Fortuna Delphi-Trevino's ghost dog has been staring at a wall for three weeks.
There's something behind it.

Behind a sealed door in the Great Hall, Fortuna discovers a vault that doesn't match anything in Mystwich Hollow's records. The coven's founding symbol has seven points. This one has eight. And the senior coven member who should be the most alarmed by the discovery doesn't seem surprised at all.

The moment Fortuna starts asking questions, a petition to exile her vampire husband explodes across town—because nothing buries an investigation like a political crisis. Someone is pulling strings to keep her away from the vault, and the founding families are closing ranks fast.

Fortuna's telepathy can read what people are thinking, but it's the things they've stopped thinking about that scare her.

A battle-scarred tomcat with trust issues.
A pitmaster found dead beside his smoker.
A stray colony hiding secrets hotter than a Texas summer.

Summer has Tablerock, Texas in a stranglehold. With triple-digit heat baking Wildebridge County and Silver Circle Cat Rescue's air conditioning wheezing its last, Ellie Rockwell-Rogers has her hands full managing a recently discovered feral colony on the outskirts of town—a scrappy band of strays led by Scruffy, a thick-cheeked tomcat who trusts humans about as far as he can spit a hairball.

But when Hank Dawson, Tablerock's legendary pitmaster and owner of Dawson's Low & Slow BBQ, is found dead beside his prize smoker the morning of the town's annual Smoke, Sizzle & Sweat BBQ Cook-Off, the colony's territory becomes the center of a murder investigation. Scruffy knows more than he's letting on—but getting a feral tom to talk, even with the help of Silver Circle's crystal collars, is like pulling bark off a live oak.

As Ellie and the gang dig into the smoky underbelly of Tablerock's fiercely competitive barbecue scene, they discover that rivalries over rubs and recipes can cut deeper than a brisket knife—and someone's willing to kill to keep their secrets off the menu.

Can Ellie earn Scruffy's trust and crack the case before the truth goes up in smoke?

Scruffy, Strays, and Skulduggery is the fourteenth book in the Silver Circle Cat Rescue Mysteries—a purr-fectly cozy cat midlife series set in the small town of Tablerock, Texas with just a touch of magic.

Astra Arden just wants one quiet week at home.

After a locked-island murder investigation that left the whole team running on coffee fumes and borrowed sleep, she's earned it. But the moment she walks through the door, she discovers Aunt Gwennie has been secretly dating Detective Briggs—and before Astra can process that, things around the house start going wrong.

Small things, at first. A shelf collapses when no one's near it. The garden gate swings shut on Briggs's fingers. A batch of Gwennie's famous snickerdoodles tastes like soap. Arden House has always had a personality, but this feels personal.

Then the small things stop being small.

Someone—or something—has Briggs in its sights. And with the human detective dodging hexes he can't see, Astra has to figure out who's targeting him and why before the small things turn deadly.