Rural Town Mystery

Aging Undersheriff Bill Gastner's vacation is interrupted by the dead body of a young woman, apparently thrown from a moving car. Other murders convince the Undersheriff to lend a hand.

In this heartfelt sequel, Ruby McGavin returns to Cardinal, California, with her brother Nash, hoping the fresh start will help him kick a debilitating drinking habit. And Ruby’s not the only one with renewed hope, as saddlemaker Lucas McGavin redoubles his efforts to win her heart - even if Ruby is his brother’s widow. Soon, all three learn that building a better future means first making peace with the past.

Michael is a rising OB/GYN at a prominent private practice in Albany, New York; he also moonlights at a local women’s health clinic. But Annie, his wife, has become tired of her workaholic husband’s absences, and the soccer-mom lifestyle has worn thin. She begins a passionate love affair with bad-boy, fading celebrity painter Simon Haas—an affair that quickly goes awry when Simon’s wife, Lydia, who is also the model upon whom he built his career, discovers the truth.

The second novel in the Roth trilogy is the story of David Byfield, a widowed parish priest with a dark past and a darker future. Set in 1970 in a commuter village near London, the novel explores the consequences of Byfield's second marriage.

Anna Pigeon moves from Mississippi to Colorado to assume her new post as district ranger at Rocky Mountain National Park, where three girls have disappeared during a religious retreat. Two of the children reappear a month later, clad only in filthy underwear and claiming to remember nothing of the intervening weeks. As Anna investigates, she finds herself caught up in the machinations of a paranoid religious sect bent on protecting their secrets.

When a skier goes missing at Sun Valley's Galena Summit, Sheriff Walt Fleming quickly assembles his crack search-and-rescue team and heads out into the snowy night. Despite the treacherous conditions, Walt and his group, including deputy Tommy Brandon and Walt's best friend, Mark Aker, set off on skis, accompanied by highly trained search dogs. Within minutes, something goes horribly wrong.

A dying man, Hank Peyton, tells his son Jerry Peyton that, after a lifetime of evil deeds, his only gift to his son will be his extremely valuable gun called The Voice of La Paloma. When Jerry is wrongfully accused of horse thievery, a cunning sheriff blackmails Jerry into stealing the gun from his father in exchange for a clean slate, even though the sheriff has already found the real horse thief.

When Casey Ford threatens to sell his property to a strip mining company, the townsfolk fear that Indigo will be lost forever. Protecting the town is important - so important that someone is willing to kill Casey to keep their home from being ruined. Now, in addition to running the town's cultural crusade, China Bayles must find Casey's murderer.

Black Jack Hollis was a daring outlaw before he was shot down. In the wake of his death, it's discovered that Hollis left behind an infant son. Elizabeth Cornish, coowner of the Cornish Ranch alongside her brother, Vance, takes it upon herself to raise the child as her own. Elizabeth names the boy Terry Colby and gives Terry a fictitious aristocratic background, believing the way the boy is raised will determine the man he will become. But Vance is convinced that Terry is destined to become an outlaw himself.

It is 1970. David Byfield, a widowed parish priest with a dark past, brings home a new wife to Roth. Soon the murders and blasphemies begin. But does the responsibility lie in the present or the past? And can Byfield, a prisoner of his own passion, break through to the truth before the final tragedy destroys what he most cherishes?

In a frigid New Hampshire winter, Jay Porter is trying to eke out a living and maintain some semblance of a relationship with his former girlfriend and their two-year-old son. When he receives an urgent call that Chris, his drug-addicted brother, is being questioned by the sheriff about his missing junkie business partner, Jay feels obliged to come to his rescue. After Jay negotiates his brother's release from the county jail, Chris disappears into the night.

The village of Avebury is one of the most mysterious places in the English countryside. Surrounded by ancient standing stones, crop circles and burial mounds, this is a place where all is not as it seems. In 1938, the archaeologist Alexander Keiller - a millionaire playboy with a passion for ritual magic - plans to reconstruct the 5000-year-old stone circle at Avebury.

A reporter for the Posadas Register barely survives a night-time patrol with one of Undersheriff Bill Gastner's deputies, and the investigation points to a young woman known for her thrill-seeking.

It's a sad duty that brings Alafair Tucker and her two daughters to Enid, Oklahoma, in the fall of 1915. Her sister Ruth Anne's husband, Lester, is not long for this world, and the family is gathering to send him to his reward. But her niece's irresponsible husband, Kenneth, has disappeared at a most inconvenient time.

Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must.

Back in 1964, tragedy struck when Peter Redburn and his friends were playing together. Now an adult, Peter has never been able to escape his feelings of guilt. A funeral forces him to confront the rivalries and secrets of the past.

Barney Dwyer is a gentle giant who has yet to find a place in the world. Capturing two notorious outlaws has made a hero of him, so much so that rancher Robert Parmelee offers him a job on his ranch to put a stop to persistent rustling. Taking the job promises an income sufficient for Barney to marry his sweetheart. But this promise for the future falls into jeopardy when the outlaws escape, determined to kill Barney.

With the first disappearance, the townspeople begin to mistrust outsiders. When the second girl goes missing, neighbors and childhood friends start to eye each other warily. And with the third disappearance, the sleepy little town awakens to a full-blown nightmare. The Church of Dead Girls displays Stephen Dobyns' remarkable gifts for exploring human nature, probing the ruinous effects of suspicion.

Erica Weisz, a new substitute teacher in the small town of Frosthaven, Florida, has a dangerous secret. When two gunmen attack the school where she works, it becomes impossible to keep the truth buried. Wounded and running for her life, she must learn to trust the only person who can help her, Florida Department of Law Enforcement Agent Justin Thiery. But Thiery has his own personal demons to overcome if he is to save Erica and find redemption for himself.

In Improbable Fortunes, Jeffrey Price takes us on a wild ride into Vanadium, a dusty, down-on-its-heels mining town in Southwest Colorado where it would be fair to assume that nothing has ever happened. But you'd be wrong. As it turns out, quite a lot has happened, starting with a suspicious mudslide that destroys the town's Main Street and a cowboy, Buster McCaffrey, arrested for the death of one of the richest men in America, Marvin Mallomar.