When a small-town historian turns up dead in her brewery basement, former lawyer Mackenzie O'Brien discovers that some family recipes are worth killing for.
Mac thought her biggest challenge would be perfecting her grandfather's Irish stout recipe for Hopefield's Fall Harvest Festival. Instead, she finds the town's most vocal development critic poisoned in her basement—and suddenly everyone thinks the newcomer with the sharp tongue and anti-authority attitude makes the perfect suspect.
Armed with her legal training and brewing expertise, Mac dives into an investigation that uncovers thirty years of property fraud, systematic municipal corruption, and forged documents bearing her grandfather's name. When someone starts sabotaging her brewery operation and threatening festival-goers with explosives, Mac realizes the killer will do anything to protect a conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels of local government.
In small-town Hopefield, North Carolina, the past and present collide over pints and property deeds, where everyone has secrets and some are worth committing murder to keep.
With the help of her diplomatic business partner Travis Blake and a reluctant sheriff's deputy, Mac must solve the case before the killer silences everyone who knows the truth. But in a community built on fraudulent foundations, choosing justice over stability might destroy the very people she's trying to protect.
The first book in the Brews & Blues Mystery series featuring Mac O'Brien and the Emerald Isle Brewery.
