Rural Town Mystery

The greatest days of Heather Matthews' life have taken place in Delta County. Unfortunately, so have the worst. Ten years after an unspeakable tragedy took the lives of the two people she loved the most, Heather returns to her hometown for a class reunion with her high school sweetheart, who is now her husband. Just when she recalls all the reasons to love the idyllic lakeside town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, her life is once again turned upside down. Heather must push her grief aside and investigate the events that occurred the night of the reunion.

Jenna Abbott’s life went up in flames even before the fire started in Tenmile, Oregon. She was still coping with her husband's affair—and the revelation that he got a much younger woman pregnant—when the fire finally died down, and Ryan was among the missing. Chelsea Goddard still can’t explain how her estranged husband got back to Tenmile from out of the country the day of the fire, and she also can’t shake the nagging feeling that the secrets they’ve kept between them for the last twenty years might just be the tinder that made it all burn.

When young Daniel Whitman is killed at a high-school party, the community is ripped apart. The death of Sanctuary's star quarterback seems to be a tragic accident, but everyone knows his ex-girlfriend Harper Fenn is the daughter of a witch - and she was there when he died. Was Daniel's death an accident, revenge, or something more sinister? As accusations fly, paranoia grips the town, culminating in a witch-hunt...and the town becomes no sanctuary at all.

When Edward Townes - famed writer of novels about knights and maids, and castles and conquering - attends a medieval launch party for his latest book, he arrives ready to do more than celebrate. But party night brings a blizzard, a once-in-a-century storm that sees Townes staggering home, alone ... only to be found dead the next day. With Cherringham cut-off and the blizzard still raging, Jack and Sarah start investigating. Their questions reveal that many of those still stranded in the dark village have secrets. And Townes' killer is still in the village.

Glenville is an interesting town full of oddballs and quirky inhabitants. One of them being Christopher Fleming, a world-renowned plastic surgeon. In the midst of celebrating his 50th birthday, multiple gunmen crash the party. Kidnapping the doctor and leaving a trail of bodies behind them. As local police and the town's detective Heather Bishop arrive at the scene, they bear witness to the horrific aftermath of the crime.

Sixteen years ago, the beloved mayor of Glenville vanished without a trace, leaving behind his wife and two young children. He became the talk of the town, and over time the theories behind his disappearance turned into a sort of folklore. Many believed that he was gone for good. But no one expected that his arrival in the present would send a ripple, disturbing the peace throughout the small community.

As Sheriff Clayton Burroughs tries to juggle fatherhood, his job, and his recovery from being shot in the confrontation that killed his two criminally inclined brothers last year, he’s doing all he can just to survive. Yet after years of carefully toeing the line between his life in law enforcement and his family, he finally has to make a choice. When a rival organization makes a first foray into Burroughs' territory, leaving a trail of bodies and a whiff of fear in its wake, Clayton is pulled back into the life he so desperately wants to leave behind.

As kids, Amelia and Kylee were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in Beaumont, Missouri, leaving blood all over the kitchen. Scrappy and driven, Grace, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and working at the meatpacking plant, had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town. Her disappearance is a warning to any local girl who dared hope for better.

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.

Maggie Gerber - one of the founding members of the Good Buy Girls - loves her quiet life in St. Stanley, Virginia. But all that changes when Sam Collins, her old flame, moves back to town as the new sheriff. On top of that, Claire Freemont, a librarian and the newest member of the Good Buy Girls, starts acting utterly strange. When Maggie goes to visit her the next day at the library, she finds the body of a very dead man. Turns out the man is someone from Claire's past.

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.

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.

Doctor Rowan Dupont knows death. She grew up surrounded by it in her family’s Victorian funeral home, and it’s haunted her since the day her twin sister drowned years ago. Between her mother’s subsequent suicide and the recent murder of her father, coming home to run the funeral home feels fitting - even if it leaves her vulnerable to an obsessive serial killer.

When council officer Chris Buckley is approached by an odd old man demanding help in healing a decades-old family rift, he sends the stranger away. But then the old man is murdered, and the police arrive on the Chris's doorstep asking questions to which he has no answers. As Chris begins to look into the circumstances of the murder, he uncovers a deadly secret in the silt and mud of the local canals that he'll realise was better kept buried.

In November 2014 Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father and sister to death with a hammer. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation. King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five witnesses and Arla herself as he questions whether Arla's responsibility for the massacre was a diminished as her legal team made out.

Evoking the spirit and hardships of small-town America during World War II, Carolyn Hart's beautifully written story follows a young reporter, Gretchen Gilman, who investigates the puzzling murder of an acquaintance. Gretchen's assignments at the local newspaper weren't very exciting, but the job was a good opportunity for a young woman with talent and ambition. That summer, everyone was talking about Faye Tatum, who was found dead in her living room.

Two months a widow, Mallory Dent has made the impulsive decision to pack up and move on. In remote McNamara, nestled in the northern mountains, she can escape her grief, guilt, and pain. But the day Mallory arrives, death follows her, lapping just outside her door. A woman’s body is found floating in Loss Lake - and it’s not the first death on these shores. Locals talk about a monster in the depths with an almost disturbing reverence. Sergeant Joel Benson understands Mallory’s unease. Years ago, his own brother was killed in the home Mallory now owns.

In Locksburg, Pennsylvania, a former coal and steel town whose best days seem long past, five thousand residents have toughed it out, and have reasons for both worry and hope as this neglected place teeters between decay and renewal. For some of them, their biggest troubles have just arrived.

When pregnant Alice Warren and her husband Paul settled into their dream home in the woods, all was blissful. But as Alice attempts to adjust to her new life in the countryside, a string of strange happenings occur, from a dead deer by the door to strange sounds in the night. Alice believes that there’s more to these occurrences than they appear, but Paul believes her paranoia is simply an overreaction. Until she vanishes, leaving behind a cryptic letter.

Myles's courtroom testimony should have put Pryor, their one-eyed ringleader, behind bars after the bank robbery gone wrong, yet somehow Pryor got off scot-free while Myles served time. Now, upon his release, Myles decides he is done with his life of wrongdoing—a change that will only be possible if he can kill Pryor and turn over a new leaf. Pryor has other ideas, and the collision between these two deadly forces soon leaves the ex-con in critical condition, clinging to life in a hospital bed.