Are peanuts capable of murder? Carolina Slade will bust this shell game.

Big money, big politics, crime, greed, and big farming-Slade, an agriculture department investigator in the steamy state of South Carolina, once again finds herself planted in a dangerous mystery.

Her assignment? Find out if there's a sinister connection between the drug-dealing arrest of wealthy peanut farmer Lamar Wheeler and the gruesome death of Lamar's teenage son in a car wreck. Especially since the dead teen is Governor Dick Wheeler's nephew.

Of course, the governor's people practically sky-write STAY AWAY FROM THE FIRST FAMILY over the Palmetto state's capitol dome in Columbia, which doesn't make Slade's job easier. Couldn't she simply back off from what appears to be a tragic and ugly-but private-family matter?

Not with hot-tempered DEA agent Pamela Largo on the case. Ex-wife to Senior Special Agent Wayne Largo, Slade's romantic interest, Pamela's hell-bent on using Lamar Wheeler's situation to re-open a cold case involving an Atlanta drug lord and Wayne's long lost sister, Kay.

Soon Slade's shoveling shooflies uphill against Pamela's obsessions, the drug lord's vendettas, the Governor's secrets, and the bizarre realization that those secrets involve peanuts.

C. Hope Clark is founder of FundsforWriters.com , a writer's resource awarded 101 Best Websites for Writers by Writer's Digest Magazine each year for over a decade. Her weekly publications reach 35,000+ readers. She works from her study overlooking Lake Murray in beautiful central South Carolina.

Hope comes alive at conferences across the country, from Mississippi to Oklahoma, from Pennsylvania to Florida, South Carolina to Iowa. She motivates and educates writers to step up, take charge, and create their careers. Her latest FFW release often discussed at conferences is The Shy Writer Reborn: An Introverted Writer's Wake-up Call. And most recently provided Writing Contests with Hope to all those writers who use contests to further their careers.

Hope, however, is most excited in her mystery fiction. She's the author of The Carolina Slade Mystery Series, published by Bell Bridge Books, Memphis, TN. With an agriculture degree from Clemson University and a two-decade history of working with US Dept of Agriculture, Hope can walk the walk of protagonist Carolina Slade who reviewers are falling in love with per the long list of five-star reviews at Amazon.

Hope branched out with The Edisto Island Mysteries with Murder on Edisto, Edisto Jinx, Echoes of Edisto, Edisto Stranger, and now the crossover story Dying on Edisto where Police Chief Callie Morgan runs into Carolina Slade, from Hope's other series. Her writing voice now well seasoned, she dives into a coastal world with Callie Jean Morgan, who finds that the beach isn't all that relaxing. The series is set on Edisto Beach, South Carolina, Hope's second home.