The Cat, The Devil, and Lee Fontana

Book excerpt: The award-winning author of the Joe Grey mystery series teams up with her husband to conjure a charming adventure involving the devil, a thief, a bet, and a phantom cat. Bringing to life an old legend about a ghost cat who helps his pal outsmart the devil himself—introduced in Cat Bearing Gifts—The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana is a tale of magic that illuminates a new dimension behind the mysterious lives of the talking felines, a story that longtime fans of the Joe Grey series won't want to miss. To the devil, the span of a human life is as brief as spit on the wind. But the challenge of playing with flawed humans, like a cat toying with a mouse, is endlessly amusing. If the devil loses a wager, though, he will harass a person's descendants until he eventually gets his due—which is why he is tormenting Lee Fontana. The night before Lee, a train robber, is paroled from jail, Satan terrifies and tempts him with the promise of one more successful heist. As Lee goes on, struggling to live an honest life working on a farm in Southern California with old friends, opportunities to get rich quick seem to appear at every turn and the temptation becomes too much to bear. But Lee has a secret ally looking out for him. The prison cat Misto, a yellow-tabby ghost, will tail the ex-con on his dangerous mission—an adventure that will leave a long legacy for everyone's favorite sleuthing cat, Joe Grey, and his pals in the charming California coastal town of Molena Point.