Set in Pennsylvania in 1835, A Stranger Here Below introduces Gideon Stoltz, a young sheriff trying to understand what caused the local judge, his mentor and friend, to kill himself. Gideon is regarded with suspicion: he’s new to town, and Pennsylvania Dutch in the backcountry Scotch-Irish settlement. And he found the judge’s body. Gideon’s mother was the victim of a violent crime, and he must confront his own trauma as he digs into the judge’s past. When he realizes that his friend’s suicide was spurred by much more than despair, Gideon follows a dangerous path into Adamant’s troubled history.

The first in an atmospheric and compelling historical mystery series, A Stranger Here Below draws on author Charles Fergus’s expertise as a nature writer – and his personal experience with murder.

“Deeply imagined and intricately plotted, A Stranger Here Below marries richly textured historical fiction with the urgency of a mystery novel. Fergus knows certain things, deep in the bone: horses, hunting, the folkways of rural places, and he weaves this wisdom into a stirring tale.” – Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March

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“Fergus has created a strong character in Gideon Stoltz . . . Some themes are universal, and the jealousy, cruelty, and greed that Stoltz uncovers are as prevalent today as they were in 1835.” — Historical Novels Review

“A slow, rich novel of a distant time and a man who is ‘Othered’ in most aspects of his life . . . an exploration of the soul in the presence of death and wrongdoing.” — New York Journal of Books

“With luminous and deftly sketched prose, Charles Fergus takes us into an American past that is both deeply familiar and utterly strange.” — Jeffrey Lent, author of Lost Nation and In the Fall

“The kind of mystery Lee Child would have had Jack Reacher tackle had he placed a story in the 1830s.” — Michael McMenamin, author of the Liebold Protocol

“Imbued with Michael Connelly’s gumshoe skills and the vivid historical descriptions of Charles Frazier.” — Brad Smith, author of the Virgil Cain Mysteries

“A cracking good mystery . . . Fergus puts you firmly in Gideon Stoltz’s rough-hewn world where a ‘foreigner’ with the wrong accent has to watch his back even if he wears a sheriff’s badge.” — Scott Weidensaul, author of The First Frontier

“Some writers are natural storytellers. Others have the ability to evoke mood or a sense of place. Still others are able to handle landscape or use precise imagery. Every now and then you find a writer who has all of these skills, and because of that they invoke the magic of fiction. They make the chair you are sitting on disappear. Charles Fergus is one of those writers, and A Stranger Here Below is one of those books.” — Craig Nova, author of The Good Son and All the Dead Yale Men

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