A Wisconsin bookstore owner and cryptozoologist is asked to investigate a series of deaths that just might be proof of a fabled lake monster in this first installment of a new mystery series by USA Today bestselling author Annelise Ryan.
Morgan Carter, owner of the Odds and Ends bookstore in Door County, Wisconsin, has a hobby. When she's not tending the store, she's hunting cryptids-creatures whose existence is rumored, but never proven to be real. It's a hobby that cost her parents their lives, but one she'll never give up on.
So when a number of bodies turn up on the shores of Lake Michigan with injuries that look like bites from a giant unknown animal, police chief Jon Flanders turns to Morgan for help. A skeptic at heart, Morgan can't turn down the opportunity to find proof of an entity whose existence she can't definitively rule out. She and her beloved rescue dog, Newt, journey to the Death's Door strait to hunt for a homicidal monster in the lake-but if they're not careful, they just might be its next victims.
A rest home makes a coroner-turned-sleuth restless in this hard-boiled mystery by the USA Today bestselling author of Dead Ringer.
Sorenson, Wisconsin's deputy coroner Mattie Winston is back on the job . . . in a nursing home examining the body of Bernie Chase-the now former president of the Twilight Home's board of directors-who is covered in a powder used to turn liquids to solids. The home's residents are certain Bernie was offing the patients who cost him too much . . . and the patient that found him can't remember a thing.
Between her ongoing tug of war with Detective Hurley, fulfilling her new job requirement of seeing a shrink, and wrangling with the Twilight Home's board of directors, Mattie's got her scrubbed hands full. She'll need all of her outside-the-box forensic skills to crack a case that's turning out to be stranger-and more dangerous-than anything she's seen before!
In her previous career as a nurse, Mattie Winston's job was to keep death at bay. Now, as a medicolegal investigator, she's required to study death intimately-to figure out causes and timing, and help deduce whether it was natural or suspicious.
In the case of Montgomery 'Monty' Dixon, a well-to-do Realtor, there can be little doubt: Broken pool cues do not embed themselves. Monty's body is found in the game room of his lavish house, the walls adorned with photos of Monty and various celebrities. But as Mattie and husband Steve Hurley, a homicide detective, both know, money and connections can't protect anyone from a killer.
The first suspect is Monty's wife, Summer, who claims to have been at a cooking class at the time. When that alibi is served up as a fake, Summer moves to the top of the suspects list, but is soon joined by Monty's ne'er-do-well son, Sawyer, who has racked up gambling debts he hoped his dad would pay off. Monty's twin brother is engaging in shady financial deals. An affair, a Ponzi scheme, a disputed inheritance . . . there are as many motives as suspects, and soon Mattie and Hurley have turned up other, possibly related deaths.
When social worker Hildy Schneider commits to an after-hours side job, she finds herself drawn into the darker side of small-town Sorenson, Wisconsin-and the twisted mind of an unnamed killer . . .
Strange things have been happening since Hildy started moonlighting with local police, but a desperate late-night call involving a former patient from Sorenson General Hospital tops the list. Although Danny Hildebrand has been tormented by hallucinations for years, he swears he's being haunted for real by the victim of a grisly murder . . .
The rambling ghost story seems like another delusion. But after a body turns up in a neglected farmhouse crawling with secrets, Hildy and the magnetic Detective Bob Richmond rush to explain Danny's knowledge of the incident. As the crime-solving partners unwittingly grow closer while examining a series of eerie leads, they realize that surviving past sunrise means shedding light on a criminal willing to do whatever it takes to stay in the shadows . . .
A new murder victim with an old M.O. puts Mattie Winston on the trail of a killer who gives a grim new meaning to flower power . . .
Spring is beginning to brighten Sorenson, Wisconsin, for Mattie and Steve Hurley and their family. While their son Matthew may be in his terrible twos and Steve's daughter Emily a moody teenager, the kids bring light to their lives when their work is dark by its nature-Steve is a homicide detective and Mattie is a medicolegal death investigator, a.k.a. medical examiner. They deal in corpses.
The latest corpse, a Jane Doe, was clearly an addict, but drugs didn't kill her, at least not directly. She's been stabbed multiple times in a pattern that is disturbingly familiar to Mattie. When she discovers flower petals from yellow carnations stuffed into the stab wounds, she recognizes a very specific M.O.-belonging to a convicted serial killer who's currently serving a life sentence.
The details of the flower petals were never made public in the last case, so it can't be a copycat crime. It looks like the wrong man is in prison, and the murderer is still at large. Now it's up to Mattie and Steve to get the case reopened-and catch the real carnation killer . . .
As a colleague of deputy coroner Mattie Winston, social worker Clothilde 'Hildy' Schneider is no stranger to unsolved murders at Sorenson General Hospital. Except this time, it's up to her to crack the case . . .
Motivated by her own difficult past, Hildy has an unparalleled commitment to supporting troubled clients through grief and addiction in Sorenson, Wisconsin. But when a distraught group therapy member reveals disturbing details about her late son's potential murder, Hildy goes from dedicated mental health professional to in-over-her-head amateur sleuth . . .
Alongside her loyal therapy Golden Retriever, Hildy stumbles through incriminating clues-and an unlikely partnership with Detective Bob Richmond, the irresistibly headstrong cop who shares her passion for helping others. With signs of foul play surfacing all over town, can Hildy and Detective Richmond pinpoint the deadly traits of a sharp-witted killer before another seat gets filled at grief therapy?
A new home, a new marriage, a new family. It's a lot to sort out. But before medicolegal death investigator Mattie can smooth out the unexpected chaos of her new life, duty calls. At the local ER, a battered and bruised teenage girl has been brought in by a mysterious man who claimed she'd fallen out of a car. The staff is suspicious, but while they attend to the teenager, the unidentified man slips out. Then the girl dies, but not before informing social worker Hildy Schneider that the man had her little sister as well.
Mattie's exam reveals forensic evidence of long-term IV drug use and physical abuse, findings consistent with Hildy's suspicion that the girl was a victim of human trafficking. They are able to confirm her identity as a teen who went missing six months ago, along with her sister-facts that are deeply unsettling to Mattie, who now shares a home with her husband's teenaged daughter.
Working closely with Hildy and homicide detectives, including her husband Steve Hurley, Mattie must delve into a dark underworld to stop the ruthless trafficking of human lives-before it's too late for another young girl . . .
