Hi, my name is Jackie Prescott, and this is my sister, Lauren Beniot and my niece, Melody Beniot. Together we inherited our great-uncle’s barbecue shack in Prairie Rose, Texas. We hadn’t seen him in years, so this was more than unexpected. He’d send the occasional birthday or holiday card, but other than that, nothing since we were children and then he disappeared from our daily lives.
Lauren and I have been estranged from each other for almost thirty years after we each chose different sides in our parents’ bitter divorce. We can’t be in the same room for more than minutes before we start tearing each other apart with our fights.
However, to receive our inheritance, we have been forced to work together for at least forty hours a day for the next year.
Neither of us have a choice as our personal lives are a mess. Mine with a recent messy and bitter divorce that has ruined me financially, though I am trying to hold it all together. Fake it until you make it, I always say.
My sister used to be a teacher, but once her daughter, Melody needed more personal attention to help manage her autism and daily life, Lauren took on whatever part-time work she could just to make ends meet. You see Melody’s father disappeared without a word only sending child support payments that were barely enough to support themselves on.
So this inheritance was not something we could not walk from easily.
As we start to learn about the magic of barbecuing and how to successfully run a restaurant, we also discovered that our great-uncle may have been hiding from a secret life we knew nothing about. Now we spend our day monitoring the smoker’s temperature, arguing over the best way to run the restaurant, and trying to figure out who we can trust as we continue to receive threats.
Do you have anything to add Lauren?
I think you’ve summed it up well for us, but I think we couldn’t do this introduction into ourselves life without mentioning the long-time employee, Jovie who has been teaching us everything including what our great-uncle was like. Then we have our overbearing neighbor, Tom Whitfield who just unleashed his cattle on our parking lot again.
Oh, and Lauren, don’t forgot that oh so handsome Sheriff that you clearly have your eye on.
Jackie, I … oh who am I kidding? He is a bit dreamy.
Well, we better get back to the grind, that sweet tea isn’t going to stir itself. Thank you for stopping by and if you ever find yourself in Prairie Rose again, please stop on by for our brisket or a pulled pork sandwich with our homemade cole slaw and a large glass of ice cold Texas sweet tea.
SMOKED SECRETS – A “Burnt Ends” Mystery, Book 1
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Subgenre: Culinary
Release: November 2025
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link
Someone wants the land. Someone wants the business. They just want to survive each other.
When Austin lawyer Jackie Prescott inherits half of her estranged Uncle Charlie Joe’s barbecue restaurant, she plans to sell her share and get back to her real life. But her financially struggling sister Lauren needs this inheritance to survive, and the will requires both sisters to run the restaurant together for at least a year or lose everything.
Forced to work alongside the sister she’s barely spoken to in years, Jackie discovers that Uncle Charlie Joe’s death wasn’t the peaceful passing everyone believed. Someone wanted him dead, and that someone is now targeting the new owners with increasingly dangerous threats.
As the sisters navigate their complicated relationship and learn to smoke brisket at 4:30 AM, they uncover a web of secrets that Uncle Charlie Joe died protecting. Hidden documents, mysterious photographs, and a trail of evidence point to a conspiracy that reaches far beyond their small Texas Hill Country town.
With the help of Jackie’s brilliant teenage niece Melody and local law enforcement, the women must decide: are they brave enough to face the truth about their uncle’s murder? And can two sisters who’ve spent decades hurting each other learn to trust again before the killer strikes?
In Prairie Rose, Texas, some family recipes are worth killing for and some truths are worth dying to protect.
Perfect for fans of Tonya Kappes and Joanne Fluke, Smoked Secrets serves up the first delicious helping of family secrets, small-town mystery, and the healing power of barbecue in the Burnt Ends Mystery series.
Meet the author
Erica Whelton lives in Texas with her husband and a house full of crazy pets. She has three grown children plus three beautiful grandsons. They are all the light of her life.
Her love of books, words, and all things reading started at a young age for two reasons. One being the number of hours she’d spend in the library. Her mother made sure she and her brothers always had books. The second reason was as a child, she had trouble sleeping. Her parents told her to think of nice things before bed, to tell herself stories. They pointed to her posters of sweet animals on her bedroom walls and told her to think of stories involving the animals. She still uses this technique even today when she struggles to shut her brain off.
She also enjoys the process of making tea, animals, the color pink, and basically anything awesome. Connect with Erica at www.ejwheltonwrites.com.