Sarah M. Stephens

If it hadn’t been for the disappearance of local writer Alice Hawkins, Detective Milo Frank’s secrets might have stayed buried alongside that body in the woods that line Highway 141 in Tallulah Falls. A body buried just two months after a young woman who claimed her name was Sam Beck showed up at the police station with a flimsy story and a bone to pick. She was convinced recently deceased state prisoner Walter Thompson was innocent—that he didn’t kill Laura Summers all those years ago. Maybe Sam figured out who did. Or, maybe she just stirred up too many old mistakes and hard feelings. Either way, her investigation landed her in a shallow grave. And she and Laura, and even Walter, would have stayed buried if it hadn’t been for Alice Hawkins. It turns out Alice was writing a book about Sam’s disappearance, and now that she’s gone missing herself, Detective Frank needs to find Alice and her manuscript before anyone else. He’s got to make sure Alice doesn’t know too much about Sam, or the truth about Walter Thompson. Trouble is, the girl who called herself Sam wasn't Sam at all, and while Detective Frank's been hunting Alice, someone else has been watching.

Amy Gibbons is friendless, unemployed and stuck in an unhappy marriage to a man who moved them across the country for his job at international candy conglomerate, Spry Industries. So, when a disgruntled Spry employee tells her the company is using forced labor on its cacao farms in Western Africa not far from where Amy’s brother died two years earlier, and suggests they vandalize a chocolate shipment in protest, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. That is, until they discover a shipping container with some migrant workers trapped inside and Amy accidentally kills a security guard. Riddled with guilt, Amy sets out to surreptitiously help the survivors. When she learns Spry’s founder is calling in favors to have them deported, she is furious. Then, when she realizes the company had something to do with her brother’s death and her husband knew and did nothing, she decides to send a powerful message. She hatches a scheme to set off an explosive at a meeting of the company founder, a group of dark money billionaires, and her own husband.

Kate, Mona, Stella, and Jocelyn are ordinary women with an extraordinary side hustle as international thieves specializing in the recovery of heirloom jewelry and small antiquities for high paying clientele. All is going well until someone murders Jocelyn in her home in the DC suburbs while Kate, Mona, and Stella are out on a job. Someone, the women learn, who had been blackmailing Jocelyn. The three women set out to find the killer before the murder investigation uncovers their own crimes or the killer takes out the rest of them. Instead, they find out each of them has been keeping secrets, especially Jocelyn. As betrayals are revealed, the group splinters and the women’s personal lives begin to spin out of control. It isn’t until they’re thrown back together by a last minute assignment to steal a two-hundred year old clock that they discover the killer is closer than they ever realized. Time is running out, and they’ll have to work together if they want to get justice for their friend, avoid a jail sentence, and stay alive.