The Lure

Riding a tide of success after helping his boyfriend, Lyle, save their neighborhood of Tinker Creek from predatory developers, reporter Manny Porter throws himself into his career and community activism. The last thing he expects is to discover the body of prominent research scientist Phillip Nikolaidis during a laboratory tour. Murder can strike anywhere, and all the evidence is pointing toward Tristan DeJesus, Manny’s nineteen-year-old mentee.

Manny only has the holiday season to overcome jealous colleagues, an angry corporation, and a skeptical publisher to discover who killed Nikolaidis before the judicial system condemns an innocent man to lethal injection.

Phoenix, May 6, 1946

At close to midnight in the Union Station baggage room, the air is hot, still, and thick. The eleven forty-five Golden State Limited to Los Angeles is approaching rapidly when the baggage handler, Alfred Brody, notices a stray hound dog sniffing around one of the steamer trunks. The horrific discovery of a body inside the trunk can mean only one thing: there’s a murderer among them.

The young woman was certainly murdered, but who did it, and why? Suspects and motives abound as Private Detective Mason Adler investigates. He soon realizes that nothing, and no one, are what they seem to be as he races to uncover the truth and bring the real murderer to justice without becoming the next victim.

It’s 1946, and on a hot spring night in Phoenix, Arizona, things are only beginning to heat up at the Monte Vista Road home of flamboyant decorator Walter Waverly Wingate.

Private detective Mason T. Adler isn’t thrilled to be turning fifty, and the party Walter throws him makes him even more uncomfortable. Walter has arranged a special birthday present for Mason: a private hour with the handsome, young Henry Bowtrickle in Walter’s upstairs bedroom. But the night turns deadly when his birthday gift turns up murdered. The room was locked, no way in or out, and only Henry and Mason were inside.

Mason Adler is on the case, but he is also a suspect, along with the other assorted party guests who were all downstairs at the time of the stabbing. Or were they?

Liberty Center High School’s football team has a long history of success, and the dying small town has nothing else to cling to. But when Lance, the star quarterback, is found dead, Alex Wheeler becomes the prime suspect in his best friend’s murder. Alex thought he was the only one who shared Lance’s biggest secret—but someone else found out. How well did Alex really know Lance, and what else did he keep hidden?

To prove his innocence and figure out what really happened to Lance that last night, Alex starts connecting the dots and finds that everything leads back to the recent death of a cheerleader who may have been sexually assaulted at a team party. Did online bullying drive her to suicide? Or was she murdered?

Alex must come to terms with his own secrets and soon finds his future may be at risk, as he gets closer and closer to the horrifying truth about how far Liberty Center will go to protect their own.

Content advisory: This work contains references to sexual assault.

When Ray O’Brien volunteers to raft the Grand Canyon with a research team, the last thing he expects is murder. After a few days on a river closed to the public, one of the volunteers is found struck dead on a secluded beach. Sixty wilderness miles from contact with other people, the group must carry on in total isolation, sure someone committed murder and may kill again. 

Despite the terrible timing, Ray falls for Duke, the group’s handsome ranger, who seems to return the attraction. Ray and Duke join forces with Jenny Bridger, the group leader, to solve the mystery. Jenny must act with confidence and decisiveness but meets puzzling resistance from the volunteers. Ensuring safe passage for all will mean overcoming the group’s misgivings and slaying Jenny’s own demons, but her compassion for the victim’s widow may lead them all astray.

The age-old Canyon becomes more and more ominous as the group fights to survive alone in nature and uncover a murderer among them.

Fresh Grave in Grand Canyon contains a racial slur by a minor character.

After landing in the hospital after a bad breakup and an ensuing drug-and-alcohol binge, college student Jake Chapman is given two options: rehab, or spend the summer at his dying grandmother’s decaying home in rural Alabama. The choice is obvious. 

His grandmother’s land has been in Jake’s family since the early nineteenth century; the ruins of the old plantation house are a short walk through the woods behind her home. An archaeological team is excavating the ruins, looking for evidence to prove an old family legend—and there’s a meth lab just over the ridge. 

Once Jake is there, he begins having strange experiences—flashes of memory, inexplicable emotions—that he can’t explain, and he keeps seeing something strange out in the woods. As he explores his family history, he uncovers some dark secrets someone—or something—is willing to kill to keep hidden.

Mystery Scene raves: "History looms over Herren’s superior Southern gothic thriller, which sensitively explores the region’s legacy of racism and homophobia. Jake’s wonderfully vulnerable narration is full of foreboding, the supernatural elements are expertly incorporated, and a flurry of stunning reveals catapults the thoughtful, multilayered plot to a devastating yet hopeful conclusion."