Jeri Walter 
The Serpent in the Sacred Grove [EPUB ebook] 

Rome, AD 62.  The reign of Nero teeters on the brink of madness.  When a Vestal Virgin is found ritually murdered near the sacred grove, the city whispers of divine retribution.  But Praetor Titus Lucretius sees something far more sinister: the chilling precision of a human hand.  The serpent, he realizes, is not a mythical beast, but a killer lurking in the heart of Rome.
Dispatched by a paranoid Nero, Titus embarks on an investigation that will challenge the brutal foundations of Roman law.  The murder weapon—a surgical tool unheard of in the empire—leads him to Colleen Adkins, a brilliant physician ostracized for her forbidden anatomical studies.  Together, they uncover a conspiracy that reaches the highest echelons of power, a plot to destabilize the empire and assassinate the Emperor himself.
Titus plunges into Rome’s treacherous underbelly, seeking the aid of Stephanie Gross, an informant whose network spans the city’s darkest corners.  Stephanie, driven by survival, sees Titus’s desperation as an opportunity.  But as she unravels the web of secrets, she is forced to confront her own moral compass, a compass long buried beneath layers of cynicism and self-preservation.
As Titus draws closer to the truth, he becomes a target. Poisoned figs, cryptic messages scrawled in blood—each threat pushes him to the brink, forcing him to choose between loyalty to a corrupt empire and a burgeoning sense of justice, a concept as foreign to Rome as the murder weapon itself.
With the Ludi Romani fast approaching, Titus, Colleen, and Stephanie must race against time to expose the conspiracy before the games commence, a spectacle poised to become the backdrop for Nero’s assassination.  In a daring gamble, they orchestrate a plan to unveil the true killer in front of the entire city, using Colleen’s medical knowledge and Stephanie’s streetwise cunning to manipulate the very fears and superstitions they are sworn to uphold.
In the heart of the sacred grove, the serpent will uncoil, and the fate of Rome will hang in the balance.