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Book Details
Fire at the Track: A Harness Racing Mystery
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – Pennsylvania
Publisher : Dancing Horse Press
Publication date : April 21, 2026
Print length : 285 pages
Paperback
ISBN-13 : 979-8993879406
ASIN : B0GPKL86Z1
Digital
ASIN : B0GMDMX3HY
Twenty-eight horses. One deadly fire. A racetrack hiding secrets.
When a late night blaze destroys Barn 7 at Liberty Racetrack, killing twenty eight prized Standardbred horses, authorities rule it arson. Insurance investigator Callie Oaks knows the fire wasn’t random. Raised in the harness racing world, Callie goes undercover at the track, posing as an exercise driver to investigate suspicious insurance claims. As she digs into the tight knit backstretch community, she uncovers secrets worth killing for. From the author of “Silver Charm,” “The Sand Pounder,” “Pinto,” and “The Stallion and His Peculiar Boy.”
Someone set the fire.
Someone profited.
And when Callie gets too close to the truth, she becomes the next target.Perfect for readers who love:
Horse racing mysteries
Arson investigations
Small-town crime fiction
Female amateur sleuth / insurance investigator thrillers
Suspense with authentic equestrian detail
Fire at the Track is a fast-paced mystery thriller packed with insider racing drama, financial deception, and high-stakes suspense.
At Liberty Racetrack, everyone has a secret.
And one of them is a killer.
About M.J. Evans
M.J. Evans is the award-winning author of twenty six published works spanning middle-grade, young adult, and adult fiction, as well as a selection of picture books. Her writing often explores themes centered around horses and equine fantasy, reflecting a lifelong passion for these remarkable animals. A graduate of Oregon State University and a former educator with experience teaching both middle and high school students, Ms. Evans brings both educational insight and storytelling flair to her work. She resides in beautiful Colorado with her husband, Tom, where they enjoy the company of their horses and Standard Poodle. She is the proud mother of five and grandmother of thirteen.
M.J. Evans was the recipient of the 2024 Colorado Authors League Lifetime Achievement Award.
Literary awards include: Chanticleer International Book Awards Readers’ Favorite International Awards Eric Hoffer Awards Nautilus Awards Literary Classics awards Literary Global Book Awards Feathered Quill Book Awards Purple Dragonfly Awards Royal Dragonfly Awards Page Turner Award Next Generation Award Global Book Awards CIPA Evvy Book Awards Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards Incipere Book Awards International Impact Book Awards Maincrest Media Book Awards Book Excellence Awards Mom’s Choice Awards
Author Links
Website:www.dancinghorsepress.com.
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4496514.M J Evans
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/m-j-evans
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/M.-J.-Evans/e/B004GMS014
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/margi.evans.98
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mjevansbooks/
Purchase links:
Author Interview
What is your favorite part of this book and why?
My favorite part to write was the interrogation scene, hands down. Rita Kowalski, my detective,
finally gets Tommy Valdez alone in that cramped, fluorescent-lit interrogation room at the back
of Ashville’s police headquarters, with Callie and Paul watching through the one-way glass. I
loved building the rhythm of it — Rita laying phone records out on the table like a fan of cards,
letting a loaded word like “help” just hang in the air until Valdez feels compelled to fill the
silence himself. Writing that scene, I honestly felt like I’d wandered onto the set of NCIS or
Castle. There’s something so satisfying about the slow-burn structure of a good interrogation: the
small lies that unravel one contradiction at a time, the detective who already knows more than
she’s letting on. It’s a very different kind of writing than a barn scene at dawn, and I loved
discovering I could do it.
If you could spend time with a character from your book, whom would it be? And what
would you do during that day?
I’d choose Stanley Smithfield, hands down. He’s the veteran trainer and driver who takes Callie
under his wing at Liberty Racetrack, and he became one of my favorite characters to write
almost by accident. I’d want to shadow him for a full training day — up before dawn for morning
workouts, standing at the rail while he reads a horse’s stride the way most people read a sentence,
and then just listening to him talk. Stanley’s the kind of person who’s spent an entire life around
harness racing and has stories for days if you’re patient enough to let him tell them. I imagine I’d
learn more in one day with him than in a month of research books.
What books/authors have most inspired you?
As a child, I spent all my reading time buried in the pages of Marguerite Henry’s books — she’s
the reason horses and stories became inseparable for me. As I got older and my reading widened,
I fell in love with C.S. Lewis, and with Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place, which taught me
what it looks like when a true story is told with real courage. Later, I discovered Dick Francis,
and something clicked. Here was someone having so much fun combining horses with mystery,
and I remember thinking: that’s what I want to do. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do now, book
by book.
Are your characters based off real people, or did they all come entirely from your
imagination?
They’re entirely from my imagination — no one in the book is a direct portrait of someone I
know. That said, I’ll admit Stanley Smithfield carries a lot of the spirit of my own dressage
trainer, Grant Schneidman. He was tough on me in the saddle, no question, but I loved every
single lesson and learned more from him than from almost anyone else in my riding life. When I
was writing Stanley, that same combination — someone exacting, a little gruff, and completely
devoted to getting it right — was very much in the back of my mind.
What made you want to become a writer?
I taught junior high and high school for years before I retired to raise a family of five. Even after
I stopped teaching in a classroom, I never really stopped working with kids — I volunteered
constantly in my children’s schools, and for seventeen years I coached teams for Odyssey of the
Mind and Destination Imagination. Part of that job was helping students build short stories and
plays from scratch for competition, which meant I spent nearly two decades immersed in the
mechanics of storytelling, just from the coaching side rather than the writing side.
I’d always loved reading and writing, but there simply wasn’t time to pursue it seriously while I
was raising five kids. Once my youngest reached high school, I finally had hours I could budget
for myself, and I used them to start writing down the stories I’d been carrying around in my head
for years. It turns out all that time coaching other people’s stories had been preparing me to
finally tell my own.
TOUR PARTICIPANTS
August 10 – Books, Ramblings, and Tea – SPOTLIGHT
August 10 – Bea’s Book Nook – REVIEW
August 11 – Romance Novel Giveaways – AUTHOR GUEST POST
August 12 – Reading Is My SuperPower – AUTHOR GUEST POST
August 12 – Socrates Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
August 13 – Baroness Book Trove – REVIEW
August 14 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – CHARACTER GUEST POST
August 15 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT
August 16 – Books1987 – SPOTLIGHT
August 17 – Boys’ Mom Reads! – SPOTLIGHT
August 18 – Ascroft, eh? – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
August 19 – Sarandipity’s – AUTHOR INTERVIEW
August 19 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT
August 20 – Salty Inspirations – SPOTLIGHT
August 21 – Sarcastically Yours, Jen – SPOTLIGHT
August 22 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT
August 23 – StoreyBook Reviews – AUTHOR GUEST POST
Giveaway
Prize – 1 – Autographed Print Copy of Fire at the Track: A Harness Racing Mystery by M.J. Evans for a Giveaway. U.S. Only.
