Blood Orchid is the third adventure of one of Stuart Woods's most engaging characters, Chief of Police Holly Barker. This time out, Holly is trying to get her life back together after the shattering loss of her fiance. With the help of her wily Doberman, Daisy, and her father, Ham, she throws herself back into the job with a vengeance. At a local restaurant, Holly and Ham meet a gentleman new to the area, rich and dapper developer Ed Shine, who has...

"Everyone in Cooper's Bayou knows the story of Raylene Atchison, the local woman who was murdered on the banks of the bayou, and her daughter Aurora, who was found on the steps of the mini-mart, alone. But when Aurora, who was raised far away from Cooper's Bayou, returns to Florida to settle her grandfather's estate, she learns that the suspect in her mother's murder was wrongly accused"--

"In the summer of 1976, recently widowed and childless, Ora Lee Beckworth hires a homeless old black man to mow her lawn. The neighborhood children call him the Pee-can Man; their mothers call them inside whenever he appears. When he is arrested for murder, only Ora knows what really happened in the woods where Eddie lived. But truth is a fickle thing, and a lie is self-perpetuating. Ora and her maid Blanche soon find themselves in a web of lies that...