The Girl at the Quarry: Book 9 - 2008 (Whispering Pines)

In the mountain town of Whispering Pines, some places are never meant to be found.

When traveling nurse Dana Kline takes an unfamiliar back road between patient visits, she expects nothing more than a rough shortcut. Instead, the road narrows, the land shifts, and an abandoned slate quarry appears where it shouldn’t—silent, deep, and waiting. At the bottom lies the body of a young woman the town is too quick to dismiss.

Dana recognizes her.

Not as a neighbor.
Not as a friend.
But as a patient.

The discovery pulls Dana into an investigation she was never meant to be part of. As an outsider, she is protected by professionalism—and restrained by it. Medical confidentiality draws hard lines. Small-town loyalty draws harder ones. Whispering Pines prefers simple explanations, and when blame settles on someone who won’t be missed, the town is ready to move on.

Dana isn’t.

As she retraces clinic records, quiet interactions, and overlooked routines, patterns begin to surface—patterns shaped by terrain, timing, and silence. The quarry is not random. The stillness is not accidental. And the story everyone is telling is built on convenience, not truth.

The deeper Dana goes, the clearer the cost becomes.

Speaking could end her career.
Staying silent could finish what fear started.

Around her, Whispering Pines tightens its grip on normalcy. Questions are met with politeness instead of answers. Concern is offered without commitment. People watch more than they speak. In a town built on long memory and quiet survival, truth is something that must be carried carefully—or not at all.

But the land does not forget.

Old cuts in stone dictate movement.
Depth controls sound.
Sequence reveals intention.

And the quarry, patient and unmoved, begins to give back what silence tried to bury.

The Girl at the Quarry is a slow-burn, atmospheric mystery about responsibility, restraint, and the dangerous comfort of letting someone else decide what matters. It explores how easily harm continues when people rely on distance—professional, social, or emotional—to excuse inaction.

There is no spectacle here.
No sensational violence.
No easy justice.

Only the quiet reckoning of truth arriving without comfort—and a woman forced to decide how much truth is worth when the cost is entirely her own.

WHY YOU’LL LOVE THIS BOOK
✔ A complete, standalone mystery—no cliffhangers
✔ Clean suspense with no gore, profanity, or graphic content
✔ A strong, emotionally grounded female protagonist
✔ Rural realism where land, weather, and silence shape the story
✔ Slow-burn tension driven by atmosphere, not shock
✔ A vivid small-town setting that feels lived-in and real

ABOUT THE SERIES
Whispering Pines: 24 Years, 24 Secrets is an atmospheric rural mystery saga told across twenty-four standalone novels, each set in a single year between 2000 and 2023. Every book features a new protagonist, a new crime, and a new secret—while the town itself remains the constant.

Familiar faces return.
Consequences carry forward.
The land remembers.

You can read The Girl at the Quarry on its own—or step deeper into Whispering Pines and discover what twenty-four years of silence leaves behind.