om award-winning author M. K. Graff brings Trudy home, leaving her New York City studio consulting job to visit her rural hometown of Schoharie, three hours north. NYPD detective Ned O'Malley accompanies Trudy, primed to meet her family, but with a secret mission to find out what really happened when her father died eleven years ago.

Mario Genova's death was deemed a tragic accident, but Trudy feels there was more to her beloved father acting out of character the day before he died. After years of hard work building a successful apple orchard business with her mother, Mario cleaned out their bank accounts. No reason-and no money-was ever found. As Trudy and Ned try to investigate without informing her family of their actions, a new death occurs on Genova Orchards property, and once again Trudy's family is under scrutiny.

"A welcome and forceful return of MK Graff's Trudy Genova, Death in the Orchard is a well- crafted and thought-provoking story of unexplained death and cold-blooded murder, as Trudy sets out to solve the death of her father with her NYPD boyfriend Ned O'Malley. The couple return to the Genova family orchards to dig into the past as the present threatens to shake the family to their very core.

Graff deals us a cold case of family intrigue, a small-town conspiracy, and a terrifying leap into the unknown, as her heroine comes face to face with a secret she thought would never be told, a case impossible to solve, and a dogged determination to finally get to the truth.

A masterclass in laying the threads bare and knitting them together in a satisfying conclusion."

Mandy Morton, Author of The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency series