In death, they are purified. Holding his victims under water, he washes away their sins as they struggle for their last breath. Then he stakes their bodies to the ground, exposing them for what they really are. Witches, sent to tempt and to corrupt. No one knows about defence attorney Charlotte Wellington's murdered sister, or about her childhood spent with the carnival that's just arrived in town. For Charlotte, what's past is past. But others don't agree. And as a madman's body count rises, she and Detective Daniel Rokov are drawn into a mission that's become terrifyingly personal.
A Central Virginia native whose family's Richmond roots run as deep as the nation's, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Mary Burton graduated from Virginia's Hollins University and began a career in marketing. After a decade she left her job and began writing. Her first novel, a romance, was published in 2000.
Following that book, Burton wrote sixteen novels and novellas for Harlequin and Silhouette before entering the dark world of multiple murderers and their motives with Senseless, Merciless, Dying Scream, Dead Ringer and I'm Watching You, as well as her novella Christmas Past, which appears in the 2008 New York Times bestselling holiday anthology Silver Bells. Mary's latest novel,THE SEVENTH VICTIM, is the first of three novels set in Austin and featuring the sleuths of the Texas Rangers.
Her commitment to realism has led to eye-opening interviews with law enforcement, to forensic seminars and to the firing range. She is a graduate of the Henrico County Citizens Police Academy and the Richmond FBI Citizen's Academy, and has participated in Sisters in Crime's Forensic University program. Recently, she attended the Writers Police Academy in Jamestown, North Carolina. There she attended seminars on autopsies, undercover work and the motives behind murder.
Mary Burton is an avid baker and an accomplished cook. When not writing, researching or baking, Mary practices yoga, enjoys her miniature dachshunds Buddy and Bella, volunteers at the University of Richmond's Culinary Arts Program, attends professional conferences, and visits with readers and booksellers.
After THE SEVENTH VICTIM, the second book, NO ESCAPE, will be published in November 2013. Mary also writes about families and relationships in her first "women's fiction" novel, THE UNION STREET BAKERY, written as Mary Ellen Taylor. That first book will be followed in early 2014 by an as yet untitled story that returns to the McCrae sisters of THE UNION STREET BAKERY.
