Sometimes the scariest stories aren’t about monsters at all—they’re about the damage people do to one another, and the shadows those wounds cast long into adulthood. That’s the heart of The Witch’s Orchard by Archer Sullivan, a gripping mystery set in the mountains of North Carolina.

Private investigator Annie Gore, a former Air Force special investigator, takes on a case that pulls her back into a world she thought she left behind: the Appalachian hollers where she grew up. Ten years earlier, three young girls vanished from a tiny mountain town. One returned, but the others were never found. Now, the brother of one of the missing hires Annie to uncover the truth. The case is cold, the town is closed off to outsiders, and the mountains are filled with both folklore and secrets—but Annie needs the money, so she can’t turn down the job.
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