The Trusted

What happens when the ones we trust the most betray us?

In the charming, tight-knit community of Sheppley, Pennsylvania, Detective Lina Cordova and her partner Aaron Cash are still reeling from their failure to get justice for Tally Frost—wife, grieving mother, and Sheppley society queen who disappeared a year earlier—when another high-profile case hits their desks.

A body is discovered in a remote hunting cabin, shot through the head. The victim was a man plagued by a controversy that once rocked Sheppley to its core. There is no shortage of suspects, and they include people Cordova and Cash know well, which makes it even more difficult to distinguish truth from lies.

The daughter of a Filipino doctor and a mother from an old-money Sheppley family, Ivy League–educated Lina Cordova is acutely aware of the social dynamics and prejudices of her hometown, while young Aaron Cash is a recent transplant, an escapee from an abusive home life in rural Tennessee. As their twisty search for the truth takes them to ever darker and more complex places, the two are forced to grapple with their own painful losses, as well as impossibly hard questions: How far would we go for the people we love? Are some secrets better left hidden? Can murder itself be a form of justice?