Pretty Dead Things

DEBUT Cora is bored to death after she follows her fiancé to Hickory Falls, a small Midwestern town. She should be preparing for her wedding. Instead, she attends an estate sale where she buys a jar of buttons and baubles. At the bottom, she discovers a pair of rings, engagement and wedding. How would those end up in a jar of buttons? Cora sets out to find their owner, starting with the daughter from the estate sale. In the process, she stirs up secrets and memories from the early 1950s, when a married man left his wife for a beautiful artist, Clarity Grey. Even then, townspeople whispered that Clarity and the women in her family dabbled in mysterious practices. When Clarity disappeared from her front yard, leaving behind a six-year-old daughter, people certainly talked. But no one dug into the past until 2024, when Cora asks questions and researches the town’s old gossip. Even 70 years later, it seems Cora is the only one interested in the truth.