The Madeline Dare Mysteries - Book 4
Valley of Ashes
“The sharpest humor comes with a pinch of suffering, and Madeline Dare suffers big time in Cornelia Read’s new mystery about this fugitive socialite from Oyster Bay, Long Island…Madeline is funny when she’s depressed (‘I’m fat, my marriage is tanking, and I want to run away with the circus’), but the only person who appreciates her bleak humor is a friend with domestic issues of her own (‘I just want to be a widow. Is that so wrong?’).”
New York Times
Madeline Dare trades New York’s gritty streets for the tree-lined avenues of Boulder, Colorado, when her husband Dean lands a promising job. Madeline, now a full-time homemaker and mother to beautiful toddler twin girls, has achieved everything she thought she always wanted, but with her husband constantly on the road, she’s fighting a losing battle against the Betty Friedan riptide of suburban/maternal exhaustion, angst, and sheer loneliness. A new freelance newspaper gig helps her get her mojo back, but Boulder isn’t nearly as tranquil as it seems: there’s a serial arsonist at large in the city. As Madeline closes in on the culprit, the fires turn deadly—and the stakes tragically personal. She’ll need every ounce of strength and courage she has to keep the flames from reaching her own doorstep, threatening all she holds most dear.
Praise