Samantha Jayne Allen is the author of the Annie McIntyre Mysteries. She has an MFA in fiction from Texas State University, and her writing has been
published in
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,
The Common, and Electric Literature. Raised in small towns in Texas and California, she now lives with her husband and daughter in Atlanta.
The newest Annie McIntyre mystery is
Hard Rain.
At CrimeReads Allen tagged
six favorite crime novels that feature natural disasters, including:
After the Storm by Linda Castillo
Closed communities are endlessly fascinating to me as a reader. A taste for old-fashioned romance is likely what draws many people to Amish-themed entertainment, but what appeals to me 
in Castillo’s series is the opposite: the incongruity of a “simple,” peaceful community that has dark secrets, scandals, and individuals chafing against restrictions. Within the first few pages, Painters Mill, a fictional town in Ohio’s Amish country, is hit hard by a tornado. During the cleanup, a skull is discovered from where it was hidden for decades inside an Amish barn, and now, police chief Kate Burkholder—herself formerly Amish—must solve a cold case that forces her to reckon with her own complicated history. The ways people act out of rage and unprocessed grief after surviving the tornado, alongside the ongoing tension between Amish and “English,” is what’s so compelling here. It’s also a well-paced procedural, a great entry in this series.
Read about
another entry on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Common, and Electric Literature. Raised in small towns in Texas and California, she now lives with her husband and daughter in Atlanta.
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