NEXT OF KIN

From the Tony Hillerman Prize-winning author of Pay Dirt Road comes Samantha Jayne Allen's mesmerizing new novel set in a hardscrabble Texas town dealing with disaster.

In shock and found clinging to a tree branch, Bethany Richter is pulled from thrashing floodwaters that have decimated the town of Garnett, Texas and killed a dozen others. Six months after solving the murder of a local waitress, Annie McIntyre is working as an apprentice P.I. when she's handed her first solo case: uncover the identity of the man who rescued Bethany before he was swept downriver. When Annie's search turns up a different victim - shot dead, not drowned - Annie questions if the hero they seek is actually a killer. Flexing her new skills while relying on the wisdom of her eccentric, ex-cop grandfather, the case leads Annie into a web of drug dealers, preachers, and wayward drifters trying to make sense of life after a disaster. Annie's own convictions are put to the ultimate test as long-held secrets, corruption, and violence are exposed like the ruin that lies beneath receding waters. Samantha Jayne Allen has an MFA in fiction from Texas State University. Her stories and essays have been published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, The Common, and Electric Literature. Raised in small towns in Texas and California, she now lives in Atlanta where she works as a bookseller. Allen won the Tony Hillerman Prize for Pay Dirt Road.