Mad Cow Nightmare — Nancy Means Wright

Tenacious Vermont farmer Ruth Willmarth has survived tough times before, but when news of mad cow disease spreads, she can't help but worry about her own resiliency -- and her own small herd. Two healthy looking calves she recently bought are under "suspicion" by officials.

The fear factor rises when Ruth's farm becomes the temporary home to a small horde of Irish visitors, relatives of her lover, Colm. One woman in the group, an abused wife, may have actually contracted the human form of the dreaded disease during a recent hospital stay. Now she has disappeared. When her husband is found dead in the river, strangled with horse reins, a panicking community assumes a mad-cow-disease-riddled killer is on the loose. But Ruth, able to discern truth from terror, looks elsewhere, finding twisted secrets, greed, manipulation and more death, as she tries to hold on to her sanity, and her farm.