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You want to borrow a casket?

Funeral director and part-time sheriff Barry Clayton finds United States Junior Chamber (Jaycee) member Archie Donovan's request absurd until he learns the casket will be the centerpiece of the Jaycees' haunted house, a charity event with all proceeds going to the children's hospital.

But when the president of the Jaycees is murdered in the casket on Halloween, the national press descends upon Gainesboro to cover the bizarre crime. Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins assigns Barry to be the lead investigator of a case that presents no motive and no suspects. Then someone fires a shot at Archie Donovan, and Barry wonders whether the victim in the casket had even been the intended target.

Barry finds his police work and personal life on a collision course as his ex-wife Rachel comes to town with high hopes of using the story to launch her TV-network career. She begins prying into the lives of Gainesboro's most distinguished citizens and creates a backlash that leaves another body in its wake. Old wounds are ripped open, family rifts exposed, and a criminal enterprise revealed that cuts to the heart of the community.

Barry Clayton must follow a trail of clues as winding as a forest path. The unexpected destination: a mountainside of Christmas trees. Somewhere behind these symbols of peace and goodwill lurks a killer, and unmasking him will be a fatal undertaking.

Mark de Castrique is the author of the Washington, DC, political thriller, The 13th Target, and author of the critically acclaimed Barry Clayton and Sam Blackman mystery series, both set in the mountains of his native North Carolina, and as well as mysteries for young adults. He is a veteran of the television and film production industry and serves as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

William Dufris attended the University of Southern Maine in Portland-Gorham before pursuing a career in voice work in London and then the United States. He has won more than twenty AudioFile Earphones Awards, was voted one of the Best Voices at the End of the Century by AudioFile magazine, and won the prestigious Audie Award in 2012 for best nonfiction narration. He lives with his family in Maine.