Rural Town Mystery

When local real estate shark Edgar Coleman is murdered and "good riddance" is the response from every Pecan Spring resident, China Bayles quickly learns that Coleman was no stranger to adultery and blackmail. China's fiancé, the interim police chief, is immersed in the investigation, and the suspect list grows steadily longer. China puts her honeymoon plans aside and starts hunting for the killer. As her investigation gets underway, she digs up dirt and secrets on people she knows.

A long-unsolved mystery gets a grim new break when the bones of Kim Ward are unearthed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, 45 years after her disappearance. Suspicion swiftly falls on her old college boyfriend: none other than retired police chief Kevin Kerney. The chief's hopes of clearing his name look bleak in the face of damning evidence compiled against him by State Police Lieutenant Clayton Istee. Left grasping for clues, with no alibi and not a single witness to speak for him, Kerney and his wife must race to reconstruct long-past events to identify the one person who can clear his name.

In the days of the frontier West, it was not unusual for desperadoes and fugitives from justice to seemingly disappear from the face of the earth. Shadow on the Trail by Zane Grey, one of the best-selling authors of all time, is the story of one such man who returned to reestablish himself in a law-abiding society. In Texas, young bank robber Wade Holden, once the toughest, fastest trigger man in the notorious Simm Bell gang, makes a promise to his dying mentor that he will go straight. But with the Rangers on his tail, he struggles to find sanctuary.

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.

Eloise Foley, known to her friends as Weezie, has been through the divorce from hell. Her ex-husband Tal (aka Talmadge Evans III) was awarded their house in Savannah's historic district, the house that Weezie had spent years painstakingly restoring to its original splendor. Weezie was awarded the two-bedroom carriage house on the same property. Each was sure the other would sell.

Rickie Alleyn, son of the famed detective Roderick Alleyn, had taken to the peaceful Channel Island village of Deep Cove to write his book. However, soon enough the tedium of provincial life threatens to send him packing - until, that is, he finds a dead stablehand, and the sleepy community's world is upturned. His father is called to take proceedings into hand, but as a darker side to island life emerges, one of illegal drugs and smuggling, Rickie goes missing.

Everything is shipshape at Jake and Ellie’s new waterfront bakery The Chocolate Moose, especially now that the annual Pirate Festival is dropping anchor in their quaint island village of Eastport, Maine. Jake and Ellie are ready for the bounty of tourists sure to flood their shop. But their plans quickly sink when the body of celebrity foodie Henry Hadlyme is discovered in the Moose’s basement.

In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.

Maud Drennan is a dedicated caretaker, but her sunny, capable disposition and snappy quips mask a deep sadness. A tragic childhood event left her in the company of a cast of patron saints who pop in and out of her life like unwelcome tourists. She tries to find solace in her hard work in London...but then she meets the inimitable Mr. Flood. A menace by all accounts, Cathal Flood is a widower living alone in a Gothic Dorset mansion crawling with collector's items and feral cats.

Ambitious young attorney Tom Crane is about to become a partner in a high-profile Atlanta law firm. But first he must clear one final matter from his docket: the closing of his deceased father’s law practice in his hometown of Bethel, Georgia. Killed in a mysterious boating accident, John Crane didn’t appear to leave his son anything except the hassle of wrapping up loose ends.

One peaceful morning, in the small, Puget Sound town of Point Orchards, the lifeless body of Dr. Erin Landry is found hanging from a tree on the property of prodigal son and failed writer, Elijah Leith. Sheriff Jim Godbout’s initial investigation points to an obvious suicide, but upon closer inspection, there seem to be clues of foul play when he discovers that the circumstances of the beautiful doctor’s death were ripped straight from the pages of Elijah Leith’s own novel.

Hamming it up with equal parts history and histrionics, Phillip leads an archaeological dig of the farm's original dump site - until one student stops the show by uncovering some human bones. When a full skeleton is later excavated, Kath can't help but wonder if it's somehow connected to Geneva, the ghost who haunts her shop, and whom she met at this very site. After Phillip is found dead, it's up to Kath to thread the clues together before someone else becomes history.

Shirley Wallace and her four sons return to her childhood home on Pope Mountain in Jubilee, Kentucky, with a lifetime of hardship behind them, hoping to find peace and begin their lives anew. Eldest brother Aaron Pope returns to his life as a police officer and is settling in just fine. Then Aaron's investigation into an attempted murder leads him right to Dani Owens. She may hold the key to a long-lost part of the Pope family's past, and more importantly, she may hold the key to Aaron's heart.

New York Times best-selling author Nevada Barr continues her award-winning Anna Pigeon series with this riveting mystery that features the puzzling plot twists, deft characterizations, and sparkling dialogue that have become Barr's trademarks, and which her ever-growing fan base can't get enough of.

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.

World War Two vet Art Kenning is the alcoholic first-aid man in an isolated sawmill village in the interior of BC, where he dreads the sound of the five whistles that summon him to the mill floor whenever a worker is hurt. Traumatized by an incident in Holland, when he stood by while members of his unit committed a horrific act, he loses himself in drink, and in memories of the love affair he had with a woman in wartime Paris. Then one of the most powerful men at the mill arrives at his door late one evening to ask for his help.

As a single mother, Annie has an especially close relationship with her son, Ben. They have always been together. Just the two of them. So, when Ben brings home his mysterious beautiful new wife, Daisy, immediately Annie doesn’t trust her. Who is this woman who has taken her son away from her? And what is she hiding? She’ll protect him with her life....

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.

After being cleared of his wife’s murder, Todd Norman returns to her small Connecticut hometown in order to finish building their dream house by the lake. He is eager to restart his life and cast aside any remaining suspicions, but all of that is dashed when a young woman’s body washes up on the beach next door. The Lakehouse is a domestic psychological thriller about the wayward and marginalized, the lies we tell those closest to us, and the price of forbidden love in an insular community, where it seems everyone has a story to tell.

A powerful and resonant novel from Tom Franklin - critically acclaimed author of Smonk and Hell at the Breech - Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter tells the riveting story of two boyhood friends, torn apart by circumstance, who are brought together again by a terrible crime in a small Mississippi town. An extraordinary novel that seamlessly blends elements of crime and Southern literary fiction, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a must for readers of Larry Brown, Pete Dexter, Ron Rash, and Dennis Lehane.