About The Series
TWISTING WILLOWS
TWISTING WILLOWS
When the Budget Coordinator is left rotting in the high school’s darkroom, the small town of Golden Valley, Colorado, is turned upside down. Unbeknownst to the murderer, the victim left a folder revealing that someone has been embezzling money from the school.
As Ruth Willows begins her senior year, she realized the guy she started dating over the summer is a new teacher in her school, and even though she must end this unethical relationship, fate continues to throw them together. Life gets more complicated when she stumbles upon the dead man in the school’s darkroom.
Ruth must do everything in her power to survive when the murderer realized that Ruth had discovered the whole truth.
Deep Pines
TWISTING WILLOWS
The media plastered Ruth Willows’ name far and wide last year as the girl who exposed an embezzler and murderer in her small hometown. Now, in Sexton, Colorado, Ruth wants nothing more than to stay under the radar and have an uneventful year in college. After last year’s trauma, she is heartbroken that her first love, Ken Silver, a.k.a. Cowboy, has ghosted her. Even more reason to keep to herself and get through the year unscathed.
While Ruth wrestles with life without Cowboy, as well as a creepy stalker, the mountain town of Sexton has its own problems. The local sheriff is confronted with a serial rapist turned murderer, and must call in the hard-edged detective, Pamela Ramos from the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, to help. Ruth and Ramos had butted heads last year. Ramos’ appearance in town is just one more obstacle in Ruth’s search for serenity.
Now, Ruth must decide to call a truce with Ramos or become the next victim.
Slippery Elms
Slippery Elms
Ruth has spent two drama-free years at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. She’s been living happily and safely with her love, Ken Silver. As graduation nears, Ken is ready for the next step in their happily ever after story, but Ruth is not so sure. Twenty-two is awfully young to settle down and start a family, especially when Ruth longs to explore the world and have a few adventures before making any permanent life decisions.
As her final year in undergrad begins, Ruth discovers that higher education is sometimes more about politics than learning. Trying to appease her advisor so that she can graduate on time, she agrees to tutor Paz Rizzo, the son of one of the university’s most esteemed donors. The Rizzo family embraces Ruth as a close friend, and Ruth returns their affection, maybe a little too much. The closer Ruth’s relationship grows between Paz and his family, the more suspicious the family’s business and their associates become.
Ruth strives to find a balance between doing her job, completing her degree, placating Ken, and staying alive.
Shady Acacia
Silver Willows
Slippery Elms
It was a bold step to move halfway around the world to Africa to work on a research project, but it was the move Ruth Willows longed for. She left behind her family, her friends, and the man she loved and lived with for the last three years, Ken Silver.
Tanzania’s savannah is a beautiful and wild. Ruth loves the wilderness, the animals, and the research as she experiences real freedom for the first time in her life. Freedom to do as she pleases, to make her own choices, and her own mistakes. But her choice to become involved with another, much older, researcher at the camp has her questioning her ability to know right from wrong.
Once a week, Ruth spends a night in a town close to the research camp. In town there is running water, internet service, and a drop-dead gorgeous singer in the local cantina that she can’t help but to be drawn to. Their attraction is mutual, and Ruth decides that this is her golden opportunity to play the field unburdened by any morals her small town upbringing has instilled.
Truly on her own for the first time, can Ruth avoid being deceived, getting caught up in a local political scandal, and ending her and all her fellow researchers’ projects and possibly their lives?
Blood Oak
Silver Willows
Silver Willows
Back on American soil, Ruth has finished her master’s degree and is working in the education department at a small zoo in Middlewater, New Jersey. Her coworkers are good people, but there’s a lot of history between the zoo employees, the town, and the Zoo’s board of Directors.
Regardless of her experiences in Africa, Ruth can’t stop the memories of her first love, Ken Silver from worming their way into her brain. She’s had no contact with him. No one can find him. And even though she has a new life, and new friends the memory of her Cowboy remains with her. He even haunts her through her latest relationship with the recently promoted and very handsome Detective Dominic Scarpaci.
Dom’s family has a long history too, not only in New Jersey and New York, but going all the back to the old country. Ruth feels the pressure from Dom’s family to declare her intention towards him and her future plans.
The morning after the zoo’s curator’s engagement party, Ruth find her dear friend and boss, Ben Garber, dead in the zoo’s crocodile tank. Of course, Detective Scarpaci is first on the scene. Ruth finds herself entangled in a nasty web of the zoo politics, local criminals, a vigilante group right out of the history books, as well as Dom’s Aunt Lucia and her spirit guides.
Silver Willows
Silver Willows
Silver Willows
Ruth Willows returns home to Tall Willows Ranch in Golden Valley, Colorado, to celebrate her Granddaddy’s 80th birthday. On paper, Ruth has it all, but in her heart, she misses her family, the ranch, her horse, and in a way — her old life. Although her beau Dominic Scarpaci wants to build a life with Ruth back on the East Coast, she can’t help but acknowledge that she also desperately misses the love of her life, Ken Silver.
Meanwhile, the Scarpaci family has a longer reach the either Ruth or Dom ever realized. Just because Dom lives on the right side of the law, doesn’t mean that everyone in his extended Scarpaci/Bianco family does the same. The family not only has ties to the old country, but certain family members are involved in criminal operations that reach worldwide. How many members of the Scarpaci family will perish because of a scheme set in motion years ago?
In this final instalment to the Tall Willow series the past collides with the present, lives are entwined, and secrets revealed. Will Ruth find the peace and the future she seeks? And will she be able to integrate her new life with her past without leaving too many casualties in the wake?