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The Worm Man
Third-grade teacher and aspiring artist, Kate Boswell has been through a lot in her forty years of life. She faced her childhood friend’s murder, a late-term miscarriage, and most recently, the death of her husband. When Kate sells a series of drawings at a gallery show to an anonymous buyer and saves her farmhouse from foreclosure, she’s sure the bad times are over, but after the lucrative sale, Kate’s favorite student, Cassie, goes missing.
Kate is convinced that the Worm Man, the serial killer who abducted her girlhood friend, has grabbed Cassie too. Cassie was collecting worms in a bucket when she disappeared, and earthworms are the Worm Man’s calling card. It all makes sense—except it doesn’t. The Worm Man has been dead for a decade. Desperate to find Cassie, Kate joins forces with Globe reporter and Worm Man expert, Tom Kingsley.
Together, they travel to Maine and follow up on a promising lead. When Kate is dubbed delusional, her involvement in the case strains her relationship with her new boyfriend, a local cop, and it puts her career in jeopardy. Fearing she’ll lose her freedom and the life she’s only recently started to rebuild, Kate is forced to confront the most frightening ghost of her past.
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Also by Mary Frances Hill
The Glass Bottle People
When Sage’s father desserts his family, her mother drags Sage and her sister to Glastonbury, New Hampshire—a tiny town in the lakes region that flooded a century before—and she introduces them to their estranged grandmother, Grandma Neuman. Sage’s older sister, Lilly, immediately despises the old woman, who is an eccentric bottle hoarder, but Sage is drawn to her.
Grandma Neuman convinces Sage that the bottles cluttering her home contain the souls of the town flood victims, and that Sage must find a way to set them free. Though Lilly and Sage’s mother think Grandma Neumann is nuts and potentially even dangerous, like her grandmother, Sage hears voices coming from the bottles. Because of this, she can’t abandon her grandmother or the bottles, even when her father shows up in town and suspiciously vanishes.
During the years that follow, Sage struggles to appease both her sister and her eccentric grandmother. But when Lilly hires a private eye to investigate their father’s disappearance and Grandma Neumann takes her own life, Sage is forced to examine her grandmother’s motives and her own life choices.
Fragile Things
Annabel is unnerved when she meets rough water swimmer and retired swim coach George Wyckoff. It’s not just because her mother tells her to stay away from the elderly man or because people claim he spent time in prison for touching a girl, it’s because she’s willing to overlook his dark history.
Annabel watches Dateline. She’s no fool. But without Wyckoff’s help, her goal of being the first nine-grade girl to make the swim team feels impossible. And she has to make the team. Swimming, where her feet can’t touch the bottom, is the only time she feels not only normal, but special.
Not everything people say about someone is true. I’ll be careful. Keeping our practices secret is no big deal. This is what she tells herself.
But when Katie Leman, the most popular girl in the freshman class and Annabel’s biggest hater goes missing and everyone suspects Wycoff of taking her, Annabel’s thoughts become as murky as the lake. Should she trust Wyckoff, who’s been nothing but appropriate and a friend to her, or listen to the accusations swirling around town?
The Lore Crystal
Jack Fry’s dad is the town gravedigger. Though Jack is proud of him, he’s never wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. His parents don’t seem to want Jack to limit himself either. They tell him to study hard, and encourage his dream of becoming a professor.
Then, Jack’s teacher’s daughter, Emma, goes missing in a blizzard. While everyone is searching for the girl, Jack hears Emma talking as he shovels the grocery store lot. He believes she’s trapped beneath the snow. But when he unearths the girl, he discovers that she’s dead. His father drags him to the chapel, he tells him to keep his conversation with Emma to himself, and that Jack’s the seventh and last spirit digger.
Suddenly Jack is thrust into a world he didn’t know existed—a world filled with witches, curses, and spirits. A world where being a grave digger isn’t just about burying. A world where a fantastical town legend about a pink magic ring and an armless woman is true.
The Heaven Spot
Recovering Vicodin addict, Maggie Roberts, heads to Palm Beach determined to find out exactly how her estranged daughter, Rose, died. But in order to piece the puzzle of her daughter’s death together, she must first learn how she lived. When Rose stormed out of their Virginia house five years earlier, she had a duffle bag and a cell phone on her person. So, how could she afford a home on the glitzy south Florida island?
In between jobs and temporarily homeless, Maggie opts to stay in her daughter’s beach bungalow. Gilt-ridden, she talks to the local detective and meets the important people in Rose’s life—Rose’s realtor, her boss, a gallery owner dubbed the Silver Fox, a writer, and Rose’s coworker and friend, Peta. But as she familiarizes herself with the Palm Beach area and fights the urge to use, hazy flashbacks of a frantic Florida road trip haunt her.
Maggie begins to wonder if she’s the missing puzzle piece, if she played a part in her own daughter’s death.