New! For coming-of-age or Southern suspense readers.

A Novel: Between the Sun and Rain

One summer night in 1985, two weeks before she is about to start sixth grade, Julia Pemberton disappears without a trace from a friend’s backyard birthday party.  Everyone in the sleepy town of Chatham, North Carolina, believes she was taken while hiding in the woods during a game of kick the can, while the truth is much closer to home.  Dell Jenkins, Julia’s life-long best friend, has to start sixth grade without Julia, and as the months go by, she feels like everyone is moving on with their lives too easily.  Confronted with her first glimpse of the evil and chaos that exists in the world, Dell still refuses to give up hope that Julia will return.  The only other person that seems to feel Julia’s absence as keenly as Dell, is Tommy, Julia’s father. After weeks of searching, Tommy begins to lose faith that his daughter will ever come home alive.  He spends his days in the wood shop behind his house, shutting the rest of the world out, even his wife.  The only person’s presence he can tolerate is Dell’s, despite the fact that she is the child of the woman he had once hoped to marry. Meanwhile, Betsy Glass, the most put-together mom in town, worries the whole town feels she is responsible for Julia’s disappearance. After all, she hosted the party from which Julia disappeared. With time, her guilt dissipates, but her perfect façade is rattled when she uncovers evidence of her husband’s infidelity.  At first, Betsy chooses to turn a blind eye, not wanting to destroy her comfortable life; but when she can no longer resist digging deeper into her husband’s affair, she unknowingly sets all three characters on the path to discover the truth about what happened to Julia.

Praise for Between the Sun and Rain

Between the Sun and Rain is a spectacular novel, a powerful, wise and intricate gift to readers.  Leighton Kirby Richards gets everything just right:  The plotting is remarkable, the details are always spot-on, and the ending is a jaw-dropper that finds truth on so many levels.  This is a big-time book.  Wow.  Just wow.

--Martin Clark, author of The Plinko Bounce and The Substitution Order

When beautiful preteen Julia Pemberton goes missing, everyone in the small town of Chatham, North Carolina, has their own heartbreak to survive--and their own suspicions to tend. Debut novelist Richards skillfully uses multiple points of views to create an artful kaleidoscope of memories and emotions concerning the missing girl. These carefully arranged fragments deftly come together for a heart-stopping and shattering finish.

The book shines with superb period details of small town 1980s life, contributing to the tale’simmersive and authentic feel. This modern Southern gothic thriller is compulsively readable and utterly unputdownable. Grab Between the Sun and Rain and read it before Hollywood scoops it up for a film adaptation.

-Heath Hardage Lee, author of The League of Wives and The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon

A haunting and beautifully layered story of loss, loyalty, and the secrets that live just beneath the surface of small-town life. With emotional precision and quiet suspense, this novel explores the unbearable weight of a child’s disappearance and the fractures it exposes in friendship, marriage, and community. Deeply human and impossible to put down.

— Dianne C. Braley
Best Selling and Multi Award Winning Author of The Silence in the Sound and The Summer Before