Sandra Parshall Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Rachel Goddard Mystery Books
The Heat of the Moon | (2006) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Disturbing the Dead | (2007) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Broken Places | (2010) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Under the Dog Star | (2011) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Bleeding Through | (2012) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Poisoned Ground | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Sandra Pashall is an American author of fiction. She is best known for being the writer of the Rachel Goddard Mystery series. She was born in South Carolina and grew up there as a child. Her first paid job when it comes to writing was not for a novel but for her hometown paper working as a weekly columnist.
Pashall became a reporter for some time and then finally tried out writing. The Heart of the Moon was her first novel in the series and it came out in 2006, making Pashall an officially published author for the first time. She has resided in the D.C. area of Washington for many years before finally moving to Virginia to share a house with her husband and her two pet cats, which are spoiled by their owners.
The Rachel Goddard series features a main character of the same name. She is a young woman that works as a vet, but her entire world seems to tumble down on one fateful night.
The Heat of the Moon is the first novel in the Rachel Goddard Mystery series. It ended up winning an Agatha Award in 2006 for being the Best First Novel of the year. A client runs into an animal hospital when a dog is hit by a car in the middle of a thunderstorm.
The basset hound looks like it is hurt and the mother and her young child are sort of swept up in the chaos. A child calls for his mother and Rachel suddenly has a flashback to the day that her little sister Michelle cried the same thing. They were in a memory where they were in a lightning storm with thunder and rain pouring down too, and it all seems like a nightmare coming back to her.
Rachel is too shaken up by the memory to interpret its meaning. Rachel just knows that it has upset her considerably and she would rather not be so anguished over it. She figures that she has to find out answers, but she finds out nothing from her sister or her mother Judith.
While Judith is their mother, she is loving but also has a manipulative side. She also works as a psychologist, and even though it may seem dysfunctional, she is really happy to have her daughters still living in her home as adults The home is just outside of Washington D.C., but could this memory be connected to a secret that will betray the underlying belly of secrets hidden in this elegant Tudor-style home?
Judith has a lot of rules that are not spoken explicitly. Her daughter wants to find out more about their dead father and the family history, but is reluctant to ask. Rachel finds out that as more memories start to come up, that nothing about her family history is actually what has been told to her. More than that, she is fighting the attempts of her mother to control her.
Rachel goes on a journey that will involve going across the country as well as into the past. When she finds out the truth about what happened, it might just end her world as she knows it and make a choice that was previously unthinkable. What will happen in the end? You have got to read this exciting book from Sandra Pashall to find out.
Disturbing the Death is Sandra Pashall’s second novel in the fictional mystery series of novels featuring Rachel Goddard. When it comes to the events of this novel, you will be turning the pages one after the other to see what happens next!
The main character in this book is named Tom Bridger. He thought that he had finally been able to get away from the prejudice of his community against mixed-race people when he left that town in the Virginian mountains. He was going to join the Richmond Police Department, where he thought things would be different, and is working to become a detective.
He is moving up the ranks when a tragedy in his family brings him back home. Now he is back working as the chief deputy– the same job that his father had. With the bones of a woman who went missing a decade ago come up on a mountain top, the evidence indicates murder. She is Melungeon, and Tom is part Melungeon too.
The violence begins to go up as the poor family of the victim and the white family that had money that she married into start to try and do everything they can to hide their secrets. They don’t want Tom finding out what they know. The detective starts going deeper into the case and through his father’s investigation of it. But in the end, what will he do if he finds out that his father is not truly the person that he thought he was?
Tom is also falling in love with someone, and that someone is the vet Rachel Goddard. She’s trying to start her life over again somewhere that has little memories holding her back. She finds herself in grave danger when she makes a friend– Holly, the teenage niece of the dead woman. It turns out that the girl may have seen something when she was little that could help find the killer of her aunt.
Holly might know something, but it’s also a very scary memory. On top of that, the killer is still out there. Holly is really scared and barely able to get out what she knows for fear of repercussions. If the girl saw something and Rachel can help her remember and piece together the things that happened in the past, she might be able to find the killer and help Tom.
But with more people out there invested in keeping things secret and never coming to light, Rachel and Holly may be in more danger than they realize. Can they find the killer and finally end this saga– or will they go down for good? Pick up this thrilling murder mystery book from talented writer Sandra Parshall to find out for yourself.
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