Tallman's Valley Detectives

Winner, Earphones Award 2020 Five long-missing children are about to be returned. It was summer in the mountains when five small children vanished from their nursery school picnic. The heat was stifling that day, the tinkle of an ice-cream van in the air.... Three-and-a-half years later, in the dead of winter, the children are returned to their families...one by one. All except for Ivy - the granddaughter of Homicide Detective Kate Wakeland. The other four children say Ivy is dead. Speculation grows that the mysterious abductor is enacting a cruel revenge plot due to a murderer that Kate put in jail years before. Kate isn't sure what to believe. But one thing is certain - she's about to begin the battle of her life. When the children were first stolen, she was prevented from investigating the case. But now, Kate will be relentless in uncovering the identity of the abductor and discovering what happened to Ivy.

A decade ago, The Lullaby Man preyed upon young girls in Tallman's Valley. He stole into their lives, whispered in their ears, spoke of love. Abby Wakeland was fourteen then. Now twenty-four, she's found the courage to tell her mother--Senior Detective Kate Wakeland--about what happened. The Lullaby Man was her teacher. What Abby reveals next will lead Kate down dark, twisting tunnels of discoveries that will blow this small town apart.

Senior Detective Kate Wakeland senses dark undercurrents in her beloved small town, Tallman's Valley. She's glimpsed a silent town lying beneath the valley " a place where the streets and landscapes are the same, but where daylight never reaches. But as Kate begins to investigate the silent town, a shocking multiple shooting occurs on the mountain that bookends the valley, Witness Mountain. Kate is forced to suspend all else and focus on the case at hand. How did a frail, elderly man manage to shoot his family? Did he have the help of his grandson, a teenage boy who can't account for his whereabouts that morning? The height of a devastating fire season hinders Kate at every turn. Through the smoky veil hanging in the valley, Kate begins to suspect a connection between the Witness Mountain shootings and the silent town. But the dangers are far greater than Kate ever imagined. There are people who will kill to conceal what they know and what they've done.