The Hollow Beneath the Pines
Miriam Calder came to Cordelia County chasing a vanishing, a local man who walked into Whitlow Hollow and never came back out. She expected a quiet town, a sympathetic sheriff, and a story she could file by Friday. She didn't expect Sheriff Dorsey to look at her like she was already a problem. She didn't expect the Voss family to seal itself behind a locked gate and a century of silence. And she certainly didn't expect what was hidden in the basement beneath the pines. As Miriam digs into the disappearance, she begins to untangle the Voss lineage through the only witnesses left willing to speak: Elliott Voss's own journals. What she uncovers is a chain of deaths, cover-ups, and confessions stretching back to Phineas Tate, each generation burying the last in a hollow that refuses to stay quiet. With the help of Dr. Iris O'Connell, the stubborn persistence of Bub Carrigan, and the reluctant courage of the remaining Voss descendants, Miriam edges closer to a truth that has cost lives for over a century. But the deeper she goes, the more certain she becomes that whoever, or whatever, has been guarding the hollow's secret knows she is coming. Now Miriam must decide how far she is willing to follow the story into the pines, knowing that some revelations do not simply end a mystery. They end the people who find them.