home grown is the 16th book in the Garth Ryland mystery series that has taken him from the graves of Navoe Cemetery to the wilds of Mitchell's Woods to the cave of Matotamah to the edge of Wampler's Pit, and in and out of the arms of some of Oakalla's most beautiful, intriguing, and dangerous women. Called "an exemplary series hero" by Publishers Weekly, Ryland lives and works in the small town of Oakalla, Wisconsin ("Lake Woebegone made sinister") where passions run high and secrets go deep, and nothing is ever quite as simple as it seems-where every thread runs at seemingly loose ends to a knot of deception and death. John Borden, an amiable misfit known to most of the locals as "Chilly Willy," is missing. He left on foot for his night job at the hospital, but never arrived. Town marshal, Cecil Hardwick, is on his way out of town to a convention at the very moment former FBI agent, Chuck Holden, arrives unannounced in Ryland's newspaper office with the information that an assassin, code name "Punisher," is likely living there in Oakalla. Holden has been after him for years, and now in retirement has made it his mission to bring him to justice. Ryland's search for John Borden first takes him to Robert Pickering's house, where Borden has been living in the basement for the past few years and where Pickering is in the last stages of emphysema. Ryland next visits Jake McKennis, a bear of a man with a short fuse and a dislike of Borden, and whose son, Ronny, is Borden's best friend. From there Ryland goes to Adams County Hospital and has an altercation with Lynn Saylor, a journeyman nurse with a hulking presence and a suspect past. Then the crank calls start at work and at home. Then Ronny McKennis runs away from home to a place that only Ryland, at his peril, knows. Then Lynn Saylor and Chuck Holden hurriedly leave town, but not before Ryland learns something about each that will put him in harm's way, and not before he takes what might be the last ride of his life. In Home Grown, Ryland's search for truth again leads him and his housekeeper, Ruth, down converging paths that each would rather not travel, but are helpless to alter, until they intersect at a place perilously close to the heart.

After the Petals Go is the 15th book in the Garth Ryland mystery series and perhaps Riggs' most ambitious book to date. Called "an exemplary series hero" by Publishers Weekly, Ryland lives and works in the small town of Oakalla, Wisconsin ("Lake Woebegone made sinister") where passions run high, secrets go deep, and nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Ryland never should have been in his office that beautiful Saturday morning in May when Will Jennings approached him with "something black and shriveled clutched in his right hand, and the weight of the world on his shoulders." The "something" that Will carries is Mike Manning's wallet that Will found in the Forty Acre Woods earlier that morning. Mike Manning has been missing from Oakalla for seven and a half years and is presumed dead by all who knew him best, including Will Jennings, his hired hand; Darrell Williamson, his best friend and drinking buddy, and Samantha Manning, his wife and Ryland's would've, could've, should've been lover.

As Ryland's search takes him from the Forty Acre Woods to the old Manning place, where Mike Manning was last seen, he discovers what appears to be Mike's Silverado pickup hidden in the barn along with an ammonia wagon, missing from Central Co-op. There Ryland also discovers a barn cat with an attitude, a milk house with its windows blacked out, and just as night starts to fall, a body upside down in a water tank. But before Ryland can begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together, he is attacked and nearly killed by an antagonist who is as ruthless and relentless as he is cunning.

Neither does his tormentor stop there, but pursues Ryland and his household even as Ryland slowly but surely closes in on him. Or her. Samantha Manning has a past, as Ruth Krammes, Ryland's housekeeper and trusted confidant, says to him, although she is reluctant to reveal just what that past is. So does Mike Manning have a past, one littered with bad debts, broken promises, deceit, and innuendo. As Ryland sorts through it on his way to the truth, he finds himself at odds with Ruth, his friends and fellow citizens, and worst of all, himself. Shaken by the events swirling around him, his near death, and the death of his hero, he steps outside of himself into an unfamiliar world of loose talk and hasty actions that are as dangerous in their own way as the killer who stalks him.

Nothin' Short of Dyin' is the long awaited 14th book in the "Garth Ryland mystery series." Called "an exemplary series hero" by Publishers Weekly, Ryland lives and works in the small town of Oakalla, Wisconsin ("Lake Woebegone made sinister") where passions run high, secrets go deep, and nothing is ever quite as it seems.

His morning starts quietly on a picture perfect, mid-November day. But even as he stands at his office widow admiring the flawless blue sky and coverall layer of fresh white snow, he knows it won't last. Wisconsin Novembers are notoriously bad. They are "one long gray litany of clouds...the ankle deep slush you wade through on your way to your first cold of the season." Besides, it was a Monday.

So Garth isn't surprised when town marshal Cecil Hardwick soon arrives and wants Garth to accompany him to a clover field just outside of town where a mud-caked black pickup with bullet holes in the door and blood on the seat is parked. Garth does so under protest, and only because Cecil's jurisdiction ends at the city limits, where Garth's begins.

The driver of the pickup is nowhere to be found, and there is no way to identify the pickup because it has no license plate or registration. A day long search turns up nothing but a menacing ex-football star from the Deep South who is looking for the same pickup.

The first fire occurs in the night at Fickle, a whistle-stop five miles south of Oakalla. It bears an eerie resemblance to an earlier fire along Coon Lake where a ghost reportedly walks the shoreline a stone's throw away from where a father and daughter once drowned.

The second fire strikes at the heart of Oakalla, and at Garth's heart as well. It threatens his friendship with his housekeper Ruth, who refuses him access to Ruth's ward at the Women's Shelter, and whom Garth blames for the fires.

Another fire will occur. A life will be lost. What promises to become a beautiful friendship will be destroyed before the mystery is unraveled and justice served.