Rural Town Mystery

Set in 1959, the year the music died, The Smoke in Our Eyes is a cinematic, clock-ticking saga set in a small Montana town. When a fatal car accident shatters ten-year-old Lucas's world, he finds himself confronting crime and vengeance, humor and heroism, all against the backdrop of growing up.

Twenty-eight-year-old Lexi could have had it all, if it weren’t for that fateful night 10 years ago when she was charged with murder. Now she’s back in her close-knit hometown, Garrison, with a tarnished reputation and a criminal record to match. Her sole mission is to shed her past and learn to live her new life. After all, she already served her time. She spent a decade grieving over what happened to her best friend, even if the details are unclear.

Thorny Wallace returns to her hometown for peace and quiet. WWII is distant thunder in the small rural town, but Los Angeles is always a clear and present threat. As she begins to look into an old death, she finds that there is always more going on in the small quiet town than meets the eye. But, when she thinks she has the players figured out, the FBI shows up.

When Sassi Stapleton receives a middle-of-the-night phone call to tell her that her beloved grandmother is unwell, she quickly puts her job on hold, packs her ute and sets off on the long drive home, knowing her grandfather will need her. Less than an hour away from Sassi's hometown, Barker, she swerves to miss a roo and her car rolls down an embankment. By the time Sassi is found, her grandmother has already passed away.

Peace was always an elusive thing for Detective Carter Boyce, even before his wife died. Since then, living has become even harder. Now, investigating what looks like a murder suicide, Carter begins piecing back together a life he didn’t even know was broken. He stumbles back into his childhood neighborhood, where Old Man Kopchek is still missing a leg, but none of his acerbic wit. The old man begins teaching him the magic of savoring the mundane and the seemingly unimportant.

Newly divorced Lily Kimura returns to her hometown to start fresh with her daughter and her recently retired parents. She’s committed to rebuilding her life, starting with a new job at the town theater. The Starlight Cove Playhouse has been closed for years, ever since a tragic fire took the life of the lead actress. Now, thanks to an anonymous donor, the town is finally ready for a revival. So is Lily, who wholeheartedly dives into her new duties as theater manager, including an unexpected connection with the visiting movie star playing the lead.

Knox Thompson thinks he's working a hustle, but it's a hustle that's working him. Trying to keep his pizza shop and parents afloat, he cleans out a backroom Kentucky poker game only to be roped into dealing marijuana by the proprietor—an arrangement Knox only halfheartedly resists. Knox's shop makes the perfect front for a marijuana operation, but his supplier turns out to be violent and calculating, and Knox ends up under his thumb. It's not long before more than just the pizza shop is at risk.

Jimmy is a kid growing up fast on the poorest street in town. He tries to do everything right and look out for his mum and his younger brother. His older brother is in jail, so it's up to Jimmy to hold things together. But small-town life is unforgiving if you're from the other side of the tracks.

1987: It's late summer and a time of change when a 17-year-old girl leaves the local shopping center in the sleepy town of Lowbridge and is never seen again. Her unsolved disappearance is never far from the town's memory. There's those who grew up in the shadow of her loss whose own lives were altered forever, and those who know more than they're saying. It just takes an outsider to ask the right questions.

Come Away From Her is a boldly written mystery-suspense novel set in the rural town of Black Walnut. The story revolves around the arrival of Tess, a deaf woman running from her past, who unwittingly sets into motion a chain of disturbing events as she is forced to share her secrets with the strangers around her. Her presence upsets the status quo for the townspeople, none more so than for Cap, the pastor of the local church whose life has been marred by substance abuse and tragedy. The morning that Cap discovers a dead body outside the church, life as the town knows it is forever changed.

Irgendwas war heute anders an Hilke, ganz sicher. Richtig: Sie hatte einen zartroten Lippenstift aufgetragen. Was war denn hier los!? Ernst Mannsen ist irritiert. Hat der Inhaber des neuen Luxushotels im Dorf tatsächlich was mit der netten Tourismusbeauftragten angefangen? Doch sicher nur, weil er sich davon Vorteile für sein Hotel verspricht. Hilke passt so gar nicht zu diesem Großmaul vom Festland. Doch sie scheint bis über beide Ohren verknallt zu sein. Keine Zeit mehr für die Kirchenorgel, fürs Brötchenschmieren beim Blutspenden des Roten Kreuzes oder für die Hilfe in Minna Paulsens Kinderclub.

Lavendel-Duft und ein mörderischer Rosenkrieg: Mit einer Leiche in einem Badesee beginnt der 5. Provence-Krimi um die sympathische junge Kommissarin Lilou Braque. Die junge Kommissarin Lilou Braque und ihr Freund Simon wollen einen wunderbar warmen Herbsttag im beschaulichen Carpentras für einen Badeausflug nutzen – und machen eine furchtbare Entdeckung: Im Wasser des Lac du Péty treibt der leblose Körper einer Frau. Alles deutet auf einen tragischen Unfall hin. Kurz darauf wird Lilou zu einem weiteren Todesfall gerufen, offenbar hat sich der Notar Jean-Claude Sousteron mit seiner eigenen Waffe erschossen.

Zahn can't get the missing girl he found—and the one he can't find—out of his mind. Someone in this mountain valley is collecting children, and Zahn is gradually drawn into the case while still trying to break through to his daughter. Then she disappears too.

Escaping personal upheaval, city accountant Billie Gibbs takes a break in a friend's country lakeside shack. Local farmer Noah Sutton arrives at the shack to investigate the unexpected visitor on a neighbouring property. He wants her to stay, but needs her to leave. Resisting an instant attraction in the face of mysterious happenings around the lake, Billie believes Noah is not all he seems, and sets out to discover why.

Its 1943 and the war continues on in Ambridge. But the minds of the villagers are focused a little closer to home. For many centuries, a local tradition has told of a mystic living in a hermit’s cave just outside the village. Legend tells that she has hidden her prophecies around the area, but none have ever been found. When a visiting academic arrives in Ambridge, there for war work, but personally intrigued by the prophecies, he becomes determined to find out more. And as the prophesies are uncovered, it appears the mystic knows more than anyone could have predicted.

Pie witch Reese is living her dream: running the bakery she’s always wanted, selling magical pies, and landing a date with handsome Prince Forrest of the Autumn Court. But people around her start vanishing, returning hours or days later with no memory of their missing time.

Port Kingerton: the insular cray-fishing town at the butt-end of South Australia, where everyone knows everyone. And everyone knows too that when Abigail Fancy left town at seventeen, she hung out the window of her boyfriend's Corolla, middle fingers held high, swearing she'd never come back. And she hasn't, until now.

The thing is…when your intention is to remain below the radar, an ever-expanding reputation is the last thing anyone needs, and soon, old problems and long-forgotten adversaries begin to resurface. Despite his reluctance to revisit the ghosts of his past, sometimes in order to move forward, you have to go back again. In doing so, Malcolm realizes that a few of the broken things requiring his attention…aren’t things at all.

The past has always felt near in the historic house of Jonathon Lydell III, who proudly advertises his family connection to the Virginia Lees. But now, history is repeating itself in a truly bizarre and spooky way. Sheriff Ike Schwartz and FBI agent Karl Hedrick are dispatched to resolve the mystery of the strangely identical murders 150 years apart.

One of the bestselling novelists of the American West brings us a gripping tale of gold, greed, and vengeance.