Sign-In
Cart
The Taking: A Heartland Crime Thriller
Paperback
Series: Still Standing, Book 1
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 22 2026
Pages: 274
Weight: 0.82
Height: 0.62 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
He came home to hold the line. He didn't know the whole valley was already being stolen out from under it.
Sheriff Dell Rourke bought his way back into the county where he grew up - sold the house his late wife died in, took the pay cut, came home to the one place on earth where the roads still knew him. He expected speeding tickets and lost hunters. He got a murdered landowner, a valley being erased one deed at a time, and a faceless company that does this for a living.
It looks like a heart attack. It looks like a fair sale. It looks like a family that moved away. It looks like nothing at all - until you lay every legal piece in a row and see the machine underneath: forged deeds, a stolen notary stamp, poisoned wells, a bought county, and a corridor of stolen land aimed at billions of dollars nobody in Hollow Creek will ever see.
Rourke has no jurisdiction they'll honor, no evidence they can't bury, and no allies left but a young deputy and a wall of photographs. They strip his badge. They sit in his kitchen to prove they can. They offer him a pension and a porch - and when he won't take it, they run him off a county road and leave him bleeding.
He gets up anyway. Because a man doesn't have to win the whole war. He just has to hold his piece of the line.
THE TAKING is a lean, propulsive heartland thriller about the last honest man in a county that's been bought - and the one crack in a perfect crime. For readers who like their justice earned the hard way.
Also from
Carson, Brad
The Capitol Contract: The Gripping Political Conspiracy Thriller They Never Wanted You to Read
Carson, Brad
Paperback
The Directive Protocol: A Political Thriller About AI, National Security, and Who Controls the Truth
Carson, Brad
Paperback
Also in
Mystery & Thriller
Coffin Road: An Utterly Gripping Crime Thriller from the Author of the China Thrillers
May, Peter
Paperback
Sabine's Notebook: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Continues
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Movie Tie-In Edition): Book 1 of the Millennium Trilogy
Larsson, Stieg
Paperback
The Golden Mean: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Concludes
Bantock, Nick
Hardcover
Big Little Truths: Reese's Book Club: A Novel: The Sequel to Big Little Lies
Moriarty, Liane
Hardcover
The Pirate Queen: A Novel from the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Frozen River
Lawhon, Ariel
Hardcover
The Altar of Pergamon: The Mystery of the Dark Angel and the Future of the World
Cahn, Jonathan
Hardcover