Heat Wave — Adriana Kraft

During an oppressive Iowa summer of drought and farm foreclosures, widowed Maggie Anderson makes a bold decision: She'll merge her love of horses and her family's 320 acres into a horse farm and try her hand at nearby Prairie Meadows Race Track. Banned from training after being falsely accused in a racing scandal, former Arlington Park trainer Ed Harrington has skulked home to Des Moines. He's unprepared for the piercing robin's-egg-blue eyes of pint-sized Maggie Anderson, who finds him at a flophouse and offers him a job. Can he pull himself together and meet the challenge? The two forge a tumultuous working partnership, but someone's out to get Maggie's farm and will stop at almost nothing. Can they find and stop the culprit before someone is killed? Can they survive the far greater danger unleashed by the raw passion simmering just beneath the surface of their relationship?