After years away Emma is forced to return to her Black Mountain home to bury her big brother, Police Chief Early Shaw. While home, Emma finds the circumstances of his death a mystery and starts to ask questions. Warned to mind her own business by strangers, friends, and family alike, Emma stubbornly moves forward with her investigation. Emma is assisted in her probe by her ancestral gift of aura reading. Depending on the color of the aura, Emma can tell if a person is lying. Will her gift be enough to prove Early's death was no accident? Will it be enough to prove it was Murder on Black Mountain?
Ex-mob enforcer Isaiah Coledrige has hung out a shingle as a private eye in New York's Hudson Valley, and in his newest case, a seemingly simple murder investigation leads him to the most terrifying enemy he has ever faced When a small-time criminal named Harold Lee turns up in the Ashokan reservoir--sans a heartbeat, head, or hands--the local mafia capo hires Isaiah Coleridge to look into the matter. The mob likes crime, but only the crime it controls . . . and as it turns out, Lee is the second independent contractor to meet a bad end on the business side of a serrated knife. One such death can be overlooked. Two makes a man wonder. A guy in Harold Lee's business would make his fair share of enemies, and it seems a likely case of pure revenge. But as Coledrige turns over more stones, he finds himself dragged into something deeper and more insidious than he could have imagined, in a labyrinthine case spanning decades. At the center are an heiress moonlighting as a cabaret dancer, a powerful corporation with high-placed connections, and a serial killer who may have been honing his skills since the Vietnam War. . . A twisty, action-packed follow-up to the acclaimed Blood Standard, Black Mountain cements Laird Barron as an inventive and remarkable voice in crime fiction.
ONCE A PERSON LEAVES THE MOUNTAIN, THEY NEVER COME BACK, NOT REALLY. THEY’RE LOST FOREVER. Nellie Clay married Hobbs Pritchard without even noticing he was a spell conjured into a man, a walking, talking ghost story. But her mama knew. She saw it in her tea leaves: death. Folks told Nellie to get off the mountain while she could, to go back home before it was too late. Hobbs wasn’t nothing but trouble. He’d even killed a man. No telling what else. That mountain was haunted, and soon enough, Nellie would feel it too. One way or another, Hobbs would get what was coming to him. The ghosts would see to that. . . . Told in the stunning voices of five women whose lives are inextricably bound when a murder takes place in rural Depression-era North Carolina, Ann Hite’s unforgettable debut spans generations and conjures the best of Southern folk-lore—mystery, spirits, hoodoo, and the incomparable beauty of the Appalachian landscape.
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.
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.
When someone breaks into the Coal County Museum and only steals a black-and-white class photo, McQuede realizes it is tied in to the body unearthed under the recently demolished school.
Chup begged the Lady Charmian; then he turned and knelt down slowly, face toward the cliff. Charmian was at his right, holding the long bade point down at the ground. He said, “Now, about this little surgery I need … I suppose a single stroke would be too much to ask for. But more than two or three should not be needed, the blade is very heavy and quite sharp.” Without turning to see her face he added, “You are the most beautiful, and most desirable by far, of all the women I have ever known.” From the corner of his eye he saw Charmian losing her hesitation, gathering resolve, straightening her thin wrists in a tight two-handed grip to lift the weapon’s weight. Chup studied the details of the rock wall before him He had knelt down facing this way so that his hed would not roll over— Enough of that. He was Chup. He would not even close his eyes. The Demon Lord Zapranoth will devour you, if the Beast Lord Draffut cannot save you.
