Something in the Straw

A wedding. A collapsed groom. A shimmer that wouldn't let go. When Brett Hargrove hits the ground at his own ceremony in the small town of Clover Hollow, everyone calls it heat and too much bourbon. Veterinary technician Ivy McCord isn't so sure. She knows what a sedated animal looks like. She knows the difference between a man who drank too much and a man who was given something he didn't choose. With her three-legged border collie Fig at her side and a green spiral notepad filling up fast, Ivy begins to pull at the one loose thread she can't leave alone — quietly, carefully, the way you approach an anxious animal. What she finds underneath is not a moment of impulse but a plan years in the making, built on family land, buried water rights, and a woman who had decided that love was a liability she couldn't afford to let transfer on paper. Something in the Straw is a cozy mystery for readers who like their small towns warm and their secrets cold — a story about what people protect, what they're willing to become to protect it, and what it means to find, in the most unexpected place, something worth calling home.