Brandon, MS: Dogwood (pub: April 2019)

Paperback. Signed.

Emily Durham appears to have it all: an accomplished, hard-working husband named Alex, three beautiful young children, and a lovely old home in the wilds of South Dakota after a move six weeks ago from her native Mississippi.

What is missing, though, is warmth. The mind-numbing winter cold and the bleak, desolate surroundings underscore the growing disconnect between Emily and Alex, a rising executive with a cutting-edge IT firm. A young mom, she’s now a thousand miles from home and isolated in a strange, barren land where she knows no one.

So it is disconcerting when she sees (or thinks she sees) a young girl in a yellow dress in her home on an especially frigid afternoon just before Alex arrives from work. This coincides with the news that her estranged father has passed away, and when Emily returns to the Ross Barnett Reservoir area of Madison County, her world turns upside down when she is not only visited at the wake by an old boyfriend, but the young girl in the yellow dress makes another appearance—and causes a car crash.

Once back in South Dakota, the chill between Emily and Alex becomes more pronounced. When she finally begins to question her sanity, it’s time to do some digging into this mysterious cutting-edge technological enterprise and Alex’s somewhat spooky business partner. Suddenly Emily doesn’t know who to trust, including M.A. Klugh, M.A., the enigmatic detective she hires.

A tightly-written, haunting tale of just how far enterprising scientists are willing to take their highly-secretive mind-control experiments, DEADLY VISITS from Mississippi author Janet Brown explores the concept of good and evil through a technological medium that wouldn’t have been possible even a few short years ago. You’ll never look at your cell phone again the same way ...

“Just when you thought you’d seen every possible suspense plot, along comes Deadly Visits—a tale that’s part ghost story, and part high-tech thriller. With settings that range from South Dakota to Mississippi, award-winning author Janet Brown has created a fast-moving and compelling novel, one that’ll grab you and never let go. I loved it!”

—John M. Floyd, Edgar nominee and three time Derringer Award winner

"With Deadly Visits, Janet Brown gives us a welcome addition to her collection of engrossing novels, this one a clever mix of the supernatural and the detective. Her characters live in the literal world of death and loss, yet one visited by persons once alive, now physically deceased and unquiet. The tone Brown achieves disturbs and surprises while at the same time roots the reader in the everyday life of joy and sorrow. Brown writes wonderfully and at crucial points most disturbingly. This novel, with its heroine Emily and its detective M.A. Klugh, M.A., grips us and won’t let go.”

—Gerald Duff, author of Nashville Burning and Playing Custer