Julia Spencer Books In Order

Rev. Clare Fergusson & Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries Books In Publication Order

  1. In the Bleak Midwinter (2002)
  2. A Fountain Filled with Blood (2003)
  3. Out of the Deep I Cry (2004)
  4. To Darkness and to Death (2005)
  5. All Mortal Flesh (2006)
  6. I Shall Not Want (2008)
  7. One Was a Soldier (2011)
  8. Through the Evil Days (2013)
  9. Hid from Our Eyes (2020)

Rev. Clare Fergusson & Russ Van Alstyne Mysteries Book Covers

Julia Spencer Books Overview

In the Bleak Midwinter

It’s a cold, snowy December in the upstate New York town of Millers Kill, and newly ordained Clare Fergusson is on thin ice as the first female priest of its small Episcopal church. The ancient regime running the parish covertly demands that she prove herself as a leader. However, her blunt manner, honed by years as an army pilot, is meeting with a chilly reception from some members of her congregation and Chief of Police Russ Van Alystyne, in particular, doesn’t know what to make of her, or how to address ‘a lady priest’ for that matter. The last thing she needs is trouble, but that is exactly what she finds. When a newborn baby is abandoned on the church stairs and a young mother is brutally murdered, Clare has to pick her way through the secrets and silence that shadow that town like the ever present Adirondack mountains. As the days dwindle down and the attraction between the avowed priest and the married police chief grows, Clare will need all her faith, tenacity, and courage to stand fast against a killer’s icy heart. In the Bleak Midwinter is one of the most outstanding Malice Domestic winners the contest has seen. The compelling atmosphere the kind of very cold and snowy winter that is typical of upstate New York will make you reach for another sweater. The characters are fully and believably drawn and you will feel like they are your old friends and find yourself rooting for them every step of the way. AUTHORBIO: Julia Spencer Fleming was born in Plattsburgh Air Force Base and spent most of her childhood on the move as an Army brat. She studied acting and history at Ithaca College, and received her JD at the University of Maine School of Law. She lives in a 180 year old farmhouse outside of Portland, Maine, with her husband, three children, and beloved big dog.

A Fountain Filled with Blood

Nestled in the heart of the Adirondacks, Miller’s Kill, New York is about as safe as it gets. That’s why Episcopal minister Clare Fergusson is shocked when the July Fourth weekend brings a rash of vicious assaults to the scenic town. Even Clare’s good friend, police chief Russ Van Alstyne, is shaken by the brutality of the crimes especially when it appears that the victims were chosen because they are gay. But when a third assault of an out of town developer ends in murder, Clare and Russ wonder if the recent crime wave is connected to the victim’s controversial plan to open an upscale spa in Miller’s Kill. But not all things in the tiny town are what they seem and soon, Clare and Russ are left to fight their unspoken attraction to one another even as they uncover a labyrinthine conspiracy that threatens to turn deadly for them both…

Out of the Deep I Cry

On April 1, 1930, Jonathan Ketchem’s wife Jane walked from her house to the police department to ask for help in finding her husband. The men, worn out from a night of chasing bootleggers, did what they could. But no one ever saw Jonathan Ketchem again…
Now decades later, someone else is missing in Miller’s Kill, NY. This time it’s the physician of the clinic that bears the Ketchem name. Suspicion falls on a volatile single mother with a grudge against the doctor, but Reverend Clare Fergusson isn’t convinced. As Clare and Russ investigate, they discover that the doctor’s disappearance is linked to a bloody trail going all the way back to the hardscrabble Prohibition era. As they draw ever closer to the truth, their attraction for each other grows increasingly more difficult to resist. And their search threatens to uncover secrets that snake from one generation to the next and to someone who’s ready to kill.

To Darkness and to Death

Saturday, November 14, 5:00 A.M. In the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill, an old lumberman sits in the dark with his gun across his knees. Not far away, an unemployed logger sleeps off his bender from the night before. The owner of the town’s last paper mill tosses in his bed. And a young woman, one of three heirs to the 250,000 acre Great Camp, wakes alone in darkness, bound and gagged. Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne wants nothing more than a quiet day of hunting in the mountains on his fiftieth birthday. His wife needs to have the town’s new luxury resort ready for its gala opening night. The Reverend Clare Fergusson expects to spend the day getting St. Alban’s Church ready for the bishop’s annual visit. Her long distance suitor from New York expects some answers about their relationship during his weekend in town. In Millers Kill, where everyone knows everyone and all are part of an interconnected web of blood or acquaintance, one person’s troubles have a way of ensnaring others. What begins as a simple case of a woman lost in the woods leads to a tangle of revenge, blackmail, assault, kidnapping, and murder. As the hours tick by, Russ and Clare struggle to make sense of their town’s plunge into chaos and their own chaotic emotions. Something terrible waits in the ice rimed mountains cradling Millers Kill. Something that won’t be content with just one death or two…
Julia Spencer Fleming continues her moving story of the way a small town, as well as a great city, can harbor evil, and the struggle of two honest people to deal with the ever present threat of their feelings for one another.

All Mortal Flesh

One horrible murder. Two people destined for love or tragedy. Emotions explode in the novel Julia Spencer Fleming’s readers have been clamoring for.

Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne s first encounter with Clare Fergusson was in the hospital emergency room on a freezing December night. A newborn infant had been abandoned on the town s Episcopal church steps. If Russ had known that the church had a new priest, he certainly would never have guessed that it would be a woman. Not a woman like Clare. That night in the hospital was the beginning of an attraction so fierce, so forbidden, that the only thing that could keep them safe from compromising their every belief was distance but in a small town like Millers Kill, distance is hard to find.
Russ Van Alstyne figures his wife kicking him out of their house is nobody s business but his own. Until a neighbor pays a friendly visit to Linda Van Alstyne and finds the woman s body, gruesomely butchered, on the kitchen floor. To the state police, it s an open and shut case of a disaffected husband, silencing first his wife, then the murder investigation he controls. To the townspeople, it s proof that the whispered gossip about the police chief and the priest was true. To the powers that be in the church hierarchy, it s a chance to control their wayward cleric once and for all.

Obsession. Lies. Nothing is as it seems in Millers Kill, where betrayal twists old friendships and evil waits inside quaint white clapboard farmhouses.

I Shall Not Want

Millers Kill reaches the boiling point in this white hot novel of love and suspensePeople die. Marriages fail. In the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill, New York, however, life doesn t stop for heartbreak. A brand new officer in the police department, a breaking and entering, and trouble within his own family keep Police Chief Russ Van Alstyne busy enough to ignore the pain of losing his wife and the woman he loves. At St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, the Reverend Clare Fergusson is trying to keep her vestry, her bishop, and her National Guard superiors happy all the while denying her own wounded soul. When a Mexican farmhand stumbles over a Latino man killed with a single shot to the back of his head, Clare is sucked into the investigation through her involvement in the migrant community. The discovery of two more bodies executed in the same way ignites fears that a serial killer is loose in the close knit community. While the sorrowful spring turns into a scorching summer, Russ is plagued by media hysteria, conflict within his department, and a series of baffling assaults. As the violence strikes closer and closer to home, an untried officer is tested, a wary migrant worker is tempted, and two would be lovers who thought they had lost everything must find a way to trust each other again before it becomes forever, fatally, too late. Julia Spencer Fleming shows you can escape danger but not desire in her most suspenseful, passionate novel yet. 20080501

One Was a Soldier

On a warm September evening in the Millers Kill community center, five veterans sit down in rickety chairs to try to make sense of their experiences in Iraq. What they will find is murder, conspiracy, and the unbreakable ties that bind them to one another and their small Adirondack town. The Rev. Clare Fergusson wants to forget the things she saw as a combat helicopter pilot and concentrate on her relationship with Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne. MP Eric McCrea needs to control the explosive anger threatening his job as a police officer. Will Ellis, high school track star, faces the reality of life as a double amputee. Orthopedist Trip Stillman is denying the extent of his traumatic brain injury. And bookkeeper Tally McNabb wrestles with guilt over the in country affair that may derail her marriage. But coming home is harder than it looks. One vet will struggle with drugs and alcohol. One will lose his family and friends. One will die. Since their first meeting, Russ and Clare’s bond has been tried, torn, and forged by adversity. But when he rules the veteran s death a suicide, she violently rejects his verdict, drawing the surviving vets into an unorthodox investigation that threatens jobs, relationships, and her own future with Russ. As the days cool and the nights grow longer, they will uncover a trail of deceit that runs from their tiny town to the upper ranks of the U.S. Army, and from the waters of the Millers Kill to the unforgiving streets of Baghdad.

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