Every Grave Keeps A Secret
Available in Ebook, audiobook, paperback, and hardcover editions.
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling mystery.
I loved this story. A wonderful combination of love, loss, danger, redemption, and ghosts. Very cool.
Included in Malevolent Dark’s Horror Fiction Top 25 July 2025 Edition
Toby Maddox has long listened to the whispers of the dead, but nothing can prepare her for the nightmare about to erupt from the forgotten graves of Elkhorn. As she struggles to piece together her shattered childhood, Toby is dragged into a world of gruesome murders and whispered legends where secrets fester like wounds.
Alongside Christian—a hardened investigator whose haunted heart mirrors her own—Toby must confront the malevolent spirit of Abel Younger before it consumes her. When every revelation reveals another ghost waiting to be unearthed, only the courage to face their inner demons can save them.
Bound by loss, betrayal, and guilt, Toby and Christian must lay to rest a past that keeps clawing its way back. The ultimate price of redemption might be their intertwined destiny—or their very souls.
The Truth Behind The Fiction
TR Kerby and I enjoy exploring old cemeteries and playing with dowsing rods. The question of how much a pair of simple copper rods can detect was too good to ignore, and For The Dead came to be. It’s a fascinating process.
In the novel, Toby Maddox is a cemetery mapper, which is a real job—or in her case, a career. So how does the graveyard mapping gig work?
First, the cemetery sends Toby their records and maps. They’re entered into a database where she can search for discrepancies. She creates a grid showing each grave, including ones that were sold but not used, or are still available. Then she goes to the cemetery, marks the known graves, and corrects any errors in the records.
Old cemeteries that haven’t been used in a long time often have several. In many cases, the records were lost or destroyed. Last are the unmarked graves. She flags them and marks them on the grid.
To find them she looks for mounds, depressions, bare spots, rocks, rotted wood, things like that. Using copper dowsing rods she can find the graves, determine if the person buried there was male or female and an adult or a child (see the video above). When she’s finished, Toby takes all that data and creates a new record book and a laminated, weatherproof map. The client is given those along with a database they can update on their own. She also archives it, so if their records are lost, she can reproduce them.
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Content Warning:
child kidnapping, gory violence, profanity
No generative artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the writing of this work.