Cypress Crown

Sheriff Tom Bracken has survived everything the Florida frontier could throw at him—its wildlife, its storms, and criminals more ruthless than any he faced in Chicago. Planning a Christmas Fair for the citizens of Cypress Run may finally be the thing that does him in… if the United States senator who’s been holding a grudge for two years doesn’t get to him first.

In December of 1885, two years after Tom traded a ruined Chicago career for a tin star in Cypress Run, he finds himself trying to forge a holiday festival out of tenacity and coerced Christmas cheer, in spite of the grief threatening to tear his marriage apart from the inside. His plans are disrupted when the powerful man he crossed up north, Senator Edwin Clayborne, comes to collect—with bounty hunters, forged paper trails, and a federal hearing rigged to strip Tom of his badge and his county.

Ellie Bracken has already buried too much. She will not bury her husband, too—not without a fight of her own—and especially not at Christmas. When Senator Clayborne forces the Brackens into a corner no lawman’s gun can shoot them out of, saving their family will cost them more than either is ready to pay.

But Clayborne underestimated two things: how fiercely the Brackens protect their own, and how badly Florida bites back.