Money is always a problem for Hera Knightsbridge's microbrewery, but now drought makes water scarce for all the breweries in the Butternut Valley. Worse, Hera discovers a rival brewer murdered in his brew barn, making Hera the authorities' favorite suspect. To clear her name, her only choice is to join forces with an unlikely partner, the new assistant deputy sheriff, Jake Ryan, her former lover from law school days. There's unfinished business between these two, and it surfaces again and again as they pursue a killer who finally turns on the indefatigable Hera as the next victim.This is the first book in the Microbrewing Mystery Series. The second book is Poisoned Pairings which continues the Hera Knightsbridge story.

Lesley retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York. In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office. Back north, she devotes her afternoons to writing and, when the sun sets, relaxing on the bank of her trout stream, sipping tea or a local microbrew. She was winner of the 2009 Sleuthfest short story contest sponsored by Mystery Writers of America, Florida Chapter. She is author of A Deadly Draught released by Mainly Murder Press and Dumpster Dying (Oak Tree Press). Her short story Murder with All the Trimmings appeared in the UntreedReads anthology The Killer Wore Cranberry.