Town Mystery

In midwinter in an English village, a teenage girl has gone missing and everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks, and a crowd of news reporters descends on what is usually a place of peace. As the seasons unfold and the search for the missing girl goes on, there are births and deaths, secrets kept and exposed, livelihoods made and lost, small kindnesses, and unanticipated betrayals. Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence.

Callie Ward knows what love feels like. She’s lived it. Breathed it. It was the kind of love she’d thought would last forever…until it didn’t. And the resulting heartache almost destroyed her. So she ran. Left the small town of Misty Peak, not sure if she’d ever return. But thanks to fate and family ties, she’s back—and so is the man who broke her heart. Ignoring him is her only option, until that proves impossible.

Caleb Cantrill still can't find where he hid the bandit's gold or his cavern of riches. The only thing it seems he can find is more and more of the monstrous blight he unleashed on the peaceful valley he now calls home. Adding to his troubles, his twenty-four-hour reprieve from the gang is up soon, and the bandits will be returning, looking for their gold, or his life is forfeit. Kitty Welch is swept up in a corrupt scheme which may result in her arrest and deportation back to Scotland. Though she wants to flee, there is something keeping her in the valley.

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....

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.

David Cobb is not a typical lawyer--he's more interested in dispensing God's wisdom than pertinent legal advice. High-stakes litigation is way outside his comfort zone. For many years, Zeke Caldwell has been concocting home remedies made from natural ingredients found in the coastal marshes near Wilmington, North Carolina. One of his remedies proved so effective that he patented it with the help of David's father. Now he suspects a big drug company has stolen his formula. What he doesn't know is that the theft has deeper, more evil roots.

Newly arrived in the quaint village of Norfolk's Pudding Corner, Daphne Brewster is glad to be leaving London life behind. As time goes by, and she finds herself in great demand as the village's unofficial Vintage Lady, she begins to acclimatise to this more sedate new way of life. But when the village school's headmaster is discovered dead, lying face down in his allotment patch, everything changes. His wife refuses to accept a verdict of natural causes, and the village is suddenly ablaze with scandal about 'the potting shed murder'.

Joan Didion's electrifying first novel is a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them is a tragic epilogue to the pioneer experience, a story of murder and betrayal that only Didion could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense.

After an easy day studying coral in the Bahamian ocean, Amanda Blayne returns to shore looking forward to a cool drink and a lazy afternoon. But the tranquil waters turn dark and treacherous when Amanda is ruthlessly abducted in broad daylight. Sean Ramiro, an undercover cop from Miami, is tasked to covertly observe the safe arrival of the senator. Instead, he witnesses Amanda's abduction and immediately throws himself into danger, pretending to be Amanda's lover to try to protect her. The two are playing a perilous game, but find it easy to play along when irresistible tension builds.

When Professor Alan Tunbridge is discovered in his office with his throat slashed, the suspects start queuing up. The brilliant but unpleasant microbiologist had a genius for making enemies. For Warren Jones, newly appointed Detective Chief Inspector to the Middlesbury force, a high-profile murder is the ideal opportunity. He’s determined to run a thorough and professional investigation but political pressure to resolve the case quickly and tensions in the office and at home make life anything but easy.

Get ready to meet your new literary besties. Join Lydia and her gal pals as they destroy a Christmas pageant, run a 5K, sabotage a craft fair, and more. All this, as they solve the crimes that plague their cozy small town. Can they escape each villain unscathed? And can their faith survive the secrets they uncover along the way?

The cast and crew of a popular TV crime drama are shooting in the Lake District – but behind the scenes, relationships are as tense as on-screen. The director’s reputation proceeds him, the two lead stars are feuding and rumours swirl. Meanwhile the locals are enjoying the filming. But when on-screen slaughter gets swapped for real-life murder at the concert hall where the TV drama is based, and the genuine police are as baffled as the TV detectives, it falls to the locals to search for the truth.

A spa stay turns into a homicidal holiday.... A bit snobbish and a trifle high strung, Sybil Foster prides herself on owning the finest estate in Upper Quintern and hiring the best gardener. In fact she is rapturous over the new asparagus beds when a visit from her unwelcome stepson sends her scurrying to a chic spa for a rest cure, a liaison with the spa's director...and an apparent suicide. Her autopsy holds one surprise, a secret drawer a second.

Colter Shaw is a career "reward-seeker", making his living locating missing persons and collecting reward money in return. In the course of his search for a missing woman, he visits the police station in the small Kansas town of Humble, and, is pulled into a puzzling case. A man is holding a hostage in a lakeside cabin, and the Humble police need Shaw's experience and know-how to assess the situation, and the captor's motives. As Shaw begins negotiating, he begins to realize that nothing about the hostage situation is as it seems, including the hostage himself.

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.

Army retiree Tessa Treslow is as excited as the other residents of New Oslo, Idaho, when the cast and crew of the TV show Picks with Ricks comes to town! Tessa and her Aunt Edna put their car restoration business on hold to let the celebrity antique hunters pick through their old garage, hoping the trash contains a treasure that will help fund their new business. But it turns out that the pickers come with TV cameras, likeable stars, a stressed-out producer—and a murderer!

Michael and Maggie Butler are found naked and dead in a Wisconsin wheat field, murdered by two vicious shotgun blasts. But no one gets murdered in Kickapoo Falls, a peaceful, picturesque vacation retreat on the edge of the Wisconsin Dells, home of the politically powerful Kickapoo Gunn Club. Deputy Pennington is convinced the answer lies back in the wheat field. But the town's ruling elite closes ranks and turns on him as he zeroes in on the truth. What appears to be a husband-wife murder-suicide soon opens doors into a deadly conspiracy set for election night.

On a winding mountain road into the town of Denton, Pennsylvania, Detective Josie Quinn finds the body of a local teenage girl, Dina Hale. The sight of plum-colored bruises gathering around the girl’s neck pierces Josie’s heart, but the discovery of a second girl’s empty purse in the dirt nearby gives her a flicker of hope that one person, at least, made a lucky escape. Dina’s parents are grief-stricken as the town rallies together in a desperate search for the second girl, who waitressed with Dina. The two best friends were on their way to a shift when they were attacked.

Sugar arrives in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas, like an ominous storm. She saunters down the street in a blonde wig and spiked heels, cigarette dangling between red-painted lips. Without even speaking to her, the women in town hate her. But when she moves in next door to Pearl, a woman who tragically lost her daughter 15 years earlier, the two women bond over tragic pasts.

In this atmospheric and profoundly moving debut, Cathy and Daniel live with their father, John, in the remote woods of Yorkshire, in a house the three of them built themselves. John is a gentle brute of a man, a former enforcer who fights for money when he has to, but who otherwise just wants to be left alone to raise his children. When a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened, and a series of actions is set in motion that can only end in violence.