Taxidermy and Tide Tables: A Sparrow Harbor Mystery, #4

Some trophies are kept for love. Some are kept as leverage.

Wendell Garrow spent sixty years turning his remote windward lodge into a private natural history museum — every mounted bird and animal catalogued with the meticulous care of a man who took his hobby more seriously than most professionals take their careers. When he's found dead by his own fireplace, the coroner calls it exactly what it looks like: an old man, a bad heart, an unlucky fall.

Nora Kestrel is hired to appraise the collection before his impatient nephew sells it off, and it should be straightforward work — until she notices that the magnificent golden eagle holding pride of place in the trophy room doesn't match its own decades-old specimen card. The materials are wrong. The craftsmanship is too recent. Somebody, quietly and skillfully, has swapped Wendell's real trophy for a convincing double — and Nora's dog won't set foot in the room where it's kept.

As Nora traces the eagle's true history back fifty years, she uncovers an old friendship built on a secret both men were too afraid, and too loyal, to ever fully let go of — until one of them finally decided it was time to make things right, and paid for that decision with his life.

Perfect for fans of small-town amateur sleuths, decades-spanning secrets, and cozy mysteries where an old kindness can curdle into something far more dangerous.