Meet Elizabeth Hartleigh Compton. She’s the house-rich, money-poor keeper of the Manor—and keeper of the peace. In World War II England, the quiet village of Sitting Marsh is faced with food rations and fear for loved ones. But Elizabeth, lady of the Manor House, stubbornly insists that life must go on. Sitting Marsh residents depend on her to make sure things go smoothly. Which means everything from sorting out gossip to solving the occasional murder... In the thick of the Allied invasion, Elizabeth is sick with worry for Major Earl Monroe. To make matters worse, people and things keep going missing from the manor—namely Martin, the elderly butler, and ladies’ knickers from the washing line. Before Elizabeth can track either down, a man is found shot dead. Few will miss bad-tempered Clyde Morgan, and the police are ready to call it a suicide. But Elizabeth’s not so sure...

Sophie Fields is a little girl tortured by her memories of Damien Smith, a much-loved and respected church elder with a secret lust for the unmentionable. After his misdeeds are covered up by church leaders, she climbs to the roof of her house and jumps to her death, right in front of her shocked brother, Charlie. Twenty years later, detective Harry Fletcher is still haunted by the personal demons associated with the church cover-up. After losing his faith, his wife, and now his partner, Fletcher learns that Charlie Fields has come back to town with one mission: to kill everyone responsible for his sisters death. It is Fletchers job to track and stop the crazed killer. But as it becomes clear who the main targets are, Fletcher finds himself in the midst of a moral quagmire. Although he sees justice in Charlies crusade, the killer seems to be taking out others not responsible for his family's destruction. As Fletcher and his new partner battle each other in a test of ideology and limits of the law, the real demons show up and change everything. In this chilling tale of suspense, revenge, and evil, a police detective wrestles with his moral conscience while attempting to stop a serial killer avenging his sisters death.

You’re invited to the Sweet Nothings trunk show. See what the shop has to offer, taste some wonderful food, catch up with friends, and solve a murder… Emma Taylor is happy to be drawing in customers at her aunt Arabella’s lingerie shop, Sweet Nothings, but replacing the store’s broken window is going to cost a small fortune. Hoping to hoist up their sagging profits, Arabella arranges to have a trunk show at the home of a local socialite who will invite all of her friends and take care of the catering. All Emma and Arabella have to do is show up and show off their wares. Seems simple enough… A gorgeous spread is prepared for the event, including delicious cupcakes topped with edible flowers. But after one of the partygoers takes a bite and winds up dead, the guest list becomes a suspect list. Now Emma must separate facts from idle gossip before the killer gives the cops the slip…

THE ACCLAIMED BOOK, NOW IN PAPERBACK, with a reading group guide and a new afterword by the author. At the height of the Cold War, JFK risked committing the greatest crime in human history: starting a nuclear war. Horrified by the specter of nuclear annihilation, Kennedy gradually turned away from his long-held Cold Warrior beliefs and toward a policy of lasting peace. But to the military and intelligence agencies in the United States, who were committed to winning the Cold War at any cost, Kennedy’s change of heart was a direct threat to their power and influence. Once these dark "Unspeakable" forces recognized that Kennedy’s interests were in direct opposition to their own, they tagged him as a dangerous traitor, plotted his assassination, and orchestrated the subsequent cover-up. Douglass takes readers into the Oval Office during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, along on the strange journey of Lee Harvey Oswald and his shadowy handlers, and to the winding road in Dallas where an ambush awaited the President’s motorcade. As Douglass convincingly documents, at every step along the way these forces of the Unspeakable were present, moving people like pawns on a chessboard to promote a dangerous and deadly agenda.

Elizabeth Hartleigh Compton, lady of the Manor House in the quiet village of Sitting Marsh in World War II England, has a wealth of suspects to choose from when she sets out to investigate the death of a boy-crazy teenager.

Meet Elizabeth Hartleigh Compton. She’s the house-rich, money-poor keeper of the Manor—and keeper of the peace. In WWII England, the quiet village of Sitting Marsh is faced with food rations and fear for loved ones. But Elizabeth Hartleigh Compton, lady of the Manor House, stubbornly insists that life must go on. Sitting Marsh residents depend on Elizabeth to make sure things go smoothly. Which means everything from sorting out gossip to solving the occasional murder. “Dangerous Enemy on the Loose!” read the newspaper headlines. When a German pilot crash-lands and escapes into the nearby woods, locals are in a panic. But Lady Elizabeth caught a good glimpse of the fellow as he parachuted down, and he seemed nothing more than a harmless, terrified young boy. Until a local girl is found murdered the very day he disappears. Coincidence? The constable thinks not. But Elizabeth suspects everyone’s jumping to conclusions. And once again, she’s in the thick of a murderous muddle, combing for clues and searching for answers before more trouble ignites.

Finalist for the 2019 Oklahoma Book Awards, Fiction "The murder investigation allows Loewenstein to probe into the lives of proud people who would never expose their troubles to strangers. People like John Hodge, the town's most respected lawyer, who knocks his wife around, and kindhearted Etha Jennings, who surreptitiously delivers home-cooked meals to the hobo camp outside town because one of the young Civilian Conservation Corps workers reminds her of her dead son. Loewenstein's sensitive treatment of these dark days in the Dust Bowl era offers little humor but a whole lot of compassion." --New York Times Book Review "This striking historical mystery...is brooding and gritty and graced with authenticity." --NPR, A Best Book of 2018 "The Depression and a 240-day-long dry spell drive the desperate townspeople of Vermillion, OK, to hire a rainmaker, but he's murdered, leaving sheriff Temple Jennings to investigate. Loewenstein's terrific historical mystery wears its history lightly and its humanity beautifully. The first in a series, it's a realistic, expertly drawn novel with characters you'll come to love." --Library Journal, A Best Book of 2018 "The plot is compelling, the character development effective and the setting carefully and accurately designed...I have lived in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma; I know about wind and dust...Combining a well created plot with an accurate, albeit imagined, setting and characters that 'speak' clearly off of the page make Death of a Rainmaker a pleasant adventure in reading." --The Oklahoman "Set in an Oklahoma small town during the Great Depression, this launch of a promising new series is as vivid as the stark photographs of Dorothea Lange." --South Florida, One of Oline Cogdill's Best Mystery Novels of 2018 "After a visiting con artist is murdered during a dust storm, a small-town sheriff and his wife pursue justice in 1930s Oklahoma. A vivid evocation of life during the Dust Bowl; you might need a glass of water at hand while reading Loewenstein's novel." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Editor's Pick "Laurie Loewenstein's new mystery novel...expertly evokes the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression...Loewenstein's novel sometimes reads like a combination of a Western and a mystery. But that genre mishmash works." --Washington City Paper "The plot is solid in Death of a Rainmaker, but what makes Loewenstein's novel so outstanding is the cast of characters she has assembled...Death of a Rainmaker is a suburb book, one that sets the reader right down amid some of the hardest times our country has faced, and lets us feel those hopeful farmers' despair as they witness their dreams turning to dust." --Mystery Scene Magazine When a rainmaker is bludgeoned to death in the pitch-blackness of a colossal dust storm, small-town sheriff Temple Jennings shoulders yet another burden in the hard times of the 1930s Dust Bowl. The killing only magnifies Temple's ongoing troubles: a formidable opponent in the upcoming election, the repugnant burden of enforcing farm foreclosures, and his wife's lingering grief over the loss of their eight-year-old son. As the sheriff and his young deputy investigate the murder, their suspicions focus on a teenager, Carmine, serving with the Civilian Conservation Corps. The deputy, himself a former CCCer, struggles with remaining loyal to the corps while pursuing his own aspirations as a lawman. When the investigation closes in on Carmine, Temple's wife, Etha, quickly becomes convinced of his innocence and sets out to prove it. But Etha's own probe soon reveals a darker web of secrets, which imperil Temple's chances of reelection and cause the husband and wife to confront their long-standing differences about the nature of grief.