Secrets of Still Water Cabin
(2025)(The fourth book in the Ellie Martin Adirondack Murder Mystery series)
A Story by Vivian Vale
Sometimes the most peaceful retreats hide the darkest secrets...
After solving three mysteries across the Adirondacks, high school English teacher Ellie Martin and her loyal canine companion Watson are desperate for a quiet week of solitude at remote Stillwater Cabin on the shores of Long Lake.
But when Ellie meets Caleb Winters, a talented local artist with an uncanny ability to capture the soul of the wilderness through his paintings, she discovers he's been hiding something beyond his canvases—a feeling of being watched from the shadows of the forest.
When Caleb shows Ellie a disturbing painting he created in the pre-dawn hours—depicting a shadowy figure approaching her cabin—she dismisses it as artistic imagination. But after a violent storm sweeps through the region, Caleb disappears, his studio is ransacked, and his body is discovered downstream—an apparent drowning victim.
As the authorities rush to rule the death accidental, Ellie's instincts tell her there's more beneath the surface of this tranquil lake community. With Watson's remarkable nose for clues and Ellie's sharp eye for inconsistencies, they uncover a high-stakes art forgery operation, a gallery owner with a history of exploiting artists, and a pattern of suspicious deaths that paint a picture more sinister than any landscape on Caleb's easel.
Racing against time and targeted by the killer herself, Ellie must decipher Caleb's final message—that the "proof is in the pigments"—before she becomes the next victim of a forger's deadly brushstrokes.
Book 4 in the Adirondack Mysteries series. Available now.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
After solving three mysteries across the Adirondacks, high school English teacher Ellie Martin and her loyal canine companion Watson are desperate for a quiet week of solitude at remote Stillwater Cabin on the shores of Long Lake.
But when Ellie meets Caleb Winters, a talented local artist with an uncanny ability to capture the soul of the wilderness through his paintings, she discovers he's been hiding something beyond his canvases—a feeling of being watched from the shadows of the forest.
When Caleb shows Ellie a disturbing painting he created in the pre-dawn hours—depicting a shadowy figure approaching her cabin—she dismisses it as artistic imagination. But after a violent storm sweeps through the region, Caleb disappears, his studio is ransacked, and his body is discovered downstream—an apparent drowning victim.
As the authorities rush to rule the death accidental, Ellie's instincts tell her there's more beneath the surface of this tranquil lake community. With Watson's remarkable nose for clues and Ellie's sharp eye for inconsistencies, they uncover a high-stakes art forgery operation, a gallery owner with a history of exploiting artists, and a pattern of suspicious deaths that paint a picture more sinister than any landscape on Caleb's easel.
Racing against time and targeted by the killer herself, Ellie must decipher Caleb's final message—that the "proof is in the pigments"—before she becomes the next victim of a forger's deadly brushstrokes.
Book 4 in the Adirondack Mysteries series. Available now.
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Used availability for Vivian Vale's Secrets of Still Water Cabin