Book 1
Last Dance
Book 2
One Last Goodbye
Book 3
The Last to Remember
Book 4
Until Our Last Embrace
Book 5
For The Last Time
Book 6
Dreams Don't Last
Book 7
Last Fires Burning
Book 8
Glory's Last Victim
Book 9
Last Rites
Oct. 2004
Book 10
Last One Down
February 2005
Book 11
Before the Last Lap
August 2005
Book 12
The First Shall Be Last
June 2007
All books are available at Avalon Books
Welcome
to the Sharyn Howard Mystery Series
Set in the picturesque Uwharrie Mountains in North Carolina, the Sheriff Sharyn Howard mystery series reflects the changing face of the southern Piedmont. Each book solves a retro mystery and a present day murder mystery that are intertwined. These books are lightly romantic and offer a slice of small town life in the south.
Diamond
Springs (DSG Staff Photo / Joyce Lavene)
“Husband-and-wife writing team Joyce and Jim Lavene (One Last Goodbye) present another episode in the Diamond Springs series, Until Our Last Embrace: A Sharyn Howard Mystery, in which a woman is killed by bears. But when Sheriff Howard finds honey and bear attractant on her clothes and strychnine in her body, evidence first points toward the woman’s husband, and then beyond him to his wealthy family.”
Publisher’s Weekly
What the critics are saying about the Sharyn Howard mysteries. . .
From
Booklist
Montgomery County, North Carolina, sheriff Sharyn Howard reluctantly
leaves town to attend a retreat for local law enforcement personnel in
an abandoned mining town on isolated Sweet Potato Mountain. Soon after
she and two of her deputies arrive, one deputy is injured in an old mine
shaft and another is killed. Next, several men are killed in an
explosion. With an old radio, now broken, their only means of
communication, the group--deeply distrustful of one another--starts down
the mountain after a raging storm floods the local waterways. Back in
town, Sharyn's department investigates the death of a young woman from
an apparent car accident, and a sniper shoots another deputy.
Alternating story lines keep the narrative moving as suspense builds and
the two cases tie together. Personal issues, including Sharyn's
difficulties with her boyfriend and her ongoing project to decode her
father's journal, add texture to the main plot. This tenth in the series
offers an entertaining quick read for fans of rural procedurals.
Sue O'Brien
