With its seven-foot snakes and nasty horses, Florida ranch country can be as dangerous as the mean streets of any big city. Sherri Travis doesn’t do country. She likes it even less when she meets Clay Adams’ psychotic neighbors and finds a dead man in the back of her pickup. With fairy lights dancing through the Spanish moss and violent men closing in, the surprise birthday party Sherri plans for Clay turns deadly. And while it isn't the party Sherri hoped for, it's a good one just the same.

The Sherri Travis mystery series was chosen by Good Morning America as one of the best mystery series for summer reading in 2010.

John Ray Leenders, the brutal man who tried to rape Sherri Travis when she was thirteen, is back in Jacaranda, living with the single mother of a teenage daughter. Sherri does not want to get involved and tries hard to ignore what she sees happening to Lacey, but it's impossible to look away. Then Sherri's father, Tully Jenkins, also reappears in her life, dragging Sherri deep into the swamp in search of alligator poachers.

Florida has two seasons. The rainy season brings hurricanes, the dry season delivers tourists - both can be nasty. Sherri Travis is tending bar at the Bath and Tennis Club where two women have been murdered. A rich socialite, who comes in daily for her quota of side-cars, decides to commit suicide by being the next victim, but first she has to decide who the murderer is. Sherri must figure it out first.

With its seven foot snakes and nasty horses, Florida ranch country can be as dangerous as the mean streets of any big city. Sherri Travis doesn't do country. She likes it even less when she meets Clay Adam's psychotic neighbors and finds a dead man in the back of her pickup. With fairy lights dancing through the Spanish moss and violent men closing in, the surprise party Sherri plans for Clay turns deadly.

In a small Florida beach town, Sherri Travis is a bartender with attitude and a woman with an inconveniently murdered husband who turns out to be as much trouble to her dead as he was alive. Sifting through the debris of Jimmy's life, Sherri finds more than a few people who wanted her lying, scheming, scam artist husband gone — but which one actually did the deed?