Dead Wait

by Janis Thornton

West Coast journalist Annie Sinclair’s career, not to mention her love life, has been on the skids far too long, when she returns to Logan Point, her small, Indiana hometown. She’s back to make amends with her elderly father, and to delve into the decades old, unsolved murder of her high school classmate for a much-needed writing gig with a national tabloid.

Annie’s plans soon go awry — first when her father warns her against digging into the past; again, when she meets The Logan Point Ledger’s handsome, but exasperating, new editor; and again still, when she reconnects with her first love, who clearly wants to rekindle what once was.

But Annie’s most arduous test appears in the form of the earthbound spirit of a boy she once knew — the boy accused of the murder she is investigating for her writing assignment — who now needs her to prove his innocence, so he can break the ties that bind him to the darkness. In exchange, he will set Annie free to realize that the love she yearns for is within her reach, if only she can open her heart.

243 pages, Paperback

Published October 4, 2026

About the author

Janis Thornton is an Indiana-based author of history, mystery, and true crime. Her most recent book, “No Place Like Murder: True Crime in the Midwest,” from Indiana University Press, is a collection of 20 sensational true crimes that shook Indiana from 1869 through 1950.

Coming next is “The 1965 Palm Sunday Tornadoes in Indiana,” published by History Press.

Her previous true crime work, “Too Good a Girl: Remembering Olene Emberton and the Mystery of Her Death,” tells the story of the 1965 Tipton, Indiana, murder of Janis' high school classmate.

Janis’ fiction works include the paranormal-romantic mystery, “Love, Lies & Azure Eyes”; and two cozy mysteries in the Elmwood Confidential series — “Dust Bunnies & Dead Bodies” and “Dead Air & Double Dares.” She also is the author of three local history books, “Images of America: Elwood,” “Images of America: Tipton County” and “Images of America: Frankfort”; and contributor to “Undeniably Indiana” and “Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul 2.”

She is a member of the national and Indianapolis chapter of Sisters in Crime, the Authors Guild, Indianapolis Writers Center, and the historical society of her hometown, Tipton Indiana. Her cozy mysteries were finalists in the East Texas Writers Guild’s First Chapter Book Award contests in 2015 and 2016. She was a 2009 Midwest Writers Workshop Fellow and was a finalist in the Daphne du Maurier contest the same year. Her newspaper feature stories have been recognized by Women in Communications (Lafayette, Indiana chapter), Smiles Unlimited, and the Hoosier State Press Association.

You may contact/follow/like her at www.janis-thornton.com, Twitter (@JanisThornton), and Facebook (facebook.com/janisthorntonauthor).