Town Mystery

Jane and her fiance, Edwin, are headed to the North Carolina coast for a much-needed vacation. Their harborside loft has floor-to-ceiling bookcases and breathtaking views, but Jane's hopes of exploring the town with her man are stymied when Edwin steps on a stingray. Things take an even less romantic turn when Jane stumbles across a dead body . . . Instead of taking leisurely beach strolls, Jane is suddenly on a literary chase through time, unearthing a dark secret in her family tree that threatens all she holds dear back in Storyton.

Praised by Bookpage as “America’s best-kept literary secret,” Amanda Eyre Ward delivers a debut short story collection imbued with humor, clear-eyed insight, and emotional richness. Here a small-town librarian considers the possibility of a new future. A recent New York widow braves the dating scene. And—in six linked stories spanning a decade of her life—Lola Wilkerson navigates lingering questions about who she wants to be when she grows up, elopement, and motherhood.

July knows 18 things about her mother. But not the truth. Summer, 1995. On her tenth birthday, July's teacher sets the class a project to find out about a relation they don't know. It's easy for July to choose her subject. She doesn't remember her mother, who died when she was small, and her father refuses to talk about her. Ever. The only memories she has of her are flashbacks from the accident that claimed her mother's life. But then she receives the note: 'She didn't die in a car accident.'

Mae West has spent the last few years bringing the rundown Happy Trails Campground and the small town of Normal, Kentucky, back to a thriving economic community. Mae's efforts haven't gone unnoticed. Not only is Happy Trails Campground in the running to be named Campground Hospitality of the Daniel Boone National Park, but she landed the coveted Paddle Fest kayak competition that secures the winner a spot on the Olympic team. When champion and Olympian kayaker Bryce Anderson turns over in his kayak dead, there's more than paddling going on, and his death has been ruled a homicide.

As the Hughes family celebrates bonfire night, a terrible accident leaves the garden shed in flames - and father and grandfather Thomas trapped inside. Tragic though it is, Thomas’ death passes without suspicion - until a local journalist makes accusations of a police cover-up in the press. WPC Trudy Loveday is sent to investigate and asks Coroner Clement Ryder to help.

Twelve-year-old Daniel, the new kid in town, soon learns the truth about his nice - but odd - new friends: one can fly, another can turn invisible, yet another controls electricity. Incredible. The superkids use their powers to secretly do good in the town, but they’re haunted by the fact that the moment they turn thirteen, their abilities will disappear - along with any memory that they ever had them. Is a memory-stealing supervillain sapping their powers?

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.

The small town of Harrod’s Reach has seen its fair share of the macabre, especially inside the decrepit old train tunnel around which the town was built. After a young boy, Sully Dupree, is injured in the abandoned tunnel and left in a coma, the townspeople are determined to wall it up. Deputy sheriff Beth Gardner is reluctant to buy into the superstitions until she finds two corpses at the tunnel’s entrance, each left with strange calling cards inscribed with old lullabies. Soon after, Sully Dupree briefly awakens from his coma.

Abounding in Southern charm, Miss Julia Paints the Town finds the plucky North Carolinian pushed to the limit by a daunting heap of difficulties. Already trying to help three friends find their missing husbands, Miss Julia also must concoct a scheme to chase a slick New Jersey developer away from Abbotsville. But perhaps she's bitten off a bit more than she can chew.

The summer of 1919 is now over, and on the high prairie, a small army of men, women, and machines moves across the land, harvesting the wheat. Custom threshers, steam engineers, bindle stiffs, cooks, camp followers, and hobos join the tide. Wheat is king as people gleefully embrace the gospels of bounty and progress. But with the wheat comes a serial killer who calls himself the Windmill Man and who believes he has a holy calling to water the newly plucked earth with blood.

It is the early 1980s. Greg Bowker is a young senior constable forcibly transferred to a one-officer station in a remote and dying Mallee town. Welcomed by a brutal combination of heat, dust, isolation and primitive amenities, the new officer expects to waste years of his career in ‘purgatory’. He is greeted with warmth by the community but becomes increasingly worried by the behavior of two delinquent teenagers, one of whose family history hides a secret he cannot resist investigating.

The Nomination is a fast-paced action and suspense thriller that brings events from the final days of the Vietnam War into direct conflict with contemporary American politics. Vietnam War hero and Massachusetts Judge Thomas Larrigan is hand-picked by his friend the president to fill the upcoming vacancy on the Supreme Court. Larrigan seems like the perfect candidate: a family man with an uncontroversial judicial record. The president's credibility needs a sure bet. Larrigan will do anything to win the nomination, but he has some old skeletons rattling around in his closet. He calls his old Marine buddy, now a hit man, to sweep the closet clean.

In this heartfelt sequel, Ruby McGavin returns to Cardinal, California, with her brother Nash, hoping the fresh start will help him kick a debilitating drinking habit. And Ruby’s not the only one with renewed hope, as saddlemaker Lucas McGavin redoubles his efforts to win her heart - even if Ruby is his brother’s widow. Soon, all three learn that building a better future means first making peace with the past.

With Holding Lies, John Larison takes us deep into a thriving subculture of the Northwest, one born of the ferns and firs, rain and hot-springs, firebombs and whitewater. He takes us even deeper into the troubles of Hank Hazelton, a 59-year-old river guide, as he struggles to reconnect with his only daughter after a 14-year estrangement. His failure as a father haunts him, along with other deep regrets, tragedies, and longings. In the days before his daughter's arrival, Hank discovers a drift boat stranded below a rapid, empty except for a long smear of blood on its seat.

The elite warriors of the Hereford-based SAS know all about pain and the enduring of it. Syd Spicer, ex-SAS trooper, has found himself back in the regiment - this time as its chaplain, responsible for the spiritual welfare of the hardest men in or out of uniform. Faced with a case which would normally be passed discreetly to Hereford diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins, Spicer is forced, for security reasons, to try and handle it himself - and is coming close to a breakdown.

Under the shadow of an ancient celestial alignment, the Blackmoore sisters face their gravest challenge yet right in their own backyard of Noquitt, Maine. Magical stones, mystical ley lines, and bizarre occurrences threaten to unleash chaos. As dark forces align, the sisters will have to combine all their powers to mend a centuries-old rift between two feuding wizards who hold the key to stopping the destructive forces.

One rainy night fifteen years ago, a knock at the door changed Liss Kehoe’s life forever. On that night, Ashley Hay stood on Liss’s front porch and handed over her brand-new baby Callan. She was never seen or heard from again.

With his heart blown to bits by a staggering loss, Sheriff Zeb Hanks falls into an abyss of drunkenness, hatred, and rage. With the help of Deputy Kate Steele, former sheriff Jake Dablo, medicine man Jimmy Song Bird, and close friend Josh Diamond, Zeb pulls himself back from the edge and turns his rage on the cause of his torment: a Mexican drug and human trafficking cartel.

Documentary filmmaker Riley Vasher has been living a low-key life on the island of Oahu with her long-time boyfriend Brody. This all changes when Brody overhears on his police scanner that popular TV weathergirl Piper Kingsley has been murdered. When Piper’s boyfriend, Ethan Jakes, is arrested for the crime, a high-profile murder trial is sure to follow - and Riley and Brody sense their chance to make a name for themselves. Riley convinces Ethan she can help him if they make a documentary about the trial, and recommends the brilliant but eccentric defense lawyer Nicholas Church.

It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends his time trying to forget about the past. Then one day, Gloomy is snatched from his off-site work station. Instead of celebrating his newfound freedom, Gloomy comes unmoored - he feels he belongs in prison. But his kidnappers believe Gloomy knows where a second nuclear warhead is hidden.