Small Town Crime

When retired homicide detective Thomas Prescott learns he’s inherited a 250-acre farm in Tarrin, Missouri (pop. 2,100), he can’t get there fast enough. As he slowly acclimates to small-town living, he hears rumblings about a horrific crime in the town’s past. Four years earlier, a recently fired employee of the local grocery store enacted his revenge, shooting and killing the owner of the store, plus four customers, then turning the gun on himself. The crime appears to have been solved, but Prescott has his doubts.

Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.

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.

Mustique is in a state of breathless calm as tropical storm Cristobal edges towards it across the Atlantic. Most villa owners have escaped the island but a few young socialites remain, unwilling to let summer's partying end. American heiress Amanda Fortini is one such thrill-seeker - until she heads out for a morning swim and doesn't return.

Full-cast radio adaptations of two crime novels featuring Scotland Yard Detective, John Appleby. A Scottish novelist and academic, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, who published crime fiction under his pseudonym Michael Innes, was well-known for his detective creation DI John Appleby. This BBC...

Wesley Crocker is accused of the murder of young Maria Ibarra, who was found near the "camping place" of the drifter. Crocker's account of the previous night leads Undersheriff Bill Gastner to more troubling questions.

Parker Hayes has finally found her rhythm at Catch You Latte, her cozy cafe known for frothy lattes and mouthwatering desserts. But when a glitzy engagement party ends in murder, Parker's peaceful routine gets a sprinkle of chaos. The victim has ties to Parker's assistant, Hazel, pulling Parker into an investigation she'd rather avoid. As she digs deeper, she uncovers whispers of shady dealings and a scheme that could rock Magnolia Grove's picture-perfect reputation.

Hurricane Harvey lashed North Padre Island National Seashore exposing tons of silver coins lost since three Spanish Galleons sank in 1554. News about the coins, located in a Park Service archaeological protection area, goes viral on internet treasure hunting sites.

1971—Hal is seventeen, with dreams of escaping from Moorabool to a life in the city. But right now he's on a good behavior bond and stuck in a job he hates, paying off the car he ‘borrowed' and crashed. Hal's packing-room job makes him a target for workplace bullies and the friendship of the older, more worldly Christine is all that makes each day bearable. So when she doesn't turn up for work, he's on the alert. So is Sergeant Mick Goodenough. But he already knows what's happened to Christine: the same thing that happened to the newly elected deputy mayor.

Hal and his little brother have just come to live in Moorabool. They're exploring the creek near their new home when they find the body of a dog. Not just dead, but killed. Not just killed, but horribly maimed. Constable Mick Goodenough, recently demoted from his big-city job as a detective, is also new in town—and one of his dogs has gone missing. Like other pets around the town. He knows what it means when someone tortures animals to death. They're practicing. When Hal's mother starts getting late-night phone calls, Goodenough, alone among the Moorabool cops, takes her seriously.

Monreith, Massachusetts, was once a small community of whalers and farmers. These days it’s a well-to-do town filled with commuters drawn to its rugged coastline and country roads. A peaceful, predictable place—until popular restaurateur Laurel Thibodeau is found brutally murdered in her own home. Suspicion naturally falls on Laurel’s husband, Simon, who had gambling debts that only her life insurance policy could fix. But there are other rumors too. Among the group of six friends gathered for Alice Stone’s fortieth birthday, theories abound concerning Laurel’s death.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The Christie sisters and their bookshop cat, Agatha, flirt with coldhearted crime when bookish matchmaking turns into a date with death. Sisters Ellie and Meg Christie share a love of books, reading, and their new roles as co-caretakers of the Book Chalet, their...

Winter in Magnolia Grove means snowy streets, local cheer, and… a feud so frosty it could rival the weather. When a Polar Plunge at the annual Frost Fest ends in murder, suspicion falls on the ambitious (and some might say, cutthroat) owner of Feta & Friends.

Barbara McClymont walks the cane fields searching for Janet, her sixteen-year-old daughter, who has been missing for weeks. The police have no leads. The people of Quala are divided by dread and distrust. But the sugar crush is underway and the cane must be burned. Meanwhile, children dream of a malevolent presence, a schoolteacher yearns to escape, and history keeps returning to remind Quala that the past is always present.

When Charlotte discovers a dead body her first day in the cozy town of Sweetwater Falls, she worries she may have made the wrong choice, moving from the big city to a small town. She was hoping for a family feel and a fresh start, not a shakedown from local law enforcement and an aunt who keeps disappearing right when danger nears.

BODY IN THE WALL This place had been her home Now it was a crime scene The sooner Special Agent Macy Stark can sell her childhood home, the sooner she can escape her small town and shameful past—until she discovers a body in the wall and her childhood nightmares return. Handsome local Sheriff...

In a sleepy North Carolina textile town, rookie reporter Ronald Truluck is bored with writing about lawn mower thefts when he gets a tip—city councilman Lamont Moody got drunk, drove his Bonneville off the road, and ripped up somebody’s front yard. But the police let him walk away. Recognizing a cover-up when he sees it, Ronald vows to break Lamontgate and make his bones as a serious journalist. It won’t be easy. Ronald is a long-haired pothead who’s loosey-goosey with the facts. His paper, The Eagle, runs pet-of-the-week photos on the front page, not corruption stories.

Hallie, a young and successful fashion blogger, recently married to a station owner, is having trouble adjusting to the flies, dust, snakes and isolation in the Flinders Ranges. Left alone with her baby while her husband, Alex is often out on long bore runs during the day, she also has to contend with her father-in-law, Rod, who insists on making himself at home in their house. Alex is out on a bore run, and as Hallie and their daughter, Ruby, watch him in real time on the camera from the homestead, Alex suddenly disappears from view. He is found later, dead at the bottom of a windmill.

Lyndon B. Johnson is president, Beatlemania is in overdrive, and gasoline costs 30 cents a gallon when Ned Parker retires as constable in Center Springs, Texas. But his plan to live a quiet life as a cotton farmer is torpedoed. A phone call leads Ned to a body in the Red River and into the urgent investigation headed by his nephew, the newly elected constable Cody Parker. Together they work to head off a multistate killing spree that sets northeast Texas on fire.

America’s justice system is severely restricted by bulleted definitions of awful crimes. Bad people have averted guilty pleas when the prosecution can prove all but one measly bullet point in the law. Not anymore. When bodies are recovered from shallow graves in an open field of one small town, local police think they know exactly who’s carrying out these heinous crimes, but their evidence is merely circumstantial. John Wolfe, a military veteran with a disturbing past, is assigned the case and watching the innkeeper's every move. Is he watching the right man?