Small Town Crime

Magpie Beach is a quiet seaside town – full of small-town prejudices and small-town cliques. Meg, Rosemary and Lily are all outsiders. Meg and Lily because they came to Magpie Beach to escape their former lives, Rosemary because her upbringing was the subject of much local gossip and upturned noses. The three women come together as friends, partly because their homes are so close together on the outskirts of town – and partly because their neighbors treat them with such suspicion. When Jessie Else goes missing – it's easy to see why this small band of outcasts are first on the list of suspect.

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.

Twenty years after her brother Callum mysteriously vanished, Orla Payne is still haunted by his disappearance. The case was closed after her uncle's suicide - the police believed he killed himself in the Hanging Wood out of guilt over murdering the boy, even though a body was never found. Daniel Kind recommends Orla contact DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of the Lake District's Cold Case Review Team, to see if she can discover the truth about what really happened all those years ago.

Twenty years ago, in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas, Annie Randall took her dog for a walk. The dog returned. Annie did not. When her body was found, cruelly broken and posed like a runner, there was only ever one suspect: Annie’s husband, Frank. Now he’s served his time and come home–but the locals won’t let him forget. Especially when there’s a new ‘running girl’ murder…

Public defender Julia Geary’s star is rising, and now she’s got her first murder case defending local denizen Ray Belmar in the death of a homeless man. Julia can’t shake the suspicion that the murder, and the subsequent killing of a homeless woman, is linked to the death of a state legislator who had been crusading for political reform. With the help of Duck Creek’s homeless community and her old friend, Sheriff’s Deputy Wayne Peterson, she launches her investigation—but then the anonymous threats start pouring in.

Daniel Kind's relationship with Miranda is on the rocks. After the bright lights of London, Miranda feels isolated in the Lake District and Daniel fears that she will just up and leave. And Miranda wouldn't be the first: ten years ago Emma Bestwick left her cottage and never returned. Her disappearance went unaccounted for, much to the chagrin of DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of the local Cold Case Review Team. But in a small, rural community, someone is bound to know something. And that someone has recently started calling the local newspaper and dropping hints about Emma's death.

In the darkest hour, a blood-soaked teenager flees the rural Gerandaroo football oval. Eight months later, Bess, a young teacher, returns home to Gerandaroo. A childhood game of dare with her former best friend forces Bess to form a women's footy team to play against Denby, a rival town. Bess reluctantly recruits players, but the team has to contend with hostile locals - including Bess's own father. Will this help the small community to come back together - or will it be the final thing that blows everything apart?

Hallie, a young and successful fashion blogger, recently married to a station owner, is having trouble adjusting to the flies, dust, snakes and isolation in the Flinders Ranges. Left alone with her baby while her husband, Alex is often out on long bore runs during the day, she also has to contend with her father-in-law, Rod, who insists on making himself at home in their house. Alex is out on a bore run, and as Hallie and their daughter, Ruby, watch him in real time on the camera from the homestead, Alex suddenly disappears from view. He is found later, dead at the bottom of a windmill.

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.

Myles's courtroom testimony should have put Pryor, their one-eyed ringleader, behind bars after the bank robbery gone wrong, yet somehow Pryor got off scot-free while Myles served time. Now, upon his release, Myles decides he is done with his life of wrongdoing—a change that will only be possible if he can kill Pryor and turn over a new leaf. Pryor has other ideas, and the collision between these two deadly forces soon leaves the ex-con in critical condition, clinging to life in a hospital bed.

Ein Geheimnis kommt selten allein! Mia will die Zelte in der Stadt abbrechen und im Haus ihrer Großmutter mitten im Schwarzwald neu beginnen. Dass sie allerdings gleich am ersten Abend ihres neuen Lebens gemeinsam mit ihrer besten Freundin Chrissi bei Nacht und Nebel einen völlig verwahrlosten struppigen Esel klaut und anschließend in ihrer Scheune über eine Leiche stolpert, gehört natürlich nicht zum Plan.

Con prosa quirúrgica y una capacidad prodigiosa para el análisis de las emociones humanas, David Monteagudo nos regala una novela coral compuesta de instantáneas en la vida de un pueblo pequeño que es a la vez infierno grande. Miserias, secretos, obsesiones, mentiras y crímenes sin resolver forman un mosaico del alma de hombres y mujeres que sorprenderá a los lectores más avezados.

Neues vom Bestsellerautor von "Ein Mann namens Ove". Eine Kleinstadt in Schweden, kurz vor dem Jahreswechsel: An einem eher grauen Tag finden sich sieben Fremde zu einer Wohnungsbesichtigung zusammen. Sie alle sind irgendwie unzufrieden, sie alle wollen irgendwie einen Neuanfang wagen - doch was dann passiert, hat niemand kommen sehen. Denn wegen der furchtbar dummen Idee eines völlig ungeübten Bankräubers werden auf einmal alle Beteiligten zu Geiseln. Auch wenn davon niemand überraschter ist als der Geiselnehmer selbst.

After a one-night stand with the wrong man, Carla Merino is hiding out in Lost Bay, Alaska, living in a camper and waitressing to stay afloat. She'd taken a memento from the evening (a habit of hers), a photograph from the man's wallet, a younger version of himself and some very important military men. But she quickly realizes who the men are - including Gordon McKint, a billionaire military security and technologies contractor with a secretive personal army and eyes on the presidency.

A story of small-town intrigue that begins with a large sum of money being entrusted and then mysteriously disappearing. The novel was extremely popular and one of Bennett's greatest successes.

When his father leaves town, 12-year-old Rodney Culver's mother takes up with Otis Dell, a fry cook at the local diner - and a well-known petty thief. While Rodney resists the man's influence at first, Otis soon draws the boy into his small-time criminal world. After a simple heist goes violently wrong, Rodney becomes an unwitting fugitive, swept away from his mother to the primitive mountain sanctuary of the mysterious Lester Fanning.

Big-city transplant Felice Bowes is as shocked as everyone else when a controversial local official is viciously killed during the biggest festival of the season. She's even more surprised when the local police chief asks her to help with the investigation, especially when she didn't like the victim and some of the locals would like her to be the guilty party. But while gathering information and interviewing fellow residents, she's most worried about the effects of the crime on a community already on the razor's edge of solvency, and her own safety.

Amy Wirkner, a high school senior in Barnesville, Ohio, is a loner, nicknamed “Chevy” for her size. She’s smart, funny, and absolutely determined to escape from her small town in the Ohio Valley, a place poisoned by fracking. She does well in school despite the cruelty of her classmates and has her eyes on a college scholarship, so she can one day become a veterinarian and make something of herself.

Ohio, 1927: Moonshining is a way of life in rural Bronwyn County, and even the otherwise upstanding Sheriff Lily Ross has been known to turn a blind eye when it comes to stills in the area. But when 13-year-old Jebediah Ranklin almost dies after drinking tainted moonshine, Lily knows that someone has gone too far, and - with the help of organizer and moonshiner Marvena Whitcomb - is determined to find out who.

On the outskirts of a town too tired for its own happenings, the boys were found dead inside a tent. Three years later, their fathers have disappeared too. Ruth Fenn's son was the boy they blamed. For three years, Ruth has accepted her lot as pariah, focusing on her ailing mother and the children left in her care by the struggling single parents of North Falls, Vermont. But now the additional loss of her husband is too much to bear. As she edges closer to the truth, she begins to uncover some secrets that are better left buried.