Betty Jean Craige is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia. She is the author of many books, among them Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist, Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Grey Parrot, and Ruminations on a Parrot Named Cosmo. Death in Potter’s Woods is the fifth book in her Witherston Murder Mystery series, which includes Downstream, Fairfield’s Auction, Dam Witherston, and Saxxons in Witherston.

Titles by Betty Jean Craige

  • by Betty Jean Craige

    • Released: September 2023
    • Genre: Novels

    Parrot Sanctuary is the story of kidnapping, parrot trafficking, cocaine trafficking, and murder—and the rescue of the wild-caught parrots transported in burlap sacks, crates, and tiny cages from Honduras through Mexico to north Georgia.

    In the course of events the reader meets Scarlet macaws, Hyacinth macaws, Blue and Gold macaws, an Indigo macaw, and a Yellow-headed amazon, all highly intelligent, all in need of sanctuary at Zoo Arroyo.

  • by Betty Jean Craige

    • Released: February 2022
    • Genre: Novels

    In Betty Jean Craige’s sixth Witherston Murder Mystery, Jorge and Jaime Arroyo own a zoo dedicated to rehabilitating wild animals and restoring endangered species. A bizarre set of events puts Zoo Arroyo in the news. A stranger dies in the wolves’ enclosure. A wolf whelps a wolf-wolverine chimera. A bear delivers a bear-wolf chimera.

    Are these events related to a beautiful scientist’s ambition to win a prize for biological innovation? Is the genetic engineer enamored of her responsible for the appropriation of the animals’ wombs? In Life and Death at Zoo Arroyo, Jorge and Jaime wonder: Is nature in the twenty-first century man-made? Life and Death at Zoo Arroyo is the sixth book in her Witherston Murder Mystery series, which includes Downstream, Fairfield’s Auction, Dam Witherston, Saxxons in Witherston, and Death in Potter’s Woods.

  • by Betty Jean Craige

    • Released: November 2021
    • Genre: Novels

    What is a Georgia mountain town to do when “Robin Hood” threatens to kill its mayor and a citizen or two if three thousand Witherstonians don’t donate $5,000 each to rectify the theft of gold and land from the Cherokees two hundred years ago? Some folks donate. Others take their chances. One person dies, in Potter’s Woods. The mayor survives an attempt on her life. Police Chief Mev Arroyo and her sons Jorge and Jaime discover that Potter’s Woods, occupied by the Cherokee people for a thousand years until the 1832 Georgia Land Lottery, is the site of two murders. And that Robin Hood, “feared by the bad, loved by the good,” is connected to both.

Reviews

  • Pikasho Deka

            Author Betty Jean Craige takes a unique narrative approach with newspaper clippings, editorials, and letters to the editor serving as primary tools to move the plot forward. Death in Potter’s Woods is a page-turner of a murder mystery that incorporates relevant environmental issues plaguing humankind and keeps you hooked with its unexpected twists and turns from start to finish. The plot moves at a blistering pace, with intricately woven threads that converge at the end to create a thoroughly entertaining reading experience. The cast is quite large, but the author provides every character with the necessary agency to keep their arcs compelling and make them an essential part of the story. Anyone who enjoys well-written sleuth stories will find Death in Potter’s Woods a blast to read.