With the help of her treasured bloodhounds, hard-nosed sleuth Jo Beth Siddon uncovers a ring of marijuana growers and follows a dangerous trail that takes her through the Okefenokee Swamp.

The heroine is bloodhound trainer Joe Beth Sidden who normally helps police find missing persons and suspects. On this occasion the suspect is herself--she is accused of attempted murder after her husband, a recently released convict, was nearly beaten to death. Joe Beth must use her talents to clear her name. The setting is the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.

Jo Beth Sidden becomes involved in the largest case of her career when her blood hound tracking business is hired to find a high-profile figure who has been abducted.

A Matter Of Life And Death There's a lot of excitement down at Jo Beth Sidden's kennel. A full litter of ten baby bloodhounds is due any day. Though pressed for time, Jo Beth still agrees to do a favor for a friend -- finding a reclusive, wealthy matriarch's missing cat. But soon afterward, her client is murdered. Now, Jo Beth is looking for a killer. There's a slew of suspects to choose from, too -- all potential heirs to the matriarch's fortune. The quicker Jo Beth can solve this case, the soon she can get home to her dogs and get her life in order. But she's in for a surprise, and a fight she'll never forget.

Edmund Russell's much-anticipated new book examines interactions between greyhounds and their owners in England from 1200 to 1900 to make a compelling case that history is an evolutionary process. Challenging the popular notion that animal breeds remain uniform over time and space, Russell integrates history and biology to offer a fresh take on human-animal coevolution. Using greyhounds in England as a case study, Russell shows that greyhounds varied and changed just as much as their owners. Not only did they evolve in response to each other, but people and dogs both evolved in response to the forces of modernization, such as capitalism, democracy, and industry. History and evolution were not separate processes, each proceeding at its own rate according to its own rules, but instead were the same.

Having ended her relationship with her violent husband, dog trainer and amateur detective Jo Beth Sidden finds herself on the trails of an escaped convict and an elderly woman who has wandered into the Okefenokee Swamp. Reprint.