Anne Mackay-Smith's

Death at Bitterwood Clearing

"It pulled me right in and along - I just inhaled it!"

"A richly detailed, subtle, and altogether satisfying mystery"

"The kind of strong female character readers will root for"

Cheryl Mendelson, "The Morningside Heights Trilogy"

Anastasia Rubis, "Oriana"

Dana Mack, "All Things That Deserve to Perish"

Available for purchase on Amazon and at your local independant book seller.

march 2026

order now

Casualties of war - or murder?

Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, 1861: Adair Stanford just wants to keep her children safe as the Civil War breaks out and her husband leaves to fight for the South. But when two dead men are found in the woods on her farm, she’s compelled to act: she’s found hidden clues that they didn’t die in a shootout between enemies, but from murder.

Isolated by her abolitionist beliefs, Adair is alone in her search for the truth until a stranger, his identity cloaked in deception, invades her world. Is he an added danger, or an ally? And do the threats and violence menacing her family stem from the ugly killings, or a shameful secret from the past?

Map of Northern Virginia, published 1899, created by Richard U. Goode.
Property of U.S. Library of Congress. Includes sites of Civil War battles.

Set at the crossroads of north and south, this mystery explores the fraught relations between men and women, the enslaved and the free, and the horror of murder – even in the midst of war.

Cheryl Mendelson,

novelist and author of the "Morningside Heights" trilogy

“It pulled me right in and along— I just inhaled it! The depiction of the physical, social, and emotional realities of the time and place is terrific—integral to the story, learned, and utterly believable.”

Sunset over the Shenandoah Valley. Photo by Catharine Kempson

“Few things are what they seem to be in this richly detailed, subtle, and altogether satisfying mystery, set in 1861 Virginia. Anne Mackay-Smith has fashioned a tale that penetrates the political passions and moral ambivalences of the early Civil War.”

Dana Mack,

author of "All Things that Deserve to Perish", a novel of Wilhelmine Germany

Sunset over the Shenandoah Valley. Photo by Catharine Kempson

"This Civil War mystery/thriller hooks readers with its characters, especially Adair Stanford. Wife, mother, farmer, mystery solver, and potential lover, she is the kind of strong female character readers will root for."