Cypress Tide

Sheriff Tom Bracken never wanted to see another epidemic. Chicago taught him exactly how fast disease can turn order into ash. So when shipments begin disappearing and a fever outbreak erupts downriver in Port Calusa, he knows two things immediately: it's bad, and it's about to get worse.

He tries to leave Ellie safely at home. Ellie-eight months pregnant and twice as stubborn-comes anyway.

Port Calusa is nothing like Cypress Run. It's larger, wealthier, and balanced on the edge of catastrophe. As fever spreads through the docks and quarantine camps fill beyond capacity, Tom, Ellie, and Dr. Diego Delgado find themselves racing to save lives in a city where fear is becoming just as dangerous as disease.

But epidemics have a way of exposing more than illness. Dockworkers vanish. Warehouses burn. Guards lie. And beneath the chaos, someone is using the crisis to hide crimes that reach far beyond the harbor.

Worse, the signature on the plot is one Tom recognizes all too well.

As storms gather over the Gulf and the death toll rises, Tom must navigate smugglers, traffickers, politicians, and enemies from his past before the city tears itself apart. But the deeper he digs, the clearer it becomes that the greatest threat may not be the fever at all-it may be the powerful men who see Port Calusa's suffering as an opportunity.

To save the people he loves, Tom must confront a foe who has already decided what his gravestone should say.

Cypress Tide is the second novel in the Cypress Run Quartet, a historical mystery series blending frontier adventure, romance, and suspense in 1880s Florida.