New York Times and USA Today Bestseller
With the dead of a bitter Vermont winter closing in, evil is alive and well . . .
Frank Rath thought he was done with murder when he turned in his detective's badge to become a private investigator and raise a daughter alone. Then the police in his remote rural community of Canaan find an '89 Monte Carlo abandoned by the side of the road, and the beautiful teenage girl who owned the car seems to have disappeared without a trace.
Soon Rath's investigation brings him face-to-face with the darkest abominations of the human soul.
With the consequences of his violent and painful past plaguing him, and young women with secrets vanishing one by one, he discovers once again that even in the smallest towns on the map, evil lurks everywhere—and no one is safe.
Morally complex, seething with wickedness and mystery, and rich in gritty atmosphere and electrifying plot turns, The Silent Girls marks the return of critically acclaimed author Eric Rickstad. Readers of Ian Rankin, Jo Nesbø, and Greg Iles will love this book and find themselves breathless at the incendiary, ambitious, and unforgettable story.

The Silent Girls (Canaan Crime Novels)

Literature & Fiction

Rickstad, Eric

United States

William Morrow Paperbacks

From the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Silent Girls comes another unforgettable thriller set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, featuring Detective Sonja Test
Even in a quiet Vermont town, unspeakable acts of the past can destroy the peace of the present.
In the remote pastoral hamlet of Canaan, Vermont, a high-profile legal case shatters the town’s sense of peace and community. Anger simmers. Fear and prejudice awaken. Old friends turn on each other. Violence threatens.
So when a young teenage girl is savagely murdered while babysitting at the house of the lead attorney in the case, Detective Sonja Test believes the girl’s murder and the divisive case must be linked.
However, as the young detective digs deeper into her first murder case, she discovers sordid acts hidden for decades, and learns that behind the town’s idyllic façade of pristine snow lurks a capacity in some for great darkness and the betrayal of innocents. And Sonja Test, a mother of two, will do anything to protect the innocent.
“Gripping, topical, and wrenching—everything you want in a top-flight mystery.”—Meg Gardiner, Edgar® Award-winning Author

Lie In Wait (Canaan Crime Novels)

“As I read Eric Rickstad’s latest, The Names of Dead Girls, I felt myself constantly wanting to skip ahead -- anxious, desperate, to find out what was going to happen...You’re in the hands of one of the best in the business, at the very peak of his form. “ -- Michael Harvey, author of Brighton
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Eric Rickstad delivers another Canaan Crime novel and features once again detectives Frank Rath and Sonja Test as they track a depraved killer through rural Vermont.
Every murder tells a story. Some stories never end . . . 
In a remote northern Vermont town, college student Rachel Rath is being watched. She can feel the stranger’s eyes on her, relentless and possessive. And she’s sure the man watching her is the same man who killed her mother and father years ago: Ned Preacher, a serial rapist and murderer who gamed the system to get a light sentence. Now, he’s free. 
Detective Frank Rath adopted Rachel, his niece, after the shocking murder of her parents when she was a baby. Ever since, Rath’s tried to protect her from the true story of her parents’ deaths. But now Preacher is calling Rath to torment him. He’s threatening Rachel and plotting cruelties for her, of the flesh and of the mind. When other girls are found brutally murdered, and a woman goes missing, Rath and Detective Sonja Test must untangle the threads that tie these new crimes and some long-ago nightmares together. Soon they will learn that the truth is more perverse than anyone could guess, rife with secrets, cruel desires, and warped, deadly loyalty.
Mesmerizing, startling, and intricately plotted, The Names of Dead Girls builds relentlessly on its spellbinding premise, luring readers into its dark and macabre mystery, right to its shocking end.

The Names of Dead Girls (Canaan Crime Novels)

The Silent Girls

With the dead of a bitter Vermont winter closing in, evil is alive and well . . .
Frank Rath thought he was done with murder when he turned in his detective’s badge to become a private investigator and raise a daughter alone. Then the police in his remote rural community of Canaan find an ’89 Monte Carlo abandoned by the side of the road, and the beautiful teenage girl who owned the car seems to have disappeared without a trace. 
Soon Rath’s investigation brings him face-to-face with the darkest abominations of the human soul. With the consequences of his violent and painful past plaguing him, and young women with secrets vanishing one by one, he discovers once again that even in the smallest towns on the map, evil lurks everywhere—and no one is safe.
Morally complex, seething with wickedness and mystery, and rich in gritty atmosphere and electrifying plot turns, The Silent Girls marks the return of critically acclaimed author Eric Rickstad.

Genre Fiction

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Girls comes this chilling, harrowing thriller set in rural Vermont about a recluse who believes the young girl he's found in the woods is the reincarnation of his missing daughter, returned to help him solve her and his wife's disappearance.
I won’t say a word. Cross my heart and hope to die…
Jonah Baum, a professor of poetry at a local college in Vermont, sees his ordinary life come tumbling down when his wife and young daughter vanish from their home. No evidence of a kidnapping. No sign of murder. No proof that Rebecca didn’t simply abandon her marriage. Just Sally’s crude and chilling drawings, Jonah’s little lies, and the sheriff’s nagging fears that nothing is what it seems.
For Sally’s best friend, Lucinda, it’s something else. She trusts in Sally not to just disappear, not after they’ve shared so many secrets—especially about the woods and what they saw there. But she’ll never tell. No one would believe her anyway.
As the search for Rebecca and Sally intensifies, and as suspicion falls on Jonah, the disappearances become more relentlessly haunting than anyone can imagine. Because what’s seen in the light of day is not nearly as terrifying as what remains hidden in the dark…

What Remains of Her: A Novel

William Morrow Large Print

Innocent and confused, fatherless Vermont sixteen-year-old Jessup Burke prowls the woods around his logging hometown daydreaming of romance, but his life takes a turn when he meets an exploitative ex-con, Reg, and his younger married sister, Marigold. Reprint.

Reap

Penguin??Books

Innocent and confused, fatherless Vermont sixteenyearold Jessup Burke prowls the woods around his logging hometown daydreaming of romance, but his life takes a turn when he meets an exploitative excon, Reg, and his younger married sister, Marigold.

Viking Adult

Review\n''A riveting tale of consequences, family, and fate -- darkly poetic and deeply felt...Do not miss this.'' --Hank Phillippi Ryan, USA Today bestselling author of Her Perfect Life\n''An exceptional read by an exceptional writer.'' --Catherine Ryan Howard, internationally bestselling author of 56 Days\n''Eric Rickstad is the rare writer who can wrap a dark, gritty story in smooth, poetic prose.'' --Alafair Burke, New York Times bestselling author of The Ex\n''Eric Rickstad's is a name to remember.'' --Criminal Element\n''Wicked and smart. Everything you want in a great thriller. A smart, very well written book with whiplash-inducing twists and turns that I never saw coming. I Am Not Who You Think I Am kept me reading late into the night.'' --Adrian McKinty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chain\n''Rickstad weaves layer upon layer of psychological mystery -- all wrapped up in vivid, elegant prose.'' --Brian Freeman, New York Times bestselling author of The Deep, Deep Snow\n''[An] exceptional thriller...Knowing that the story line is building toward the fatal conflagration keeps the tension high. Rickstad has raised his game to a new level.'' --Publishers Weekly (starred review)\n''What an incredible, sad story. This is the kind of story that lingers long after you’ve finished reading. It’s dark and twisted, with no redemption for the characters. And yet, it is probably a more realistic ending than the ones we normally read about...If you enjoy dark, gritty thrillers, then I recommend you read this book.'' --Portland Book Review\n''I Am Not Who You Think I Am is a grim tour-de-force, full of sleight-of-hand twists. Rickstad feints in one direction, then cuts you while you aren’t looking. Dark and unflinching. You’re not getting out of this one unscathed.'' --Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Road of Bones and Ararat\n''I loved it. A riveting tale of lies and betrayal. Clear your calendar before you crack the cover -- you WON’T be able to put this one down!'' --J. D. Barker, New York Times bestselling author of A Caller’s Game\nMP3 CD Format 
*A New York Times Pick of the Best Thrillers of 2021 
“Wicked and smart. Everything you want in a great thriller.” --Adrian McKinty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chain\nOne secret. 
Eight cryptic words. 
Lifetimes of ruin. 
From a New York Times and Internationally bestselling author 
Wayland Maynard is just eight years old when he sees his father kill himself, finds a note that reads I am not who you think I am, and is left reeling with grief and shock. Who was his father if not the loving man Wayland knew? Terrified, Wayland keeps the note a secret, but his reasons for being afraid are just beginning. 
Eight years later, Wayland makes a shocking discovery and becomes certain the note is the key to unlocking a past his mother and others in town want to keep buried. 
With the help of two friends, Wayland searches for the truth. Together they uncover strange messages scribbled in his father’s old books, a sinister history behind the town’s most powerful family, and a bizarre tragedy possibly linked to Wayland’s birth. Each revelation raises more questions and deepens Wayland’s suspicions of everyone around him. Soon, he’ll regret he ever found the note, trusted his friends, or believed in such a thing as the truth. 
I Am Not Who You Think I Am is an ingenious, addictive, and shattering tale of grief, obsession, and fate as eight words lead to lifetimes of ruin.

I Am Not Who You Think I Am

Blackstone Pub

"Intoxicating. Poetic. Arresting. Powerfully bloody." — The New York Times Sunday Book Review. From the New York Times Bestselling author of THE SILENT GIRLS and LIE IN WAIT comes a smoldering and devastating literary crime novel in the tradition of Daniel Woodrell, Larry Brown, Chris Offutt, and heralded by the New York Times as "Intoxicating. Creepy. Poetic. Arresting. Powerfully bloody." In this hard-edged, quick-moving, and violent tale, a young fatherless boy is unwittingly lured into a murderous plot in the Gothic backwoods of Northern Vermont when he bonds with a paranoid ex-con he's unaware is bent on revenge. All tempered by a fine lyric sensibility and an awareness of people and place that sings with evocation and authenticity. Taut, riveting, and unflinching, REAP draws readers into the dangerous and claustrophobic backwoods of Northern Vermont to witness a hard-edged, quick-moving, and violent story charged with fate, bad blood, and family secrets, tempered by a fine lyric sensibility and an awareness of people and place that sings with evocation and authenticity. A masterwork of literary crime fiction heralded alongside Denis Johnson, Russell Banks, and Robert Stone. THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW Remarkable. Intoxicating. Arresting. Poetic. A tale of macho violence and alternative horticulture in a creepy edge-of-the-world setting. The body count is high, and the violence persuasive. Most remarkable is the evocation of the territory, the Gothic tangle of native forest and exotic cash crop that mirrors the characters’ claustrophobic inner landscapes [and] the grimly poetic images scattered throughout, like flashes of submerged lives never quite reeled in. SUNDAY CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER A bloody beauty. Reap illuminates worlds of darkness. A dramatic reminder of the mystery and majesty of the wild places that exist in both man and nature. LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW A complex portrait of a group of people whose interlocking fates snap into place with gruesome repercussions and of a boy who unwittingly stumbles into adulthood like a bird dog into a wolf trap. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Harrowing. Absorbing. Unpredictable. Dangerous. Bucolic and eerie, it probes the mysteries of growing as plants people and situations twist inexorably in unpredictable, dangerous directions. A progressively more harrowing, absorbing tale. BOOK MAGAZINE Transcends the typical. Harrowing. Inevitable. Rickstad renders dark, often violent characters with such elegance that we will embrace them long after they’ve opted for the choice that is clearly wrong. BOOKLIST Rickstad pulls back the veneer of the bucolic wilderness of northern Vermont and finds trouble in paradise. Colorful, marginal, and often violent characters, and the undertone of violence, desperation, and drug dealing as a way of life underscores the fact that the country joins the inner city in becoming a modern American wasteland. WEEKLY ALIBI A haunting, dark story that seethes with human emotion. Turning each page is like opening the door to an open field.

Literary

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

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Books by Rickstad, Eric

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rickstad, Eric. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Silent Girls (Canaan Crime Novels)

Lie In Wait (Canaan Crime Novels)

The Names of Dead Girls (Canaan Crime Novels)

The Silent Girls

What Remains of Her: A Novel

What Remains of Her: A Novel

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Reap

I Am Not Who You Think I Am

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