“Breakneck pace and solid atmosphere are the hallmarks here.” —AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION When a local schoolteacher disappears from rural West Wheeling, acting sheriff Homer Deters investigates. Before long he's got three more missing persons, two unidentified bodies, a car theft, a twenty-three-vehicle pile-up in the center of town, a missing tiger, and a squad of agitated ATF agents to deal with. With no help from the Feds, Homer turns to his buddy, Rye Willis, and West Wheeling's eccentric postmistress, Nina Ross, to locate the missing, identify the bodies, and bring a murderer to justice. Packed with regional charm and Deters’ wit, Death in West Wheeling shows how wild one case can get.

Sheriff Homer Deters returns in the “delightful” sequel to Death in West Wheeling from the award-winning author of the Caleb and Thinnes mysteries (Publishers Weekly). When Sheriff Homer Deters’ proposal to his sweetheart is interrupted by the report of a body in a ditch, he discovers the corpse is skeletal and half the town has trampled through the scene. Before the investigation gains traction, someone turns a truckload of actual mustangs loose in the Truck Stop parking lot. And when the truck driver is subsequently murdered, Homer has a real whodunit on his hands. Complaints about rats and transients, jackasses of the two and four-legged variety, and a series of hijackings interrupt both investigations. While Homer tries to sort things out, a local farmer is murdered and dumped in another ditch. With help from the State Police and plenty of assistance from his sweetheart, deputy, and adopted son, the West Wheeling Sheriff manages to survive an Indian uprising, West Wheeling’s Oktoberfest, and Sadie Hawkins Day. He just has to solve the murders while he’s at it. Praise for Death in West Wheeling “Dymmoch pushes into Joan Hess territory with this rollicking tale of murder, moonshine and madcap law enforcement . . . Dymmoch handles this farcical crime wave with down-home warmth and humor.”—Kirkus Reviews “Homer keeps his cool, handily solving murders and disappearances. Breakneck pace and solid atmosphere are the hallmarks here.”—Booklist

A New York Times Critics’ Top Ten Book of the Year * 2021 Edgar Award Winner Best Fact Crime * A Lit Hub Best Book of The Year From a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a “powerful,” (The New York Times) urgent, and heartbreaking account of the corporate greed that pumped millions of pain pills into small Appalachian towns, decimating communities. In a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, 12 million opioid pain pills were distributed in just three years to a town with a population of 382 people. One woman, after losing her brother to overdose, was desperate for justice. Debbie Preece’s fight for accountability for her brother’s death took her well beyond the Sav-Rite Pharmacy in coal country, ultimately leading to three of the biggest drug wholesalers in the country. She was joined by a crusading lawyer and by local journalist, Eric Eyre, who uncovered a massive opioid pill-dumping scandal that shook the foundation of America’s largest drug companies—and won him a Pulitzer Prize. Part Erin Brockovich, part Spotlight, Death in Mud Lick details the clandestine meetings with whistleblowers; a court fight to unseal filings that the drug distributors tried to keep hidden, a push to secure the DEA pill-shipment data, and the fallout after Eyre’s local paper, the Gazette-Mail, the smallest newspaper ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, broke the story. Eyre follows the opioid shipments into individual counties, pharmacies, and homes in West Virginia and explains how thousands of Appalachians got hooked on prescription drugs—resulting in the highest overdose rates in the country. But despite the tragedy, there is also hope as citizens banded together to create positive change—and won. “A product of one reporter’s sustained outrage [and] a searing spotlight on the scope and human cost of corruption and negligence” (The Washington Post) Eric Eyre’s intimate portrayal of a national public health crisis illuminates the shocking pattern of corporate greed and its repercussions for the citizens of West Virginia—and the nation—to this day.