Rating: 4.5⭐️
Tombstones with a View is great and really expands on the series with several new characters and insights into established ones. I absolutely loved it.
We’ve met Mavis, owner of the Desert Rest Motel before. Primarily because that place is full of Mavis’s antique doll collection, hundreds of dolls everywhere throughout the motel, in every room. Staring at you. In prior stories.
Here Mavis is the center of the story. Her dolls too. Which makes for a unique investigation when Mavis goes missing. We and Claire learn about her in her absence.
Claire’s long time friend, Sara, a journalist from Chicago ,arrives to spend time together. There’s someone who is cutting fences and leaving threatening notes at the Sanctuary. And Sam’s still trying to propose.
Tombstones with a View accomplishes several things along with a terrific mystery. It brings in a new, actually 2 new connected characters and develops an established minor character into one who looks to become one of the found family that Claire is forming around herself.
This also gives Buster, a deputy Sheriff who’s normally shown as useless, a chance to demonstrate extra depth, something I appreciate.
The ending not only ties up all the various plot threads giving us a couple of interesting elements and terrific surprises, but a lovely note for Claire and Sam.
Sara Bourgeois continues to give us a realistic sense of the beauty and atmosphere of the Arizona desert while layering it with the most interesting of mysteries and engaging characters. This series is a real treat!
Cover by Book Covers by Melody
The Haunted Ranch Mysteries (8 book series)
Death Rides The Desert #1
Bones and Cactus Blooms #2
Spirits of the Saguaro #3
Tombstones with a View #4
Body Beneath the Wither #5
Death Waits at Dead Rock #6
Skulls and Sunlit Secrets #7
The Bone Charm #8
Buy link
Tombstones with a View (The Haunted Ranch Mysteries Book 4)
Blurb
The dolls are always watching.
Claire Caldwell learned that the hard way in Room 7 of the Desert Rest Motel. But now their owner has vanished, and those glass eyes might be the only witnesses to what happened…
Sheriff Dobson isn’t concerned. “Woman finally got tired of those creepy dolls and skipped town. Can’t blame her.”
But Claire knows Mavis would never abandon her collection. Those hundreds of Victorian dolls aren’t just decorations… they’re her life. Her family. Her obsession.
With the sheriff refusing to investigate, Claire finds herself drawn into the dusty rooms of the Desert Rest, surrounded by glass eyes that follow her every move. The dolls saw what happened to Mavis. If only they could talk.
Meanwhile, someone is stalking Whispering Saguaro Ranch. Cut fences. Threatening notes. A shadow in the barn at midnight. Claire’s made some enemies, and one of them wants what she has… no matter the cost.
As Claire searches for answers, she discovers that Mavis has secrets of her own. The Pioneer Cemetery behind the motel holds more than old bones. The dolls hold more than sawdust and porcelain. And the eccentric woman everyone dismissed as harmless may have been hiding something worth killing for.
Now Claire must untangle two mysteries at once, with help from an unlikely source: her veterinarian fiancé Sam, whose rounds through the desert bring whispers of things people don’t want known. Together, they’ll learn that in Perdido Springs, the strangest people often have the darkest secrets.
And some collections are worth more than anyone imagined.
January 11, 2026
Language
English
Print length
283 pages
Book 4 of 8
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words 