Annelise Ryan

Death is never pretty, and deputy coroner Mattie Winston's latest case is no exception. But this victim certainly was strikingly beautiful--before someone stuck that knife into her chest. Mattie knows everyone in the charmingly small town of Sorenson, Wisconsin, so the deceased is definitely a stranger from out of town. If a woman this attractive had moved into town, the news would have surely hit the gossip mill in record time. So what was the victim...

When a paraplegic who recently won a huge casino jackpot dies in a house fire, all bets are off as deputy coroner Mattie Winston and detective Scott Hurley, convinced that he was murdered for his money, take a gamble on the wrong suspect.

"As a colleague of deputy coroner Mattie Winston, social worker Clothilde 'Hildy' Schneider is no stranger to unsolved murders at Sorenson General Hospital. Except this time, it's up to her to crack the case... Motivated by her own difficult past, Hildy has an unparalleled commitment to supporting troubled clients through grief and addiction in Sorenson, Wisconsin. But when a distraught group therapy member reveals disturbing details about her late...

In her previous career as a nurse, Mattie Winston's job was to keep death at bay. Now, as a medicolegal investigator, she's required to study death intimately--to figure out causes and timing, and help deduce whether it was natural or suspicious. In the case of Montgomery "Monty" Dixon, a well-to-do realtor, there can be little doubt: broken pool cues do not embed themselves. Monty's body is found in the game room of his lavish house, the walls adorned...

The honeymoon will have to wait for newlyweds Mattie Winston and Steve Hurley...As deputy medical examiner and homicide detective respectively, the couple are dispatched to a grisly crime scene at the Grizzly Motel, a seedy joint for illicit liaisons on the outskirts of Sorenson, Wisconsin. A man and woman are found dead next to each other in bed in what initially appears to be a grim but straightforward murder-suicide. An affair gone sour? But...

When a floating body with its throat slashed turns out to be the newest member of the medical examiner's staff, all while she plans her wedding to Detective Steve Hurley Wisconsin deputy coroner Mattie Winston is starting to feel that she is in way over her head.

"Morgan Carter, owner of the Odds and Ends bookstore in Door County, Wisconsin, has a hobby. When she's not tending the store, she's hunting cryptids--creatures whose existence is rumored but never proven to be real. It's a hobby that cost her parents their lives but one she'll never give up on. So when a number of bodies turn up on the shores of Lake Michigan with injuries that look like bites from a giant unknown animal, police chief Jon Flanders...