Showing results by author "Donis Casey" in All Categories

Alafair Tucker is a strong woman and the core of her family’s life on a farm in Oklahoma where backbreaking work and the daily logistics of caring for her husband and their nine children, and of being a good neighbor, requires determination and a clear head. She’s also a woman of strong opinions, and it is her opinion that her neighbor, Harley Day, is a drunkard and a reprobate. So, when Harley’s body is discovered frozen in a snowdrift one January day in 1912, she isn’t surprised that his long-suffering family isn’t particularly broken up. When Alafair helps Harley’s wife prepare the body for burial, she discovers that Harley’s demise was anything but natural.

One August evening in 1914, a bushwhacker ends a pleasant outing by blowing a hole in Bill McBride, kidnapping and ravaging Bill's fiancée and wounding Alafair Tucker's daughter, Mary. All Mary knows is that the crime had something to do with the Fourth of July.

It's the spring of 1913, and love is in bloom for Alice Tucker. Alice's new beau, Walter Kelley, is handsome and wealthy. Everyone in Boynton, Oklahoma, likes him, except Alice's mother, Alafair. She sees that Walter has a weakness for the ladies - and they for him. Moreover, Walter's late wife, Louise, was murdered. and the murderer has not been caught. Walter had an alibi, so the sheriff has cleared him of the crime, but Alafair is not so sure that he wasn't involved in some way.

Instead of a quail, Shaw’s dog, Buttercup, retrieves an old boot with the bones of a foot inside. Buttercup then leads the men to a shallow grave and a skeleton with a bullet hole in the skull.

After they are settled that night in their tents, Shaw awakens to see a pair of moccasin-clad legs strolling by his tent flap. He chases the intruder, who has disappeared so completely that Shaw wonders if he imagined seeing anyone. Had he also imagined the ghostly voice that called his name?

It's a sad duty that brings Alafair Tucker and her two daughters to Enid, Oklahoma, in the fall of 1915. Her sister Ruth Anne's husband, Lester, is not long for this world, and the family is gathering to send him to his reward. But her niece's irresponsible husband, Kenneth, has disappeared at a most inconvenient time.

In the summer of 1916, a big twister brings destruction to the land 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 Jubal Beldon, who made it his business to know the ugly secrets of everyonei n town. It doesn't matter if Jubal's insinuations are true or not. In a small town like Boynton, rumor is as damaging as fact.

The year 1916 was not shaping up to be a good one for Alafair Tucker, and finding Bernie Arruda dead in a ditch didn’t help matters. Alafair had not wanted to go to Arizona in the first place. But her 10-year-old daughter, Blanche, was suffering from a stubborn ailment of the lungs, and her best chance for a cure was dry desert air. So Alafair and her husband, Shaw, had bundled their sick child onto the train and made the difficult trip from Oklahoma to the home of Alafair’s sister in Tempe, Arizona.

Blanche Tucker longs to escape her drop-dead dull life in tiny Boynton, Oklahoma. Then dashing Graham Peyton roars into town. Posing as a film producer, Graham convinces the ambitious but naive teenager to run away with him to a glamorous new life. Instead, Graham uses her as cruelly as a silent-picture villain. Taking charge of her life, she makes it to Hollywood. Six years later, Blanche has transformed into the celebrated Bianca LaBelle, the reclusive star of a series of adventure films, and Peyton's remains are discovered on a Santa Monica beach. Is there a connection?

Although Bianca LaBelle, star of the wildly popular silent movie serial The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse, and Rudolph Valentino, the greatest screen idol of all time, have been friends for years, in the summer of 1926, they are making their first picture together, a steamy romance called Grand Obsession. One evening after dinner at Bianca's fabulous Beverly Hills estate, a troubled Rudy confesses that he has received anonymous death threats. In a matter of days, filming comes to an abrupt halt when Rudy falls deathly ill. Could it be poison?