If you like your authors to be smart and articulate, you should have a look at Paula Munier’s books. If you like your authors to be authentic and engaging, you should have a look at Paula Munier’s books. If you like your authors to have a great sense of human nature and place, you should have a look at Paula Munier’s books. Paula Munier is all of that, and she writes a fun and engaging monthly newsletter—there is always a picture that makes me smile, a tidbit of information I didn’t even know I needed to know until I read it. And, for me, the icing on the cake, she ALWAYS responds to my goofy comments in response to her newsletter. Paula Munier is not only a mensch, she is a great writer. So you should all go read her Mercy and Elvis series.

“Mercy and Elvis?” you ask. Yep. Mercy Carr is a retired army MP. Her partner, Elvis, is also retired military—a Belgian Malinois bomb-sniffing dog. Together with U. S. Game Warden Troy Warner and his search and rescue Newfoundland Susie Bear, the foursome explore Vermont’s forest wilderness and mountains where they inevitably discover murder and mayhem, and where they build friendship and family.

The first book in the series is a Borrowing of Bones.

 Fourth of July weekend, and Elvis alerts to explosives as he and Mercy are hiking the Lye Brook Wilderness. Then they find a crying baby alone near a shallow grave filled with what appear to be human bones. U.S. Game Warden Troy Warner and his search-and rescue Newfoundland Susie Bear respond to Mercy’s 911 call, and the four learn to work together to track down a missing mother, solve a cold-case murder, and keep the citizens of Vermont safe.

In the second installment, Mercy, Elvis, Troy and Susie Bear meet nine-year-old Henry, who’s lost in the Vermont woods in October. Again. Only this time, he sees something terrible. When a young woman is found shot through the heart with a fatal arrow, Mercy thinks that something is murder. But Henry, a math genius whose autism often silences him when he should speak up most, is not talking. Now there’s a murderer hiding among the hunters in the forest—and the fabulous foursome need to find the killer—before the killer finds Henry. When an early season blizzard hits the mountains, cutting them off from the rest of the world, the race is on to solve the crime, apprehend the murderer, and keep the boy safe until the snowplows get through.

In the third Mercy and Elvis book, the man who killed her grandfather breaks out of prison and comes after her grandmother. In the search to find the man who threatens her family, Mercy must unearth the long-buried scandals that threaten to tear her family apart. Meanwhile an army vet appears at Mercy’s door claiming to be Elvis’ handler, and asserting his right to Elvis. You really won’t want to put this one down!

The most recent Mercy and Elvis book is The Wedding Plot. Mercy’s grandmother Patience finally agrees to marry her long time beau Claude Renault at the five-star Lady’s Slipper Inn. Mercy’s mother, Grace, is the wedding planner, and it promises to be the destination wedding of the year. Just as the four-day extravaganza is due to begin, the inn’s spa director Bodhi St. George disappears—and Mercy’s mother sends Mercy and Elvis to find him. But what they discover instead is a stranger skewered by a pitchfork in the barn on the goat farm where St. George lived. From there, everything unravels, mayhem and murder ensue, and it just keeps getting better—with a surprise ending that.. well, read the book!