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Some Places Never Forget

The Everglades Files

An Everglades Mystery Series

Stand alone mysteries set around Everglades City and the Ten Thousand Islands. Each book can be read on its own, and together they uncover a larger secret the swamp has kept for decades.

Sheriff Maxine “Max” Harper follows the maps and journals her father, Game Warden Frank Harper, left behind, with her closest friends Chet, Zeb and Hank at her side. Each case brings her a little closer to the one story Frank never finished telling.

5 BooksComplete SeriesThe Ten Thousand Islands
Start with Book OneSee the Reading Order
The Swamp Remembers coverThe Keeper's Journal coverThe Okefenokee Connection coverThe Cathedral coverThe Last Patrol cover

The Books in Order

Every book stands on its own, but reading them in order lets the larger story unfold.

IBOOK ONE
The Swamp Remembers, The Everglades Files Book One, by Howard Mark Hines

The Swamp Remembers

The Everglades may appear silent, but beneath the sawgrass and dark water, the past is never truly buried. When a forgotten journal connected to Franklin Leonard Harper comes to light, it opens the door to a mystery that has remained hidden for years. Frank knew the Everglades better than most men. He understood its winding waterways, isolated camps, and places where even experienced travelers feared to go. Before he disappeared, he left behind fragments of his work, cryptic notes, and questions that no one had been able to answer.

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IIBOOK TWO
The Keeper's Journal, The Everglades Files Book Two, by Howard Mark Hines

The Keeper's Journal

A quiet Tuesday at the Everglades Historical Society ends with an empty shelf where a leather journal used to sit, donated years earlier by Game Warden Frank Harper under one strange condition, that no one grant access to it without first notifying the Sheriff's Office. Someone has broken that condition, and stolen the journal by giving a dead man's name at the front desk.

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IIIBOOK THREE
The Okefenokee Connection, The Everglades Files Book Three, by Howard Mark Hines

The Okefenokee Connection

A single line in her father's handwriting sends Sheriff Maxine “Max” Harper hundreds of miles from her own territory. Ask Calder. Following an old, circled notation on one of Frank Harper's maps, Max and her closest friends Chet, Zeb, and Hank cross into the black water and cypress of Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp, chasing a place that no longer appears on any map at all, a forgotten settlement called Palmetto Crossing.

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IVBOOK FOUR
The Cathedral, The Everglades Files Book Four, by Howard Mark Hines

The Cathedral

A weathered photograph left behind in her father's things sends Sheriff Maxine “Max” Harper into the Ten Thousand Islands south of Goodland, toward a hidden mangrove church known only as the Cathedral. A guarded letter from Will Tigertail, whose family has kept these waters and their secrets long before Frank Harper ever carried a badge through them, tells her only that someone has broken into the little church and gone straight to a hiding place behind its walls, one Frank himself found decades earlier and chose never to disturb.

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VBOOK FIVE
The Last Patrol, The Everglades Files Book Five, by Howard Mark Hines

The Last Patrol

Sheriff Maxine “Max” Harper is going through the last of her father's storage boxes with her closest friends Chet, Zeb, and Hank, hoping for once to find nothing at all. Instead she finds a hidden folder tucked away from everything else, holding a photocopied patrol assignment sheet, part of an old map, and a column of handwritten numbers. The official record shows Frank Harper clearing duty on an ordinary night with nothing to report. His own field journal, kept faithfully for decades, shows something else entirely. The page for that same night left almost completely blank.

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✦COMPANION
Frank Harper’s Journal, a companion journal to The Everglades Files, by Howard Mark Hines

Frank Harper’s Journal

Every reader of The Everglades Files knows Frank Harper’s field journal. It is the worn leather book he carried on patrol for decades, filled with the notes he never put in an official report. Now you can keep one of your own. Frank Harper’s Journal is a 200 page lined journal made to look like Frank’s own, with a leather cover tied with a strap on the front and aged pages inside. Use it for field notes, a diary or your own stories.

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