Till the Cows Come Home [Paperback]

Judy Clemens (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2005

Stella Crown works hard and loves her life. She runs her own dairy farm with the trusted help of longtime assistant Howie, rides her Harley on the weekends, and has enough friends to suit her just fine.

But on her twenty-ninth birthday, things start to change. A neighborhood child dies from a strange and threatening illness, a string of mysterious disasters place Stella and her farm in peril, not to mention her friend Abe showing up with a new woman on his arm, creating confusing emotions all around. Electrical outages, flooded barns, and cows running loose in the countryside are bad enough, but when her livestock begins turning up dead, Stella knows someone, or something, is out to get her.

Though doctors quickly announce the discovery of the neighbor child's cause of death, another child dies before they can declare victory over the illness, sending the community into a state of near panic. While trying to solve the mystery behind her own troubles, Stella begins to think she alone might hold the answers to the children's deaths.

Striking out on her own, afraid to trust anyone -- friends, neighbors, or the gorgeous stranger she's fallen for -- Stella must find her enemy before anyone else, including herself, ends up dead.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in Pennsylvania dairy farm country, newcomer Clemens's absorbing mystery thriller explores the impact of runaway development and loss of agricultural land on farmers such as her engaging heroine, motorcycle-riding, 29-year-old Stella Crown. The story opens with the aftermath of a calving as graphic as any similar scene in James Herriott's All Creatures Great and Small: "I tried to wipe the blood off my face, but my gloves were too messy... I looked down at my boots and they were hidden beneath birth muck and manure." This sets the tone for a series of menacing incidents-a leaking hole in a manure pit, a dead cow, a missing dog, a flooded barn-that spell trouble for Stella and others in her rural community. Worst of all is a mysterious illness afflicting children. The author excels at drawing true-to-life characters, including Howie, Stella's family farmhand of 20 years; Zach, her 14-year-old helper; Carla, the veterinarian who sews up the cow that delivers the calf; and her fellow bikers. An attractive barn painter and an old beau provide some romantic conflict, while a suave developer makes a splendid villain.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

She's smart. She's tough. She's sexy. She's a dairy farmer? However incongruous Stella Crown's occupation may seem in conjunction with her attributes, Clemens makes her not only believable but admirable. Left alone when her parents died, Stella runs the family's Pennsylvania dairy farm with help from her hired hand and second father, Howie. It's a hard life, and Clemens' vivid portrayal of the lot of the small farmer is eye-opening and disturbing. But Stella's troubles go beyond the everyday when it becomes clear that someone is sabotaging her. And, even more seriously, children are falling ill with a strange virus--one young boy is already dead. Stella deals with dead cows, arson, a missing dog, and a sick young farmhand while also attempting to sort out her love life. Alternately a Harley-riding, tough farm girl and a kindhearted, vulnerable woman, Stella makes an endearing heroine in a promising first novel. Jenny McLarin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press (July 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590581873
• ISBN-13: 978-1590581872
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,982,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Judy Clemens has lived in seven states and decided to settle in the beautiful farmland of Ohio. She has been nominated for the Anthony and Agatha awards, and is the immediate past president of Sisters in Crime. She loves chocolate, watching movies, reading fantasy (especially YA and middle-grade) and is an active member of Grace Mennonite Church. She has two children, is married to a soccer coach, and lives in a farmhouse that is constantly being renovated. Learn more about her at www.judyclemens.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting amateur detective, January 10, 2006

By 

carl brookins "Carl Brookins" (St. Paul, Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Till the Cows Come Home (Paperback)

A new kind of sheriff is in town. She's a feisty, shoot-from the hip dairy farmer and she rides a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. In this engaging, entertaining debut novel, set in rural Pennsylvania, the hard-working folks who supply us with the food we mostly take for granted get their due. Here's a take-no-prisoners woman with real attitude. Stella Crown is her name and she owns a productive dairy farm in Pennsylvania. It's a fresh-air, marginal kind of life, but she loves it, knows her product is important to the nation, and she's not about to give it up anytime soon.

But the vultures are circling in the form of land developers and Stella sees farm after farm among her neighbors being closed down and new homes going up on what was once productive crop lands. New problems arise and Stella finds her own farm the target of a series of mysterious "accidents." In the small nearby town strange illness takes the life of a small boy and several others are oddly sick.

Author Judy Clemens takes a complicated plot, a raft of engaging characters, and an often overlooked setting to craft a fine entertaining novel. She nails the setting and most of the characters. Her protagonist is a fine example of a whole individual, although I thought Stella over-reacted to some situations a bit much at times. She always seems to be slamming and spinning around. It's a small cavil. The pace of this novel, especially in the early going, is just right for its rural setting, and it leaves the author sufficient room to jack things up as we near the climax.

There are suprises and emotion a-plenty in this handsomely packaged mystery. Based on this entry, Judy Clemens is a new author on the block and definitely one to watch.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mystery fans will find plenty to thrill them, July 9, 2004

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Till the Cows Come Home (Hardcover)

A sexy, tough dairy farmer with an eye for investigation attacks clues left behind to a farming community struck by plague in Judy Clemens' unusual Till The Cows Come Home. Mystery fans will find plenty to thrill them in this hard-hitting first novel which comes to life with powerful characterization and unusual plots and sub-plots.

4.0 out of 5 stars Life on the Dairy Farm Just Got a Whole Lot Harder, September 13, 2011

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Till the Cows Come Home (Paperback)

I recently first came across this author's work with her sensational Grim Reaper series. I thought, hey these novels would still be really good even without the Grim Reaper in them, as those novels' main character Casey Maldonado is one of the best written female lead characters I've come across. So I decided to check out Clemen's other female character series starting with first of the Stella Crown novels, which was also the author's debut novel, Till the Cows Come Home.

Like with Casey in the Reaper series, Stella Crown is certainly a strong female character. She's a bit more realistic than Casey, although with a few less survival skills, but she makes up for that with hard work while trying to keep her struggling dairy farm going, and out of the hands of a shonky housing estate developer. However someone seems to be sabotaging things on the farm, any doubt that these are just bad luck is shattered with the murder of a bovine resident. Things are only going to get worse if Stella can't work out who's behind these acts of evil. To further complicate things, the local community is also burdened with an illness no one seems to be able to identify let alone stop. The neighbour's kid has just died from the mysterious disease.

I can't remember the last time I read a farm based fiction novel, well one that didn't have talking animals in it, if I've ever read one at all. I wondered if it would work and could keep me interested for up to the final pages and can certainly say that it does. Till the Cows Come Home is the first novel by the author and is written a bit roughly at times. It isn't quite as good as the first Reaper series novel Embrace the Grim Reaper but is still a fun read. One advantage it does have though over the first Reaper novel is that it is a standalone wraps everything up tale, and not a too be continued one. There's plenty of twists and things occuring to keep you interested. I thought I knew who was behind the sabotages on the dairy farm but I was wrong. I'll definitely check out the next book in this series, Three Can Keep a Secret.