Books by Jess McConkey

In the vein of Jennifer McMahons Promise Not to Tell and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold comes Love Lies Bleeding, a haunting story about the lengths to which people will go to keep their pasts buried. Jess McConkey (aka award-winning author Shirley Damsgaard) enthralls with her ingenious blending of family drama and gripping mystery. Suspenseful and absolutely chilling, Love Lies Bleeding grabs hold of the reader from page one, as a young woman whose golden life is shattered by unexpected violence is sent to a small, secluded lake town in Northern Minnesota to recoverand soon suspects the towns eccentric residents are hiding more than one truly frightening secret.

Family secrets can bind and destroyKate is ready to put her nomadic, city-dwelling past behind her when she marries Joe Krause and moves with him to the Iowa farm that has been in his family for more than 140 years. But life on the farm isn't quite as idyllic as she'd hoped. It's filled with chores, judgmental neighbors, and her mother-in-law, who?unbeknownst to Kate until after the wedding?will be living with them.As Kate struggles to find her place in the small farming community, she begins to realize that her husband and his family are not who she thought they were. According to town gossip, the Krause family harbors a long-kept secret about a mysterious death that haunts Kate as a dangerous, unexplainable chain of events begins.