Las Animas - Bent County Library District

When professional house-sitter Lila Emerson witnesses a murder/suicide from her current apartment-sitting job, life as she knows it takes a dramatic turn. Suddenly, the woman with no permanent ties finds herself almost wishing for one. Artist Ashton Archer knows his brother isn't capable of violence--against himself or others. He recruits Lila, the only eyewitness, to help him uncover what happened. Ash longs to paint her as intensely as he hungers...

Brought together by a mass shooting at a Texas county fair, children's book author and single mother Elle Portman and high-rolling corporate consultant Calder Hudson, both fueled by revenge, search for a killer while wondering if the attraction growing between them is too painful and complicated to sustain.

"Abandoned by her mother at age seven, Alexandra Winslow took solace in the mystery stories she read with her devoted father--and soon she was writing them herself, slowly graduating to dark, violent, complex crime stories that reflected skill and imagination far beyond her years. After her father's early death, at fourteen Alex is taken in by the nuns of a local convent, where she finds twenty-six mothers to take the place of the one she lost, and...

Sabrina Brooks is a wildly successful bestselling author of gripping thrillers. Unlike her fictional characters, Sabrina lives a quiet life in the Berkshires with her two beloved dogs. But behind this peaceful exterior is a dark, painful past. As a child raised by an emotionally distant father, Sabrina rarely felt love. And as an adult, her marriage twisted into an abusive relationship from which she had to escape. Sabrina channeled that fear into...

A play that deals with the effect that an unexpected, large sum of money has on a poor Black family living on the South Side of Chicago.

In this satisfying page-turner from "the queen of beach reads" (New York Magazine), a Nantucket novelist has one final summer to protect her secrets while her loved ones on earth learn to live without their golden girl. On a perfect June day, Vivian Howe, author of thirteen beach novels and mother of three nearly grown children, is killed in a hit-and-run car accident while jogging near her home on Nantucket. She ascends to the Beyond where she's...

"A "sublimely creepy" psychological thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover (Tarryn Fisher, New York Times bestselling author). Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen...

"From the author of the beloved Ruth Galloway series, a modern gothic mystery for fans of Magpie Murders and The Lake House"-- Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school English teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R.M. Holland, she teaches a course on it every year. But when one of Clare's colleagues and closest friends is found dead, with a line from R.M. Holland's most famous story, "The Stranger," left by her body, Clare is horrified...

A writer discovers the truth about her past in this haunting and multi-layered thriller.

Jewett creates a mosaic of tales and character sketches, all set in the fictional Maine fishing hamlet of Dunnet Landing. The unnamed narrator, an unmarried female writer (like Jewett herself), has come to the town seeking a summer of solitude and work. But sheś drawn to the villagers she meets. Most of them are over sixty, alone, and covering a roiling inner ocean of feeling with a craggy exterior as rocky as the ragged coastline. Entranced by their...