Town Mystery

His drinking is getting worse by the day, his emotional wounds after a deployment to Afghanistan are as raw as ever, his marriage and career are over, and the only job he can hold down is with the local sheriff’s department. And that’s only because the sheriff is his mother—and she’s overwhelmed with small town Shaky Lake’s dwindling budget and the fallout from the opioid epidemic.

Ohio, 1926: For many years, the railroad track in Moonvale Tunnel has been used as a shortcut through the Appalachian hills. When an elderly woman is killed walking along the tracks, the brakeman tells tales of seeing a ghostly female figure dressed all in white. Newly elected Sheriff Lily Ross is called on to the case to dispel the myths. With the help of her friends Marvena Whitcomb and Hildy Cooper, Lily follows the woman’s trail to The Hollows - a notorious asylum - and they begin to expose dark secrets long hidden by time and the mountains.

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!

Lee left Craw Valley at eighteen without a backward glance. She wanted no part of the generations of her family who tapped into the power of the land to heal and help their community. But when she abandons her new life in California and has nowhere else to go, Lee returns to Craw Valley with her children in tow to live with her grandmother, Belva. Lee vows to stay far away from Belva’s world of magic, but when the target of one of her grandmother’s spells is discovered dead, Lee fears that Belva’s magic may have conjured something far more sinister.

When the ancient waters of Lady’s Well in the rural village of Holystone begin to run red, it seems to be a nasty Hallowe’en prank and nothing more. But things take a sinister turn when the entire village suffers severe poisoning, and one old man turns up dead. Accusations abound in the small close-knit community, and ‘old’ religions spar against ‘new’ while fear runs like wildfire through the streets. With so many potential motives and countless opportunities, there’s only one man who can help solve this particular mystery.

Crime-writer-turned-amateur-sleuth Jen has taken over the running of the local bookstore in her hometown of Riddleton. But balancing the books at Ravenous Readers is nothing compared to meeting the deadline for her new novel. Dodging phone calls from her editor takes a back seat, however, when the local police chief is poisoned. To solve the murder, Jen must dust off her detective hat once more. With everyone in town seemingly a suspect, and evidence planted to incriminate local police officer and close friend Eric, Jen is working against the clock.

Street-smart and straightforward police chief Cuddy Mangum and his refined homicide detective Justin Savile V are determined to keep their town’s cultural, political and racial divisions stable…even peaceful. But when a young black activist is murdered while in the process of fighting for his brother’s freedom from death row, the lines keeping Hillston, North Carolina, in balance start to crumble.

Dover Station, Montana, is no place for a lawman. A sheriff's badge ain't worth a nickel here - unless you've got the bullets to back it up. When he signed up to be sheriff of this dirty little boomtown, Aaron Mackey knew he was asking for trouble. Once, when Mackey was the US marshal for the whole Montana Territory, he swore no job could get any harder. But that was before he took down a few of the bank-robbing Hancock gang in Dover Station - and incurred the wrath of the gang's maniacal matriarch, Mad Nellie Hancock.

All communities have their secrets...but on Widow’s Island, there’s a skeleton in every closet, as Deputy Tessa Black knows all too well. When Tessa stumbles upon a half-buried body in the woods, a peaceful morning hike suddenly turns into a race to catch a killer. Tessa identifies the skeletal corpse as Aurora Franklin, a young college student and aspiring actor. She’d come to Widow’s Island for a summer job, only to be strangled and discarded. Aurora has been dead for over a month - and not a single islander has reported her missing.

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.

Last year at Cherringham High, and for three girls that means facing the School Summer Challenge, a grueling fifty-mile hike across the Cotswolds, through thick woods, over steep hills, camping each night under the stars. But when one of them disappears in the middle of the night and is found dead in the morning, most believe a terrible accident has taken place. Was it really an accident? Jack and Sarah aren't convinced - and soon discover that secrets and lies can have terrible consequences... and always leave a trail.

In this riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and Wi-Fi are banned, journalist Stephen Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet.

18-year-old Rowan James has spent her whole life harboring unpleasant truths—that’s what happens when you can smell lies on the teller’s breath—and building walls around herself to block them out. Like her younger sister, Linden, who can taste the feelings of others, Rowan has long struggled with her gift, which has taught her that everyone distorts the truth, and no one is who they seem to be. So when her old rival Hadrian Fitch shows up on her front porch—bloodied and bruised and asking for the kind of help only she can provide—her first instinct is distrust.

Penn Cage is no stranger to death. As a Houston prosecutor he sent 16 men to death row, and watched seven of them die. But now, in the aftermath of his wife's death, the grief-stricken father packs up his four-year-old daughter, Annie, and returns to his hometown in search of healing. But peace is not what he finds there.

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.

Sera and Dee were the best of friends. Until the day that Dee and her brother Leo vanished from Sera's life, during a long hot summer 15 years ago. Now Sera is an adult, with her own child, 5-year-old Katie, and has returned to her childhood home after her husband's death. While she grieves, the past haunts Sera at every turn...and then Dee and Leo return to their small Hampshire village, along with Dee's young daughter.

In a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown. After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down. Lilydale’s motto, “Come Home Forever,” couldn’t be more inviting. And yet, something is off in the picture-perfect village. The friendliness borders on intrusive. Joan can’t shake the feeling that every move she makes is being tracked. An archaic organization still seems to hold the town in thrall.

My husband is lying. The minute he came home with alcohol on his breath and unable to look me in the eyes I knew it. We used to be in love–the intense ‘I can’t be without you for a second’ kind. Where it hurts deep to be apart. But now, we’re the couple that keep secrets from each other. We hide the truth. He thought I wouldn’t find out. I’m a detective–it’s literally my job to uncover clues and solve mysteries. I know what he did. And now I’m sitting here, in a police interview, being asked the question ‘did you kill her?’ to which I utter one life-shattering word: ‘yes.’

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.

Ride along with Deputy Taylor Gray as she investigates a triple murder alongside her partner, Detective Shane Weaver. As she tries to bring justice to the victims and their families, Taylor also grapples with personal decisions and seeks balance in her own life. Meanwhile, Catherine struggles to rebuild her life after serving a 20-year prison sentence. Facing rejection and distrust, Catherine tries to find stability and peace with her adult daughters. Even as Catherine tries to move on, secrets in Hart's Ridge continue to surface, revealing the town's darker side.