Cypress Run

Tom Bracken was a good detective in Chicago. Good enough to know that if you're going to make enemies, you should do it spectacularly well or not at all. Which is how, in the winter of 1883, he finds himself exiled to Cypress Run, Florida: a swamp-soaked frontier town where the alligators outnumber the citizens, the politics are deadlier than the wildlife, and the only woman worth talking to spends most of her time calling him an idiot. (She's not entirely wrong.) As the newly-sworn-in sheriff of Cypress Run, Tom is completely out of his depth. In Chicago, he could read a crime scene like a poker hand. In Florida, he can't even eat an orange without nearly killing himself. He isn't prepared for the heat. He isn't prepared for the swamp. And he absolutely isn't prepared for Ellie Harper, a sharp-eyed nurse who sees straight through his charm and refuses to let him hide behind it. When a murdered surveyor turns up in the creek and railroad money begins shifting the balance of power, Tom realizes his exile isn't a punishment—it's a test. Someone wants Cypress Run broken. Someone wants him disgraced. And the deeper he digs, the clearer it becomes that survival will require more than quick aim and quicker wit. In a town where the swamp devours the careless and politics devour the honest, Tom must decide if he's the sort of man who lets a little thing like Florida get the best of him—and whether he's brave enough to build a future with the woman who might be the only thing keeping him alive. Cypress Run is a historical mystery set in post-Reconstruction Florida, blending frontier justice, found family, slow-burn romance-and yes, alligators.