Is it hotter than Hades everywhere? Sweltering heat that makes the pools feel like bathwater, and the lakes a petrie dish for bacteria? We’ve had blistering heat that won’t relent, so this week I decided to step into the shade and enjoy what the shadows bring. I wanted to test the darkest corners and see what little monsters I could find—embrace every deadly kiss the shadow man delivered. And boy did he deliver! For a taste that will chill the blood flowing through your veins, check out these four mysteries this summer. THE DARKEST CORNERS by Kara Thomas There are secrets around every corner in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Tessa left when she was nine and has been trying ever since not to think about what happened there that last summer. She and her childhood best friend Callie never talked about what they saw. Not before the trial. And certainly not after. But ever since she left, Tessa has had questions. Things have never quite added up. And now she has to go back to Fayette—to Wyatt Stokes, sitting on death row; to Lori Cawley, Callie’s dead cousin; and to the one other person who may be hiding the truth. Only the…

I am an indoor kid. I know this is a surprise for exactly zero people who know me, but I prefer some kind of barrier between me and anything resembling nature. I adore looking at it. It’s the being in it where things start to fall apart. While I was plotting and writing THE HUNTING GROUNDS I had to do a significant amount of research. I’ve visited Glacier National Park a few times when I was younger, and it made quite the impression on me, so it seemed natural enough to set the story there. It’s beautiful and sprawling and the perfect place to strand a group of hikers who won’t all make it back to civilization alive. Then there were the park rangers—in the course of my research and questions I posed, there is no way I’m not on some watch-list somewhere—and camping and all the nitty gritty details that need to go into a book to ground it effectively in reality. It was a total blast putting it together. Which is where this story starts to break down. In all my hours and days and weeks of research, I started to feel pretty on top of it. Surely…