Pretty Dead Things

Lilian West

A bride-to-be’s discovery of long-lost wedding rings at an estate sale reveals the key to a decades-old cold case in a small town mystery perfect for fans of Louise Penny.

2024. Recently-engaged city girl Cora is new to the small town of Hickory Falls. Still adjusting to the change in pace, she’s delighted when she stumbles upon a quaint estate sale. Drawn in by the knickknacks, she buys a jar of colorful baubles and is surprised to find two rings at the bottom of the jar. When she innocently sets out to find the original owner of the rings, she instead stumbles upon a decades-old mystery.

1953. Clarity Grey should’ve known better than to get involved with a married man, but their connection went too deep to ignore. When he divorces his wife for her, they marry and she gets the family life she’s always dreamed of, with a new stepdaughter and a child of her own. But just as suddenly, her new life slips out of her hands when she simply vanishes, never to be seen or heard of again. Clarity is labeled as flaky and a homewrecker, so nobody in town takes her disappearance seriously--until Cora, seventy years later.

Told in dual timelines, this engrossing novel exposes one family’s secrets and the twisted lies that are hidden in small towns.