The Chameleon Chronicles Box Set: Books 1-5

Camille Tate has always run away…but now she’s ready to stop vanishing whenever life gets too frightening.

The Chameleon Chronicles Box Set: Books 1-5

Author Name:

Release Date : March 5, 2023

ISBN Number : 978-1-63632-154-7

Genre: ,

$17.99

Kindle Reader = Mobi
Others = Epub

Description

Camille Tate has always run away…but now she’s ready to stop vanishing whenever life gets too frightening.

This special box set contains all five volumes of the Chameleon Chronicles.

Orcas Intrigue: When a broken heart sends Cam to remote Orcas Island to try her hand at caretaking and writing a screenplay, she finds quiet beaches and cozy bookstores, plus a host of intriguing folks, including a rugged boat-builder, a glamorous neighbor, and a reassuring sheriff’s deputy.

But an escalating nest of mysteries and the haunting sense of being watched soon leave Cam wondering if she can believe her own perceptions. As intrigue turns to danger, she must decide whether there is anyone she can trust, or if it’s time for her to vanish yet again.

Orcas Intruder: Camille Tate always tells herself to calm down…but her instincts always warn her to disappear.

After her first, frightening weeks on Orcas Island, Cam is hoping that a quiet Thanksgiving with her foster parents and a few friends will help her recover from the horror of witnessing a shooting and being kidnapped.

But her employers, the Brixtons, are returning to their estate for the holiday as well. Then a few unexpected visitors from Cam’s past show up. When her neighbor’s home is ransacked, Cam’s peaceful holiday vanishes completely as she realizes the intrigue that has haunted her new island life is far from over.

Orcas Investigation: Camille Tate has begun to feel at home…but staying in one place has dangers for a woman who always fades away.

Winter comes to Orcas, and ice strands Cam indoors to work on her script, do some caretaking, and recover from the dangers of her earlier time on the island. But Cam is grieving her friends, lost to betrayal, travel, and whatever called Lisa Cannon away with barely a word.

JoJo, the rakish son of her boss, offers a charming distraction from this loneliness, and all the things Cam should be doing. With him at her side, Cam is swept into a new investigation. Against a backdrop of hilarious island politics and eccentric neighbors, the secrets of Cam’s childhood—and her mysterious gift—begin to surface.

Orcas Illusion: Camille Tate has finally found her stride…but is it all an illusion?

Just when life should finally be settling down for Cam, new challenges arrive to knock her off balance again.

Lisa Cannon has returned after being off island all winter, and Cam is both excited to be her new personal assistant, and nervous about showing her the play she’s written. But Lisa’s return brings much more trouble than that.

JoJo Brixton, that charming rascal, is back, and determined to win Cam’s forgiveness with his usual blend of humor, insouciance, and charm. Then there’s Colin, who has had just about enough of the friend zone. Kevin and his Intruder, Paige Berry and her air of mystery, pets, raccoons, and play revisions add plenty of chaos too. But then a stranger comes prowling, a friend falls deathly ill, and Cam finds herself embroiled in Orcas intrigue again.

When Cam and her friend Jen dig deep to resolve all these mysteries, both the law and other more shadowy figures go to surprising lengths to keep these “amateurs” out of their business, and away from the truth.

Orcas Intermission: Camille Tate is ready to be seen…but is her world ready to see her?

Reeling from her recent recruitment as a confidential informant in the island’s ongoing more-than-murder investigation, Cam is flummoxed by an escalating avalanche of secrets divulged by everyone from her boss, Lisa Cannon, to her friend Paige Berry, and the rakishly charming JoJo Brixton, among others. No one and nothing is what it seemed; and as each new revelation leads to even deeper ones, it becomes a struggle to focus on her fabulous new day job: bringing her recently completed play, Salon Confidential, to the stage! In all the chaos, Cam nearly misses the one thing that’s so clear to everyone around her: how much she herself is changing.

In this fast-moving, humorous, heartbreaking and heartwarming final volume of The Chameleon Chronicles, Cam faces more than one old nemesis, a slew of surprising new challenges, the long arm of the law, and her innermost fears…as a truly unforgettable opening night draws ever nearer.

The Chameleon Chronicles Box Set: Books 1-5

REVIEWS

“A delightful and atmospheric adventure set on picturesque Orcas Island, full of boats and romance and theatre people and drinking chocolate and a vulnerable but determined heroine you instantly root for. The rain-lashed small-town setting is so real I want to step right into it.”
-Tina Connolly, Nebula-nominated author of Ironskin

“If the strange, haunting setting of Orcas Island doesn’t drag you under, the introduction to a main character as relatable and smart as she is strange will surely keep you turning pages to find out what will be revealed on the next pages. Orcas Intrigue is a unique, fast-paced, eerie mystery set at what feels like the edge of the world…and it will keep you on the edge of your seat.”
-USA Today bestselling author Lyla Payne

“Orcas Intrigue is one of those rare cozy mysteries where the landscape—beautiful and compelling—is as much a character as any of the interesting people that inhabit it. Laura Gayle presents Cam as a sympathetic heroine with a real and unusual problem. While reading I needed to know how she was going to learn to deal with that problem so she could get on with her life. I sincerely hope a second volume is in the offing.”
-Irene Radford, author of Whistling River Resort Mysteries

“A delicious, complex broth of questions, comforts—and deaths.”
-Chaz Brenchley, award-winning author of Bitter Waters

“Mystery and a touch of magic in the gorgeous Pacific Northwest—chef’s kiss!”
-Sherwood Smith, author of Crown Duel

____
Laura Gayle is the nom de plume of two friends who love to collaborate: Shannon Page (www.shannonpage.net) and Karen G. Berry (www.karengberry.mywriting.network/).

Share :

Chapter 1

When my latest relationship imploded on my twenty-seventh birthday, I did the only reasonable thing: I picked up and moved to a remote island in the Pacific Northwest.

It was a blur, really. One moment I was reeling from a breakup when I’d been expecting a proposal; and the next, it seemed, I was in line for the last ferry of the night, my car packed with everything it would hold, crying so steadily that I wasn’t sure if it was rain or my tears that made the windshield look like that.

“Stupid, Cam, stupid,” I chastised myself. I’d vanished again, just when Kevin had asked me to open my heart, to let him in. I’d tried, and when it had gone so sour, I’d panicked and vanished. I always vanished. I couldn’t help it.

I closed my eyes and sniffled. “So now you’re running away,” I whispered in the dark. “Again.” No, I’m running toward, I told myself.

Maybe if I said it enough times, I’d even believe it was true.

It could be true. The caretaking job held promise. And really, Orcas Island is not all that remote. It’s the largest of the San Juan Islands, and there are ferries several times a day. You can get there from Seattle in a mere four hours…or five…or not until the next day, if you miss that last ferry.

Well, I wasn’t missing it. “Now boarding, lanes three and four, with stops at Lopez, Shaw, and Orcas Island.” Ahead of me, taillights flared as people started their engines. We crawled ahead, following the directions of the orange-vested Washington State Ferry employees guiding us onto the huge boat. I’ve never driven onto a boat before, I thought, as my little Honda worked its way up the ramp. I’m here for adventures. Driving my car onto a boat is definitely an adventure.

I shoehorned my Honda into a side compartment, snuggled up behind a black BMW, in front of a ratty blue pickup, and next to a bland sedan with a family of four in it. Once we’d all set our emergency brakes, I saw that most passengers were getting out of their cars. I followed suit. No sense spending the hour and twenty minutes down here in the dark and cold, even if it did perfectly match my mood.

I sidled and squeezed between the tightly packed cars, following people to a staircase leading to the floor above. I emerged into a big seating area, with booths along each side. Huge windows showed only the blackness of night and the rapidly receding lights of the town of Anacortes. I found an unoccupied table and pulled out my phone, opening up Words with Friends. My brother had just scored 57 points, the turkey.

“Kissy?” I muttered. “That’s even a word?”

I thought of Kevin’s kisses and died a little inside.

No, enough of that. I wasn’t going to grieve, I was going to move on. I sent a triple word score and waited. Within ten minutes, I’d lost the signal. So much for that distraction. I put the phone away and looked around the deck. It was sparsely filled, the few other passengers reading or chatting quietly, or sleeping. Not much call for the 9:05 ferry on a Wednesday night in November.

I stared out into the night, thinking about what lay ahead.

I didn’t know the Brixtons well. Okay, understatement: I didn’t know him at all; I knew her in the way a hairdresser knows her client. Selectively, I would say. And yet they had just hired me to caretake their estate on Orcas Island—main house, guesthouse, and five acres of grounds on the water at the far end of West Sound. “You’ll do wonderfully, my dear,” Diana Brixton had said, clutching my hands in her cool ones as she glanced back at her husband, Emmett. I had simply nodded, still reeling, still not believing. “We’re just so relieved you’re available on such short notice. I don’t know what possessed Megan to up and quit like that. After only three weeks.”

Maybe she found she hated living on a remote northern island in the dead of winter? I’d wondered. Even in Seattle, we only had about eight hours of daylight in the winter months—when the sun bothered to show up at all. The islands would be worse than that, being pretty much next door to Canada. But I was used to it. I was looking forward to it, in fact. It’s less upsetting to vanish if you’re already in the dark.

I felt more than heard the shift in the giant ferry’s engines as it slowed, turning gently. “Now approaching Lopez, Lopez Island,” came the crackly announcement. “Drivers, return to your cars; foot passengers, exit from the car deck.”

Lopez looked utterly uninhabited; I saw no lights other than one at the tiny dock. And only two people got up and ambled down the stairs.

Now there’s a remote island, I thought.

External Links

Book Sample

Choose Book Format

,

Reviews

There are no reviews yet.

Be the first to review “The Chameleon Chronicles Box Set: Books 1-5”

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

External Links

Downloadable Links