The new 'Holly Winter' dog mystery - When Dog's Life columnist Holly Winter rejects applicants who want to adopt homeless dogs, she makes a lot of enemies. In dogs Holly trusts, and the dogs she trusts most are her beloved malamutes, Rowdy, Kimi and Sammy. But right now she could use a human friend. Lately, it seems wherever she turns, things go wrong: an anonymous call turns vicious, her husband is keeping secrets, and acquaintances die under mysterious circumstances. Then Holly's own life is threatened. Can the brute strength of Rowdy, Kimi, and Sammy protect her?

From Publishers Weekly Not just dog lovers should enjoy Conant's carefully crafted 17th mystery to feature the Cambridge, Mass., dog trainer and amateur sleuth, Holly Winter (after 2004's Bride and Groom). Soon after Holly agrees to housebreak Dolfo, a golden Aussie huskapoo, for Ted and Eumie Green, quirky therapists as much in need of therapy as their patients, Holly finds Eumie dead of a drug overdose on one of her visits to their home. While the death appears to be an accident, Eumie's daughter from her first marriage, a reclusive, overweight Harvard coed, suspects murder. Ted's moody teenage son from his earlier marriage cares little that his stepmother has died. Plenty of interesting facts about Holly's favorite breed, the Alaskan malamute, coupled with the humorous portrait of the Boston-area therapeutic community, help make this a particularly delightful cozy. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Dog-trainer Holly Winter, now married to veterinarian Steve Delaney, donated dog- training classes to a fund-raising auction for a Cambridge, Massachusetts, private school. The winning bidders, psychotherapists Ted and Eumie Green, have a 60-pound Aussie huskapoo in dire need of training. Once involved, Holly learns that the dog's lack of obedience skills is only the tip of the iceberg. The Green family is totally dysfunctional. When Eumie dies of a drug overdose, her daughter, Caprice, is sure that it was murder. Unhappy and obese, Caprice knows all the family secrets. The ensuing investigation exposes the quirky community of therapists in Cambridge as well as a complicated web of interpersonal relationships. Dog-loving cozy readers may find the canines far more appealing than the humans, but Conant tells her story with good humor. Her fans will enjoy Holly's latest case. Barbara Bibel Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Mistress of the dog lover’s mystery, Susan Conant is a seven-time winner of the Dog Writers Association of America’s coveted Maxwell Award. She has chronicled the adventures of dog writer and dog trainer Holly Winter and her Alaskan malamutes since 1990. When Sire and Damn opens, it’s a hot August in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Holly’s unexpectedly pregnant friend Rita is about to marry the pretentious Quinn Youngman. As Rita’s and Quinn’s variously and hilariously eccentric, hostile, duplicitous, kleptomaniacal, and pistol-packing relatives gather for the wedding, deceit is ubiquitous. Fibbing, cheating, and pilfering are one thing. Killing is another! Even a burglar deserves to live, doesn’t he? But how can Holly tell truth from lies when no one’s word is good? No human word, that is. Dogs don’t lie, especially Holly’s own bold and fearless Rowdy and psychiatric service dog Izzy, the most charming Labrador retriever ever to bound out of the pages of fiction and leap into the hearts of readers everywhere. An intriguing mystery and a novel of family relationships, Sire and Damn is above all else a dog story told with authenticity and wit. Dog lovers, come, sit, stay!

From Publishers Weekly In Conant's entertaining 18th Dog Lover's mystery (after 2006's Gaits of Heaven), Holly Winter, Massachusetts malamute trainer and dog columnist, goes searching for a missing dog, a Siberian husky named Strike, and instead finds a woman's corpse. In the victim's possession are personal papers belonging to Holly and another Cambridge-area Holly Winter, suggesting the woman may have been indulging in a little identity theft. Even stranger, when Holly finally finds Strike, she turns out to be a rare blue Alaskan malamute with Holly's name and phone number on her tag. The two living Holly Winters must deal with their mutual dislike as they hurl into a hair-raising conflict connected to a crooked former dog breeder who'll stop at nothing to get what he wants. Conant includes a lot of insider doggy details and lovingly depicts Holly's interactions with her malamutes, Kimi, Rowdy and young pup Sammy. Sammy and Rowdy's courageous defense of Holly when the killer catches up to her will have dog lovers cheering. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Product Description Holly the malamute trainer isn’t the only Holly Winter in town. There’s Holly number two, a dog hater. And now a third H.W. has shown up. Unfortunately, this last one is a corpse that Holly number one discovered while searching for a missing husky.

A DOGGED KILLER When Dog's Life columnist Holly Winter regains consciousness atop a cliff in Acadia National Park, she has no idea who she is. Not even the arrival of two beautiful and oddly friendly dogs, who happen to be her own Alaskan malamutes, Rowdy and Kimi, is enough to jar her memory. Instinct tells her that her fall was no accident and she'd best keep her amnesia a secret. Yet when she follows the clues back to the guest house of Gabrielle Beamon, a charming woman surrounded by an eccentric band of preservationists, all she finds is more questions. What was a dead man, who reportedly hated exercise and the outdoors, doing hiking in the first place? Why did Holly have a file filled with information on arsenic? And why does the charismatic founder of the Pine Tree Foundation seem so hauntingly familiar? As Holly gets closer to the truth, not even her faithful dogs may be able to save her from a human who is ruthless to the bone.

From Publishers Weekly Fans of Conant's Dog Lover's mysteries (_Bride and Groom_, etc.) will lap up the first installment of a new series, which introduces Felicity Pride, the author of a mystery series about cats. When Felicity returns to her Boston-area home from a book signing, she's a little freaked out to stumble on a very dead corpse, and a very live cat, in her vestibule. Her shock, however, doesn't prevent her from trying to get as much publicity as possible from her discovery. Envisioning her book sales skyrocketing after she catches the killer, Felicity learns that solving a murder in real life is a lot harder than writing a mystery novel. Yes, the setup—a cat mystery about a cat mystery writer who finds a real body—is a trifle meta. But Conant, never precious, takes the opportunity to poke gentle fun at some of the conventions of the cozy genre. Sidesplittingly funny and very clever, this book is just about purr-fect. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Author of the popular Dog Lover mysteries, Conant introduces a new series for feline fans. Felicity Pride, a Boston author whose cat mysteries have earned her a modicum of fame, finds a dead man on her doorstep. Next to him is an unperturbed gray Chartreux cat. Although Felicity feels compelled to take in the cat, she has never owned one and has no idea what to do--one of the many ironies in Conant's tongue-in-cheek story. After the dead man is identified, Felicity rescues his other cat, and once she adopts Brigitte and Edith, Felicity realizes that maybe she has a thing or two to learn about the subjects of her series. Despite her pomposity and pathetic attempts to be recognized, Felicity is an endearing series heroine, opening her heart to the two orphaned kitties--even if she doesn't know how to pet them. Conant drops some fun tidbits about the wacky world of mystery writers and gets in a few good-natured jabs at cat-mystery authors--poking fun at herself in the process. Jenny McLarin Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

DOGGED BY DEATH Holly Winter had her hands full with one dog: Still, when therapist Elaine Walsh is found dead, Holly eagerly adopts the orphaned Kimi--and vows to teach her some manners. But when questions arise about Elaine's death--following close on the heels of a patient's suicide--Holly suspects the misbehaving malamute Kimi might be the key witness. Digging for clues all over Cambridge, Holly hopes to untangle a snarl of secrets--and collar a killer! A DOG LOVER'S MYSTERY Holly Winter's life is going to the dogs, but that's just fine with her. She's a feisty, thirty-something dog-lover, born in Maine and settled near Boston, and her expertise in the breeding, training, and caring for man's (and woman's) best friend is just one of her inbred talents--she's also a grand champion at tracking down criminals...the two-legged kind.

From School Library Journal YA. To win a bet with a friend that she can write about something other than dogs, Holly Winter begins in-depth research into the life of Hannah Dunston, a local 17th-century heroine who turns out to have been a murderer. Clues into Hannah's past lead to the murder of Jack Winter Andrews 18 years ago and the mysterious circumstances of finding his golden retriever tied to his desk at the crime scene. Holly diligently searches through libraries and other people's cluttered basements to discover the identity of Jack's killer, the location of his illegitimate son, and Holly's own tie to Hannah Dunston. Conant adeptly weaves Andrews's murder together with the legend of Hannah Dunston, resulting in an intriguing mesh of converging facts. The author keeps readers entertained between major breakthroughs in the story by relating all sorts of pointers about dogs in general, and more specifically Holly's own malamutes, who play a role in solving the crime. Holly comes across as self-assured, independent, and knowledgeable, and all of the other characters are precisely drawn through subtle details and expertly manipulated facts. During the last chapters, the suspense and tension build rapidly, although the twist at the end is somewhat convenient. Readers who enjoy the dogs in Virginia Lanier's series will also enjoy Conant's mysteries.?Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal The 18-year-old murder of a book publisher interested in showing dogs sidetracks Holly Winter from her research into the life of a New England woman abducted by Indians. She finally solves the case but nearly gets killed in the process. For all those dog-loving readers. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.