Small Town Crime

Death has come twice to Ravenbank, a remote community in England's Lake District, each time on Hallowe'en. In 1914, a young woman's corpse was found, with a makeshift shroud frozen to her battered face. Her ghost - the Faceless Woman - is said to walk through Ravenbank on Hallowe'en. Five years ago, another woman was murdered, and again her face was covered to hide her injuries. Daniel Kind becomes fascinated by the old cases, and wonders whether the obvious suspects really did commit the crimes.

Baby’s heart is in the right place, but she’s got problems—namely, a fierce taste for booze and an on-again-off-again boyfriend who can't commit. She’s living and working at Oakwood Hills, a crumbling lakeside resort, with her friends, Crystal Nugget and DJ Overalls, reeling since her adoptive mother died of a stroke. And now, the return of local drug kingpin Bad Mike is about to throw her already unstable summer into full-blown chaos. To make matters worse, the owner of Oakwood Hills announces plans to sell the resort to Amelia, her boyfriend's wealthy twin sister.

July, 1997. Matilda is killed in a tragic accident on the Dorset rocks, leaving her best friend Sophie alone, wracked with guilt. Decades later, Sophie is back for the first time since that terrible summer, to sell her family's old beach hut and bury the memories forever. But on clearing out the hut, she finds evidence that Matilda's death was no accident. What really happened the night she died? As Sophie edges closer to the truth, the past starts to close in on the present.

Ten years ago, his wife died in his arms. God saved him for Himself. Now, he wants his first love to catch her killer. Tom Greer left Myerton six months after his wife Joan’s death, determined to leave the painful memories behind. Ten years later, now-Father Tom Greer returns for a four-month assignment as the temporary pastor of Saint Clare's Parish in Myerton. His only desire is to serve God's people quietly, then leave again. But the past won't leave Father Tom alone…

In 1972, the town of DeClare, Oklahoma, was consumed by the terrifying murder of Gaylene Harjo and the disappearance of her baby, Nicky Jack. When the child's pajama bottoms were found on the banks of Willow Creek, everyone feared Nicky Jack was dead, although his body was never found.

Mick Hardin is an Army CID officer home on leave, recovering from an IED attack and flirting with prescription painkillers, when a body is found in the center of town. It’s Barney Kissick, the local heroin dealer, and the city police see it as an occupational hazard. But when Barney’s mother, Shifty, asks Mick to take a look, he finds there’s more to the killing than it seems. Mick should be rehabbing his leg, signing his divorce papers, and getting out of town—and most of all, staying out of the way—but he keeps on looking, and suddenly he’s getting shot at himself.

When the truth lies out of sight... West Wales, 1850. When an old tree root is dug up, the remains of a young woman are found. Harry Probert-Lloyd, a young barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has been dreading this discovery. He knows exactly whose bones they are. Working with his clerk, John Davies, Harry is determined to expose the guilty. But the investigation turns up more questions than answers and raises long-buried secrets. The search for the truth will prove costly.

When Alfie Hook settles down to eat his fish and chips by the Hunstanton seaside he hasn’t anticipated it is going to be his last meal. DS Ashley Knight and her Major Investigation Team are called to investigate and when they discover who Alfie is married to, they realise this case is not going to be straightforward. A second body is found in gruesome circumstances at the nearby Paradise Caravan Park, but the team struggle to connect the two victims. Even after hours of interviews with the residents, and many questionable stories, to the police's frustration, all their alibis check out.

Black Harbor is a tinderbox. Temperatures and violent crime have both risen to all-time highs, a new drug razes the city, and the scene to which Sergeant Nikolai Kole responds is anything but a rote homicide. In the back of a clubhouse lies a body wrapped in garbage bags and doused in bleach. It isn’t just any body. Tommy Greenlee, the ex-husband of Kole’s former lover, Hazel, has been shot several times and left for dead. What’s more…the killer left what appears to be a calling card.

Emma Frost inherits a house on Fanoe Island when her grandmother dies. She decides to move there with her family, much to her teenage daughter's regret. One morning a wealthy older woman living in her street is found murdered and soon Emma finds herself wrapped in a mystery uncovering the island's dark secrets reaching into her own family.

True crime isn't only about serial killers and rapists and pedophiles and organized crime. It is also about the victims left behind to serve their own life sentences, often without anyone to help them make it through the awful ordeal. If you dare, enter the world of Small Town Murder.

Street-smart and straightforward police chief Cuddy Mangum and his refined homicide detective Justin Savile V are determined to keep their town’s cultural, political and racial divisions stable…even peaceful. But when a young black activist is murdered while in the process of fighting for his brother’s freedom from death row, the lines keeping Hillston, North Carolina, in balance start to crumble.

Before David Wilson became the UK's pre-eminent criminologist, he was just a young boy growing up in the Scottish town of Carluke. As a child, the brutal murder of a young woman rocked this small community, but very quickly a man was arrested for the crime, convicted and put behind bars. For most, life slowly carried on - case closed.

April in Florida and Benedicta (Ben) O'Keeffe is enjoying balmy temperatures during the last few days of a six month stint with a US law firm. A week later, she returns to Glendara, Inishowen, where a charity cycle event is taking place. The town is abuzz with excitement, but it starts to rain, causing the cyclists to postpone the start of their event. The rain doesn't stop—it becomes relentless, torrential. In the middle of the night, Police Sergeant Tom Molloy is called out to Mamore Gap, where a body, dislodged from a high bank by the heavy rain, has fallen onto a passing vehicle.

Monreith, Massachusetts, was once a small community of whalers and farmers. These days it’s a well-to-do town filled with commuters drawn to its rugged coastline and country roads. A peaceful, predictable place—until popular restaurateur Laurel Thibodeau is found brutally murdered in her own home. Suspicion naturally falls on Laurel’s husband, Simon, who had gambling debts that only her life insurance policy could fix. But there are other rumors too. Among the group of six friends gathered for Alice Stone’s fortieth birthday, theories abound concerning Laurel’s death.

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.

Here, in Lynne Truss' first novel, we meet Osborne Lonsdale, a down-at-heel journalist, mysteriously attractive to women, who writes a regular celebrity interview for Come into the Garden. This week his "Me and My Shed" column will be based on the charming garden outhouse owned by TV sitcom star Angela Farmer. Unbeknownst to Osborne, driving down to Devon to interview Angela in her country retreat, the sleepy magazine has been taken over by new management.

A decade ago, the bodies of nine people were discovered at Black Valley Farm. The only suspect vanished without a trace. Clare has spent ten years living a lie, but a new podcast on the murders threatens to bring her carefully built life crashing down. Because someone else has listened to the podcast. Someone who knows Clare is lying, and who will stop at nothing to ensure the truth never comes to light.

Handywoman Barb Young has lived in the sleepy coastal town of Bullford Point for over fifty years - and frankly, in that time, not much has happened, unless you count that business where a bush turkey managed to board the ferry a couple of years ago. When Joe Griffiths returns from Sydney after six years of drug addiction, jail and, eventually, rehab, Barb offers him a job, hoping to help him turn his life around. However, when another new resident of Bullford Point is murdered, Joe becomes the prime suspect.

True crime writer Dougal Lachlan swore he'd never set foot in Twisted Cedars again. Not even for his sister's upcoming wedding. But an email promising the story of a lifetime pulls him back to his hometown against his better judgement. Thirty years ago, five librarians were murdered across quiet coastal towns in Oregon, leaving a trail of unsolved mysteries. All signs point to a serial killer. As Dougal plunges into the investigation, he enlists the help of local librarian Charlotte Hammond.