Death Cap At Dawn: A Bracken Bay Market Mystery, Book Four
October settles over Bracken Bay in fog, cedar smoke, steaming coffee, and baskets of chanterelles fresh from the surrounding forests. For market director Mara Vale, the first annual Forest & Forage Festival is supposed to prove that the Saturday Market can finally attract attention for something other than murder.
Then the festival's celebrity headliner collapses before sunrise.
Miles Dane is one of the Pacific Northwest's best-known foragers, a bestselling field-guide author whose reputation was built on knowing exactly what grows where and whether it is safe. Brilliant, charismatic, and relentlessly opinionated, Miles has spent years teaching others that one mistake in the forest can have deadly consequences.
Now it appears he has made that mistake himself.
After a private tasting, Miles dies from what looks like exposure to a toxic mushroom. The explanation is horrifying but simple: even an expert can get careless.
Mara does not believe it.
Miles inspected his ingredients obsessively. His tasting portion was prepared separately. And when investigators discover that only his food was contaminated, an accident begins looking much more like murder.
There is no shortage of suspects.
Miles was feuding with cookbook author Leah Mercer over stolen credit. Chef Colin Voss feared Miles would expose questionable restaurant sourcing. Conservation mycologist Dr. Anika Shah considered his publicity dangerous to fragile habitats. A timber-company representative wanted damaging environmental accusations silenced. Local mushroom hunter Mae Bellweather still blamed Miles for nearly destroying her livelihood. Even Miles's sister and manager had financial reasons to resent him.
Mara approaches the case the way she approaches every impossible market problem: by reconstructing movement, access, timing, and physical reality. But this time, logistics extend beyond loading docks and vendor schedules. She must learn to read the forest itself.
Trees matter. Soil matters. Habitat matters.
The mushroom responsible for Miles's death supposedly came from conifer-dominated Alder Ridge. Yet ecological evidence tells a different story. The toxic material is associated instead with an ornamental oak environment, and traces recovered from the scene suggest someone has lied about where it originated. An outdated trail map, a missing field notebook, suspicious permit numbers, and one wet oak leaf carried into the market begin connecting a death at dawn to secrets hidden far beyond the festival grounds.
The investigation becomes increasingly dangerous when evidence disappears and another toxic specimen appears, seemingly reinforcing the story that Miles was simply reckless. Mara must decide which secrets reveal murder and which merely make innocent people look guilty.
Meanwhile, her relationship with Graham Rook reaches its most intimate point yet. When an investigation leaves them temporarily stranded in heavy fog, the quiet hours they spend together lead to an almost-kiss. Mara stops.
What matters is what Graham does next.
He does not pressure her. He does not withdraw. He simply remains.
For Mara, that response may change more than a kiss ever could.
And buried inside the journal of one of Bracken Bay's original thirteen founders waits another clue to Market Hall's past:
"Copy not at Hall. Thirteen shares. One trust."
Warm, atmospheric, and unmistakably Pacific Northwest, Death Cap at Dawn blends a fair-play whodunit with wild-foraging culture, autumn forests, small-town secrets, mature slow-burn romance, and a historical mystery growing steadily beneath the entire series.
A mushroom always belongs somewhere. So does a killer.
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