Rural Town Mystery

In Louviec, einem kleinen Ort in der Bretagne, gehen merkwürdige Dinge vor sich: Ein Wildhüter wird mit einem kostbaren Messer in der Brust tot aufgefunden. In der Nacht zuvor wollen die Alten des Dorfes den hinkenden Schritt eines Geistes gehört haben, der immer dann erklingt, wenn Unheil bevorsteht. Als Adamsberg, der legendäre Kommissar, von dem Fall Wind bekommt, ist er nicht mehr zu halten: Er steigt in die Ermittlungen ein und sofort fallen ihm drei Flohbisse an der Leiche auf – ein Detail, das sonst niemand gesehen hat.

The summer of 1919 is now over, and on the high prairie, a small army of men, women, and machines moves across the land, harvesting the wheat. Custom threshers, steam engineers, bindle stiffs, cooks, camp followers, and hobos join the tide. Wheat is king as people gleefully embrace the gospels of bounty and progress. But with the wheat comes a serial killer who calls himself the Windmill Man and who believes he has a holy calling to water the newly plucked earth with blood.

When the ladies of the Dangerous Curves Motorcycle Club take over the Mountaintop Lodge for their annual autumn ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway, Misty Murphy couldn't be more thrilled. Every room is full and the adventurous women even invite Misty and her assistant Brynn to join them on a ride to admire the colorful fall foliage. The skies are clear, the air is crisp, and the leaves are gorgeous. But what starts as a perfect ride turns worrisome when the tail gunner—the last rider in their group—fails to show up at the Craggy Gardens overlook.

Given a chance to salvage his law enforcement career, Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Detective Clayton Istee catches a bizarre late-night double homicide at a Las Cruces hotel. Both victims, a man and a woman, have been scalped with their throats cut. The murders show all the signs of a signature hit, but national and state crime databases reveal no similar profiles. Digging into the victims’ backgrounds, Clayton discovers that six months prior the couple had walked out of a nearby casino with $200,000 of a high-stakes gambler’s money.

Ein Leben voller Veränderungen ... Insgeheim träumt Emma davon, Malerin zu werden – als man sie zu ihrer Tante im nahegelegenen Kristiansund in die Lehre schickt, um Schneiderin zu werden, will sie dennoch das Beste daraus machen. Immerhin kann sie so dem Nachbarssohn Olav nahe sein, der ihr Herz höher schlagen lässt. Doch schon bald drängt sich ein Geheimnis aus der Vergangenheit vor ihr neues Glück – ein erschütterndes Ereignis, das Emma zum alten Familienhof in Averøya zurückzieht.

Caitlin has been having an affair for over a year when the country enters lockdown. Suddenly, seeing her lover, Daniel, without alerting her husband becomes almost impossible. When she does manage to sneak to his home, she finds him lying in a pool of his own blood, dead. Ali is a just-about-functioning alcoholic, recently laid off and feeling rather lonely. Each day she goes to her local shop to buy her permitted two bottles of wine, leaving food parcels for neighbours on her way home. While keeping an eye on what they are up to, of course.

Emma Laurent has always preferred helping others to asking for help. But now, she’s the one in need. Her stepmother is selling her late father’s candy shop, her grandmother’s assisted-living facility has become a financial burden, and the anniversary of her fiancé’s death is quickly approaching. Rather than face her problems, Emma does what she does best - finds someone else to help by offering a mother and son with nowhere to go somewhere to stay.

For decades, Pity Wood Farm has been a source of employment for poor workers passing through Rakedale, migrants with lives as abject as the labour they sought. But now it seems a far worse fate may have befallen some of those who came upon this isolated community. Routine building work at the farm has unearthed a grisly discovery: a human hand preserved in clay.

In her Food Lovers' Village Mysteries, Agatha Award-winning author Leslie Budewitz introduces us to Jewel Bay, a tight-knit Montana community that thrives on tourism and farm-to-table fare. Featuring Erin Murphy, beloved proprietor of the Merc—a century-old general store converted into a local foods market-each book brings us closer to the folks who call Jewel Bay home, and the cunning culprits in their midst.

From one of the most beloved Western authors comes an epic historical tale of adventure and romance in the great wilderness. Against the epic backdrop of the building of the Union Pacific Railroad across plains and deserts and through the mountains to meet up with the Southern Pacific in Utah comes a sprawling, historical tale. Warren Neale is a brilliant civil engineer who is constantly confronted with construction problems. He is sided by Larry Red King, a Texas gunfighter and friend.

Five-year-old Daisy Gonzalez's father is always waiting for her at the bus stop. But today he isn't, and Daisy disappears. When Daisy goes missing, nearly everyone in town suspects or knows something different about what happened. And they also know a lot about each other. The immigrants who work in the dairy farm know their employers' secrets. The hairdresser knows everything except what's happening in her own backyard.

A death rocks the Gulf Coast town of Port Leo, Texas. Beach-bum-turned-judge Whit Mosley is summoned to a yacht where the black-sheep son of a senator lies dead. Was it suicide, fueled by a family tragedy? Or did an obsessed killer use the dead man as a pawn in a twisted game? When Whit defies political pressure and conducts an inquest, he and Detective Claudia Salazar expose a nest of drug lords, con artists, and power-hungry sharks - all out for blood. With their careers - and their lives - at stake, Whit and Claudia must unearth a lethal trail of passion and deceit.

This is a beautiful, moving tale from the best-selling author of the Flashman Papers. To the young Lady Margaret Dacre, raised in the rich security of Queen Elizabeth's court, the Scottish border was a land of blood and brutal violence, where raid and murder were commonplace, and her broad inheritance lay at the mercy of the outlaw riders and feuding tribes of England's last frontier.

Works by best-selling author Susan Wittig Albert have been nominated for the Agatha and Anthony awards. In The Tale of Oat Cake Crag, Miss Beatrix Potter is frustrated by distractions near her home. As the noisy test flights of a hydroplane disrupt her concentration, Beatrix investigates a string of bizarre letters threatening a friend’s reputation. Then life becomes even more complicated when the body of the hydroplane project funder is found at the foot of Oat Cake Crag.

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 reclusive writer Jock falls for vivacious tea shop owner, Sapphire, he is amazed that she seems to feel the same way about him. He watches with pride as Sapphire is crowned May Queen at the town's May Day celebrations, but his joy turns to heartbreak when she runs off into the crowd, never to return.

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.

Called to investigate the bloodstained aftermath of an eventful Christmas party, detectives Anderson & Costello discover that the holiday season can be anything but merry. A family man is stabbed to death at a crowded Christmas Ice Show. Murder in plain sight. No clues, no witnesses, no known motive.

Even if it means exposing an unsettling past, Rowan is determined to get to the bottom of her mother's suicide before the serial killer who's tracking her finds her.

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.