Zoe Chambers Mystery

Zoe Chambers, paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania's tight-knit Vance Township, has been privy to a number of local secrets over the years, some of them her own. But secrets become explosive when a dead body is found in the Township Board president's abandoned car. As a January blizzard rages, Zoe and Police Chief Pete Adams launch a desperate search for the killer, even if it means uncovering secrets that could not only destroy Zoe and Pete but also those closest to them.

On a sultry summer afternoon, paramedic Zoe Chambers responds to a call and finds a farmer's body hanging from the rafters of his hay barn. What first appears to be a suicide quickly becomes something sinister when Zoe links the victim to a pair of deaths 45 years earlier. Her attempts to wheedle information from her mother and stepfather hit a brick wall of deception, one that brings into question everything Zoe knows about her late father, who died in a car crash when she was eight. Or did he?

Paramedic Zoe Chambers is used to saving lives, but when she stops a man from running into a raging inferno in a futile attempt to rescue his wife, Zoe finds herself drawn to him, and even more so to his 10-year-old daughter. She invites them both to live at the farm while the grieving widower picks up the pieces of his life. Vance Township Police Chief Pete Adams, of course, is not happy with this setup, especially when he finds evidence implicating Zoe's new houseguest in murder times two.

Paramedic Zoe Chambers and the rest of rural Monongahela County's EMS and fire personnel are used to wading into the middle of trouble to rescue the sick and the injured. But when someone with an ax to grind seeks retribution by staging accident scenes and gunning down the first responders, Zoe finds herself forced to not only treat her own brethren of the front lines, but also, in her role as deputy coroner, seek out whoever is killing her friends.

A relaxing trail ride turns tragic when Paramedic and Deputy Coroner Zoe Chambers discovers the body of a popular county commissioner in her Pennsylvania woods. Inconsistencies surround the horrible accident, but before she can investigate further, she's pried away by a plea for help from her best friend, whose son has been deemed a person of interest in a homicide over 1,000 miles away. When he vanishes without a trace, his mother begs Zoe to help clear him and bring him safely home.

On the way to the emergency room, an elderly woman regains consciousness long enough to inform paramedic Zoe Chambers that her fall down the basement steps was no accident. Before she can say more, she succumbs to her injuries, launching Zoe and Police Chief Pete Adams into the investigation of a burglary ring targeting the area's vulnerable senior citizens.

Rural Pennsylvania's Vance Township Police Chief Pete Adams is down an officer and has been dealing with extra shifts as well as a pair of bickering neighbors, one of whom owns a machete and isn't afraid to use it. Golden Oaks Assisted Living is outside Pete's jurisdiction, but a murder in the facility his Alzheimer's-afflicted father calls home makes the case personal.

Paramedic Zoe Chambers hoped a week at the Monongahela County Fair, showing her horse and manning the ambulance, would provide a much-needed diversion from recent events that continue to haunt her. An old friend, a bossy nemesis, and a teenage crush from her 4-H days fail to offer the distraction she had in mind. But ever the caregiver, she soon bonds with a troubled teen and a grieving father. Back in Vance Township, a missing woman turns up dead, leading Police Chief Pete Adams into a journey through her mysterious final hours.

Paramedic and Deputy Coroner Zoe Chambers responds to a shooting and discovers her longtime friend Horace Pavelka has gunned down a man who'd bullied him mercilessly for decades. Ruled self-defense, no charges are filed. When another of his tormentors turns up dead in Horace's kitchen, Police Chief Pete Adams questions the man's innocence in both cases...especially after Horace and his girlfriend go into hiding.

When one of Chief Pete Adams' first murder convictions is overturned, he and County Detective Wayne Baronick are assigned to reinvestigate the case. As new theories about the murder surface, Pete begins to question not only the original suspect's guilt, but his own investigative skills from the days when he first took over the Vance Township Police Department. Did Pete put his personal feelings ahead of his quest for justice and lock up an innocent man? Or is the defendant as devious as Pete first believed?

As Monongahela County's new coroner Zoe Chambers-Adams gears up for a third day searching for a missing woman, she receives the news she's been dreading: a body has been found. What she discovers at the scene leaves no doubt-the missing woman was violently murdered. Worse, the manner of death mirrors the Monongahela Strangler case that terrorized the county when Zoe was in high school. Those murders stopped, but the case was never satisfactorily solved. And with people arriving in town for Zoe's twentieth high school reunion, the memories of those scary days return with a vengeance.

As a massive weather system barrels toward them, Vance Township Police Chief Pete Adams and his wife, County Coroner Zoe Chambers-Adams, learn how unprepared they really are. A 911 call reports a dead young mother, her critically injured husband, and their missing seven-year-old daughter. Pete and Zoe realize that as the storm moved north, a killer came with it.

Annette Dashofy presents Book 13 in the Zoe Chambers Mystery series.