Jennifer Graeser Dornbush – författare

A cold-case murder, a grisly discovery, and a viper’s nest of resentment, betrayal, and dirty secrets converge in this mystery perfect for fans of Kathy Reichs and Jayne Ann Krentz.

It’s been twelve years since Sandi Parkman went missing after being dropped off at home by her schoolmate, Nick Larson, now the Sheriff of Freeport, Michigan. When a construction crew unearths Sandi’s bones—along with Nick’s letterman jacket and one of his hairs—Nick becomes suspect number one in the murder.

Dr. Emily Hartford, the daughter of Freeport’s medical examiner, is called in to investigate, but the case is about to get personal. Nick was Emily’s high school love, and now she has to either clear his name—or contend that he’s the killer. As she delves into the case, a host of other suspects emerge: a coterie of Nick’s jock friends from high school; Sandi’s sister, Tiffani, now a dancer at a local strip club; and James VanDerMuellen, a trust funder who recently returned to Freeport.

As the autumn skies darken over Freeport and the holiday season looms, Emily must sift through more than Sandi’s brittle bones to solve the case. Can she exonerate Nick—and rekindle their long-smoldering romance? The race is on to find the truth.

Summoned from her promising surgical career first to her estranged father’s bedside and then to his post as medical examiner when his small town needs urgent help with a suspicious death, Emily Hartford discovers home is where the bodies are in this pitch-perfect mystery debut.

Recently engaged and deeply ensconced in her third year of surgical residency in Chicago, Emily Hartford gets a shock when she is called home to Freeport, Michigan, the small town she fled a decade ago after the death of her mother. Her estranged father, the local medical examiner, has had a massive heart attack, and Emily is needed urgently to help with his recovery.

Not sure what to expect, Emily races home, blowing the only stoplight at the center of town and getting pulled over by her former high school love, now sheriff, Nick Larson. At the hospital, she finds her father in near total denial of the seriousness of his condition. He insists that the best thing Emily can do to help him is to take on the autopsy of a senator’s teen daughter whose sudden, unexplained death has just rocked the sleepy town.

Reluctantly agreeing to help her father and Nick, Emily gets down to work, only to discover that the girl was murdered. The autopsy reminds her of her many hours in the morgue with her father when she was a young teen―a time which inspired her love of medicine. Before she knows it, she is pulled deeper into the case and closer to her father and to Nick―much to the dismay of her big-city fiancé.

When a threat is made to Emily herself, she must race to catch the killer before he strikes again.

The Coroner, expertly written and sharply plotted, is perfect for fans of Patricia Cornwell and Julia Spencer Fleming.

From Beat It to Billie Jean, the songs we know and love take on a brand-new, thrilling connotation in this anthology edited by Don Bruns.

In this second collection in the Music and Murder Mystery series, nine award-winning, bestselling authors have written their own interpretations of the Thriller song list. With original work from some of the best mystery authors out there, the anthology includes stories from Heather Graham, Jeffery Deaver, William Kent Krueger, Dahlia Rose, and David R. Slayton, among others.

With poignant, frightening, and intriguing stories from some of the best writers in the genre, this eerie collection is sure to keep you up at night—and maybe even haunt your dreams.

From Beat It to Billie Jean, the songs we know and love take on a brand-new, thrilling connotation in this anthology edited by Don Bruns.

In this second collection in the Music and Murder Mystery series, nine award-winning, bestselling authors have written their own interpretations of the Thriller song list. With original work from some of the best mystery authors out there, the anthology includes stories from Heather Graham, Jeffery Deaver, William Kent Krueger, Dahlia Rose, and David R. Slayton, among others.

With poignant, frightening, and intriguing stories from some of the best writers in the genre, this eerie collection is sure to keep you up at night—and maybe even haunt your dreams.

Dr. Emily Hartford is back in Chicago, ready to move forward and leave the past behind, until an unexpected request for help sends her deep into an investigation—and into the path of a killer.

Seventeen months after the Parkman case, Dr. Hartford has returned to Chicago to finish her surgical residency. But when she is contacted out of the blue by Solange McClelland, the only survivor of a decade-old triple homicide, Emily is compelled to dig deeper. She doesn’t know the details of the event but remembers it as one of the few cases her deceased father never solved.

On her thirtieth birthday, Solange opens a long-forgotten safe-deposit box and is entirely baffled by what she finds. Inside are not only painful reminders of a once-happy youth but almost four million dollars—enough to pursue and finally solve the mystery of who brutally murdered her family. It’s been over ten years, and Solange has built a new life in Detroit with her husband, Joseph. But there are certain disturbing questions about her past that she is determined to answer. So she reaches out to the only one who might know something about her family’s deaths and their possibly erroneous death certificates—Dr. Hartford, the daughter of Freeport’s former medical examiner.

Finding it impossible to believe that her scrupulous father made a mistake, Emily joins Solange’s pursuit of the truth, and as subzero temperatures blanket snow-covered Michigan, the two women pursue justice in two very different ways. But lurking nearby in the frigid cold is a crafty, unrepentant killer, determined to finish what he started long ago.

Dr. Emily Hartford is back in Chicago, ready to move forward and leave the past behind, until an unexpected request for help sends her deep into an investigation—and into the path of a killer.

Seventeen months after the Parkman case, Dr. Hartford has returned to Chicago to finish her surgical residency. But when she is contacted out of the blue by Solange McClelland, the only survivor of a decade-old triple homicide, Emily is compelled to dig deeper. She doesn’t know the details of the event but remembers it as one of the few cases her deceased father never solved.

On her thirtieth birthday, Solange opens a long-forgotten safe-deposit box and is entirely baffled by what she finds. Inside are not only painful reminders of a once-happy youth but almost four million dollars—enough to pursue and finally solve the mystery of who brutally murdered her family. It’s been over ten years, and Solange has built a new life in Detroit with her husband, Joseph. But there are certain disturbing questions about her past that she is determined to answer. So she reaches out to the only one who might know something about her family’s deaths and their possibly erroneous death certificates—Dr. Hartford, the daughter of Freeport’s former medical examiner.

Finding it impossible to believe that her scrupulous father made a mistake, Emily joins Solange’s pursuit of the truth, and as subzero temperatures blanket snow-covered Michigan, the two women pursue justice in two very different ways. But lurking nearby in the frigid cold is a crafty, unrepentant killer, determined to finish what he started long ago.

Dr. Emily Hartford is back in Frozen Lives, the next thrilling mystery from Jennifer Graeser Dornbush.

Chicago surgeon Emily Hartford has never quite shaken off the dust of her hometown in Michigan. She may be a professional success and have a princely boyfriend in the Windy City, but she can’t seem to let go of being “the coroner’s daughter” from Freeport.

Once again, she finds herself pulled back to her hometown when Jeremiah—the eleven-year-old son of her best friend, Jo—goes missing on the frigid shores of Lake Michigan.

To everyone’s relief, Jeremiah turns up days later, alive and unharmed. But tensions remain high, and suspicions of every sort continue to grow. Jeremiah’s account of his abduction doesn’t add up, and Emily worries about Jo’s unraveling marriage. Jeremiah’s recovery, it turns out, is not the end of their terrifying tale. It’s just the beginning …

For moving among them is a devious, malevolent force. Sowing panic while seeking to fulfill his own twisted needs, this wolf in sheep’s clothing leaves a trail of rack and ruin, heedless of the damage in his wake … and the bodies he leaves behind.

Emily solidifies her role as the coroner’s daughter when she puzzles out this madman’s chilling machinations. Risking everything dear to her, Emily is determined to go the icy distance and end his killing spree.

Dr. Emily Hartford finds herself dredging the depths of a remote lake—and her own past relationship—in What Darkness Does, the next thrilling mystery from Jennifer Graeser Dornbush.

Called in to investigate the body of a young mother found floating in a small Michigan lake, Freeport coroner Dr. Emily Hartford quickly determines that Savannah Browdey was murdered. Among the many questions circling this horrifying event is one that yanks hard on Emily’s heartstrings: Where is Savannah’s infant daughter? Working alongside police detective Ishkode Aditson, Emily becomes ferociously determined to find the missing baby, Brooklyn.

At the same time, Emily’s longtime boyfriend Nick Larsen has reappeared—after being missing, presumed dead, for over a year. But Nick has changed. Badly injured and severely traumatized, the ex-cop turned FBI agent is a different man, one who has endured unimaginable brutality and then buried his secrets deep. Nick has a long road ahead … but he’s not a patient man, and catching a sadistic killer seems like good enough therapy to him.

Emily has her doubts, but what’s clear is that a cruel killer’s reign of terror must be stopped, one way or another. Their foe is formidable, increasingly bold, and brutally reckless. To catch this monster, Nick must battle his own demons, while Emily puzzles together the mystery of Brooklyn’s whereabouts, in hopes of giving a grieving family a happy ending.

July 1989, in a sleepy Michigan town, high school grad Nina Laramie heads out with her friends and is never seen alive again. Months later, her skeleton is found near a remote party spot in the forest.

The ME determines Nina has been brutally raped and bludgeoned to death. Fear and anger ripple through this tight-knit community when the case goes cold.

Thirty years later, Riley St. James, a Detroit PD assigned to Nina’s case, is determined to get her first big cold case win despite having a similar past to the victim. Relying on her investigative prowess and gut instinct, Riley tracks down a witness, who saw Nina Laramie’s murder. But as the truth comes to light, Riley must face the killers who want their secret to stay in the Hole in the Woods.

Based on the 1989 true-life murder case of Shannon Siders of Newaygo County, Michigan. After the case went dormant, a Michigan cold case team formed in 2011 and uncovered new evidence that enabled them to arrest, try, and convict the killers, who were sent to prison for Shannon’s murder in 2015.