The Case of the Croaked Coach (Hannah White Mysteries Book 1)

A Coach is Dead. A Trophy is Bloody. A Teen Sleuth Smells a Rat.

Buzz Bixby wasn’t just hated—he was universally despised. As Encino High School’s corrupt, conniving football coach, Bixby’s list of enemies could fill a yearbook. So when student reporter Hannah White stumbles upon his lifeless body—and one of the school's star varsity football players standing over it with a bloodied trophy—she knows something doesn’t add up.

Sure, Dean Snyder looks guilty. But Hannah, quick-witted and determined, refuses to believe it. With her signature sarcasm and a nose for truth, she dives headfirst into a case that spirals into a dangerous maze of secrets, betrayals, and revenge. The deeper she digs, the more twisted the truth becomes—and the closer she gets to becoming the killer’s next target.

“The Case of the Croaked Coach” is a fast-paced, darkly funny teen mystery packed with tension, grit, and unexpected turns that will keep you guessing until the final whistle.

Get the book now and follow Hannah White as she tackles the most explosive story of her life.

Excerpt from the book

Early Monday morning, I drove Nana’s huge white four-door sedan into the half-empty student parking lot next to the football field at Encino High School. I slid the car into the space two down from tall, gangly, Julie Jacobs as she pulled her spindly, long legs out of her bright blue vee-dub bug.

Julie lived down the street from my house and was a year ahead of me in school. She wears her black, stick-straight hair in a shoulder-length blunt cut picture-framing her oval-shaped face. Her pale skin is a translucent white highlighted by wide-set dark eyes, giving her a perpetually surprised expression—as if life was one big secret and it was hers alone to tell.

She waited for me to extract myself from the cavernous cab of Nana’s car. She glanced at my aircraft carrier disguised as an automobile and laughed. “This is hilarious.” Drama Queen Julie bobbed her head from side to side the same way the bobblehead doll my boyfriend Howie has on his car dashboard. “I fold my body in half to cram myself into the bug, and a shrimp like you tools around town in a big boat.”

This is another one of life’s twisted ironies. Not to appear ungrateful for the use of Nana’s wheels…but at only four feet nine inches tall, I needed a cushion behind my back and the front bench seat pushed all the way forward to barely reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel.

Beanpole-thin Julie is at least six inches taller than me, and I had to bend back to look up at her. “I’d gladly swap you out in a minute, but I highly doubt if my grandmother would appreciate my trading her car for yours.” I pointed to the front of Julie’s oddly hump-shaped subcompact car and snorted. “Nana buys enough food to feed a small army. There’s no way she could get all her groceries to fit into such a tiny trunk.”

When I received my driver’s license, Nana and I worked out a deal. On the days she didn’t need her car, I could drive it to school. In exchange, I agreed to help her do the weekly marketing on Saturday mornings, drive my blind-as-a-bat-grandmother without her Coke-bottle thick eyeglasses back and forth from her adult education night classes at my high school, as well as chauffeur Nana and her card-playing cronies to their weekly evening canasta games. As anyone who had eyes but me could see…wily Nana got the better end of the deal.

Nana was not your typical grandmother—anything but. She was never judgmental and had an open mind and an approachable heart. Smart, funny, and fearless, she taught me life’s important things: to care, swear, and drive. Yep, my myopic Nana wearing her Coke-bottle-thick glasses, who probably set a world record for the number of driving lessons she’d taken before finally getting her license at sixty years old, taught me to drive. Imagine taking driving lessons from Mr. Magoo.

Nana was short, the same as the rest of the women in our family. If you squinted and your measuring stick was inexact, plus or minus five foot one. She wore her wavy gray hair cut in a bob. She had an average bust, flat-as-a-pancake tush, and a round tummy, making her appear perpetually pregnant. Without her glasses, she was blind as a bat.