The Hunt Ball is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2005 by American Artists, Inc.
Title page illustrations copyright © 2005 by Lee Gildea Jr.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, Rita Mae.
The hunt ball / Rita Mae Brown.
p. cm.
1. Arnold, Jane (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. School administrators—Crimes against—Fiction. 3. Women detectives—Virginia—Fiction. 4. Women hunters—Fiction. 5. Older women—Fiction. 6. Virginia—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.R698H86 2005
813'.54—dc22 2005045315
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-48594-6
v3.0