Joan lives on a small acreage with her husband in the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island. When she is not writing she is picking fruit or playing with her three cats.
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Canadian Historical Mysteries (Yukon) - Book 2
Helen Castrel has just arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, from England and she hires Baxter Davenport of the Davenport & Son Detective Agency to go with her to Dawson City and help find her second oldest brother, David, whom she hasn’t seen since she was eleven years old.
David had been trouble to the family since he was young and was sent to Canada as a remittance man ten years ago. The last communication her father, Charles Castrel, received from David was late last summer when he sent a telegram from Victoria, British Columbia, saying he was on his way to the Klondike gold rush at Dawson City. Since then Charles Gastrel has heard nothing from his son, not even a letter stating where his remittance money was to be sent. Helen needs to find David to make sure he’s alive and to deliver a message from their father.
Baxter Davenport isn’t sure about travelling north with two women. He will have a job to do and doesn’t need to be looking after them. Plus, he doesn’t like the idea that Helen Castrel is excited about being a sleuth along with him. He soon finds out that both women can look after themselves.
Mattie Lewis, Helen Castrel’s lady’s maid, insisted on accompanying Helen, not only to look after her but because she has worked for the family for years and remembers David better than Helen does. She also has her own motive for wanting to find David.
The three head north armed with an old photograph and a recent description they obtained from David’s former landlady. They arrive in Dawson City where the gold rush is in full swing. There they are challenged by deceit, fraud, and danger in their quest to find David.
In this sequel to Romancing the Klondike, it is 1898 and Pearl Owens has been in Dawson City for two years. She’d originally come north with her cousin Emma to write about the people and places along the Yukon River for her hometown newspaper and had stayed to write about the Klondike Gold Rush and Dawson City.
Pearl has been unlucky in love. She fell in love with a man named Joseph Ladue, the founder of Dawson City, but he loved another woman and returned to his fiancée in New York in 1897. Another man, Paul Gamon, has expressed his desire to court Pearl, but Pearl wishes only to be friends with him.
Pearl’s best friend, Florence, and her older brother, Andrew, cross the Chilkoot Trail and arrive in Dawson in search for gold. Pearl remembers Andrew as the scrawny boy who threw snakes and spiders at her and Florence when they were children. She is taken by the handsome man he has become.
It is 1896 and nineteen-year-old Pearl Owens wants adventure just like her idols Anna Leonowens and Annie “Londonderry” Choen Kopchovsky. In the 1860s, Anna Leonowens taught the wives, concubines, and children of the King of Siam, while during the years 1894-1895, Annie “Londonderry” Choen Kopchovsky became the first woman to travel around the world on a bicycle. She was testing a woman’s ability to look after herself.
To fulfill her dream Pearl is on her to the Yukon River area with her cousin, Emma, to write articles and do illustrations about the woman and men who are looking for gold in the far north.
Sam Owens, Pearl’s cousin and Emma’s brother, has been searching for gold with two friends, Gordon and Donald, for five years without success. Gordon and Donald have decided their quest is futile and it is time to return home. But Sam wants to stay a while longer. Then they hear word of a new gold find on Rabbit Creek.
Over the next ten months, the lives of all five are changed due to love, gold, and tragedy.
In 1
750, Thomas Gunn, along with three friends, join the Hudson's Bay Company and sail from Stromness on the Orkney Islands of northern Scotland to York Factory fort on Hudson's Bay. They believe they are starting a new and exciting life in what is called Rupert's Land, but tragedy follows them, striking for the first time on the ship. At the fort Thomas finds his older brother, Edward..
On his sixteenth birthday Phillipe Chabot is told that his brother-in-law has hired him to be a voyageur. He will be paddling west from Montreal to Grade Portage to trade supplies with the Indians for furs. He is overjoyed and receives all the appropriate clothing from his family as birthday gifts, even a tobacco pouch.
As the loaded canoe brigade gets ready to leave, his cousin, Jeanne, accepts the proposal of marriage yelled at her by the clerk who is going along to keep track of the trading.
Unfortunately, disaster strikes the brigade as the men paddle the rivers, make their portages, and get onto the sometimes violent and unforgiving Lake Superior. In Montreal, the city is ravished by a fire and death is everywhere.
Elizabeth Oliver is a travel writer who somehow gets drawn into a mystery each time she is researching an article for a travel magazine.
Illegally Dead: Elizabeth happens upon the discovery of a skeleton in an old septic tank. Although she tells herself she doesn't have time to get involved, it isn't long before she is digging up long-buried secrets. When a second murder victim is found, Elizabeth's travel research provides clues to the disturbing truth behind the murders.
The Only Shadow In The House: In this fast paced sequel to Illegally Dead, Edmonton travel writer Elizabeth Oliver is excited to get back on the open road to research a new article when, suddenly, an unexpected romance leads to a new murder mystery. Though she is determined to stay focused on her writing, Elizabeth can't ignore the familiar goose bumps she feels when handsome wheelchair basketball coach asks for her help to find out the truth about his mother's death.
Whistler's Murder: Elizabeth Oliver has tagged along with her best friend Sally Matthews to Whistler where Sally is attending a science fiction/fantasy writing retreat.
Elizabeth plans on spending the first week working on an article about Whistler for a travel magazine and then relaxing and enjoying being in the famous resort town for the second week. However, her well laid plan immediately begins to fall apart with the discovery of a body in a newly demolished house. Then she is again sidetracked when one of Sally’s fellow students asks her to solve the mystery of her cousin’s death and is then murdered herself.
"I like how author Joan Donaldson-Yarmey sets her books in obscure places in Alberta. This time it is Redwater...a small town outside of Edmonton that not many people have heard of...I only have because the company I worked at for many years built a cogeneration plant there. This is the second book in her Travelling Detective Series. It is an enjoyable read particularly if you want to learn more about Alberta. The author is a travel writer and her experience and expertise about the area shines through." Kathryn Poulin of Mysteries Etc
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