title: Throw-Away Horses
author: Ketchledge, Lura
description: When Sharon Landry survives a near-death experience as a child, she returns with psychic abilities—a gift she feels compelled to hide. One day, she and her sister Debbie encounter three rider-less racehorses galloping towards them on a nearby beach and take the injured horse, home to their grandparents’ small farm. Sharon plans to adopt the horse she calls Mugs, but before they can execute a purchase, the owner forcibly collects the horse, and transports it to a slaughterhouse. Debbie subsequently exposes a horse-theft ring in a series of scathing newspaper articles, and dies three weeks later. Sharon soon experiences paranormal ‘contact dreams’ hinting that Debbie’s car crash was no accident. Sharon searches for answers to Debbie’s suspicious death, using a false identity, while following her sister’s trail to the slaughterhouse, and awakens a ghostly presence there. When something horrible occurs, Sharon leaves feeling guilty and ashamed. A few decades later, she, and her beloved horse Rasputin, live on a haunted farm in Middleburg, Virginia, surrounded by mysteries she must solve. When two wealthy bachelors compete for her attention, Sharon struggles to open her heart, reveal her darkest secrets, and make peace with the psychic abilities she’d spent her entire life trying to deny.