I’m a relative newcomer to Rachel Howzell Hall‘s fiction. She is the author of the Eloise Norton crime series, and the stand-alone novels They All Fall Down and the excellent And Now She’s Gone (hopefully not to be a stand-alone for long). The author’s next novel is These Toxic Things, due to be published by Thomas & Mercer:

Mickie Lambert creates “digital scrapbooks” for clients, ensuring that precious souvenirs aren’t forgotten or lost. When her latest client Nadia Denham, a curio shop owner, dies from an apparent suicide, Mickie honors the old woman’s last wish and begins curating her peculiar objets d’art. A music box, a hair clip, a keychain — twelve mementos in all that must have meant so much to Nadia who collected them on her flea market scavenges across the country.

They mean a lot to someone else, too. Mickie has been getting threatening messages from a long-dormant serial killer to leave Nadia’s past alone.

It’s becoming a mystery Mickie is driven to solve. Who are the women, now dead or disappeared, who once owned these odd treasures? How did Nadia really come to possess them? Who is the killer watching every move Mickie makes? Discovering the truth means navigating the secrets of a sinister past. One, Mickie fears, might be inescapably entwined with her own.

Rachel Howzell Hall’s These Toxic Things is due to be published by Thomas & Mercer in North America and in the UK.

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