Rural Mystery

The Speed of Mercy captures the unbearable cost of childhood betrayal and what happens when history is suppressed, our past is forgotten - yet finding the truth can change the future. Christy Ann Conlin rips into the myths and stereotypes about older women and those on the edge of conventional society to reveal the timeless gift of mercy in this feminist tour de force.

It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends his time trying to forget about the past. Then one day, Gloomy is snatched from his off-site work station. Instead of celebrating his newfound freedom, Gloomy comes unmoored - he feels he belongs in prison. But his kidnappers believe Gloomy knows where a second nuclear warhead is hidden.

In the quiet coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, a body is discovered at the foot of a cliff just months after a near-identical tragedy - and Detective Inspector Louise Blackwell can't believe it could be a coincidence. Next to the body, she discovers a note that echoes one found beside the first: Death is not the end. Louise is certain that behind these desperate acts someone is pulling the strings, but how many more will plunge to their demise before she can find out who - and why?

When Jim Qwilleran's friend Polly decides to spend two weeks on vacation with an old girlfriend in Oregon, he finds himself at a loose end—but not for long. A visit from Nick Bamba brings news of a hotbed of mystery.

Twenty years ago, Malcolm Whiteley discovers his wife Lysette is having an affair. The Whiteleys are wealthy and live with their 16-year-old daughter Amber in the Dungeon House. But Malcolm begins to disintegrate psychologically, and when Lysette tells him their marriage is over, he snaps, and takes out the old Winchester rifle. In the present day, Hannah Scarlett's cold case team are looking into the three-year-old mystery of the disappearance of Lily Elstone, whose father was Malcolm Whiteley's accountant. Their investigation coincides with the disappearance of another teenage girl.

Although she hadn’t known Leonard Mallett very well, nor liked him particularly, Carole Seddon feels duty bound to attend her fellow committee member’s funeral. As she suspected, the hymns, readings, and sermon are all very predictable - not unlike Leonard himself. What she couldn’t have predicted was that the deceased’s daughter would use the occasion to publicly accuse her stepmother of murder.

Lyle Hovde is at the onset of his golden years, living a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence and subsequent estrangement from her parents, Shiloh has finally come home. But while Lyle is thrilled to have his whole family reunited, he’s also uneasy: In Shiloh’s absence, she has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced Isaac has the spiritual ability to heal the sick.

Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and the Widow is an unsettling thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband’s secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside when she’s forced to confront the evidence of her husband’s guilt. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.

Bristol detective DS George Cross, champion of the outsider, the voiceless and the dispossessed. DS George Cross can be rude, difficult and awkward with people. But his unfailing logic and dogged pursuit of the truth means his conviction rate is the best on the force. An outsider himself, having been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, DS Cross is especially drawn to cases concerning the voiceless and the dispossessed. Now, Cross is untangling the truth about a young woman who died three days ago.

The Expo begins with a literal bang: a bomb wrecks the hotel, killing a housekeeper and causing extensive damage. Luckily for Pickax, Qwill is on the scene, his moustache twitching with suspicions that this bomb was intended as something stronger than a warning to someone. His evidence: Koko and Yum Yum's new interest in cheese, especially Gruyere, Brie and Feta. Qwill and the Siamese are on a case that will demand all their feline intuition and mustachioed insight!

Lucy and Nate head to rural Texas in order to take an FBI Most Wanted armed robber into custody. When they reach the jail hours from San Antonio, the local cops ask them to transport another prisoner, too, since the transfer location is on their way. With torrential rain and flash floods keeping everyone busy, Lucy and Nate don’t have much of a choice but to help out. When the two prisoners stage an escape and take a child hostage on their way, Lucy and Nate must try to rescue the boy and survive the storm, without letting these violent criminals get away.

Menace awaits. Sleath. Quiet, peaceful. A small village hidden away in the Chiltern Hills, almost forgotten by the modern world. Nothing much seems to happen here; little disturbs the centuries-old tranquillity. Until the ghosts begin to appear and frighteningly bizarre events start to occur. Psychic investigator David Ash, a man burdened by the dark secret of his own past, is sent to Sleath to investigate the phenomena and his discoveries there drive him to the very edge of his own sanity.

One rainy night fifteen years ago, a knock at the door changed Liss Kehoe’s life forever. On that night, Ashley Hay stood on Liss’s front porch and handed over her brand-new baby Callan. She was never seen or heard from again.

England, 1976. Mrs Creasy is missing, and The Avenue is alive with whispers. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, 10-year-olds Grace and Tilly decide to take matters into their own hands. And as the cul-de-sac starts giving up its secrets, the amateur detectives will find much more than they imagined.

Safe Haven: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! When a mysterious young woman named Katie appears in the small North Carolina town of Southport, her sudden arrival raises questions about her past. Beautiful yet self-effacing, Katie seems determined to avoid forming personal ties until a series of events draws her into two reluctant relationships: one with Alex, a widowed store owner with a kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken single neighbor, Jo.

As the Hughes family celebrates bonfire night, a terrible accident leaves the garden shed in flames - and father and grandfather Thomas trapped inside. Tragic though it is, Thomas’ death passes without suspicion - until a local journalist makes accusations of a police cover-up in the press. WPC Trudy Loveday is sent to investigate and asks Coroner Clement Ryder to help.

“Sharks are as timid as rabbits,” says a superintendent of the Coast Guard, dismissing the possibility that a shark could be the culprit in an unprecedented fatal attack at the Jersey Shore. It’s July, and swimming in the sea is a popular new pastime, but people up and down the East Coast are shocked and mystified by the swimmer’s death. A prominent surgeon at the shore, Dr. Edwin Halsey is the one who examines the victim, and the only one who believes the perpetrator was a shark—and that it will strike again.

A routine missing person enquiry takes a grisly turn when a young couple drag a box containing human remains out of a Somerset river. The victim was a surveillance expert investigating an exaggerated injury claim—a murder with an obvious motive, until a police officer is implicated and suspended. Still brooding after his recent brush with police Professional Standards, Detective Chief Inspector Nick Dixon is on extended leave, helping his pregnant fiancée, Detective Sergeant Jane Winter, fight for her place on the major investigation team.

It's 1997. Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an outward bound centre. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who took that fateful trip and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby.

Here, in Lynne Truss' first novel, we meet Osborne Lonsdale, a down-at-heel journalist, mysteriously attractive to women, who writes a regular celebrity interview for Come into the Garden. This week his "Me and My Shed" column will be based on the charming garden outhouse owned by TV sitcom star Angela Farmer. Unbeknownst to Osborne, driving down to Devon to interview Angela in her country retreat, the sleepy magazine has been taken over by new management.