Small Town Crime

It’s a brutal winter in Des Moines, Iowa, and the city is gripped by fear. A serial attacker known as the Sin Eater is stalking women and has just struck again. It’s a tough time and a tough place for Riley Fisher, a former small-town sergeant, to be reporting for duty as an FBI agent on her first assignment. Teamed with a man she’s not sure she can trust and struggling to prove herself—while fighting the pull of her old life and family dramas—Riley is tasked with investigating a vicious death threat against the newly elected female state governor.

A hard-nosed real estate baron is dead, and detectives P.T. Marsh and Remy Morgan learn there's a long list of suspects. Mason Falls, Georgia, may be a small town, but Ennis Fultz had filled it with professional rivals, angry neighbors, and a wronged ex-wife. And when Marsh realizes that this potential murder might be the least of his troubles, he begins to see what happens when ordinary people become capable of evil. As Marsh and Morgan dig into the case, it becomes clear that Fultz's death was not an isolated case of revenge.

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.

It's 1998. Varg Veum sits by the hospital bedside of his long-term girlfriend, Karin, whose life-threatening injuries provide a deeply painful reminder of the mistakes he's made. Investigating the seemingly innocent disappearance of a wind-farm inspector, Varg Veum is thrust into one of the most challenging cases of his career, riddled with conflicts, environmental terrorism, religious fanaticism, unsolved mysteries and dubious business ethics.

In The Lightkeepers, we follow Miranda, a nature photographer who travels to the Farallon Islands, an exotic and dangerous archipelago off the coast of California, for a one-year residency capturing the landscape. Her only companions are the scientists studying there, odd and quirky refugees from the mainland living in rustic conditions; they document the fish populations around the island, the bold trio of sharks called the Sisters that hunt the surrounding waters, and the overwhelming bird population....

Twenty years ago, Malcolm Whiteley discovers his wife Lysette is having an affair. The Whiteleys are wealthy and live with their 16-year-old daughter Amber in the Dungeon House. But Malcolm begins to disintegrate psychologically, and when Lysette tells him their marriage is over, he snaps, and takes out the old Winchester rifle. In the present day, Hannah Scarlett's cold case team are looking into the three-year-old mystery of the disappearance of Lily Elstone, whose father was Malcolm Whiteley's accountant. Their investigation coincides with the disappearance of another teenage girl.

An online flirtation can have horrific consequences, as detective Louise Rick discovers when she is called to an idyllic Copenhagen neighborhood where a young woman has been left bound and gagged after a profoundly brutal rape attack. Susanne Hansson met her rapist on a popular dating website. But the man is hiding behind a labyrinth of false pseudonyms, and neither Susanne - nor the police - have been able to trace his true identity. With the Internet as his playground, the rapist will almost certainly strike again if Louise can't unmask him before it's too late.

Blood was found at his home in Franklin County, PA. All evidence pointed to one suspect: Scott North, a former employee of Carl’s, a regular attendee of Franklin County courts, and the son of a Chambersburg, PA cop. After burglarizing a tavern, a judge granted him work release, and then another dismissed a recent gun charge. Days later, he ran from his unsupervised worksite and began a crime spree that may have ended with the murder of Carl Wade Ryder.

When Professor Alan Tunbridge is discovered in his office with his throat slashed, the suspects start queuing up. The brilliant but unpleasant microbiologist had a genius for making enemies. For Warren Jones, newly appointed Detective Chief Inspector to the Middlesbury force, a high-profile murder is the ideal opportunity. He’s determined to run a thorough and professional investigation but political pressure to resolve the case quickly and tensions in the office and at home make life anything but easy.

In November 2014 Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father and sister to death with a hammer. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation. King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five witnesses and Arla herself as he questions whether Arla's responsibility for the massacre was a diminished as her legal team made out.

A white woman has been bludgeoned to death with an altar cross in a rural church on Cicada Road in Walterboro, South Carolina. Sam Jenkins, a Black man, is found covered in blood, kneeling over the body. In a state already roiling with racial tension, this is not just a murder case: it's a powder keg. Two young women are murdered on quiet Edisto Beach, an hour southeast of Walterboro, and the killer disappears without a trace. Thirty-four years later, the mystery remains unsolved. Could there be a connection to Stander's case?

Lieutenant Blake Larsen is on the trail of her own family tragedy when another rips apart Pine Ridge Retreat, a troubled teen camp on the edge of Northern Pines. A girl named Chloe Perez is dead, and a missing teenager with a troubled past—Jax Mitchell—is the prime suspect. Though Blake is desperate to uncover the truth about her parents' horrific murder-suicide, duty calls. When deputies first arrive at Pine Ridge, security refuses to let them through the gate. Why? What are they hiding—and why will no one talk?

Gemma Hayden has returned to her hometown of Alice Springs for a new job as a primary school teacher. It's been six years since her family broke apart following the disappearance of her twin brother. And the scars still run deep. Hard on the heels of her homecoming, Saul Pearce, the man she once loved, is reposted from Parks and Wildlife in Darwin back to Alice. When an old car wreck is uncovered, washed down the river to Ruby Gap, Saul investigates only to find that the wreck belonged to Ethan, Gemma's twin—and there's a coded note for her in the glovebox.

When council officer Chris Buckley is approached by an odd old man demanding help in healing a decades-old family rift, he sends the stranger away. But then the old man is murdered, and the police arrive on the Chris's doorstep asking questions to which he has no answers. As Chris begins to look into the circumstances of the murder, he uncovers a deadly secret in the silt and mud of the local canals that he'll realise was better kept buried.

A short story introduces listeners to Brian Panowich's brutal, mesmerizing North Georgia landscape, in preparation for Like Lions. Enter the world of Brian Panowich, where Gareth Burroughs runs McFalls County, in North Georgia, and all the criminal enterprises therein. Two of his three sons, Halford and Buckley, are aiming to follow in his footsteps. The third, Clayton, has turned his back on the family and became a lawman, a sheriff in town.

When a body washes up on the state park beach, Deputy Tessa Black’s experience as a former Seattle detective tells her that the death was not an accident. All evidence points to another murder on the remote island. The victim is a local contractor with a shockingly long list of enemies. The more locals Tessa interviews, the more people she suspects - from the bitter ex-wife and estranged current wife to disgruntled former clients and employees. They all have different reasons to want him dead.

Izzy Harrington's fiancé is a successful entrepreneur and everyone's friend, but today she's waiting for him to get home so she can tell him they're over. Except Brad never arrives. Instead, three angry men knock on the door and insist on talking to Brad. When the police arrive asking difficult questions and demanding to see his passport, Izzy's packed suitcases suddenly take on a whole new meaning.

Mount Orange, Florida, is famous for two things: cerulean freshwater springs, ideal for free divers who aren't afraid of lurking gators. And the gruesome cold case murder of best friends, Bailey and Celeste, twenty years ago. Bailey and Celeste's murders cast a permanent darkness over sunny Mount Orange. Tru has always lived in that shadow. Now she's supposed to head to FSU in the fall with her boyfriend, but those unsolved murders—and the death of her own sister—invade her every thought. It’s only in the shadowy deep of Hidden Glen Springs that she can breathe.

As kids, Amelia and Kylee were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in Beaumont, Missouri, leaving blood all over the kitchen. Scrappy and driven, Grace, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and working at the meatpacking plant, had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town. Her disappearance is a warning to any local girl who dared hope for better.

It's 1997. Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an outward bound centre. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who took that fateful trip and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby.