Rural Town Mystery

In the glorious sunshine of Oxford, on a day when everyone should be celebrating, tragedy strikes when a university student is found floating in the river, dead. Probationary WPC Trudy Loveday finds herself paired with coroner Clement Ryder to investigate and it soon becomes clear that this case is not going to be easy. The witnesses all refuse to give a straight answer, each new lead sends them in a new direction and tales of other missing youngsters add further mystery to the investigation.

A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey—conservative, white fundamentalist Christians—are charged with her murder.

The latest in this enchanting and fast-selling series, featuring the beloved ghost Aunt Dimity, opens in a picturesque English cottage where the lovable Lori Shepherd is up to her elbows in pureed carrots and formula bottles, striving to be the perfect mother to twins! Luckily, a beautiful Italian nanny arrives just in time - so Lori can help settle the local civil war stirred up by a visiting archaeologist's excavation. With Reginald, the stuffed pink rabbit, and Edmond Terrance, the stuffed tiger in tow, Lori hunts down a missing document.

Luc Verlains delikatester Fall. Hinter dem Glanz der schönen Welt kulinarischer Hochgenüsse entdeckt Luc Verlain eine raue Wirklichkeit voll Neid, Konkurrenz und brutaler Arbeitsbedingungen. Es ist der Höhepunkt der französischen Gourmetsaison: Die Spitzenköche und Restaurantbetreiber fiebern der Vergabe der Sterne des Guide Michelin entgegen. Ausgerechnet in der renommierten "Villa Auguste" wird der berühmteste Restaurantkritiker des Landes noch während der Vorspeise vergiftet. Dabei sollte seine Höchstwertung doch die Karriere des legendären Auguste Fontaine krönen.

It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow. In the early hours of the morning after Valentine’s Day, 14-year-old Gloria Ramírez appears on the front porch of Mary Rose Whitehead’s ranch house, broken and barely alive. The teenager had been viciously attacked in a nearby oil field - an act of brutality that is tried in the churches and barrooms of Odessa before it can reach a court of law.

After the sudden death of her husband, Cassie Alberta leaves city life behind and moves to the small town of Little Leaf Creek, looking for a new beginning. She’s immediately charmed by the quaint little town. Add in an unlikely friendship with her dessert-baking neighbor and a developing romance with a charming, handsome local, her new life is better than anything she expected. The only problem is that Little Leaf Creek has more than its fair share of murder mysteries, and Cassie's naturally curious nature kicks in. She can't resist lending a helping hand to get to the truth.

When the exuberant president of Ng'ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old schoolmate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to persuade him otherwise. Consequently, on the night of the embassy's reception, the house and grounds are stiff with police.

Thea Slocombe, nee Osborne, is trying to settle into normal, domestic life with Drew and his two children in Broad Campden. But in the course of an attempt to make friends locally, she finds the body of a close neighbour and suddenly feels much less settled and secure. No longer a house-sitter, she has no choice but to stay in the village and deal with whatever happens next. And doing this risks damage to her marriage.

When Jennifer Smiley’s grandmother, Ginny, leaves her an old farmhouse on Edgewater Road in seemingly quiet Ross County, Ohio, Jennifer can’t pass up the opportunity for a new beginning. Almost immediately, she meets a group of men who generously help her move in. When she realizes that they work for Lincoln Bennett, her next-door neighbor, she’s intrigued. Lincoln is gorgeous and has dark lapis-blue eyes she could get lost in...but he doesn’t seem all that friendly. She’s torn between getting to know him and sticking with the solitude she knows so well.

Winter in Balsam Dell is a snowy affair, and to add in some cheer after the holidays, Carly's former classmate Klarissa Taddeo is hosting her extravagant bridal shower at the historic Balsam Dell inn. That is, she was until a double-booking throws some mold in the cheese and leaves Klarissa scrambling. With the venue moved to the maid of honor's family mansion and Carly rinding to create a new delicious treat, it seems the group is going to pull off the shower without a hitch—until a rowdy band of groomsmen crashes the event.

Sugar arrives in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas, like an ominous storm. She saunters down the street in a blonde wig and spiked heels, cigarette dangling between red-painted lips. Without even speaking to her, the women in town hate her. But when she moves in next door to Pearl, a woman who tragically lost her daughter 15 years earlier, the two women bond over tragic pasts.

It's week one of the Swedish elk hunt, and the sound of gunfire is everywhere. When Tuva Moodyson investigates the story that could make her career she stumbles on a web of secrets that knit Gavrik town together. Are the latest murders connected to the Medusa killings 20 years ago? Is someone following her? Why take the eyes? Tuva must face her demons and venture deep into the woods to stop the killer and write the story. And then get the hell out of Gavrik.

When her stepmother dies, Caro returns to her childhood home in the rural English countryside. She hadn’t seen Elizabeth in years, but the remote farmhouse offers refuge from a bad relationship and a chance to start again. But going through Elizabeth’s belongings unearths memories Caro would rather stay buried. In particular, the story her stepmother would tell her about two little girls and the terrible thing they do. As heavy snow traps Caro in the village, where her neighbours stare and whisper, Caro is forced to question why Elizabeth hated her so much and what she was hiding.

It's 1933 in East Texas and the Depression lingers in the air like a slow-moving storm. When a young Harry Collins and his little sister stumble across the body of a black woman who has been savagely mutilated and left to die in the bottoms of the Sabine River, their small town is instantly charged with tension. When a second body turns up, this time of a white woman, there is little Harry can do from stopping his Klan neighbors from lynching an innocent black man.

A new Miss Julia novel from New York Times best-selling author Ann B. Ross is a special treat for her devoted fans as well as those new to the adventures of the titular senior citizen. This time out, the proper Southern lady has a couple doozies on her plate. It seems that her friend Hazel’s PI husband, J.D,. has gotten himself in some trouble in West Virginia - and he’s one tirade away from landing in a jail cell. Meanwhile, a crew of misfits has followed wealthy Agnes Whitman back to Abbotsville, and they have all the makings of a crazy religious cult!

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.

There's something fishy just below the surface of Scumble River.... School psychologist Skye Denison-Boyd is getting ready to return to work from her maternity leave and hoping for a peaceful year in her job as a school psychologist. But when an elderly woman disappears on her first day back and a disgruntled parent threatens to sue the school, Skye realizes that her return will be anything but quiet. When the parent suing Skye's school is found dead and with the missing woman's case still unsolved, Skye suspects the crimes are somehow linked.

Hot-blooded Georgiana Stockwell will break a man's heart while he's eating out of her hand. Moving from the East to join her schoolteacher sister in the rugged wilds of Tonto Basin, Arizona, Georgiana makes quite an impression. Despite her sister's best efforts, Georgiana creates a culture clash as her modern, free-spirited personality comes up against the code of the West, the unwritten law of the range that everyone is expected to follow.

As the Nazis’ relentless bombs fall during the Blitz of Coventry, six-year-old Rose Sherbourne finds herself orphaned and under the guardianship of a Cornish farmer's daughter, Elenor Cardew. Elenor knows that the only way to protect spirited Rose is to leave the city and make a new life for themselves away from harm. But soon Elenor discovers that Hitler’s firestorm is not the only thing she must fear when she learns a devastating secret about Rose....

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.