Free
08/10/2026
Higher education, lower survival rates.Cassandra Sato traded the beaches of Oahu for Carson, Nebraska, and her first year as Vice President of Student Affairs has been a crash course in subzero winter, academic politics, and murder investigations. She's a Hawaiian Japanese woman navigating a predominantly white Midwestern campus, juggling a slow-burn romantic triangle, and building a found family one awkward friendship at a time.Fiercely competent and deeply loyal to her students, Cassandra still carries grief from a lost fiancé she's not ready to talk about. She's solving crimes with help from a campus security director who brings her breakfast, a housing director who makes her pulse race, a best friend who won't let her pretend everything's fine, and a foster dog named Murphy who has strong opinions about all of it.Every semester brings a different kind of campus mystery: from the suspicious death of a Deaf work-study student to a decades-old college cold case to a blizzard that traps Cassandra in the international student dorm. Every mystery pulls her deeper into the community she's slowly learning to call home, making Morton College as memorable as the crimes themselves.The Cassandra Sato Mysteries deliver authentic Deaf representation, alongside mysteries rooted in the everyday pressures, politics, and relationships of college life. Cassandra's cultural identity is the lens through which every scene is rendered, from the Hawaiian food she craves to the code-switching she does in every professional conversation. Zero patience for institutional nonsense. One unforgettable sleuth.This box set collects three complete mysteries: Death by Dissertation, Dead Week, and Dead of Winter Break, plus the bonus short story Primary Source and a glossary of the Hawaiian words and phrases Cassandra uses when she's homesick. If you love cozy mysteries with stakes that feel real and protagonists who refuse to fit the mold, start with Death by Dissertation and binge the rest of the series.Enroll now. Class is officially in session.