city and town life

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city and town life

Ritual

2008
Nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing enough, until the discovery of the matching appendage a day later. Both hands have been freshly amputated, and there are indications that the victim was still alive when they were removed. Newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol, DI Jack Caffery soon establishes that the hands belong to a young man who has recently disappeared. As Caffery and Marley search for the rest of the victim and for his abductor, they journey into the darkest recesses of Bristol's underworld, where drug addiction is rife, street kids sell themselves for a hit, and a disturbing occult ritual may be making an unexpected appearance.

Curses and other buried things

When Susana's eighteenth birthday triggers a generational curse, prompting her to sleepwalk into the Okefenokee Swamp behind her grandparent's house, she realizes the roots of her family tree run deeper than she believed.

The summer house

2020
When seven murder victims are found in a small town, the homicide investigation shakes a small-town sheriff to her core.

Where the body was

2023
A boarding house full of druggies. A neglected housewife. A young girl who thinks she?s a superhero. A cop who wants to be left alone. And a Private Detective looking for a runaway girl. These stories collide one fateful summer in Where the Body Was, a tale of love and murder in the suburbs, told from a dozen different points of view. All the neighbors on the block have an opinion about the murder and how it happened, but which of them is telling the truth?.

Bad summer people

2023
Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker rule the town of Salcombe, Fire Island every summer. They hold sway on the beach and the tennis court, and are adept at manipulating people to get what they want. Their husbands, Sam and Jason, have summered together on the island since childhood, despite lifelong grudges and numerous secrets. Their one single friend, Rachel Woolf, is looking to meet her match, whether he's the tennis pro; or someone else's husband. But even with plenty to gossip about, this season starts out as quietly as any other. Until a body is discovered, face down, off the side of the boardwalk.

The caretaker

a novel
2023
It's 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. It suits his withdrawn personality, and the inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob's wife, Naomi, as well. Sixteen-year-old Naomi Clarke is an outcast in Blowing Rock, an outsider, poor and uneducated, who works as a seasonal maid in the town's most elegant hotel. When Naomi eloped with Jacob a few months after her arrival, the marriage scandalized the community, most of all his wealthy parents, who disinherited him. Shunned by the townsfolk for their differences and equally fearful that Jacob may never come home, Blackburn and Naomi grow closer and closer until a shattering development derails numerous lives.

All the sinners bleed

2023
After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus Crown returns home to Charon County, land of moonshine and cornbread, fist fights and honeysuckle. Seeing his hometown struggling with a bigoted police force inspires him to run for sheriff. He wins, and becomes the first Black sheriff in the history of the county. Then a year to the day after his election, a young Black man is fatally shot by Titus's deputies. Titus pledges to follow the truth wherever it leads. But no one expected he would unearth a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon. Now, Titus must pull off the impossible: stay true to his instincts, prevent outright panic, and investigate a shocking crime in a small town where everyone knows everyone yet secrets flourish. All while also breaking up backroads bar fights and being forced to protect racist Confederate pride marchers. For a Black man wearing a police uniform in the American South, that's no easy feat. But Charon is Titus's home and his heart, and he won't let the darkness overtake it. Even as it threatens to consume him.

The quarry girls

a thriller
2022
Minnesota, 1977. For the teens of one close-knit community, summer means late-night swimming parties at the quarry, the county fair, and venturing into the tunnels beneath the city. But for two best friends, it?s not all fun and games. Heather and Brenda have a secret. Something they saw in the dark. Something they can?t forget. They?ve decided to never tell a soul. But their vow is tested when their friend disappears; the second girl to vanish in a week. And yet the authorities are reluctant to investigate. Heather is terrified that the missing girls are connected to what she and Brenda stumbled upon that night. Desperately searching for answers on her own, she learns that no one in her community is who they seem to be. Not the police, not the boys she met at the quarry, not even her parents. But she can?t stop digging because she knows those girls are in danger. She also knows she?s next.

The dark secrets of Oliveto

2022
The sleepy little town of Oliveto is full of secrets. Magical beings coexist amongst unsuspecting humans. Casting spells and enchantments are the norm amongst certain members of the community. And someone, or something, is abducting members of its fairy community.

Chickens on the loose

2021
Illustrations and easy-to-read, rhyming text follow a flock of chickens that gets loose and runs rampant through a city, causing mischief and mayhem. Includes information about keeping chickens in an urban environment.

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