Henry Cole is your typical twelve-year-old kid. He lives in the suburbs with his family, goes to school, and he's looking foward to the next three months of summer vacation. But when he meets the beguiling Christopher Deter, an enigmatic elderly man, his life will be forever changed as he is shown a world beyond the realm of imagination. A world filled with secrecy, corruption, and betrayal.

The first book in the Shady Hollow series, in which we are introduced to the village of Shady Hollow, a place where woodland creatures live together in harmony—until a curmudgeonly toad turns up dead and the local reporter has to solve the case. Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow. The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter where it leads. As she stirs up still waters, the fox exposes more than one mystery, and discovers that additional lives are in jeopardy. Vera finds more to this town than she ever suspected. It seems someone in the Hollow will do anything to keep her from solving the murder, and soon it will take all of Vera’s cunning and quickness to crack the case. A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL