Showing results by author "Laura McHugh" in All Categories

Arrowood is the most ornate and grand of the historical houses that line the Mississippi River in southern Iowa. But the house has a mystery it has never revealed: It’s where Arden Arrowood’s younger twin sisters vanished on her watch 20 years ago - never to be seen again. After the twins’ disappearance, Arden’s parents divorced and the Arrowoods left the big house that had been in their family for generations. And Arden’s own life has fallen apart: She can’t finish her master’s thesis, and a misguided love affair has ended badly.

Sadie Keller is determined to find out how her brother died, even if no one else thinks it’s worth investigating. Untimely deaths are all too common in rural Blackwater, Kansas, where crime and overdoses are on the rise, and the small-town police force is consumed with the recent discovery of a child’s skull in the woods. Sadie is on her own, delving into the dark corners of a life her brother kept hidden and unearthing more questions than answers.

As kids, Amelia and Kylee were found unharmed in their upstairs bedroom the night their teenage cousin Grace, who was babysitting them, vanished from the farmhouse in Beaumont, Missouri, leaving blood all over the kitchen. Scrappy and driven, Grace, the first in their family to go to college instead of getting married and working at the meatpacking plant, had been on the verge of escaping their dead-end town. Her disappearance is a warning to any local girl who dared hope for better.

The town of Henbane sits deep in the Ozark Mountains. Folks there still whisper about Lucy Dane’s mother, a bewitching stranger who appeared long enough to marry Carl Dane and then vanished when Lucy was just a child. Now on the brink of adulthood, Lucy experiences another loss when her friend Cheri disappears and is then found murdered, her body placed on display for all to see. Lucy’s family has deep roots in the Ozarks, part of a community that is fiercely protective of its own.

Seventeen-year-old Sarabeth has become increasingly rebellious since her parents found God and moved their family to a remote Arkansas farmstead where she’s forced to wear long dresses, follow strict rules, and grow her hair down to her waist. She’s all but given up on escaping the farm when a masked man appears one stifling summer morning and snatches her out of the cornfield. A week after her abduction, she’s found alongside a highway in a bloodstained dress - alive. Five years later, Sarabeth is struggling to keep her past buried when Investigator Nick Farrow calls.

Arrowood is the grandest of historical houses lining the Mississippi. It has its own stories and ghostly presence: it's where two small twin girls were abducted 10 years ago.... Now Arden has returned to her childhood home determined to establish what really happened to her sisters that traumatic summer. But the house and the surrounding town hold their secrets close - and the truth, when Arden finds it, is more devastating than she ever could have imagined.

People still whisper about Lucy Dane’s mother, who vanished years ago from the town of Henbane, deep in the Ozark mountains. When one of Lucy’s friends is found murdered, Lucy feels haunted by the two lost women: by the mother she never knew and the friend she couldn’t protect. But her search for answers, in a place where secrets are easily concealed, leads her to a chilling discovery.

Ohne einen Abschluss und mit einem Berg an Problemen kehrt die 25-jährige Arden in ihre Heimat zurück, um ihr Erbe anzutreten - die alte Villa Arrowood. Der geschichtsträchtige Familiensitz am Mississippi ist zum Sinnbild ihrer tiefsitzenden Schuld geworden: Vor 17 Jahren verschwanden ihre beiden Schwestern auf mysteriöse Weise aus dem Garten des Hauses.