Rural Mystery

When Lacey's friend is haunted by a nighttime prowler only she can hear, it's up to Lacey to decide if the prowler is imaginary or not - a life-altering decision.

In May 1997, eighteen-year-old Laura McPherson left her house for a run and didn’t return. Twenty years later, a reporter arrives in the small town of Griffiths to write an article about the unsolved murder of Laura McPherson. He is the most recent in a long line of journalists, podcasters, and amateur sleuths seeking new insights into what really happened to Laura. Laura’s younger brother, David, a repressed and stuck thirty-something, is dealing with the recent death of his mother when the reporter comes knocking.

Dane Kirby is a broken man and no stranger to tragedy. As a life-long resident and ex-arson investigator for McFalls County, Dane has lived his life in one of the most chaotic and crime-ridden regions of the south. When he gets called in to consult on a brutal murder in a Jacksonville, Florida, motel room, he and his FBI counterpart, Special Agent Roselita Velasquez, begin an investigation that leads them back to the criminal circles of his own backyard.

When Jane and TJ agree to attend their high school reunion they never expect to come face-to-face with classmate-turned-stalker Lincoln the moment they return home. Unspoken words fester between them of the incident in the local woods 20 years ago when Evie vanished in a flash of amber light. They were the last three people to see her alive. But the trees have been whispering to Lincoln ever since, and as Jane and TJ arrive back in town, the voices call to him again, hissing three solitary words: she is here.

The story of a Civil War soldier finding his humanity in the face of horrible savagery. Emerging from the Civil War a shamed and broken man, Stephen Latch turns to a life of thievery and murder. Still hoping to uphold the values of the Confederacy, Latch sets his sights on the wealth of resources pouring westward from the northern United States, putting together a band of ruthless misfits to help him stake his claim of the riches of the caravans.

Siblings Bert, Willet, and Pansy know better than to go swimming at the old rock quarry. According to their father, it's the Devil's place, a place that's been cursed and forgotten. But Mississippi Delta summer days are scorching hot, and they can't resist cooling off in the dark, bottomless water - until the day six-year-old Pansy vanishes...not drowned, not lost, simply gone. When their father disappears as well, Bert and Willet leave their childhoods behind to try and hold their broken family together.

Harley McKenna is the only child of North County's biggest criminal. Duke McKenna's run more guns, cooked more meth, and killed more men than anyone around. Harley's been working for him since she was sixteen, dreading the day he'd deem her ready to rule the rural drug empire he's built. Her time's run out. The Springfields, her family's biggest rivals, are moving in. And they're coming for Duke's only weak spot: his daughter.

Killer Market takes the quintessential steel magnolia to the hub of North Carolina's massive furniture industry. Deborah soon gets caught up in the whirl of the International Home Furnishings Market and finds herself a suspect in a high-power murder case. The feisty judge must use her courtroom experience and intuitive skills to strip through layers of deception if she is to clear her own name. Maron draws from her own rural southern roots to craft her trademark authentic settings and characters.

The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it. Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back in the regiment - this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case which would normally be passed discreetly to Hereford diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself - and is coming close to a breakdown.

A deafening explosion rocks a historic Oklahoma City hotel, sending archaeologist Faye Longchamp-Mantooth crashing to the lobby floor. Faye's in town for a conference celebrating indigenous arts but is soon distracted by the aftermath of the explosion, which cracks open the hotel’s floor to reveal subterranean chambers that had housed Chinese immigrants a century before. Faye's fascinated by the tunnels, which are a time capsule back to the early 20th century - but when the bodies of three children are discovered deep beneath the city, her sense of discovery turns to one of dread.

In this first book of a three-book series, author Vannetta Chapman brings a fresh twist to the popular Amish fiction genre. She blends the familiar components consumers love in Amish books - faith, community, simplicity, family - with an innovative who-done-it plot that keeps readers guessing right up to the last stitch in the quilt. When two women - one Amish, one English - each with different motives, join forces to organize a successful on-line quilt auction, neither expects nor wants a friendship.

Andy Adams (1859-1935) was born to pioneer parents in Indiana, worked in Texas for a decade driving cattle, and settled in Colorado Springs, where he penned his cowboy narratives. The Log of a Cowboy chronicles a five-month drive of three thousand head of cattle from Brownsville, Texas, to the Blackfoot Indian Reservation in Montana. This classical work of fiction provides fascinating insights of everyday life on the Great Western Cattle Trail with a team of 12 cowhands, a cook, a horse wrangler and a foreman.

On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the Wentshire Forest Pass when a burst tyre forced his father, Sorrel, to stop the car. Leaving the car to summon the emergency services, Sorrel returned to find his son gone. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995. Elusive online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night.

Penny and Hattie are sisters in a small town, bound tight to the point of knots. They share a secret they cannot escape, even while it pulls them apart. One night, a match is lit, and Penny's terrible husband is killed - a marriage going up in flames and offering the potential of a new life. The sisters retreat into their family home, a house of secrets and memories, and try to live in the shadow of what they put in motion. But Penny's husband is not the only thing they are hiding - both from the outside world and from each other.

After suddenly inheriting a funeral home from her father - from whom she hadn't heard in decades - Ilka Jensen has impulsively abandoned her quiet life in Denmark to visit the small town in rural Wisconsin where her father lived. There, she's devastated to discover her father's second family: a stepmother and two half sisters she never knew existed. Then a local woman is killed, seemingly the victim of a home invasion turned violent. But when Ilka learns that the woman knew her father, it becomes increasingly clear that she may not have been a completely random victim after all.

Six-million acres of Adirondack forest separate Natalie and Doug Larson from civilization. For the newlyweds, the isolated backcountry honeymoon seemed ideal for starting their lives together, but as they begin to explore the dark interiors of their own hearts, it soon becomes clear that they are not alone in the woods. A man watches them, wielding the forest like a weapon. He wants something from them that's more terrifying than death. And once they are near him, he will do everything in his power to make sure they never walk out again.

When two teenage girls vanish without a trace from an educational retreat at Chidlow House in Lincolnshire, the students and teachers are put on high alert. Called in to investigate, Detective Karen Hart questions everyone who came into contact with the two girls, Cressida and Natasha, in the days leading up to their disappearance. Stories of Chidlow House being haunted abound, but Hart - still coming to terms with the suspicious circumstances surrounding the tragic loss of her own family - knows that while the house might be otherworldly, the crime is grimly real.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

Solve a murder, bring a killer to justice... but at what cost? Harry Probert-Lloyd, a young barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has begun work as the acting coroner of Teifi Valley with solicitor's clerk John Davies as his assistant. When a faceless body is found on an isolated beach, Harry must lead the inquest. But his dogged pursuit of the truth begins to ruffle feathers. Especially when he decides to work alongside a local doctor with a dubious reputation and experimental theories considered radical and dangerous.

When Sarah's Aunt Evelyn passes away, she discovers a hidden fortune has been left to her, including a foreboding mansion in a small Northumberland town. But it comes with one condition. For most of her life, Evelyn had been haunted by the loss of a friend who went missing in Cragsmoor—the very house Evelyn has left to Sarah. Now, Evelyn's final wish is for Sarah to return to Cragsmoor and uncover the truth. If she does, she will inherit everything. But someone wishes for the secrets of Cragsmoor to remain hidden.