An anonymous letter arrives at the offices of the Clarendon English Dictionary containing a challenge for the team of lexicographers working there. It's clear that's it's not the usual run-of-the-mill, eccentric enquiry. The letter hints at secrets, lies and a year. 2010. For Martha Thornhill, the new senior editor, that year can mean only one thing: the summer her brilliant, beautiful older sister Charlie went missing.
After a decade living abroad, Martha has returned to her father, her family home and the city whose institutions have defined her family, but the ghosts she thought at rest were only waiting for her to return.
More letters arrive, pointing towards a secret in the heart of the dictionary itself. As Martha and her colleagues start pulling apart the clues, the questions become more insistent and troubling. Charlie's disappearance is one of a series of secret absences going back centuries, and someone wants to keep those secrets buried.
Bloody Ties, an installment of Serenity's Plain Secrets, is a thrilling and unpredictable adventure of corruption, organized crime, and murder that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.
When dead mobsters start turning up in Blood Rock, Sheriff Serenity Adams joins forces with a new recruit, a US marshal, and her ex-partner to solve the cases, but can she trust any of them? Her old partner, Ryan Donavan, is not acting like himself, and Serenity fears he's keeping secrets. For all of his politeness, there's something about Officer Jerome Wilson that doesn't ring true, and Marshall Bryant always has his own agenda. Throw in the Moretti mafia family, a Mexican drug cartel, and a hillbilly moonshine making clan, and Serenity has her hands full. But just as answers come into view, the investigations expand into the Amish community.
The sudden return of an ex-Amish man marks more trouble for the sheriff, and local teenagers are once again facing bad luck. As Serenity grasps at a little normalcy in her personal life, sinister forces descend on her town-and in a race against time, she must unravel the truth before she loses everyone she holds dear.
Unholy Ground is the gripping new installment to the Serenity's Plain Secrets' mystery/crime thriller series. Sheriff Serenity Adams journeys to a northern Indiana Amish settlement to search for a missing girl, and discovers a young outsider has also vanished into thin air.
Serenity suspects the cases are connected, and joins forces with an unlikely ally to find answers. When she goes undercover, the sinister truth of the girls' whereabouts begins to unravel, and she finds herself in a race against time to save the girls, and a desperate fight for her own survival.
Dylan Apel can't stay out of trouble . . .
When Southern witch Dylan Apel finds herself stripped of her powers and under house arrest, she's got no one to blame but herself. But that doesn't stop trouble from knocking on her door. When a convicted murderer winds up dead outside Dylan's house, there's a short list of suspects, including her own grandmother.
With everyone on high alert and no one sure of who's going to be the next victim, Dylan breaks her house arrest in order to solve the crime. But when one of the good guys suddenly becomes the primary suspect, Dylan's world turns upside down.
In order to discover whodunit, Dylan must accept truths about herself as well as the witching world, all while running a successful dress shop and trying to stay sane amidst a nutjob grandmother, a destructive baby unicorn, and a sister determined to outfit all of Silver Springs in crocheted body suits. Will Dylan figure out the killer before she becomes the next victim?
There's a murderer on the loose again . . . but is witchcraft involved?
Southern witch Dylan Apel just can't stay away from murder. When a stranger's body turns up in the school gymnasium, everyone's on high alert. The search is on to discover the person's identity-is it a random hobo or someone connected to the witching world?
With Dylan's super-hot boyfriend Roman Bane on the case, this should be an easy one to solve, right? But when a new witch arrives with the intention of stealing Roman right out from under Dylan's nose, her world is sent topsy-turvy. Things only get worse when Dylan's family is attacked-whoever is committing murder intends Dylan to be next!
Dylan must solve a murder, protect her family and keep the new witch's claws from sinking into Roman-all while running a successful dress shop and staying sane. Will Dylan figure out the killer before she becomes the next victim?
It’s a stormy afternoon in Hampstead, Kansas. And the medical center waiting room is deserted. Except for Susan Wren and feverish little Jen Bryant. Jen is awaiting an appointment with frosty Dr Dorothy Barrington. Suddenly, a gunshot rings out, killing Dr Dorothy and critically wounding Jen. Susan couldn’t protect little Jen from the bullet. Now she will do whatever it takes to catch the elusive shooter. Dr Dorothy wasn’t short of enemies. A prickly control freak, she couldn’t even get along with her four brothers and sisters. What skeletons hide in their respectable family closet? It’s up to Susan to find out before the killer strikes again. But the truth can be a bitter pill... Fans of Kate Carlisle, Ellery Adams, Sarah Yarwood-Lovett, Eileen Brady, Cathy Pickens and Dorothy Cannell will be hooked from the very first page!
The eighth book of this dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts.
If there's one thing Eric Carter can count on, it's his past coming back to bite him in the ass.
Gabriela Cortez, La Bruja, has had her soul trapped . . . somewhere, and the only one who knows how to get it back is the Oracle of Las Vegas, a powerful artifact that Carter helped create almost thirty years before. It doesn't just predict the future-it makes things happen, influencing events to reach the goal it wants.
Only somebody's gone and stolen it, attempting to turn it into an artifact that doesn't just change the future, but also the past.
Eric needs to find it and steal it back before this comes to pass. If he doesn't, Gabriela's soul is lost. And quite possibly the future as well.
The ninth book of this dark urban fantasy series follows necromancer Eric Carter through a world of vengeful gods and goddesses, mysterious murders, and restless ghosts.
Eric Carter has a lot on his plate.
He's hunting the Oracle of Las Vegas, a literal talking head that manipulates the future to make its prophecies come true. But it has a new trick. It can change the past, too.
Now Jazz Age Los Angeles is invading the present. Long gone buildings suddenly restored, decommissioned Red Car trains appearing on paved over tracks, miles of the city changing back to orange groves.
Throw in a hundred-year-old doomsday cult, time magic, and a terrifyingly powerful spell to raise the dead and it makes for a busy week. Carter knows the Oracle is behind it all but he can't figure out how. Or why.
But he better figure it out soon or he, the city, and everyone he knows might be wiped from existence.
Cult Classic is noir urban fantasy at its finest, with a cutting voice, sharp wit, and a plot that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Edinburgh is mourning recent the death of Queen Elizabeth II when Bookseller Delaney Nichols's boss comes to her with a most unusual assignment. An old friend of his, living in an estate in the village of Roslin, has found what could be a priceless relic on her property, and Delaney is tasked with investigating. Could Jolie possibly have an item of breathtaking Scottish historical significance in her possession? But when Delaney arrives at Jolie's estate, she is greeted by a legal team with a vested interest in the property. Jolie manages to remove the interlopers, but as they're examining the priceless item, they hear a scream, and meet a much less welcome discovery: a body.
As Delaney digs deeper, she discovers Jolie's own fascinating history. Jolie's mother had long claimed that her daughter was the rightful heir to the throne, not Elizabeth II, because of an affair she claimed to have with King Edward VIII. The only evidence, however, is in the form of a purported journal that one of Edward's secretaries kept. The puzzles become more confusing when a connection is uncovered between this far-fetched story and the murdered man. Delaney will have to read between the lines to put together the pieces . . . or become history herself.
Master of unsettling suspense Jen Williams is back with another chilling, dark read that will draw readers into a gruesome and atmospheric nightmare
Macabre murders plague a rural town as a scam-artist psychic races to find the answers in this haunting thriller from award-winning author Jen Williams, perfect for fans of C.J. Tudor and Alex North.
As a child, Ashley Whitelam was haunted by ghostly figures no one else could see. Silent and watchful, these Heedful Ones followed her wherever she went. She hasn’t seen them for eighteen years, not since that fateful night at Red Rigg House. But now they’re back, and they’re trying to tell her something.
As children begin to disappear across the Lake District, Ashley becomes involved in the investigation, eager for free publicity to promote her work as a psychic. She never expected the collaborating to bear fruit, but when she discovers the body of one of the missing children, everything changes.
The police are convinced that she’s involved with the killings, and the press are hounding her for answers. Desperate to clear her name, she works with true crime podcaster, Freddie Miller, to investigate. As they look deeper into the disappearances, Ashley must dig into the demons of her past, before the nightmare in the present comes for her, too.
After two years of pandemic people are touchy. Violence is everywhere. Fear and anxiety run wild. Jess has a scary encounter with a man in the woods and then a blow-up that threatens her closest friendships. Her husband, FBI Agent Scott Cooper, investigates a school shooting he thinks might be the start of a bigger terrorism campaign.
A lead in that case takes Scott and Jess to the mountains of western Virginia as a snowstorm moves in. While there, a school bus disappears. The driver is found dead by the road, but where is the bus and, more importantly, the kids?
Jess and Scott, along with Jess's dog Luke, join the sheriff in the hunt. The elderly Miss Etta provides a clue but is she reliable? Scott's intelligence, Jess's grit, and Nate's wisdom all must come into play to save the kids. In the end, Nate's comment that 'People ain't always what they seem,' proves dead accurate.
High-flying city cop Susan never expected to wind up in Hampstead, Kansas—a sleepy little town where there are more pigs than people. But she moved here to be with the man she loved. One year after his murder, the folk of Hampstead need police chief Susan more than ever. Professor Carena Egersund is out walking in the woods when a dog comes bounding over. Carena looks for the owner—and spots a dead body floating face-down in the creek! A few days before her death, Lynnelle Hames was telling everyone she’d found her long-lost birth mother. Has someone killed her to keep her silent? Professor Carena may specialize in math, but something about her story doesn’t add up. Then a second body surfaces, in an equally watery grave, and Susan realizes the clock is ticking to catch a ruthless killer... Fans of Kate Carlisle, Ellery Adams, Sarah Yarwood-Lovett, Eileen Brady, Cathy Pickens, and Dorothy Cannell will be hooked from the very first page!
