Anthropologist Dr. Silver Collins is used to laughter, derision, or fanaticism when she tells someone she’s an ancient astronaut theorist. So when she receives none of those reactions from cowboy Layne Dawson, she’s intrigued. What also intrigues her is that the man has lived in the same town all his life, is amazingly confident, and is absolutely content with his life. His main goal appears to be to keep everything just the way it is.

When the news of her mother’s passing finally reaches her, a guilt-ridden Juli returns home ready to make amends with her past. Turning her mother’s antique store into an organic café for people and their pets seems to be the fresh start she needs. Only she doesn’t count on her old friend, Chase Hargrave, being the town Sheriff or that she’d be his number one suspect when a man turns up dead in her mother’s rose garden.

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

Julia Devaux loves big cities, chic cafes, old movies, and charming men. But after seeing a mafia don whack one of his minions, she is relocated under the Witness Protection Program to a small isolated town in the middle of nowhere. Simpson, Idaho doesn’t have chic cafes or cult movie theaters or even sidewalks. And it definitely doesn’t have charming men.

However, it does have Sam Cooper, former Navy SEAL and war hero, now horse breeder, who makes her feel safe and excited at the same time. True, he doesn’t have charming conversation, but conversation isn’t what Cooper does best.