THE BLACK CURRENT Hardcover – January 30, 2026

The river doesn’t just take the missing. It keeps them.When Mara Elling returns to her hometown along the Russian River, she expects old memories, not new disappearances. A local man vanishes without a splash, driftwood sigils wash ashore in impossible patterns, and the river begins to rise in unnatural pulses, as if something beneath the surface has awakened.Deputy Rowan Pike wants to protect her, but the deeper they dig, the more the valley’s buried history surfaces: a lineage of vanishings, a secretive order sworn to silence, and a symbol carved into every case the town pretends never happened.Then a child disappears in broad daylight. No scream. No struggle. Just gone.And Mara hears a voice she hasn’t heard since the night her brother drowned, calling her name from the water.As the river tightens its grip on the valley, Mara realizes the truth she’s feared for years: the current marked her once. It’s calling her back. And this time, it isn’t taking a victim.It’s claiming its seventh. Read more