Small Town Crime

Whether in Truman Capote’s detailed murder of the Clutter family or Ted Bundy’s small-town charm, criminals have always roamed rural America and towns worldwide. Featuring murder stories, criminal case studies, and more, The Best New True Crime Stories: Small Towns contains all-new accounts from writers of true crime, crime journalism, and crime fiction. And these entries are not based on a true story - they are true stories. Edited by acclaimed author and anthologist Mitzi Szereto, the stories in this volume span the globe.

The cold, blustery Midwest winters don't exactly agree with Betsy Devonshire, but since moving to Excelsior, Minnestoa, she sure has met a lot of warm, friendly people. So she isn't too surprised when the town's most talented needleworkers volunteer to restore a damaged tapestry that was found in the basement of a local church. Betsy even offers to donate materials for the project, thinking that the free publicity will boost sales at her financially troubled needlecraft shop. But soon Betsy is afraid of losing more than her business....

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.

The Isle of Wight has always felt like a safe place to live for keen dog-walker and reluctant sleuth Susan. But after being involved in the investigation of a troubling crime near her old home, Susan decides to move to the peaceful village of Bishopstone. Susan loves the sense of community and immediately throws herself into village life, volunteering at the local primary school and joining the choir of St Jude’s. So, when there is an altercation at the meeting of the choir committee, followed by a shocking accident, Susan is dismayed to realise her powers of deduction may be needed again.

Grace Daniels is distraught after her daughter's body is found in a Leicestershire country lane. Her only solace is the reemergence of Faye, an old friend who seems to understand her loss. DI Will Jackman delves into the case until a family tragedy and a figure from his past threaten to derail him. When the police discover another victim, the spotlight falls on Grace. Can Jackman find the killer before she is convicted of a crime she didn't commit?

The polite Piedmont town of Hillston, North Carolina, wants to go on believing it is still too temperate to require homicide experts. But when the wife of a state senator is found beaten to death, the inner circle of Hillston’s ruling families arranges to have the case assigned to Detective Justin Savile, the charming black sheep of the dynasty that founded the town. Aided by his wise-cracking partner and a young woman from the Carolina mountains whose strength and love rescues him from his own destructive impulses, Savile sets out to unravel the deceit hidden in Hillston’s past.

Over 40 years, two British police units acted undercover to infiltrate activist groups. At least 20 of those officers deliberately targeted women and entered relationships with them. One of those women was me. This is my story.

Settled into a relationship with an Italian yoga instructor and working in Europe, Dr. Orville Rose's peace is shaken by his mother's death. On his return to Columbia, a Hudson River town of quirky people and “plagued by breakage,” he learns that his mother has willed him a large sum of money, her 1981 Chrysler, and her Victorian house in the center of town.

When the local bus company announces it will be stopping its route through their quaint Cotswold village, the people of Wendlebury Barrow are up in arms. Not least Sophie Sayers, whose driving lessons with her boyfriend Hector get off to a bumpy start. But the locals’ peaceful protests against the decision turn deadly when a body is discovered on the Number 27. No one can work out how a passenger met their demise, let alone how the driver didn’t notice. While the police wait for the post mortem results, Sophie immediately suspects foul play, and launches her own investigation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The winters in Willow Falls, Iowa are cold, brutal and unforgiving. And so is the town’s newest visitor. Except he’s not passing through. He’s here on vacation, for some fun and he’s going to stay for a while. They call him “Robin Hood”, a winter serial killer who has left a gruesome trail of horror and d ath across four Midwestern states. His grisly trademark is skewering his victims to tree trunks using a hunting crossbow. Now he’s here.

There was the moment eight-year-old Ruth Corrigan ran away from playing in the woods with her best friend, and then the moment after, when Ceely was gone. Murdered. Now the silence of that day lives within Ruth. Lives in the judgment she sees in the faces of so many in the small town she still calls home. Ruth may be older now, tougher, a cop by trade, but her life has been unraveling ever since that tragic day in the woods. Alcohol, sex, broken marriages—nothing can lighten the truth she knows inside. Until the child-killer returns, free and unencumbered, having already paid for his crime.

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.

Jacob Reese enjoys the quiet life, running a coffee shop and renting out his cottage in The Hollows, Vermont. But the calm is shattered when a woman who looks eerily similar to his ex-girlfriend Laura turns up to stay in the cottage, and leaves a mysterious note in the guest book. Now Jacob’s seeing Laura everywhere - a glimpse of her face across the street, her music box left outside his house, a gift he gave her years before hanging from the trees. But it can’t be Laura. Because Laura’s dead.

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.

Miles de Cogan thought that he was set to live out a simple life with a cantankerous old lady for his landlord, but this is all turned on its head with a phone call. Inheriting a prosperous estate called County Wicklow and the title to go along with it, Miles learns of the death of his cousin, a baronet.

Most folks in Exile, Texas, think Megan Leary got away with murder. Megan was acquitted of her mother's vicious killing after someone else confessed—but suspicion still shadows her fifteen years later. Now a private investigator, she's come back to help a friend look for her missing teenage daughter—and it's not just gossip that's being stirred up. Sheriff's Deputy Dan Fox wasn't sure what to think of Megan or her mysterious past when he pulled her over for speeding. But suddenly, people are dying—and Dan may have to decide whether he can put his trust in Megan to ensure both of them survive.