A body in the ice. A secret in a red coat. A river that remembers.
"The river saw everything. The trouble was, rivers did not testify. Girls did not always get to either."
Maura Vale came home to Milan, New Hampshire for quiet, distance, and the kind of winter that makes old ghosts easier to ignore.
Then a body surfaces in the frozen Androscoggin, and a dying man drags an eighteen-year-old secret into her barn.
Sadie Bell was supposed to be just another troubled girl who ran.
Maura never believed that story.
It nearly destroyed her once. Now the past is back with blood on its hands, a crescent-shaped warning on her porch, and Deputy Elias Thorne asking questions Maura has spent years trying not to answer.
Because someone kept a ledger.
Names. Dates. Road markers. Motel rooms. Little crescent moons pressed into the margins like a brand. A girl in a red coat stole the proof, hid what she could, and ran into the snow before powerful men could bury the truth for good.
But the river does not forget.
As Maura and Elias follow the trail through frozen roads, back-country motels, old police reports, and the dark bends of the Androscoggin River, old loyalties begin to crack. Room 12 heard more than anyone admitted. Sadie knew more than anyone wanted. And the men who made the North Country their hiding place are willing to kill to keep their secrets under the ice.
The deeper Maura digs, the harder it becomes to separate danger from desire - because Elias is determined to keep her alive, Maura is determined not to need saving, and the truth they uncover could burn through half the county before the thaw.
They thought winter would keep their secrets.
They were wrong about Maura Vale.
When the River Freezes is Book One in Androscoggin After Dark, a North Country romantic suspense series set along the Androscoggin River, where old mill towns, winter roads, motel rooms, buried evidence, slow-burn heat, and small-town secrets collide.
A note for readers: Androscoggin After Dark does not look away. This series reckons with violence against women, a predatory network that ran on silence, and a town that decided some girls were easier to explain than to find. Come for the slow-burn romance and the frozen-river mystery. Stay for the women who are finally done being quiet.
ANDROSCOGGIN AFTER DARK
A North Country Romantic Suspense Series
Book One - When the River Freezes
Book Two - When the River Thaws
Book Three - When the River Runs - August 1
Book Four - When the River Burns - September 1
Best read in order. Each book cracks open another secret the river has been keeping - because in the North Country, some things do not drown. They wait for spring.
Start where the ice breaks. Meet Maura Vale. And find out what Room 12 heard.
