"Inez Stannert has reinvented herself—again. Fleeing the comfort and wealth of her East Coast upbringing, she became a saloon owner and card sharp in the rough silver boomtown of Leadville, Colorado, always favoring the unconventional path—a difficult road for a woman in the late 1800s.
Then the teenaged daughter of a local prostitute is orphaned by her mother's murder, and Inez steps up to raise the troubled girl as her own. Inez works hard to keep a respectable, loving home for Antonia, carefully crafting their new life in San Francisco. But risk is a seductive friend, difficult to resist. When a skeleton tumbles from the wall of her latest business investment, the police only seem interested in the bag of Civil War-era gold coins that fell out with it. With her trusty derringer tucked in the folds of her gown, Inez uses her street smarts and sheer will to unearth a secret that someone has already killed to keep buried. The more she digs, the muddier and more dangerous things become.
She enlists the help of Walter de Brujin, a local private investigator with whom she shares some history. Though she wants to trust him, she fears that his knowledge of her past, along with her growing attraction to him, may well blow her veneer of respectability to bits—that is, if her dogged pursuit of the truth doesn't kill her first."
"It’s autumn of 1881, and Inez Stannert, still the coowner of Leadville, Colorado’s Silver Queen saloon, is settled in San Francisco with her young ward, Antonia Gizzi. Inez has turned her business talents to managing a music store, hoping to eventually become an equal partner in the enterprise with the store’s owner, a celebrated local violinist.
Inez’s carefully constructed life for herself and Antonia threatens to tumble about her ears when the badly beaten body of a young musician washes up on the filthy banks of San Francisco’s Mission Creek canal. Inez and Antonia become entangled in the mystery of his death when the musician turns out to have ties to Leadville, ties that threaten to expose Inez’s notorious past. And they aren’t the only ones searching for answers. Wolter Roeland de Bruijn, “finder of the lost,” has also been tasked with ferreting out the perpetrators and dispensing justice in its most final form. Leadville’s leading madam, Frisco Flo, an unwilling visitor to the city with a Leadville millionaire, is on the hook as well, having injudiciously financed the young musician’s journey to San Francisco in the first place.
Time grows short as Inez and the others uncover long-hidden secrets and unsettled scores. With lives and reputations on the line, the tempo rises until the investigation’s final, dying note."
"'The great questions of the time are not decided by speeches and majority decisions…but by iron and blood.'—Otto von Bismarck, 1862
Summer 1880. The railroad is coming west, all the way to Leadville, Colorado, and its rich Rocky Mountain mines—and millionaires. Coming to celebrate the arrival of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad is a former president, none other than Ulysses S. Grant, eighteenth president of the United States and commander of the Union armies during the Civil War.
But not everyone wants to celebrate the arrival of the railroad. Inez Stannert, like other residents in the Colorado boomtown, regards the news with mixed feelings. Her business partnership in the Silver Queen Saloon is still shaky and the bonds of family still tenuous, with her husband missing and her son living back east. Inez doesn't want to see lawlessness escalate and lead, once again, to murder.
Inez isn't the only one with iron ties to the past. Some folks have wicked memories of the Civil War, and others a stake in the competing railroad lines. Caught in the crossfire is Inez's friend, photographer Susan Carothers. An explosion that nearly killed Susan has killed another—or could it have been murder? It's up to Inez to investigate."
"The crooked, the greedy, and those with a checkered past-they all came to Leadville with the same purpose: Get in, get rich, get out.
As 1879 draws to a close, silver fever burns hot in the Rocky Mountain boomtown of Leadville, Colorado. Unfortunately for Joe Rose, an assayer of precious metals, death stakes its own claim. Joe's body is found trampled into the muck behind Inez Stannert's saloon.
Inez already has much more to deal with than pouring shots of Taos Lightning. A lady educated on the East Coast, she has a past that doesn't bear close scrutiny, due in part to her elopement with a gambling man who has recently disappeared. Most of the townsfolk, including Inez's business partner, Abe Jackson, dismiss Joe's death as an accident. Death, after all, is no stranger in Leadville. But Inez wonders why this loving husband and father was carrying a brass token good for "one free screw" at the parlor house of Denver madam Mattie Silks.
When Joe's widow Emma asks Inez to settle Joe's affairs, Inez reluctantly agrees and soon uncovers skewed assays, bogus greenbacks, and blackmail, leading her to believe that Joe was murdered. Was he killed over money or for purely personal motives? It's up to Inez to find out."
"In the summer of 1880, many people are traveling to the booming health resort of Manitou Springs, Colorado, at the foot of Pike's Peak, to "chase the cure" for tuberculosis. But Inez Stannert, part owner of the Silver Queen Saloon in Leadville, travels for a different reason to this town renowned for its mineral springs and scenery. After a long separation, she's reuniting with her young son, William, and her beloved sister, Harmony. However, the stagecoach journey to Manitou turns deadly when East Coast businessman Edward Pace mysteriously dies under the horrified gaze of Inez and Pace's wife and children.
After they arrive at the posh Mountain Springs House hotel, Pace's widow begs Inez to make inquiries into her husband's untimely death. As Inez digs deeper, she uncovers shady business dealings by people hoping to profit from the coming bonanza in medicinal waters and miracle remedies and who kindle false hopes in the desperate and the dying-a deception that predates the Civil War. But there is no miracle cure for murder.
Pace's sudden demise is not the only event that tarnishes Inez's hopes of a happy reunion with her son and sister. Inez's husband, Mark Stannert, has reappeared after a year-and-a-half absence, after Inez has made other plans for her future. Now Inez fears whether she will be able to hold on to her child and the life she has built for herself."
"In the summer of 1880, the mining boom town of Leadville, Colorado, is being toured by Ulysses S. Grant, former president and Civil War general, probably with a view to invest in the town's silver mines. But others in his retinue and in the town are tempted by other visions.
As part owner of the Silver Queen Saloon, Inez Stannert has observed the ruination that comes of yielding to temptation. Still, that knowledge hasn't stopped her from striking a backroom deal with upscale brothel madam Frisco Flo, a deal that Inez gambles will make her financially independent. But then there is the discovery of the body of one of Flo's women. And when Inez learns that Flo has another silent business partner, whose identity she will not divulge, Inez begins to have second thoughts."
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