Alafair Tucker Mysteries
4 primary works • 9 total works
Book 2
It's the spring of 1913, and love is in bloom for Alice Tucker. Alice's new beau, Walter Kelley, is handsome, popular, and wealthy. Everyone in Boynton, Oklahoma, likes him. Everyone but Alice's mother, Alafair. She sees that Walter has a weakness for the ladies - and they for him. Moreover, Walter's late wife Louise had been stabbed in the heart and her body disposed of in Cane Creek only a few months earlier. The murderer has never been caught. The sheriff has cleared Walter of the deed - he has an alibi - but Alafair is not so sure that he wasn't involved in some way. Something literally doesn't smell right. Could it be Louise's tormented spirit signaling clues from the other side, or is Alafair scenting a more direct link to the crime? Even if he had nothing to do with his wife's death, Alafair judges Walter to have been a bad husband. With the help of her feisty mother-in-law, Sally McBride, Alafair sets out to prove to the headstrong Alice that Walter is not the paragon she thinks he is.
As she searches for the truth behind the death of Louise Kelley, Alafair uncovers such a tangle of lies, misdirection, and deceit that she begins to think that the whole town has been downright hornswoggled!
As she searches for the truth behind the death of Louise Kelley, Alafair uncovers such a tangle of lies, misdirection, and deceit that she begins to think that the whole town has been downright hornswoggled!
Book 4
It's a sad duty that brings Alafair Tucker to Enid, Oklahoma, in the fall of 1915. Her sister Ruth Ann's husband, Lester, is not long for this world, and the family is gathering to send him to his reward. Alafair's eldest daughter Martha has volunteered to come along and care for toddler Grace, freeing Alafair to comfort the soon-to-be-bereaved. But where is Kenneth, her niece's irresponsible husband? When it comes to light that Kenneth has been involved in some shady dealing with Buck Collins, the most ruthless businessman in town, everyone is convinced that Collins has done him in. In fact, no other possibility is considered. But Alafair suspects that things are not so simple, and with help from Martha, Grace, and her sister's cat, she sets about to discover the truth about Kenneth's fate. Over the next few days, Alafair and Martha come face-to-face with blackmail, intimidation, murder, and family secrets that stretch back over twenty years. And in the process, they discover things about each other that will change their relationship forever.
Book 5
In the autumn of 1915, Shaw Tucker, his brother James, and their sons go hunting. Instead of a quail, Shaw's dog, Buttercup, flushes an old boot...containing the bones of a foot. Buttercup then leads the men to a shallow grave and a skeleton with a bullet hole in the skull. That night, Shaw awakens to see a pair of moccasin-clad legs brushing by his tent flap. He chases the intruder, but he has disappeared. His concern is justified when he realizes that someone - or something - has followed him home. Dread turns to relief when he captures a young Creek Indian boy called Crying Blood. Shaw ties the boy up in the barn, but during the few minutes he is left alone, someone thrusts a spear through Crying Blood's heart. The local law is on the killer's trail, but Shaw Tucker has a hunch... Only Shaw's wife Alafair might be able to forestall his dangerous plan. So Shaw sends her on a wild goose chase so he can confront the killer...
Book 10
Some people who have experienced a shocking, dangerous, or terrifying event develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is recognized today as a debilitating but potentially treatable mental health condition. Military veterans are a vulnerable group. But PTSD can deliver a knockout blow to anyone, as the remarkable unfolding of the tenth Alafair Tucker Mystery, Forty Dead Men, shows. World War I is over. Alafair is overjoyed that her elder son, George Washington Tucker, has finally returned home from the battlefields of France. Yet she is the only one in the family who senses that he has somehow changed. Gee Dub moves back into his old bunkhouse quarters, but he's restless and spends his days roaming. One rainy day while out riding he spies a woman trudging along the country road. She's thoroughly skittish and rejects his help. So Gee Dub cannily rides for home to enlist his mother in offering the exhausted traveler shelter. Once made comfortable at the Tucker farm, Holly Johnson reveals she's forged her way from Maine to Oklahoma in hopes of finding the soldier she married before he shipped to France. At the war's end, Daniel Johnson disappeared without a trace. It's been months. Is he alive? Is she a widow? Holly is following her only lead - that Dan has connected with his parents who live yonder in Okmulgee. Gee Dub, desperate for some kind of mission, resolves to shepherd Holly through her quest although the prickly young woman spurns any aid. Meanwhile, Alafair has discovered that Gee Dub sleeps with two cartridge boxes under his pillow - boxes containing twenty dead men each. The boxes are empty, save for one bullet. She recognizes in Gee Dub and Holly that not all war wounds are physical. Then Holly's missing husband turns up, shot dead. Gee Dub is arrested on suspicion of murder, and the entire extended Tucker family rallies to his defense. He says he had no reason to do it, but the solitary bullet under Gee Dub's pillow is gone. Regardless, be he guilty or innocent, his mother will travel any distance and go to any lengths to keep him out of prison.
Who killed Uncle Bill? Alafair W Tucker is desperate to find out. One August evening in 1914, a bushwhacker ended a pleasant outing by blowing a hole in Bill McBride, kidnapping and ravaging Bill's fiancee, and wounding Alafair's daughter Mary. Does Mary know who did the low-down deed? If she does, the bullet that grazed her knocked that information right out of her head. All she remembers is that it has something to do with the Fourth of July. Or is there more? The answer seems to be floating piece by tiny piece to the surface of Mary's consciousness. Several malicious acts testify to the fact that Bill's killer is still around and attempting to cover his tracks. The question is, can Mary remember before the murderer manages to eliminate everyone who could identify him? The law is hot on the bushwhacker's trail. Alafair thinks there is little she can do to help the sheriff, but that will never stop her from trying. She has no qualms about driving Mary to distraction with her persistent snooping and constant hovering. If there's a chance she can protect Mary from further harm or help her remember, she'll do anything she can. Even confront a vicious killer...Born and raised in Tulsa, Donis Casey is a third generation Oklahoman.
She and her siblings grew up among their aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, and great-grandparents on farms and in small towns, where they learned the love of family and independent spirit that characterizes the population of that pioneering state. Before retiring to devote herself full-time to writing, Donis was a schoolteacher, an academic librarian at the University of Oklahoma and later at Arizona State University, and owner of a Scottish import gift shop. Donis and her husband live in Tempe, Arizona. The Drop Edge of Yonder is the third novel in her series featuring the indomitable Alafair Tucker and her family, following The Old Buzzard Had It Coming and Hornswoggled.
She and her siblings grew up among their aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, and great-grandparents on farms and in small towns, where they learned the love of family and independent spirit that characterizes the population of that pioneering state. Before retiring to devote herself full-time to writing, Donis was a schoolteacher, an academic librarian at the University of Oklahoma and later at Arizona State University, and owner of a Scottish import gift shop. Donis and her husband live in Tempe, Arizona. The Drop Edge of Yonder is the third novel in her series featuring the indomitable Alafair Tucker and her family, following The Old Buzzard Had It Coming and Hornswoggled.
#1
Alafair Tucker is a strong woman: caring for her husband and nine children requires hard muscle and a clear mind. She's also a woman of strong opinions, one of them being that her neighbour, Harley Day, is a drunkard and a reprobate. So, when Harley's body is discovered frozen in a snowdrift she isn't surprised that his family aren't grieving much. But Alafair discovers that Harley's demise was anything but natural. Now his son, John Lee, is the prime suspect in his father's murder. At first, Alafair's only fear is that her seventeen-year-old daughter Phoebe will be heartbroken by the news. But, unravelling the events that led to Harley's death, Alafair suspects that Phoebe might be more than just John Lee's sweetheart - she may even be his accomplice in murder.
#6
In the summer of 1916, a big twister cuts a swath of destruction around Boynton, Oklahoma. Alafair Tucker's family and neighbors are not spared the ruin and grief spread by the storm. But no one is going to mourn for dead Jubal Beldon, who'd made it his business to know the ugly secrets of everyone in town. It never mattered if Jubal's insinuations were true or not since in a small town like Boynton, rumor could be as ruinous as fact. Then Mr. Lee, the undertaker, does his grim duty for the storm victims and discovers that even in death, troublemaker Jubal isn't going to leave his neighbors in peace. Jubal was already dead when the tornado carried his body to the middle of a fallow field. Had he died in an accident or had he been murdered by someone whose secret he had threatened to expose? Dozens of people would have been happy to do the deed, some of them members of Jubal's own family like his angry, disinherited brothers. As Sheriff Scott Tucker and his deputy Trenton Calder look into Jubal's demise, it begins to look like the prime suspect may be someone very dear to the widow Beckie MacKenzie, the beloved music teacher and mentor of Alafair's daughter Ruth. Ruth fears that the secrets exposed by the investigation are going to cause more damage to Beckie's life than the tornado. Alafair, coping with injuries to her own, still has time for suspicions about how Jubal Beldon came to die. What if the truth of it hits very close to home?
