A retired detective reluctantly helps a friend investigate a homicideBill O'Shea is living the dream. After a career of fighting crime in the big city, Bill buys a condo in the bucolic mountain resort community of Wintergreen, Virginia. When he meets his attractive new neighbor, Bill knows his retirement is off to a great start.But then a local pedestrian is killed in a hit-and-run accident, and the short-staffed community police department asks Bill to help out. With no witnesses and no vehicle, it's going to be a real challenge. Plus, the snooty groundhog and irrepressible bear are certainly no help. When a break in the case proves a connection between the car and the victim, Bill goes from no suspects to too many.Is it the victim's wife--whose husband cheated on her for many years--or the betrayed business partner? Maybe it's the victim's mistress or the friend who loaned him money. It could even be a random hiker passing through on the nearby Appalachian Trail.Join Bill O'Shea as he tries to solve this murder while dodging zany wildlife and courting a new love interest in the beautiful mountaintop resort of Wintergreen, Virginia.

One August night in 1931, on a secluded mountain ridge overlooking Birmingham, Alabama, three young white women were brutally attacked. The sole survivor, Nell Williams, age eighteen, said a black man had held the women captive for four hours before shooting them and disappearing into the woods. That same night, a reign of terror was unleashed on Birmingham's black community: black businesses were set ablaze, posses of armed white men roamed the streets, and dozens of black men were arrested in the largest manhunt in Jefferson County history. Weeks later, Nell identified Willie Peterson as the attacker who killed her sister Augusta and their friend Jennie Wood. With the exception of being black, Peterson bore little resemblance to the description Nell gave the police. An all-white jury convicted Peterson of murder and sentenced him to death. In Murder on Shades Mountain Melanie S. Morrison tells the gripping and tragic story of the attack and its aftermath—events that shook Birmingham to its core. Having first heard the story from her father—who dated Nell's youngest sister when he was a teenager—Morrison scoured the historical archives and documented the black-led campaigns that sought to overturn Peterson's unjust conviction, spearheaded by the NAACP and the Communist Party. The travesty of justice suffered by Peterson reveals how the judicial system could function as a lynch mob in the Jim Crow South. Murder on Shades Mountain also sheds new light on the struggle for justice in Depression-era Birmingham. This riveting narrative is a testament to the courageous predecessors of present-day movements that demand an end to racial profiling, police brutality, and the criminalization of black men.

Getaway With Murder is the first in a cozy series from Diane Kelly set in a lodge in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where secrets hide behind every hill. As if hitting the half-century mark wasn’t enough, Misty Murphy celebrated her landmark birthday by amicably ending her marriage and investing her settlement in a dilapidated mountain lodge at the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains. With the old inn teetering on both a bluff and bankruptcy, she must have lost her ever-loving mind. Luckily, handyman Rocky Crowder has a knack for rehabbing virtual ruins and for doing it on a dime, and to Misty’s delight, the lodge is fully booked on opening night, every room filled with flexible folks who’d slipped into spandex and ascended the peak for a yoga retreat with plans to namastay for a full week. Misty and her guests are feeling zen—at least until the yoga instructor is found dead. With a killer on the loose and the lodge’s reputation hanging in the balance, Misty must put her detective-skills to the test. Only one thing is as clear as a sunny mountain morning—she must solve the crime before the lodge ends up, once again, on the brink.

Charged with murdering her husband in 1879, Margaret Meierhofer became the last woman executed by the state of New Jersey. Murder on the Mountain considers all sides of this fascinating and mysterious true crime story, investigating how the case's sensational details about domestic violence and female sexuality gripped the nation.

Based on a true story--one of Idaho's strangest murders (1917). Frieda lives by the laws of the wilderness in primitive isolation with her husband--until she finds something more important than raw survival. Suspense intensifies to the shocking conclusion, then resolves in deliverance. Set on the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. "This is one of those rare gems... a small but powerful work. It captures the roughness of life and the people, and the awesome land in which they struggled... The writing is finely balanced, the tale both universal and yet specific to its time and place... up there with Conrad Richter's Sea of Grass." -Persia Woolley, author of The Guinevere Trilogy

"This is the true story of the murder of Artemio Bruni, a peasant farmer in the mountains of Casentino, north-eastern Tuscany, in the winter of 1907. Artemio was my husband's great-grandfather. "For reasons not understood by my husband's family, Grandpa Artemio's death was never investigated. It was not reported to the police, nor did Bruna Bruni, Artemio's wife, ever demand justice. How could that be possible, I asked my mother-in-law - was it because of the mafia? 'No, no, you don't understand,' she answered. 'Things were different in the mountains one hundred years ago. Grandpa and Grandma were poor farmers, no one could have cared less about them. Grandpa was a nobody and life was cheap in Tuscany then.'" When Australian author and journalist Lisa Clifford moved to Florence to be with her Italian husband, an unsolved murder in his family became part of her life. The more Lisa found out about it, the more intrigued she became - so much so that she was driven to investigate the tragic events of a century ago. Death in the Mountains is Lisa's brilliant recreation of the life and death of Artemio Bruni, and an evocation of the world of the Tuscan mountains in the early 20th century. It is both a murder mystery and a beautifully observed picture of a lost Italy.

In 1929, in a remote county of the Arkansas Ozarks, the gruesome murder of harmonica-playing drifter Connie Franklin and the brutal rape of his teenaged fiancée captured the attention of a nation on the cusp of the Great Depression. National press from coast to coast ran stories of the sensational exploits of night-riding moonshiners, powerful "Barons of the Hills," and a world of feudal oppression in the isolation of the rugged Ozarks. The ensuing arrest of five local men for both crimes and the confusion and superstition surrounding the trial and conviction gave Stone County a dubious and short-lived notoriety. Closely examining how the story and its regional setting were interpreted by the media, Brooks Blevins recounts the gripping events of the murder investigation and trial, where a man claiming to be the murder victim--the "Ghost" of the Ozarks--appeared to testify. Local conditions in Stone County, which had no electricity and only one long-distance telephone line, frustrated the dozen or more reporters who found their way to the rural Ozarks, and the developments following the arrests often prompted reporters' caricatures of the region: accusations of imposture and insanity, revelations of hidden pasts and assumed names, and threats of widespread violence. Locating the past squarely within the major currents of American history, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South paints a convincing backdrop to a story that, more than 80 years later, remains riddled with mystery.

The first novel in the clever and fast-paced Sean Stranahan Mystery Series. When a fishing guide reels in the body of a young man on the Madison, the Holy Grail of Montana trout rivers, Sheriff Martha Ettinger suspects foul play. It's not just the stick jammed into the man's eye that draws her attention; it's the Royal Wulff trout fly stuck in his bloated lower lip. Following her instincts, Ettinger soon finds herself crossing paths with Montana newcomer Sean Stranahan. Fly fisher, painter, and has-been private detective, Stranahan left a failed marriage and lackluster career to drive to Montana, where he lives in an art studio decorated with fly-tying feathers and mouse droppings. With more luck catching fish than clients, Stranahan is completely captivated when Southern siren Velvet Lafayette walks into his life, intent on hiring his services to find her missing brother. The clues lead Stranahan and Ettinger back to Montana's Big Business: fly fishing. Where there's money, there's bound to be crime.

"Murder at the Mill by M. B. Shaw is a great sweeping adventure. Ideal for holiday reading." —M. C. Beaton, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author "A rich, mystery debut" —Kirkus Starred Review A picture hides a thousand lies... And only Iris Grey can uncover the truth. Iris Grey rents a quaint cottage in a picture-perfect Hampshire village, looking to escape from her crumbling marriage. She is drawn to the neighboring Wetherby family, and is commissioned to paint a portrait of Dominic Wetherby, a celebrated crime writer. At the Wetherby's Christmas Eve party, the mulled wine is in full flow - but so are tensions and rivalries among the guests. On Christmas Day, the youngest member of the Wetherby family, Lorcan, finds a body in the water. A tragic accident? Or a deadly crime? With the snow falling, Iris enters a world of village gossip, romantic intrigue, buried secrets, and murder.

A suspicious death casts a dark cloud over a small community south of the Black Mountains... White Monk Abbey is a local landmark and its resident patriarch, Caradoc Mansell, a foreboding presence. He runs his household and family as if he is still in the army. And he's been known for rubbing people up the wrong way. So, when he is found murdered, the challenge Chief Inspector Matt Lambert of the Newport police faces is that many people had a powerful grudge or good reason to want him dead. And when it is discovered that Caradoc had children from dalliances in his youth, his family also fall under suspicion - their substantial inheritance having been put in doubt. With so many suspects and little evidence, DCI Lambert finds it difficult to progress the investigation. The family go to ground, so he draws on the advice of his former boss, ex-detective Fabia Havard. Knowing the family, Havard helps Lambert establish motive and opportunity. But will their fractious relationship, the result of repressed feelings for one another, get in the way of finding the killer? MURDER AT THE OLD ABBEY is the second book by Pippa McCathie to feature Matt Lambert and Fabia Havard. If you enjoy it, be sure to check out the best-selling MURDER IN THE VALLEYS, which is available in paperback, audiobook and FREE with Kindle Unlimited.