T. Froemel

His drinking is getting worse by the day, his emotional wounds after a deployment to Afghanistan are as raw as ever, his marriage and career are over, and the only job he can hold down is with the local sheriff’s department. And that’s only because the sheriff is his mother—and she’s overwhelmed with small town Shaky Lake’s dwindling budget and the fallout from the opioid epidemic.

Sometimes what you don’t know can hurt you. In Riley Harper’s case, it’s what she says she can’t remember. Nearly a decade ago, Riley was the suspect in a murder investigation that destroyed her life and drove her into a psychiatric facility. Locked away for years, she was always guilty in the eyes of an unforgiving public. Now, after being released, all she wants is a fresh start, but the effort stalls when she becomes fixated on her new neighbor’s extravagant life. She can’t stop watching Samantha Light. And it’s curiously satisfying.

Energetic and eager to make his mark on what Time Magazine called the next great boom town, Bucky Ontario leaves his Louisiana home and hops a bus to Defiance, Oklahoma, a town not particularly adverse to murders, just the embarrassment of them. While helping his friend, Kindra, search for a ring that once belonged to her dead mother, Bucky is told, "Find the baby, find the ring."