Small Town Crime

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.

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.

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....

Already widowed by the age of 40, Ilka Nichols Jensen, a school portrait photographer, leads a modest, regimented, and uneventful life in Copenhagen. Until unexpected news rocks her quiet existence: Her father - who walked out suddenly and inexplicably on the family more than three decades ago - has died. And he's left her something in his will: his funeral home. In Racine, Wisconsin. Clinging to this last shred of communication from the father she hasn't heard from since childhood, Ilka makes an uncharacteristically rash decision and jumps on a plane to Wisconsin.

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.

In May 1997, eighteen-year-old Laura McPherson left her house for a run and didn’t return. Twenty years later, a reporter arrives in the small town of Griffiths to write an article about the unsolved murder of Laura McPherson. He is the most recent in a long line of journalists, podcasters, and amateur sleuths seeking new insights into what really happened to Laura. Laura’s younger brother, David, a repressed and stuck thirty-something, is dealing with the recent death of his mother when the reporter comes knocking.

Father Solomon Lancaster—the town's dry-witted sheriff and priest at the community Catholic church—finds himself on the forefront of an investigation into a series of murders. Soon, he's fighting to match wits with the serial killer terrorizing his town while trying to justify his law-enforcement credentials to the FBI as their analysts and profilers take Crooked Creek, Indiana, by storm. But Father Solomon is hiding secrets of his own. Ones that threaten to rise to the surface as the murders continue and the investigation draws nearer to the truth.

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.

Dane Kirby is a broken man and no stranger to tragedy. As a life-long resident and ex-arson investigator for McFalls County, Dane has lived his life in one of the most chaotic and crime-ridden regions of the south. When he gets called in to consult on a brutal murder in a Jacksonville, Florida, motel room, he and his FBI counterpart, Special Agent Roselita Velasquez, begin an investigation that leads them back to the criminal circles of his own backyard.

A death rocks the Gulf Coast town of Port Leo, Texas. Beach-bum-turned-judge Whit Mosley is summoned to a yacht where the black-sheep son of a senator lies dead. Was it suicide, fueled by a family tragedy? Or did an obsessed killer use the dead man as a pawn in a twisted game? When Whit defies political pressure and conducts an inquest, he and Detective Claudia Salazar expose a nest of drug lords, con artists, and power-hungry sharks - all out for blood. With their careers - and their lives - at stake, Whit and Claudia must unearth a lethal trail of passion and deceit.

On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the Wentshire Forest Pass when a burst tyre forced his father, Sorrel, to stop the car. Leaving the car to summon the emergency services, Sorrel returned to find his son gone. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995. Elusive online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night.

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.

Solve a murder, bring a killer to justice... but at what cost? Harry Probert-Lloyd, a young barrister forced home from London by encroaching blindness, has begun work as the acting coroner of Teifi Valley with solicitor's clerk John Davies as his assistant. When a faceless body is found on an isolated beach, Harry must lead the inquest. But his dogged pursuit of the truth begins to ruffle feathers. Especially when he decides to work alongside a local doctor with a dubious reputation and experimental theories considered radical and dangerous.

When Sarah's Aunt Evelyn passes away, she discovers a hidden fortune has been left to her, including a foreboding mansion in a small Northumberland town. But it comes with one condition. For most of her life, Evelyn had been haunted by the loss of a friend who went missing in Cragsmoor—the very house Evelyn has left to Sarah. Now, Evelyn's final wish is for Sarah to return to Cragsmoor and uncover the truth. If she does, she will inherit everything. But someone wishes for the secrets of Cragsmoor to remain hidden.

Burnt-out from policework, Detective Sergeant George Manolis flies from Australia to Greece for a holiday. Recently divorced and mourning the death of his father, who emigrated from the turbulent Prespes region which straddles the borders of Greece, Albania and North Macedonia, Manolis hopes to reconnect with his roots and heritage. On arrival, Manolis learns of the disappearance of an 'invisible'—a local man who lives without a scrap of paperwork. The police and some locals believe the man's disappearance was pre-planned, while others suspect foul play.

When Emily's beautiful cousin Aspen goes missing somewhere in the Outback, no one seems to take it seriously, not even the police. After all, Aspen has a history of drug use and a string of broken relationships to her name. But Emily knows that her disappearance is totally out of character, so she books a flight to the Northern Territory to find her. Emily's search takes her south of Darwin to every road stop and tourist trap she can find, but the only person who turns up is the last person she expected to see, her ex-husband Ben. But there is a violent killer on the loose.

Running from a troubled childhood, Jack Devereaux left home as soon as he could and never looked back—until the day a stranger calls, begging him to return to his hometown of Jasperville, Quebec. Jack's brother Calvis—the little boy he left behind more than twenty years ago—has viciously attacked a man and left him for dead. Nobody knows why he did it, though Jack suspects it has something to do with the Jasperville girls who were lost all those years ago.

In the audiobook Criminal Activity in the Hoosier Heartland, author David Boyer offers up tales that have no happy endings, no Prince Charming or fairy-tale romances. Truth is much stranger than fiction, as these tales will prove beyond the shadow of a doubt. In the author's world, deep, dark secrets lie beneath the friendly, normal facade known as Knox County, Indiana.

Good cops have no use for coincidence. When a driver slams his pickup truck—twice—into a tandem bike being ridden by Carlos Guzman and his fiancée, Tasha, in Briones, California, it's more than a simple hit-and-run; the driver clearly intended to harm them. Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman gets the call with the news of her son's accident and wastes no time racing to his side. She is greeted by Police Captain Eddie Mitchell, formerly of Posadas County, who allows Estelle to "consult" on the investigation—but only to a point.

Six-million acres of Adirondack forest separate Natalie and Doug Larson from civilization. For the newlyweds, the isolated backcountry honeymoon seemed ideal for starting their lives together, but as they begin to explore the dark interiors of their own hearts, it soon becomes clear that they are not alone in the woods. A man watches them, wielding the forest like a weapon. He wants something from them that's more terrifying than death. And once they are near him, he will do everything in his power to make sure they never walk out again.