MacKenzie Family (Christopher Rice) Books in Order

MacKenzie Family stories are set in and around Surrender, Montana, a small town anchored by Liliana Hart's clan of law enforcement heroes, and many different authors contribute novellas to the shared world. Christopher Rice's entry, Desire & Ice, drops his voice and preoccupations into this snowy, romantic suspense landscape.(barnesandnoble.com)

The story centers on Danny Patterson, the youngest deputy in the sheriff's department, who is determined to prove himself to Sheriff Cooper MacKenzie. Danny is no longer the lanky teenager he once was; he is a capable officer who still carries a quiet torch for Eliza Brightwell, the high school teacher who once saw more in him than trouble. When she returns to Surrender after years away, just as a major blizzard rolls toward town, old feelings crash back with the storm.(barnesandnoble.com)

Eliza is clearly running from something, although she is reluctant to say what. Rather than stand down when Cooper orders everyone to stay put, Danny makes the kind of impulsive choice that defines a MacKenzie style hero. He heads out into the worsening weather to find her, following tire tracks and half remembered trails into the backcountry. The whiteout turns the Montana landscape into a maze where visibility is measured in feet and every wrong turn could be fatal.(bookshop.org)

As the blizzard deepens, so does the sense that Eliza's past has caught up with her. The danger is human rather than supernatural, rooted in an obsessive figure from her old life who would rather see her dead than free. Trapped by snow and hunted by someone who knows the terrain, Danny and Eliza are forced to rely on each other, both to survive and to decide whether the spark between them is more than nostalgia.(barnesandnoble.com)

Fans of the wider MacKenzie Family series will spot familiar names and dynamics, from the way the community rallies during a storm to the expectation that a MacKenzie deputy will bend rules in the name of protecting people. Readers coming from Christopher Rice's other work will recognize his interest in second chances, fraught family histories, and small town gossip as a pressure cooker. The result is a compact, snowbound thriller that trades the swamps and cities of his other books for icy roads, warm cabins, and the risk of trusting someone you once knew only from the front of a classroom.