“Sister” Jane Arnold, esteemed master of the Jefferson Hunt Club, has traveled to Kentucky for one of the biggest events of the season: the Mid-America Hound Show, where foxhounds, bassets, and beagles gather to strut their champion bloodline stuff. But the fun is squelched when immediately after the competition a contestant turns up dead–stripped to the waist and peppered with birdshot. Two weeks later, back in Virginia, a popular veterinarian dies from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Sister refuses to believe that her friend killed herself and vows to sniff out the truth. But before she can make real headway, a wealthy pet food manufacturer vanishes during the granddaddy of all canine exhibitions, the Virginia Hound Show. Ever reliant on her “horse sense,” Sister can’t help but connect the three incidents, and what she uncovers will make her blood run colder than the bodies that keep turning up in unexpected places. “The revelation of the killer will come as a shock–but the fun of Brown’s series is the wealth of foxhunting lore, the spot-on portrayal of Virginians [and] the evocative descriptions of the Blue Ridge Mountains and nearby environs.”— Richmond Times-Dispatch “Chock-full of suspense, twists, and humor.”— Lavender magazine “A high-quality modern cozy mystery.”— Booklist “ Hounded to Death will surely please fans of the series. The mystery is fast-paced and filled with scenes from the world of fox hunting. . . . [Rita Mae] Brown delivers the brush.”— Baltimore Sun Rita Mae Brown  is the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown series; the Sister Jane series;  A Nose for Justice  and  Murder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle; In Her Day;  and  Six of One,  as well as several other novels. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia. Chapter 1   Rose twilight lingered over Shaker Village in central Kentucky, which, this Saturday, May 24, was hosting the MidAmerica Hound Show.   Jane Arnold, master of Jefferson Hunt Hounds in Virginia, drove alongside dry-laid stone walls, quietly relishing the village’s three thousand well-tended acres of land. It was as if the spirits of the Shakers hovered everywhere. Sister Jane, as she was known, respected the sect’s unswerving devotion to equality, peace, and love, qualities that suffused those past lives like the rose-lavender tinted twilight suffused the rolling pastures with ethereal beauty.   Pared-down functionalism, the essence of Shaker design, pure as fresh rainwater, prefigured later architectural and furniture development. Sister admired the care and intelligence the Shakers used to build their houses while fortifying their spirits with song and hard work.   Much as she admired their clean straight lines, she herself felt more at home in a mix of eighteenth-century exuberance allied with modern comfort.   She laughed to herself that her nickname, Sister Jane, meant she’d fit right in if only she could slip back in time to work alongside the Shakers. However, she’d soon have run afoul of the sisters and brothers as they did not practice sex, which had eventually resulted in the extinction of the sect. No one had ever accused Sister of being celibate.   Shaker ideas and ideals lived after them. Perhaps most people hope to leave something behind, usually in the form of progeny. But some are able to also impart inventions, artistic achievements, or new ways of seeing the same old problems.   What Sister hoped to leave behind was a love of the environment, belief in the protection of American farmland, and respect for all living creatures. Foxhunting was one of the best ways to do that because a person could inhale the best values while having more fun than the legal limit.   It pained her that so many people thought that foxes were killed in the hunt. Countless times she’d patiently explained that hunting practices in the United States were different from those in England. Given that the Mid-America Hound Show would be made up of foxhunters showing their best hounds, she breathed in relief. She wouldn’t need to have that conversation here.   Her new Subaru Forester followed the gray stone walls, rolling through a deep dip in the road, passing over a creek, and climbing a steep incline. She’d bought the SUV in hopes of saving a bit of money, seeing as her everyday vehicle was a big red gas-guzzling GMC half-ton truck. Like many Americans, she wanted to conserve fuel, but living out in the country made this a pipe dream.   Sister found pleasure in driving the handy little vehicle, which burned less gas, but she still had to use farm trucks for work. She couldn’t envision how that would change without driving the cost of food up to the point where there’d be bread riots like those that helped jump-start the French and Russian revolutions. At the top of the steep hill, a flat green pasture beckoned, now silvery in May evening haze. In the middle of this lushness, surrounded by large t