Hollow Ground - The Buckner Hollow Thrillers, #1

In the hollows of West Virginia, the ground keeps its secrets — until it doesn't. When a body surfaces in the flooded shaft of an abandoned coal mine, newly elected sheriff Eli Cain faces the first real test of his badge. The dead man is Tommy Kinser — missing for two decades, presumed gone for good. His reappearance cracks open a silence the people of Buckner Hollow have worked hard to maintain. Eli grew up in these mountains. He knows the families, the feuds, the unspoken rules. But as he digs into Tommy's death, the case wraps around the town's most powerful name: the Prater family, whose mining empire has shaped — and scarred — every acre of the hollow. What starts as a cold case becomes something far more dangerous when Eli realizes the violence didn't stop with Tommy. With a disgraced state investigator dogging his steps, a county commissioner blocking his warrants, and his own family ties threatening to pull him under, Eli has to decide how far he's willing to go for the truth — and what it'll cost him to bring it home. Hollow Ground is a slow-burn Appalachian thriller about corruption, loyalty, and the weight of what lies beneath. For readers who love Winter's Bone, Sharp Objects, and Dark Hollow.