The La Chance Mine Mystery

Nick Stretton has been away from La Chance for months, building roads through the northern wilderness. Now he's fighting his way back through autumn rapids in a canoe, exhausted and restless, dreaming of the gold that waits and the life he left behind. But when he finally reaches the mine, nothing is as he left it. The woman who greets him is Paulette Brown, and she's got a gun in her hand and suspicion in her eyes. She mistakes him for someone else at first, and even when she learns who he really is, she doesn't put the weapon down. She's Dudley's fiancee, the man who owns half of La Chance, and she's got plans for that gold that don't include Nick. As Nick digs into what's changed in his absence, he finds danger in every direction: the wilderness itself is turning hostile, someone is watching the mine with ill intent, and Paulette's secrets are darker than he imagined. His attraction to her might be the thing that gets him killed. For fans of early 20th-century adventure mysteries with a dangerous femme fatale, frontier danger, and a gold-rush setting.