The next thrilling installment in Paula Munier's USA Today bestselling Mercy Carr series.

Autumn in Vermont is all about apples. Mercy Carr is in the woods with her husband Troy, their toddler Felicity, and the dogs, Elvis and Susie Bear, hunting for heirloom apple trees worthy of their growing orchard.

But when Levi Beecher shows up, saying his sister Adah needs her help, Mercy knows something is very wrong in apple country. She and Elvis follow Levi deep into the woods to a small clearing. There in the shade of a gnarled old apple tree sits a sobbing Adah, cradling a dead man. He’s died in her arms, stabbed to death, and Adah is now a prime suspect. He’s the famed apple explorer Adam O’Hern and Adah’s longtime secret lover. She’s counting on Mercy to clear her name and solve her paramour’s murder.

A break-in at the local cider mill could be related to the murder. When Mercy and Elvis investigate, they discover an unidentified body floating in a vat of apples. Someone is killing the movers and shakers of the heirloom apple world. Apples are big business, and suspects from Washington state to Maine are all in town for the Apple Faire, where it’s rumored a new dark apple better than the Black Oxford—rivaling the darkest of dark apples, the rare Black Diamond of Tibet—will be unveiled.

An apple worth killing for.

With the grand finale of the Apple Faire fast approaching, time is running out. It’s up to Mercy and Troy and the dogs to sniff out the bad apple in a lethal barrel of greed, graft, and murder—before it’s too late.