To solve a murder, a buttoned-up neuroscientist must learn to trust her wild side in this first installment of a dazzling new series by Agatha Award-winning author Mindy Quigley.

Winona Wild wants nothing more than to leave The Wildlands in the dust. And apart from occasional flashbacks to her terrifying final days there, she has.

Her parents' animal sanctuary began as a well-intentioned effort to rescue abandoned pets, but spiraled out of control with an increasingly exotic array of creatures. After a violent encounter with one of the refuge's most dangerous animals left her father dead and Winona scarred, she forged a new path away from the chaos.

Seven years later, Winona's carefully constructed life as a neuroscience PhD student is shattered when a Wildlands' employee is found murdered and Winona's older brother-who stayed behind to run the struggling operation-vanishes. Now, Winona must face down the exotic inhabitants of The Wildlands once more.

Matters become more complicated with the arrival of Joss Whitmore, the relentless, perceptive-and frustratingly handsome-PI hired by The Wildlands' mysterious benefactors to investigate the death. With a shadowy past and a knack for psychological tricks that rivals her own, Joss may be the one creature Winona can't tame.

Can Winona confront her darkest memories and unravel the mystery lurking at the heart of her family's legacy? Or will The Wildlands once again prove that the fiercest beasts of all aren't the ones in cages?