Book 1 · 2021
The Quiet Ledger
A town clerk dies at eighty-one and leaves behind a ledger that balances a little too well.
About this bookNovelist, Millbrook Crossing, VT
Iris Hale
Small-town mysteries set in the hills of Vermont.
Three novels about a town of nine hundred people that would really rather you did not ask.
New in 2025 · Book Three
The Ridge Road
The road over the ridge only goes two places, and one of them turns out to be a lie.
Read the opening pagesThe series, in order
The Millbrook Mysteries
Nora Beckett runs the library in a town that keeps its own records, thank you. Each book stands alone. Read them in order anyway.
The writer
Twenty years behind a library desk, listening.
I was a county librarian for twenty years before I wrote a word of fiction. You learn a lot about a town from what people check out, what they return late, and what they ask you to look up when they think nobody is paying attention.
I start at five in the morning, walk the same ridge trail afterward, and put most of what I see up there into the books.
More about IrisFrom the mailbag
What readers say.
These three are placeholders. Replace them with real reader mail, blurbs, or press quotes as they come in.
“I read The Ridge Road in two sittings and then made my husband read it so I would have somebody to argue with about the ending.”
“Our book club has done all three. The arguing goes on for a week afterward. That is the highest compliment we know how to give.”
“She writes small towns like somebody who has actually sat through a town meeting in February. Nothing in these books is decorative.”
The letter
A short letter when the next book is coming.
Nothing else, ever. No launch countdowns, no daily thoughts, no forwarding your address to anybody. Four or five letters a year at the very most.
Join the letter