The Other Mothers
It’s a crisp spring morning when the small-town community around Briar Ridge Elementary School is shattered by devastating news. Bright and shy five-year-old Nicole has disappeared at recess.
Nicole’s mother, Gia, is lost in her grief. On the same day her baby girl vanished, Gia found out she was pregnant with the sister Nicole had begged for. Gia is also devastated that her best friend Karen was supervising the playground when Nicole was taken. And when Nicole’s body is discovered, Gia can’t help but ask: why didn’t Karen protect her little girl?
Someone knows what happened in school that day and Detective Jo Fournier is determined to find the truth. Jo’s little nieces also attend Briar Ridge and she would cross mountains to keep them safe. As she starts to dig into the mothers’ secrets, she begins to wonder if anyone is telling the truth. Gia’s been hiding a part of herself for years and Jo can tell it’s eating her apart. And Karen is definitely lying—but what is more important than finding the killer of her best friend’s daughter?
As Gia and Karen struggle with their guilt, a teacher at Briar Ridge dies in what looks like a tragic accident. But with two deaths in such a short time, Jo knows better than that. In this school, where soccer moms flock to the gates with cookies for teachers, someone is willing to kill to keep a secret. The only question is who.
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M.M. Chouinard
My first fiction story was published in my local paper when I was eight, and I fell in love with Agatha Christie novels not long after. The stories kept rattling around my skull while I pursued a Ph.D. in psychology and while I helped to found the first US research university of the new millennium, University of California, Merced. For sanity’s sake, I finally decided to release them.
When I’m not writing, I’m probably unleashing the visual side of my creativity: I love nail art and all types of paper crafts. Or, I might be working on my family genealogy; I recently managed to document one of my ancestral lines back to Charlemagne (a lineage that may or may not explain my passionate relationship with French cheeses—okay, with all cheese). I also love coffee, chocolate, bullet journaling, tarot cards, anything to do with Halloween or zombie apocalypses, and small doses of tomfoolery and shenanigans.
No matter what I’m doing, you’ll find me surrounded by my three cats and my dog—and my husband, who, in addition to being my biggest fan, technically keeps me from being a crazy cat lady.
Also writes as Michelle Chouinard.
Detective Jo Fournier
Detective Jo Fournier consists of seven primary books, and includes one additional book that complement the series but is not considered mandatory reads. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.
