Now a "New York Times" bestselling series, "Even in beautiful Vermont, Archer Mayor finds shadows . . . and his detective, Joe Gunther, finds a way to beat them back." --"NPR"

Joe Gunther and his team at the Vermont Bureau of Investigation are alerted to a string of unrelated burglaries across Vermont. Someone, in addition to flatscreens, computers, and stereos, has also been stealing antiques and jewelry.

Meanwhile, in Boston, an elderly woman surprises some thieves in her Beacon Hill home and is viciously murdered. The Boston police find that not only is the loot similar to what's being stolen in Vermont, but it may have the same destination. Word is out that someone powerful is purchasing these particular kinds of items in the "Paradise City" of Northampton, Mass.
Gunther, the Boston Police, and the vengeful granddaughter of the murdered old lady convene on Northampton, eager to get to the bottom of the mystery and find the "responsible parties"--although each is motivated to mete out some very different penalties.

In "Southern Timberman," Archer H. Mayor traces the legacy of William Buchanan and the companies he owned along the borders of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas, from his first lumber mill in the early 1880s to the sale of the last company in 1979. Like many self-made men, Buchanan was known for both his compassion and his relentlessness. To the hundreds of workers who lived in his company-built mill towns, "Old Man" Buchanan was a caring father figure. To his business associates, he was a strong-willed profiteer--a God-fearing, "cut-out-and-get-out" lumberman whose crews laid waste to thousands of acres of virgin pineland.

Whatever his tactics, William Buchanan had a gift for making money. By the time he died in 1923, he was one of the wealthiest men in the South. "Southern Timberman" is also the story of a strong, volatile family who fought--sometimes among themselves--to preserve that fortune. Tracing the growth of Buchanan's ventures from the first acre of virgin pine to the charged atmosphere of the corporate boardroom, Mayor paints a compelling family portrait set against the background of America's oil and timber industries.

Archer Mayor's "New York Times" bestselling Joe Gunther series returns with a complex case involving two corpses, one escaped mental patient, and a long-held secret that binds them together

""Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." --Ben Franklin
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"Joe Gunther and his team--the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI)--are usually called in on major cases by local Vermont enforcement whenever they need expertise and back-up. But after the state is devastated by Hurricane Irene, the police from one end of the state are taxed to their limits, leaving Joe Gunther involved in an odd, seemingly unrelated series of cases. In the wake of the hurricane, a seventeen year old gravesite is exposed, revealing a coffin that had been filled with rocks instead of the expected remains.
At the same time, an old, retired state politician turns up dead at his high-end nursing home, in circumstances that leave investigators unsure that he wasn't murdered. And a patient who calls herself The Governor has walked away from a state mental facility during the post-hurricane flood. It turns out that she was indeed once "Governor for a Day," over forty years ago, but that she might have also been falsely committed and drugged to keep her from revealing something that she saw all those years ago. Amidst the turmoil and the disaster relief, it's up to Joe Gunther and his team to learn what really happened with the two corpses--one missing--and what secret "The Governor" might have still locked in her brain that links them all.