Neema Mystery

Sam Westin is rarely afraid in the wilderness, but maybe she should be now. Sam's friends Kyla and Kim were murdered on a popular hiking trail only a few weeks ago and the murderer is still unidentified. When Sam steps in as a substitute for Kyla to shepherd six troubled teens through the backcountry, she can't help watching over her shoulder. Has grief at the violent deaths of her friends made her paranoid, or is she right to suspect her rag-tag band is sharing the mountain wilderness with the killer?

A MISSING BABY Seventeen-year-old Brittany Morgan dashed into the store for just a minute, leaving her sleeping baby in the car. Now Ivy's gone and half the town believes Brittany murdered her daughter. A HAUNTED DETECTIVE Detective Matthew Finn, a big-city fish out of water in small-town Evansburg, Washington, struggles with his wife's betrayal as he investigates Ivy Morgan's disappearance. The clock is ticking and he can't find any witnesses. AN UNUSUAL RESEARCH SUBJECT Imaginative, manipulative, and volatile, with the intelligence of a five-year-old child, Neema knows enough sign language to invent jokes and insults. She can also hurl a grown man across the room. Neema is a gorilla. A DISTRESSED SCIENTIST After a psycho murdered one of her "talking" gorillas in Seattle, Dr. Grace McKenna relocated to the Evansburg area. Now with the economy on the rocks and her funding cut, her beloved gorillas Neema and Gumu are in jeopardy. When Neema repeats a story of a crying baby, a cucumber car, and a snake, Grace realizes her gorilla is the only witness to whatever happened to baby Ivy. Does Grace dare go public with Neema's sketchy clues? Can she afford not to?

Gorillas that communicate in sign language aren't exactly commonplace, so when Dr. Grace McKenna reluctantly hosts the first open house at her research center, half the town of Evansburg, Washington shows up to gawk. The next morning, Grace discovers that her worst nightmare has come true. All three apes-Gumu, Neema, and baby Kanoni-have vanished, leaving behind only one clue: a huge pool of blood. Grace is frantic. She hopes the apes have simply escaped into the nearby forests. If the press learns of her gorillas' disappearance, the county will revoke her permit to keep the apes. Detective Matthew Finn is sure that a criminal is at work. He risks his job for Grace by agreeing to keep the disappearance secret while doing his best to solve the crime. Has the maniac who murdered Grace's first gorilla returned? Have Grace's trusted staff members, who belong to the controversial Animal Rights Union, 'liberated' the apes? Or have exotic animal dealers stolen the valuable gorillas to sell on the illegal wildlife market? The character of Neema, the fictional signing gorilla in this series, is based largely on everything the author has read about Koko, the real signing gorilla, and studies of chimpanzees who have learned sign language.

What does a human finger bone found by a signing gorilla have to do with Detective Matthew Finn's case of two missing girls? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Memorial Day starts off strangely when a signing gorilla hands Detective Matthew Finn a human finger bone, and then explains the bone's origin with the mysterious clues of up, bird, and Snow, a favorite white cat. Finn's day gets far worse when his small police department in Evansburg, Washington, loans him to the adjacent county to investigate the case of two missing teenage girls. Adding to the chaos, an arsonist is torching abandoned buildings in the area, and Finn soon discovers a troubling history of young women who have vanished in the rural area. Frantic parents and demanding reporters are breathing down his neck. Can Finn fit the puzzle pieces together in time to save the girls?

This Neema Mysteries Bundle includes THE ONLY WITNESS (book 1) and THE ONLY CLUE (book 2). In THE ONLY WITNESS, teenage mom Brittany leaves her baby, Ivy, sleeping in the car when she dashes into a store. When she returns, Ivy is gone. Now half the town believes Brittany murdered Ivy. The only witness to what happened is Neema, a gorilla that communicates in sign language. But will anyone decipher Neema's cryptic clues? In THE ONLY CLUE, after Dr. Grace McKenna is forced to hold a public event at her research compound to show off the signing gorillas, her worst nightmare comes true. Neema, her mate Gumu, and her baby Kanoni vanish, leaving behind only a pool of blood. Neema, the fictional signing gorilla, is based on information from books and films about Koko, the real signing gorilla.