All Good People Here: A Novel

by Ashley Flowers

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Armchair detectives, this book has your name on it. Disappearances, unsolved murders, justice — this thriller has it all. As with a true crime podcast, there’s no lack of wanting to hear and read such stories. Unpleasant, likely so, but when well written, as is the case of All Good People Here, we are allowed to skate that line of imagination and reality. Because don’t all of us just really want it to work out in the end? Authors such as Flowers help us with that hurdle.

In the propulsive debut novel from the host of the #1 true crime podcast Crime Junkie, a journalist uncovers her hometown’s dark secrets when she becomes obsessed with the unsolved murder of her childhood neighbor—and the disappearance of another girl twenty years later.
 
You can’t ever know for sure what happens behind closed doors.

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the infamous case of January Jacobs, who was discovered in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist. But she’s always been haunted by the feeling that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.

When Margot returns home to help care for her uncle after he is diagnosed with early-onset dementia, she feels like she’s walked into a time capsule. Wakarusa is exactly how she remembers—genial, stifled, secretive. Then news breaks about five-year-old Natalie Clark from the next town over, who’s gone missing under circumstances eerily similar to January’s. With all the old feelings rushing back, Margot vows to find Natalie and to solve January’s murder once and for all.

But the police, Natalie’s family, the townspeople—they all seem to be hiding something. And the deeper Margot digs into Natalie’s disappearance, the more resistance she encounters, and the colder January’s case feels. Could January’s killer still be out there? Is it the same person who took Natalie? And what will it cost to finally discover what truly happened that night twenty years ago?

Twisty, chilling, and intense, All Good People Here is a searing tale that asks: What are your neighbors capable of when they think no one is watching?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593496473
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/16/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,468
Product dimensions:	6.37(w) x 9.52(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Ashley Flowers is the founder and chief executive officer of audiochuck, the award-winning, independent media and podcast production company known for its standout content and storytelling across different genres such as true crime, fiction, comedy, among others. She also hosts and produces several audiochuck shows, including the top-rated podcast Crime Junkie. In addition to her work with audiochuck, Flowers has collaborated with Parcast to launch and host several podcasts, including International Infamy, Very Presidential, and Supernatural with Ashley Flowers, which debuted at number one on the podcast charts. Flowers was born and raised in Indiana, where she continues to live with her husband and their beloved dog, Chuck.

Editorial Reviews

06/13/2022

Flowers, the host of the true crime podcast Crime Junkie, debuts with a twisty psychological thriller coauthored with Kiester (The Truth About Ben and June). Twenty-five years after the unsolved murder of Margot Davies’s childhood best friend, January Jacobs (forever frozen in public memory—shades of JonBenét Ramsey—as that tiny dancer looking disturbingly older than six in her skimpy competition costume), Margot remains haunted by the case, as well as the way pious finger-pointing in her hometown of Wakarusa, Ind., helped shatter her surviving family. So when duty drags Margot, now a crime reporter for an Indianapolis newspaper, back to Wakarusa to care for the ailing uncle who raised her, she hopes this might be her chance to crack the case—especially once, less than a day after her arrival, a five-year-old vanishes in a neighboring town. The reporter swiftly discovers that the townsfolk she once thought she knew may have been concealing far more complex and problematic passions than apparent back then to a child such as herself. This intricate, intriguing puzzler should surprise even those readers certain they know where the plot’s heading. Flowers is off to a promising start. Agent: Meredith Miller, UTA. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly