Sticks and Stones — Michael Hiebert

A case from the past sparks a nightmare for Detective Leah Teal in Michael Hiebert's masterful new novel of suspense.

Fifteen years ago, a serial killer tagged by the media as the Stickman spread terror throughout Alabama and became Alvin detective Joe Fowler's obsession. After fifteen months and nine victims, Harry Stork was identified as the Stickman and Fowler shot him dead. The killings stopped. For a while.

Now, more bodies are turning up, each staked through the chest with a stick-figure drawing in the killer's signature style. Detective Leah Teal -- Joe Fowler's daughter and Alvin's sole detective -- receives a letter before each victim is found, just like her late father did. The only people who knew about the letters were the cops on the taskforce back then -- and the killer himself. Did Joe shoot the wrong man, or was one of the detectives he handpicked involved all along? As a single mother, Leah tries to balance an increasingly disturbing case and a new relationship with caring for her children -- bright, perceptive Abe, and teenaged Caroline, who's in the first flush of young love. But with each menacing communication, each gruesome discovery, Leah realizes just how personal, and how devastating, the truth may be.

Weaving lyrical prose and emotional richness into a taut, gripping mystery, Michael Hiebert creates a fascinating novel of life, love, and death in a small Southern town.