Avalanche Hearts

Read sample ▶ Listen to a sample

Eight years ago he dug her out of an avalanche. Then he left without a word. Now the mountain has sent him back. Marit Halvorsen runs the ski patrol at Larch Valley, a small resort town in the Alberta Rockies. In 2018 the Kestrel Couloir buried her for fourteen minutes. Her fiancé, the forecaster who had opened it, dug the last meter with his bare hands, sat outside her hospital room for three days, and then left her a one-line note and drove to the airport. Now it's December, and the Kestrel keeps sliding at three in the morning, on still, clear nights, for no reason anyone can find. Marit knows the crown is wrong. The resort says it's natural. And the province sends its new regional forecaster to look. It's Jonah Ashdown. With a big mountain company ready to buy the resort at the right price, charges missing from the explosives magazine, and a town that remembers exactly who opened the Kestrel on her, Marit and Jonah have to work together to find out who is bringing the mountain down, before Christmas, and before someone is under it. Avalanche Hearts is a second-chance Christmas romance with a real mystery: an ugly-sweater ski race, a Santa who keeps losing his beard, a grandmother who bakes and knits and is always right, a torchlight parade down a mountain, and an avalanche dog with very firm opinions about who is staying. For readers who want: • A second chance that has to face the reason it was needed • A sabotage mystery told in snow, a scorched glove and a forged signature • A ski town at Christmas, from the patrol shack to the bakery • A dog who steals hats and decides things • A happy ending that has to be earned A standalone novel with a happy ending. Sensual, not explicit: one love scene, implied and never described. Mild language. Avalanche peril, a burial and a rescue on the page.