Darker Than Any Shadow — Tina Whittle

The dog days of summer have arrived, and Tai Randolph is feeling the heat. Running her uncle's gun shop is more demanding than she ever imagined. Her best friend Rico is competing for a national slam poetry title. And Atlanta is overrun with hundreds of fame-hungry performance poets clogging all the good bars.

She's also got her brand-new relationship with corporate security agent Trey Seaver to deal with. SWAT-trained and rule-obsessed, Trey has a brain geared for statistics and flow charts, not romance. And while Tai finds him irresistibly fascinating, dating a human lie detector who can kill with his bare hands is a somewhat precarious endeavor.

And then just when she thinks she might get a handle on things, one of Rico's fellow poets is murdered . . . and Rico becomes the prime suspect.

Tai pushes up her sleeves and comes to his defense with every trick in her book a little lying here, a little snooping there. Trey wants her off the case immediately. So does Rico. Every poet in Atlanta has a secret, it seems, and one of them is willing to kill to keep theirs quiet. But someone else wants her on the job, someone dropping anonymous clues and clandestine tip-offs her way. Someone with an agenda that's looking either positively heroic . . . or downright deadly.

Will Tai's relationship with Trey survive another foray into amateur sleuthing? And even more importantly, will she?