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A locked-room young adult whodunit in the classic tradition of Sherlock Holmes

June 1860. A new locomotive christened A Southern Breeze steams across the Carolina countryside carrying seventeen-year-old Jeb Bennett and his twin sister, Rachel Leigh, to the exhilarating promise of a summer in Charleston.

While storm clouds gather over the landscape, fiercer storms rage inside the passenger cars. The tensions between North and South rapidly escalate until one traveler's journey abruptly and brutally ends. Who is the murderer? Was the victim the real target? Amid swirling suspicions and deceptive intrigue, Jeb and Rachel Leigh join Pinkerton detective Jonathan Ward in a race to unmask a killer.

But murder isn't the only evil Jeb must confront. As motives and suspects abound, Jeb learns what it means to place a price on a human life, not only as a victim of murder but also as property to be traded and sold.

The final showdown means hard choices, a test of loyalties, and a face-to-face encounter with death on A Southern Breeze.

Mark de Castrique is the author of the Washington, DC, political thriller, The 13th Target, and author of the critically acclaimed Barry Clayton and Sam Blackman mystery series, both set in the mountains of his native North Carolina, and as well as mysteries for young adults. He is a veteran of the television and film production industry and serves as an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

William Dufris attended the University of Southern Maine in Portland-Gorham before pursuing a career in voice work in London and then the United States. He has won more than twenty AudioFile Earphones Awards, was voted one of the Best Voices at the End of the Century by AudioFile magazine, and won the prestigious Audie Award in 2012 for best nonfiction narration. He lives with his family in Maine.