A year ago, a hit-and-run nearly killed Celeste Cleary. Instead, it left her with a chilling gift: the ability to see the dead. She uses her new power to unravel the mysteries behind the missing and murdered. But now it's time for her to return home to West Virginia, where her own life began, and where her mother abandoned her family decades before. Celeste is about to confront her darkest fears. And some of them might lead her right to the truth about her own past—a truth buried deep, waiting to be unearthed.

It’s the day of his ex-wife’s wedding when Dan makes the winding mountain journey to a remote cabin for an escape from the life that another man has stepped into. Less than 48 hours into his reprieve, the forest tranquility is shattered when he looks through a telescope and witnesses the violent abduction of a young woman. Dan springs into action, but there’s no evidence of an abduction nor reports of a missing woman. That is, until Dan sees the missing person’s poster for Ivy Trent.

In their freshman year at Husher University, inseparable friends Teagan and Harley embark on a new chapter of their lives. The excitement takes a chilling turn when Harley mysteriously disappears during rush week, leaving Teagan desperate to find her. Teagan's relentless pursuit of the truth leads her into the depths of a malevolent mystery, unearthing the disturbing secrets of other missing girls from Husher University.

On a sunny August morning in 1935, 13-year-old Sophia Gray finds her friend Rosemary wandering in the woods. Rosemary’s yellow dress is tattered and her eyes are vacant and glassy. She beckons to Sophia, desperate to show her something. In an abandoned cabin, beneath a tattered blanket, Sophia discovers Rosemary’s body. It was not Rosemary who led her there, but Rosemary’s ghost. Twenty years later, Sophia finds herself trapped in the sprawling Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane, in the hands of a malevolent doctor who preys on patients who exhibit paranormal abilities.

Emmie's spring break just started. Her idyllic getaway by the ocean is everything she dreamed of. Solitude. Friends. Sunshine. A chance to get away from her psychic past. But things take a chilling turn when she’s confronted by the ghost of a murdered girl. As the restless spirit haunts her every step, Emmie soon realizes that delving into the past is attracting unwelcome attention. A mysterious presence stalks her, their intentions sinister and unknown. The darkness within Shine House is suffocating, and Emmie is holding the last candle for the family that was brutally slain there.

Siblings Michael and Ellery Lisbon are desperate for a fresh start. Reeling after a series of misfortunes, the pair settle down in the quiet town of Plum Hollow in the hopes of kick-starting their stalled lives. The house they move into is unbelievably affordable—a seeming gem in a ferociously competitive market. But it was in this house that, two years prior, a family was savagely butchered. Despised by their neighbors, the siblings are left to grapple with the grisly reality of the house's past—and with the possibility that the evil behind the slayings is still present.

When Jenine finds an abandoned polaroid camera, she playfully snaps a photo without a second thought. But there's something wrong with the image: a ghostly figure stands in the background, watching her. Fixated on her. Moving one step closer with every picture she takes.

Kylie Macklin is eager to live a normal life. Freshly moved from Florida to Alabama and finally in remission from cancer, the optimistic nine-year-old is used to dodging her overprotective mom’s warnings. So when a new playmate invites her to hang out, the happy girl thinks nothing of the playground being located in a graveyard for young victims of the Spanish Flu… and a local serial killer.

Former NSA agent Eve Wicker has faced many hardships and tragedies in life. Needing to be closer to her ailing father, Eve takes a position as her hometown Sheriff. A position she never imagined would open many old wounds from her past. When she receives a phone call about a body in the woods, She drives up to the crime scene. There, she grabs the attention of the town’s mountain recluse. Roman Pike, a big burly ex-marine who’s as abrasive as he is brash.

Newly-minted child psychologist Mina has little experience. In a field where the first people called are experts, she’s been unable to get her feet wet. Instead, she aimlessly spends her days stuck in the stifling heat wave sweeping across Britain, and anxiously contemplating her upcoming marriage to careful, precise researcher Oscar. The only reprieve from her small, close world is attending the local bereavement group to mourn her brother’s death from years ago. That is, until she meets journalist Sam Hunter at the grief group one day. And he has a proposition for her.

The Ladies' Society for the Dead meets once a year. This year, there are eleven ghostly attendees who must work together to pierce the veil between the living and the dead. Each woman has an important message to share if her ghost is ever to find peace. This year, Maude will do everything she can to complete her séance and tell the world who the real axe murderer was on the night of her grisly demise.

Meg Russo was behind the wheel when it happened. She and her husband Justin were driving their daughter Lily to Ithaca College, the family celebrating the eighteen-year-old music prodigy’s future. Then a car swerved up beside them, the young men inside it behaving bizarrely—and Meg lost control of her own vehicle. The family road trip turned into a tragedy. Justin didn’t survive the accident.

Stephanie and Jessica have nothing and everything in common. The two women don’t know each other but are on the same plane heading to California. Stephanie is on a business trip and Jasmine is fleeing an abusive relationship. After a few days, they text their friends the same exact messages about the same man—the messages becoming stranger and more erratic. And then the two women vanish. The texts go silent, the red flags go up, and the panic sets in. When Stephanie and Jasmine are each declared missing and in danger, it begs the questions: Who is Trent McCarthy?

Leigh Harker's quiet suburban home was her sanctuary for more than a decade, until things abruptly changed. Curtains open by themselves. Radios turn off and on. And a dark figure looms in the shadows of her bedroom door at night, watching her and waiting for her to finally let down her guard enough to fall asleep.

Olivia Becente was never supposed to have the gift. The ability to commune with the dead was the specialty of her sister, Naiche. But when Naiche dies unexpectedly and under strange circumstances, somehow Olivia suddenly can’t stop seeing and hearing from spirits. A few years later, she’s the most in-demand paranormal investigator in Denver. She’s good at her job, but the loss of Naiche haunts her. That’s when she hears from the Brown Palace, a landmark Denver hotel.

A year ago, a hit-and-run nearly killed Celeste Cleary. Instead, it left her with a chilling gift: the ability to see the dead. She uses her new power to unravel the mysteries behind the missing and murdered. But now it's time for her to return home to West Virginia, where her own life began, and where her mother abandoned her family decades before. Celeste is about to confront her darkest fears. And some of them might lead her right to the truth about her own past—a truth buried deep, waiting to be unearthed.

In their freshman year at Husher University, inseparable friends Teagan and Harley embark on a new chapter of their lives. The excitement takes a chilling turn when Harley mysteriously disappears during rush week, leaving Teagan desperate to find her. Teagan's relentless pursuit of the truth leads her into the depths of a malevolent mystery, unearthing the disturbing secrets of other missing girls from Husher University.

On a sunny August morning in 1935, 13-year-old Sophia Gray finds her friend Rosemary wandering in the woods. Rosemary’s yellow dress is tattered and her eyes are vacant and glassy. She beckons to Sophia, desperate to show her something. In an abandoned cabin, beneath a tattered blanket, Sophia discovers Rosemary’s body. It was not Rosemary who led her there, but Rosemary’s ghost. Twenty years later, Sophia finds herself trapped in the sprawling Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane, in the hands of a malevolent doctor who preys on patients who exhibit paranormal abilities.

Family is content for Kaylee Volk. Her vlogs celebrate a happy home with her husband and their three foster children, Bethany, Mason, and Andrea. Everything is perfect until the day the family’s private plane plummets into the ocean. Only Kaylee manages to survive—with a shocking revelation: Andrea did it.

It’s the day of his ex-wife’s wedding when Dan makes the winding mountain journey to a remote cabin for an escape from the life that another man has stepped into. Less than 48 hours into his reprieve, the forest tranquility is shattered when he looks through a telescope and witnesses the violent abduction of a young woman. Dan springs into action, but there’s no evidence of an abduction nor reports of a missing woman. That is, until Dan sees the missing person’s poster for Ivy Trent.

All Ruby wanted was a fresh start. But after an early retirement and a relocation to a tight-knit community with her husband, Tom, and her daughter, Lily, her new beginning takes a turn. First her troubled daughter and then her husband disappear without a trace. Unsure how to cope, grief-ridden Ruby turns to her neighborhood friends to find a way forward with new hobbies, including a murder club where they try to solve cold cases. But just as unexpectedly as her family vanished, a body floats to the surface of the nearby lake.

When Lenna gets a call from her old friend Rhiannon, she is startled; Rhiannon disappeared years ago without a trace. But Lenna is even more startled to learn that Rhiannon has a son and that she lives off the grid with a group of women in a community called Halcyon. Rhiannon invites Lenna, a new mother herself, to join them. Why suffer the sleepless nights by yourself? It takes a village, after all. Lenna decides to go and hopefully repair her relationship with Rhiannon, but as she drives into the desert and her cell service gets weaker, she becomes suspicious.

It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.

The murder of Elise Rockwood’s sister shattered her family. Their mother’s anxiety kept her housebound. Elise’s paranoid brother, Kyle, saw conspiracies everywhere. Elise numbed her grief in an aimless lifestyle that left her emotionally broken. All of them victims. A local boy eventually confessed, but the damage was already done. Years later, Elise is reinventing herself. She’s bought a mountain lodge to be close to home again and to find stability. Not even an email from her ex tempts her into revisiting the past. But Kyle won’t let it go.

Siblings Michael and Ellery Lisbon are desperate for a fresh start. Reeling after a series of misfortunes, the pair settle down in the quiet town of Plum Hollow in the hopes of kick-starting their stalled lives. The house they move into is unbelievably affordable—a seeming gem in a ferociously competitive market. But it was in this house that, two years prior, a family was savagely butchered. Despised by their neighbors, the siblings are left to grapple with the grisly reality of the house's past—and with the possibility that the evil behind the slayings is still present.

Four years ago, beautiful yet troubled Allie Andersen vanished without a trace. The twenty-one-year-old daughter of an acclaimed actress, her disappearance captivated the media, left her family distraught, and became a fixation for online theorists, who implicated everybody Allie knew and loved. Everyone, including her devoted stepsister, Natasha. Now, Natasha is finally trying to move on.

Saffy is waiting to go into an important meeting when she receives a missed call and then a text message from her best friend, Leona: Please help...come now. Of course, she races to her friend’s house. But when she arrives, she notices something strange. This message was deleted. Leona answers the door, and insists everything's fine. She doesn't know anything about the message. Six hours later, Saffy gets a knock on the door. It's the police. They’ve found a body. And Saffy was the last one to see them alive.

From the first moment single mother Nicolette Winchester held her daughter in her arms, she knew she'd do everything in her power to keep her safe. Now 18 years old, Ella is bright, kind, and a cello prodigy headed for Juilliard. Nicolette can't help but feel proud of the young woman her daughter's become. Then Ella calls home one night. There's been an accident. A classmate is dead. And Ella is the only one on the scene. To protect her daughter, Nicolette makes an unthinkable decision.

When novelist Andy Drake returns to his hometown to care for his ailing father, a reconnection with his childhood friend Rachel escalates into a secret love affair. For Rachel, struggling to maintain the facade of a picture-perfect life, it’s an escape from an emotionally abusive marriage. Then Andy receives an anonymous note warning him to end the affair. Or else.

Liv and Gabe Ahlstrom are estranged siblings who haven’t seen each other in years, but that’s about to change when they receive a rare call from their older brother’s wife. “Mack is dead,” she says. “He died of a seizure.” Five minutes after they hang up, Liv and Gabe each receive a scheduled email from their dead brother, claiming that he was murdered. The siblings return to their family-run resort in the Northwoods of Minnesota to investigate Mack's claims, but Leech Lake has more in store for them than either could imagine.