An anthology of four adventures of Detective Cahal "Mac" MacAlastair and his sometimes art consultant, shapeshifter Catherine "Cat" O'sullivan, as they work together to solve crimes on the dark side of Seattle's Pioneer Square. In "Eyewitness," three young female artists have been found brutally murdered in the back alleys of Seattle's Pioneer Square, and Police Detective Cahal "Mac" MacAlastair must find a serial killer, before someone else dies. But the only eyewitness is a black cat apparently left for dead by the killer, and Mac doesn't have a lot of confidence in her ability to identify the killer-until he learns she is far more than she seems. In "Vanished," when a wealthy young heiress vanishes in the night, her mother-who is unsatisfied with police efforts-hires Mac, a newly minted private investigator, to find her daughter. And when Mac finds a mysterious silver ring at the scene of the woman's disappearance, he once again brings in art expert Catherine "Cat" O'Sullivan to help him track the heiress down. But with no ransom demands and nothing more than the ring to go on, Mac quickly realizes this vanishing act is not necessarily what it seems. In "Ambush," an unknown gunman puts Mac in the emergency room, leaving the Seattle PD scrambling to find his would-be killer-or identify the one who might have hired him. Cat's only concern is Mac's life, and when he leaves the hospital, her family steps in to settle Mac in his office, the studio apartment just downstairs from Cat's apartment over the family's gallery, which is loaded with state-of-the art security. But when the killer's image is picked up by hospital security cameras, and INTERPOL identifies him as a well-known international assassin, the FBI is called in, because this is no ordinary killer, and his reputation guarantees he will try again. And in "Darkness," when Mac is hired to investigate the theft of some artifacts depicting demons and human sacrifice owned by the late husband of a wealthy widow, he enlists Cat's help in investigating the artifacts' origins and meaning-and in finding the possible motivation behind the theft. But what starts out as a straight-forward home robbery becomes downright terrifying the closer Cat and Mac get to the madman who has absconded with these images of darkness.
About the Author: Laura Anne Ewald is a former librarian turned author and public speaker. An eclectic scholar with degrees in classical studies, drama, library science, and organizational communication, Laura brings this diverse background and a love of reading into her storytelling, which might take the form of a novel, an e-book, a short story, a play, or a puppet show. A recent happy transplant to the "Deep South," she shares her southern Mississippi home with her retired parents and an ever-changing assortment of adopted stray cats.