Bones from the Sky

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BONES FROM THE SKY, Raine Stockton Mystery Book #18 is now available in Digital and Paperback format.  This one you don't want to miss!

   Raine Stockton wanted a small wedding. Instead, she got helicopters, private security, international guests, and a mystery before the vows.

   When a suspicious new client appears at Dog Daze, Raine’s home is bugged and a security consultant assigned to watch her property is found shot after a crash. Cisco, her golden retriever search-and-rescue dog, makes the live find—but the rescue is only the beginning.

   Someone is targeting Miles Young’s global business empire, and the threat has reached Raine’s mountain home. With the wedding hours away, Raine must untangle corporate sabotage, old military secrets, and a guest list full of suspects before the celebration turns deadly.

I hope you enjoy BONES FROM THE SKY.  And when you've finished reading it, join the discussion in the Donna Ball Mysteries Group on Facebook.   
 

Pre-order for Kindle Here

The Book That Changes Everything

Raine Stockton wanted a small wedding. Instead, she got helicopters, private security, international guests, and a mystery before the vows.

When a suspicious new client appears at Dog Daze, Raine’s home is bugged and a security consultant assigned to watch her property is found shot after a crash. Cisco, her golden retriever search-and-rescue dog, makes the live find—but the rescue is only the beginning.

Someone is targeting Miles Young’s global business empire, and the threat has reached Raine’s mountain home. With the wedding hours away, Raine must untangle corporate sabotage, old military secrets, and a guest list full of suspects before the celebration turns deadly.

Bones From the Sky takes a beloved mystery series beyond small-town intrigue and into high-stakes romantic suspense, with search-and-rescue action, corporate sabotage, international danger, and a deadly threat to everyone Raine loves.

Available everywhere Sept. 24; pre-order for your Kindle now!

 

Jagged Edges: Raine Stockton Dog Mystery #17

 

Now available in paperback and for Kindle!  Audio coming soon. 

Raine Stockton Dog Mystery #17 

Dog trainer and search‑and‑rescue specialist Raine Stockton is trying to rebuild her life after a year she’d rather forget—one that included false arrest, public scrutiny, and more heartbreak than any small town should dish out. With her golden retriever partner Cisco by her side, Raine hopes the new year will finally bring calm.

It doesn’t.

When a frightened woman disappears, a battered dog is found abandoned, and a powerful outsider begins buying up land around the county, Raine is drawn into a case that hits far too close to home. What starts as a routine act of compassion quickly exposes a chilling network of kidnapping, murder and corruption—one powerful enough to reach far beyond the mountains and silence anyone who gets too close.

As snowstorms close roads and tensions flare, Raine must rely on her instincts, her training, and Cisco’s unerring nose to uncover the truth. But in a place where everyone knows your name, it’s the things no one talks about that can get you killed.

Jagged Edges is a gripping, emotionally rich mystery that blends small‑town secrets, a heroic search‑and‑rescue dog and high‑stakes suspense— where justice is hard‑won and deeply human.

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The Saga of The Hunter Concludes

A Flash of Shadow, the conclusion of the Saga of the Hunter trilogy, is now available in paperback, audio, and for your Kindle! Order from Amazon here .  Also available for Nook.

After two and a half long years, The Saga of the Hunter is complete! This is the first time characters from one of my mystery series have crossed over to another series, and with A Flash of Shadow(Dogleg Island Mystery #7), the Hunter's journey comes to an end. Thanks to all who made the conclusion of the trilogy the #1 new release in mysteries on Amazon!

To read more about each book in The Saga of the Hunter trilogy, check it out here. 

And you can read about the making of the trilogy at www.donnaballblog.com.

 

Dogleg Island Mystery #7 Coming Soon!

 

Now available for pre-order here

Coming September 25

The Saga of the Hunter trilogy, which began with Dead Man's Trail (Raine Stockton Dog Mystery #16) and continued with Undefeatable: A Buck Lawson Mystery (Blood River series Book #3) concludes on Dogleg Island with A FLASH OF SHADOW.  Patrick Henry Jessup, who has left a bloody trail of victims across America's parks and national forests, returns to the Gulf Coast of Florida where he was born.  But has he come home to die, or to kill?

Even if you haven't read the other two books in the series (though I hope you do!) fans of Flash won't want to miss this one.  Changes are coming to Dogleg Island, and you'll want to be a part of them.  The paperback and hardcover editions will be available September 25, with the audio version coming shortly thereafter, but you can pre-order your copy for Kindle now.

  

Now available from  for Kindle and in paperback HERE

The Saga of the Hunter Continues with Book # 3 of The Blood River Series.

The quiet little south Georgia town of Mercy is rocked by the brutal murder of one of its most unassuming citizens. Within hours of the discovery of the crime, the remains of another victim are found in the Blood River. And then another.  Things like this simply don’t happen in Mercy.

Until they do.

Police Chief Buck Lawson is still finding his way around his new hometown and his new job, but he is no stranger to the savagery that appears to be stalking the residents of Mercy once again. The black waters of the Blood River have a reputation as a killing field that goes back centuries, and Buck has seen for himself the kind of predator they attract.

While struggling with civil unrest, departmental incompetence, and unintentional interference from state investigators, Buck comes upon a set of twenty-year-old crimes that suggest a pattern.  Has the same killer returned to Mercy now?  And has he done so many, many times in the past?  

Buck Lawson races against time to catch a killer and protect the town he has come to call home from the shadows that lurk beneath its surface.  As the hunter becomes the hunted, the line between predator and prey blurs, leading to a desperate confrontation in which only the most determined will survive.

Audible edition coming soon! 

Dead Man's Trail Preorder

Pre-order here for Kindle

On the Trail Again…

Deep in the heart of the Smoky Mountain wilderness there are a thousand things that will kill you. One of them is human.

Wilderness expert and dog trainer Raine Stockton agrees to help lead a survival skills training camp for her fiancé’s executive team.  She is unaware that she and her tracking dog, Cisco, are walking into a hotbed of corporate intrigue involving espionage and stolen technology. Everyone at the retreat is a suspect, and no one can be trusted. And none of them is aware that, while their small drama plays out, a much bigger threat is stalking them.

On a routine survival exercise, the group becomes stranded in the wilderness with an ice storm moving in.  With all communications disabled, they are completely cut off from the modern world and being hunted by a man to whom killing is a way of life.   One by one their members are picked off and the survivors must rely on Raine and Cisco to lead them to safety.  But as the killer draws ever closer, even Raine is no longer sure where safety lies.

Don’t miss this thrilling first installment in The Hunter Saga, Raine and Cisco’s most harrowing adventure yet!

Coming in PRINT May 30, and on Audible this summer. 

 

Now available from Amazon here

Also available for Nook

It's been two years since FLASH IN THE DARK and many readers had given up on ever finding out what happened to Aggie, Grady, Flash and friends.  But good news: they're back! FLASH OF FIRE takes place in the late summer following the events of FLASH IN THE DARK and before the events of THE GOOD SHEPHERD.  It may sound confusing, but don't worry-- it's all self-explanatory once you start reading.

Many people have asked why I chose to release THE GOOD SHEPHERD before FLASH OF FIRE. The answer is fairly simple.  With three ongoing mystery series, I knew it would be a long time between books for readers of the Dogleg Island Mysteries.  I didn't want readers to think I'd abandoned them, so I released a Christmas anthology of short stories from each series to tide readers over until the next full-length novel.  It seems to have worked well, and I may do it again from time to time.

In fact, once you finish FLASH OF FIRE, you may want to get in the holiday mood again with THE GOOD SHEPHERD.  It's available for Kindle for $2.99, or you can read the entire anthology, DECK THE HALLS: A HOLIDAY MYSTERY ANTHOLOGY in paperback or  e-book.

Pre-Order Flash of Fire

Pre Order for your Kindle  HERE

Flash is back!

FLASH OF FIRE picks up in the late summer after the events of FLASH IN THE DARK, with new challenges and a new mystery to solve for Aggie, Flash, Grady and friends.

The peaceful Gulf Coast community of Dogleg Island has almost returned to normal after the terrifying battle with a drug cartel six months ago.  However, there have been a lot of changes on Dogleg Island, and not all of them benign. 

Police Chief Aggie Malone and her canine assistant Flash are glad to be back to the ordinary business of small-town policing again, but their move into their new office is not entirely without its challenges. Old ghosts haunt the hallways of their new headquarters as they struggle to overcome the memories of its tragic past.   While Aggie and her husband Grady excitedly await the birth of their first child, Grady is faced with an unexpected career change. Old friends are leaving, while others are coming home. Flash, whose self-appointed job it is to make sense of the ways of the world, finds all the changes exciting.  Aggie is not so sure.

In the midst of all this, the beaches of Dogleg Island have been targeted by a group of environmental activists who insist upon exercising their right to peaceful protest in the most disruptive ways possible.   When a series of apparently harmless break-ins result in the theft of explosives, Aggie begins to suspect the environmentalists are not as peaceful as they appear.  And when a man is murdered, Aggie and Flash know that it’s only a matter of time before the troubles on Dogleg escalate into a crisis. And they are right.

Somewhere on the island a violent terrorist lurks, and it’s up to Aggie, Flash and Grady to find him before he makes his next move.  The problem is that only one person knows his identity, and that person may be even more dangerous than the terrorist.  As the clock ticks down toward disaster, Aggie and Flash find themselves caught up in a desperate guessing game… one in which one wrong move could prove deadly.

Flash of Fire is available to pre-order for your Kindle now. Paperback and Nook versions will be released November 29, with the Audible version following soon after.

 

The second installment in The Blood River Series is coming June 22!

 In this exciting follow-up to UNFIXABLE, Buck Lawson is doing his best to settle in to his new job as police chief in the little town of Mercy, Georgia.  He is once again called to face an unexpected challenge when skeletal remains are discovered on the property of a prominent citizen. The subsequent investigation uncovers a self-sustaining empire of crime that has been virtually unstoppable for almost 200 years.  It's up to Buck and his small band of  loyal officers to find  a way to dismantle the operation before anyone else dies.

I hope you enjoy UNSTOPPABLE on a beach with a cool drink!  Pre-order for Kindle HERE . Paperback, hardcover, and Nook editions will be released June 22.  Audible version coming later this summer.

 

Deck the Halls

Available in Print and for Kindle 

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Happy Holidays everyone!

I wanted to do something special for my readers this year, so I decided that, instead of featuring just one of my fictional sleuths in a holiday book, that the only fair thing to do was to feature all three!  Here, together in one volume, are holiday mysteries from the Raine Stockton Dog Mystery series,  Dogleg Island mystery series, and the Blood River mystery series.  And, to be honest, I can't decide which story I like best!  Here is a description:

Three holiday parties, three holiday mysteries featuring your favorite sleuths:

Raine Stockton and Cisco in Angels in the Snow

While preparing for the annual Dog Daze Christmas party, Raine leaves on a secret Christmas errand and becomes trapped in a blizzard. Injured and alone, with a desperate criminal on the loose, a surprising canine hero comes to her rescue. But is it all a product of her imagination, or a genuine Christmas miracle?

 

Flash and Aggie in The Good Shepherd

A missing infant, a holiday pageant, and a priest determined to do the right thing no matter what the cost all come together to present Dogleg Island police chief Aggie Malone and her canine assistant Flash with one of their most unusual cases yet. When a routine call escalates into a kidnapping on the eve of the annual Dogleg Island Police Department holiday open house, Flash and Aggie are held hostage by a desperate man whose only chance for redemption may be the grace of the holiday season.

 

Buck Lawson in Welcome to Bethlehem

Police chief Buck Lawson wants his first Christmas in his new hometown of Mercy, Georgia, to be a memorable one, both for his family and the police officers under his command. But while preparing to host the traditional police department Christmas party, Buck’s home is burglarized by a Middle Eastern man who may be connected to far more violent crimes. As the investigation unfolds and unsettling connections to the past come to light, Buck fears this Christmas will be memorable for all the wrong reasons.     

UNFIXABLE

 

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Order for Nook here 

I'm so excited to announce that UNFIXABLE: A BUCK LAWSON MYSTERY is now available at your favorite retailer.    Unfixable, a spin-off from the popular Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series, is the first in the new Blood River series in which Raine's ex, Buck Lawson, sets out to clean up the town of Mercy, Georgia, and gets more than he bargained for.

You can read more about Unfixable here , or download a free sample from Amazon here. I think you'll like it!

COMING SEPTEMBER 16

With UNFIXABLE: A Buck Lawson Mystery, I launch my first new series in 6 years.  I couldn't be more excited!  

In this spin-off from the popular Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series, Former Hanover County Sheriff Buck Lawson leaves the mountains of North Carolina to take a job as the police chief of the small south Georgia town of Mercy, and soon finds himself in over his head.  For one thing, his predecessor has been murdered…

Leaving behind two failed marriages and a job that almost cost him his life, Buck is seeking a fresh start for himself and his new family.  But Mercy is a town with a past as dark as the Blood River that runs through it, and the crime that resulted in the death of the beloved former chief of police may have its roots in an evil that goes back generations.
 
Buck has inherited an unsolved homicide, a house that may well be haunted and a police department that is almost certainly corrupt.    It falls to Buck to free an innocent man and bring the former police chief’s killer to justice while he wades through the quagmire of incompetence and dishonesty that permeates his office.  His efforts are both hampered and assisted by a benevolent despot of a mayor who runs the town like her own fiefdom and is known to bend the law to suit her convenience.  His only true ally, Buck  comes to understand, is the dead man himself.

 When a young college student goes missing, Buck has reason to suspect foul play that may involve one of his police officers. He must rely on his gut to point him to those he can trust.  But as the evidence leads him closer to an unthinkable truth, he realizes he is retracing the footsteps of the former police chief.  Will the path lead him, as it did his predecessor, to his grave?  

You can read the first chapter for free  here

If you'd like to read an interview about how the series came to be, go here.

And enjoy the first installment in the Blood River Series September 16!

FLASH IN THE DARK, Dogleg Island Mystery # 5, Now Available

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All your questions will be answered!

Dogleg Island Police Chief Aggie Malone has spent years searching for the identity of her birth father.  Now, thanks to a home DNA test, she has a lead… but it’s taking her in a direction she never could have imagined, and desperately does not want to go.  Because the evidence suggests that Aggie could be the daughter of the infamous Angelo, head of the deadly Ghost Syndicate crime empire. 

Matters become more complicated when Aggie’s canine partner, Flash, discovers an abandoned child on the beach. The little girl can tell them nothing about how she got there, but she is clutching a Santa Muerte statuette—a symbol of protection in Hispanic culture, but also the notorious insignia for a drug cartel.   Aggie’s husband, Deputy Sheriff Ryan Grady, becomes involved when the case intersects with his own investigation into the Ghost Syndicate, leading them all down a dark path fill with treachery and deceit in which no one is above suspicion.

Grady unearths a secret organization with sinister connections to the past that may provide the key to bringing down the Ghost Syndicate.  Aggie comes closer to discovering Angelo’s true identity and, perhaps, the truth about her own parentage.   But even as the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place, a plan for revenge that has been decades in the making is unfolding around them.  Unless Aggie, Grady and Flash can stop it they risk losing everything they love… even Dogleg Island itself.

Don’t miss this shocking conclusion to the “Angel Trilogy”!  

 

Murder Creek Now Available

It seems we've been waiting forever but the 14th installment in the Raine Stockton Mystery series goes on sale today.  Here are the Amazon links:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0996561099   (print version)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084T96C6V (kindle version)

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w?ean=2940162830351 (nook version)

This is a good time to stay home and read, folks!

Murder Creek

PRE-ORDER FOR KINDLE HERE 
PRE-ORDER IN PRINT HERE

Raine Stockton knows dogs, not kids.  Nonetheless, she is supremely confident in her ability to take care her fiancé’s ten year old daughter, Melanie, for a week while he is out of town.   After all, how hard could it be?

But things get complicated when Raine and her golden retriever, Cisco, rescue a dog who is locked in a hot car in a remote Smoky Mountain park… and subsequently discover the owner of that car drowned in the creek only a few dozen yards away.  Was it an accident, or was it murder?

Raine is certain that she recognizes the abandoned dog from her puppy training class six years ago.  Mere months later, the dog, along with his three-year-old owner, disappeared from the child’s bedroom during the night and were never seen again.  Now the dog is back, and Raine is convinced his reappearance might hold the key to the truth about the missing child.  The problem is that no one believes her.

While Raine tries to unravel the mystery of the abandoned dog’s past—and a six-year-old missing child case—her ex-husband, criminal investigator Buck Lawson, opens an investigation into the death of the man in whose car the dog was found.  He soon finds himself involved in another cold case, one that leads him from an apparent serial killer in Florida to a murder in his own hometown.

The one thing that ties the two cases together is the dog whose shadowy history opens the door to questions better left unasked, and whose answers may prove to be deadly.  But when lives are in danger, it is up to Raine and Cisco to track down the truth, even though it means risking someone she loves. 

Pieces of Eight

Pre-order for your Kindle now

COMING SEPTEMBER 9, 2019

A deadly explosion at an archeological dig on Dogleg Island plunges police chief Aggie Malone and her canine partner Flash into a dark mystery from the past.

On the other side of the bridge, Deputy Sheriff Ryan Grady, still reeling from the brutal assassination of his ex-partner, stumbles onto the site of a mass murder. 

 

In the midst of a state-wide manhunt for a desperate fugitive, Aggie deals with a new island administrator who threatens the future of police department, while Grady is stalked by a mysterious stranger with an agenda of his own. 

As the pieces of the investigations fall into place, Aggie and Grady begin to see that their cases, though separated by fifty years, are more alike than they are different… but only Flash knows how they are connected.  And by whom.

When a family tragedy is traced back to the elusive Ghost Syndicate, the fight for justice turns fiercely personal for Aggie, Grady, and Flash.  And this time it’s a fight they can’t afford to lose. 

Don’t miss this exciting sequel to Flash of Brilliance, nominee for Dog Writers Association of America’s Best Fiction Book of the Year!

The Devil's Deal: Raine Stockton Mystery #13

Kindle

Paperback

Nook

Coming November 29, 2018!

From the winner of the Dog Writer’s Association of America “Best Fiction Book of the Year 2017”award comes this thrilling new installment in the Raine Stockton Dog Mystery series.

The annual Hansonville, North Carolina Founder’s Day Festival always draws plenty of locals and tourists alike who are eager to immerse themselves in the Smoky Mountain culture and show their support for local businesses and civic organizations.  For dog trainer and Humane Society volunteer Raine Stockton, it’s a perfect opportunity to raise money for the local animal shelter.  But when a stranger wanders into her fund-raising booth with his young daughter and their beautiful black Lab, the peaceful country afternoon is turned into chaos.  Within  moments the man is arrested for murder, his child is placed in foster care, and Raine finds herself the temporary custodian of what may well be the most valuable dog in the world. 

 While Raine’s ex-husband, the newly appointed county investigator Buck Lawson, tries to sort out the tangled threads of a murder case that isn’t even his own, Raine discovers that the man they’ve taken into custody is the world-famous research scientist Dr. Jason Broderick and that the Labrador, Bongo, is one of an elite group of dogs Broderick has bred and trained to detect concealed micro-technology.  Raine can’t believe that someone she so admires could be guilty of murder, particularly when she learns that one of his associates is her own fiancé, Miles Young.   But is her faith in both men misplaced?

It turns out that Bongo has skills that go beyond even those of his fellow scent-detecting canines—skills that are worth billions of dollars to some people, and are worth killing for to others.   When the unthinkable happens and an innocent life is placed in jeopardy, Raine is forced to make a terrible choice:  one that will shake her to her very core and cause her to question not only herself, but everything she has ever believed.

This thirteenth installment of the Raine Stockton Dog Mystery series begins a story arc that will take the lives of Raine, Miles and Buck down paths they had never before imagined.  Don't miss it!

Available for your Kindle here

A special gift for Hummingbird House readers!  This short novella (about 80 pages) is offered for Kindle and Nook only this summer for $2.99.  It is not available in print.   

Paul and Derrick organize a Book Lovers’ Gala Weekend at the Hummingbird House, featuring none other than the Queen of Romance, Esmerelda Delaware, as their guest speaker.  Despite dire warnings from Harmony-- the Hummingbird House’s massage therapist, general manager, and resident mystic-- that the stars could not be more misaligned for such an event, they even invite the members of their old book club, many of whom they haven’t seen in years.  Of course, the problem with reunions is that everyone changes with time and some of those changes are more dramatic than others. Add to this a secret crush about to be made public, a secret identity about to be exposed, and an 84-year-old queen married to a 24-year-old prince, and the weekend quickly deteriorates into a web of deception and evasion. As they watch their grand extravaganza slowly spin into chaos, Paul and Derrick are forced to admit their mistakes, and are reminded once again that honesty is always the best policy… or is it?

If you enjoy this novella, look for a collection of similar stories-- to be offered in both print in electronic format!--in the future.  

Pre-Order DEADFALL

Coming December 9, 2017

Pre Order Here

Book #12 in the Raine Stockton Dog Mystery Series

Hollywood has come to the scenic Smoky Mountain community of Hanover County, and dog trainer Raine Stockton can’t resist the opportunity when her dogs are offered a chance at a role in the film. Naturally, she expects her showy golden retriever, Cisco, to win the part, but Cisco’s impetuous nature does him in, and the role goes to her twin Australian Shepherds, Mischief and Magic. For the first time in his young life, Cisco is left behind.

Film-making turns out not to be as exciting as Raine had expected, and the only upside to the long, mostly boring days is the new friend she makes on the set, a stuntwoman by the name of Dallas McKenzie. But it doesn’t take Raine long to discover that Dallas is a woman of secrets and lies, and trouble seems to follow her wherever she goes. The set is plagued by accidents and vandalism, and Dallas always seems to be at the center of everything that goes wrong. But even Raine can’t imagine how wrong things have yet to go.

Meanwhile, Raine agrees to investigate a case for her lawyer friend Sonny involving a service dog who is accused of biting a child. The case seems open and shut until Cisco, who is beginning to show some talent as a medical alert dog, sniffs out evidence that throws previous theories into disarray—and may shed some light into the mysterious happenings on the movie set. But when Cisco and Raine start to track down answers, they find murder instead. 

In a world where nothing is what it seems, it’s up to Raine and Cisco to find the truth… before it’s too late. 

Order from Amazon HERE for December 9 release