Smoked Secrets
About this ebook
When Austin lawyer Jackie Prescott inherits half of her estranged Uncle Charlie Joe's barbecue restaurant, she plans to sell her share and get back to her real life. But her financially struggling sister Lauren needs this inheritance to survive, and the will requires both sisters to run the restaurant together for a year or lose everything.
Forced to work alongside the sister she's barely spoken to in years, Jackie discovers that Uncle Charlie Joe's death wasn't the peaceful passing everyone believed. Someone wanted him dead, and that someone is now targeting the new owners with increasingly dangerous threats.
As the sisters navigate their complicated relationship and learn to smoke brisket at 4:30 AM, they uncover a web of secrets that Uncle Charlie Joe died protecting. Hidden documents, mysterious photographs, and a trail of evidence point to a conspiracy that reaches far beyond their small Texas Hill Country town.
With the help of Jackie's brilliant teenage niece Melody and local law enforcement, the women must decide: are they brave enough to face the truth about their uncle's murder? And can two sisters who've spent decades hurting each other learn to trust again before the killer strikes?
In Prairie Rose, Texas, some family recipes are worth killing for and some truths are worth dying to protect.
Perfect for fans of Tonya Kappes and Joanne Fluke, Smoked Secrets serves up the first delicious helping of family secrets, small-town mystery, and the healing power of barbecue in the Burnt Ends Mystery series.
About the author
Erica Whelton lives in Texas with her husband and a house full of crazy pets. She has three grown children plus three beautiful grandsons. They are all the light of her life.
Her love of books, words, and all things reading started at a young age for two reasons. One being the number of hours she'd spend in the library. Her mother made sure she and her brothers always had books. The second reason was as a child, she had trouble sleeping. Her parents told her to think of nice things before bed, to tell herself stories. They pointed to her posters of sweet animals on her bedroom walls and told her to think of stories involving the animals. She still uses this technique even today when she struggles to shut her brain off.
She also enjoys the process of making tea, animals, the color pink, and basically anything awesome.
