Rural Town Mystery

Date with Poison is the brilliant fourth novel in Julia Chapman's Dales Detective Agency series and is perfect of fans of M C Beaton's Agatha Raisin series and Gervase Phinn. A young teenager has gone missing. Can Samson O'Brien and Delilah Metcalfe find him? Spring is in the air in Bruncliffe. But not everyone is filled with the joys of the season. Implicated in the murder of a man in Leeds, the Dales Detective Agency’s Samson O’Brien is facing tough questions from the police....

The lead homicide investigator in a rural town, Detective Sergeant Gemma Woodstock is deeply unnerved when a high school classmate is found strangled, her body floating in a lake. And not just any classmate, but Rosalind Ryan, whose beauty and inscrutability exerted a magnetic pull on Smithson High School, first during Rosalind's student years and then again when she returned to teach drama. As much as Rosalind's life was a mystery to Gemma when they were students together, her death presents even more of a puzzle.

For a curious boy like Jess Hall, growing up in Marshall means trouble when your mother catches you spying on grown-ups. Adventurous and precocious, Jess is enormously protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute whom everyone calls Stump. Though their mother has warned them not to snoop, Stump can't help sneaking a look at something he's not supposed to - an act that will have catastrophic repercussions, shattering both his world and Jess's. It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into an adulthood for which he's not prepared.

The Speed of Mercy captures the unbearable cost of childhood betrayal and what happens when history is suppressed, our past is forgotten - yet finding the truth can change the future. Christy Ann Conlin rips into the myths and stereotypes about older women and those on the edge of conventional society to reveal the timeless gift of mercy in this feminist tour de force.

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.

Menace awaits. Sleath. Quiet, peaceful. A small village hidden away in the Chiltern Hills, almost forgotten by the modern world. Nothing much seems to happen here; little disturbs the centuries-old tranquillity. Until the ghosts begin to appear and frighteningly bizarre events start to occur. Psychic investigator David Ash, a man burdened by the dark secret of his own past, is sent to Sleath to investigate the phenomena and his discoveries there drive him to the very edge of his own sanity.

London Scott’s routine, boring life gets a jolt when her niece discovers a woman’s body while out hiking with her boyfriend. It’s just her luck that it’s Sebastian Archer who investigates the murder. Having known the man since childhood, she’s always been the annoying tagalong. Even though she finds him drop-dead sexy, that’s a ship that can never sail now that she’s guardian to her niece and his goddaughter.

A brutal murder in a town called Treachery? It's a story most journos would kill for, but for Stuart Dryden, it's a major inconvenience. He didn't take the gig at the local rag for its bustling crime beat. He'd sacrifice a career-making story for happy hour at the pub, but not even he can let a grisly murder through to the keeper. Especially when he keeps getting scooped by a persistent kid with a disposable Kodak.

In the third entry to the series, Alaska P.I. Cecil Younger is fresh out of rehab, sporting a fresh head wound, with a child custody case from hell, and with the clients to match. Confrontational and obsessed, Priscilla DeAngelo is sure her ex is conspiring with a state senator to wrest her son from her, and thus, hires Cecil Younger to investigate. This is the first time Younger has to deal with lawyers in flashy suits and overused paper shredders. When she storms off to Juneau for a showdown, Younger's custody case swiftly turns into a murder.

A supremely geeky murder mystery perfect for Whovians, gamers, and Muggles alike. Autumn has everything she could possibly want: loving friends, a successful business, and a gaggle of nerds in her store every day. Welcome to Ten Again, a tabletop gaming store that attracts nerds of every kind and fosters a community Autumn's pretty proud of - a community that also keeps business afloat. And now that Autumn's in the running for a grant, Ten Again's future is looking bright.

Liv and Gabe Ahlstrom are estranged siblings who haven’t seen each other in years, but that’s about to change when they receive a rare call from their older brother’s wife. “Mack is dead,” she says. “He died of a seizure.” Five minutes after they hang up, Liv and Gabe each receive a scheduled email from their dead brother, claiming that he was murdered. The siblings return to their family-run resort in the Northwoods of Minnesota to investigate Mack's claims, but Leech Lake has more in store for them than either could imagine.

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.

Judith Kratt inherited all the Kratt family had to offer - the pie safe, the copper clock, the murder that no one talks about - and she knows in her old bones that it's time to make an inventory of her household and its valuables. But she finds that cataloging the family belongings - as well as their misfortunes - won't contain her family's secrets, not when her wayward sister suddenly returns, determined to expose skeletons that the Kratts had hoped to take to their grave.

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.

Attempting to escape his abusive father and generations of cyclical poverty, young Jonah Hargrove joins the mysterious River - a teenage girl carrying thousands of dollars in stolen meth - and embarks on a Southern Gothic odyssey through the East Texas river bottoms. They are pursued by local drug kingpin, John Curtis, and his murderous enforcer, Dakota Cade, with whom River was romantically involved. But Cade and Curtis have their own enemies, as their relationship with the cartel controlling their meth supply begins to sour.

After suddenly inheriting a funeral home from her father - from whom she hadn't heard in decades - Ilka Jensen has impulsively abandoned her quiet life in Denmark to visit the small town in rural Wisconsin where her father lived. There, she's devastated to discover her father's second family: a stepmother and two half sisters she never knew existed. Then a local woman is killed, seemingly the victim of a home invasion turned violent. But when Ilka learns that the woman knew her father, it becomes increasingly clear that she may not have been a completely random victim after all.

The Grimes sisters aren’t normal—even by witches’ standards. For weeks, Fiona has been having chilling visions of death, and Eleanor sees restless spirits nearly everywhere she goes. It doesn’t help that Mountain Shadow is a strange place to begin with, where rumors of curses fly as fast as saltwater taffy on a warm summer day. When a string of gruesome murders rocks the small town, Fiona and the rest of her coven begin to worry that a fellow witch may be the killer. Even worse? A witch hunter has just moved in next door, and he suspects the coven.

Andrea Brafford’s life is nearly perfect. A passionate marine biologist happily married to Craig, the man she loves, she has recently moved into a home commensurate with their success to enjoy a life many others only dream about in one of Houston’s most desirable suburbs. But only a few months later, a trial that dramatically polarizes their town names Craig Brafford as a defendant in the murder of his young wife, shattering the serenity of the peaceful community. Andrea’s life remains a mystery that investigators and public opinion equally fail to solve.

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.

In between spring break and summer is usually a downtime for Corrie and the campground, even with Bike Rally Weekend on the horizon. This April, however, peace and quiet are not an option. A disconcertingly attractive biker arrives, who arouses the suspicions of Corrie's childhood friend and one-time ex, Sheriff Rick Sutton. Then, one of Corrie's favorite guests is shot dead in his own RV, leaving his wheelchair-bound wife in the care of a son whom no one knew existed.