Kay Jennings

The Port Stirling Series

Shallow Waters

Shallow Waters (#1)

“Brisk, instantly engaging police procedural”
The Oregonian

A sleepy Oregon coastal village with secrets as dark as its January storms. A new, handsome police chief with his own shadowy past.

In this shocking story set in a beach town not unlike where she grew up, native Oregonian Kay Jennings introduces a thrilling new mystery series set alongside Oregon’s rugged Pacific coast. Shallow Waters combines an intriguing police procedural with a spooky murder mystery in a remote part of southwest Oregon you aren’t likely to forget. 

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Midnight Beach

Midnight Beach (#2)

A brutally murdered federal agent, and distrust among his close colleagues greet Port Stirling Police Chief Matt Horning as he faces down a second homicide in his new Oregon hometown.

Is there really an international drug ring operating in his remote coastal village where nothing ever happens? Is this what Matt Horning bargained for when he took this job last winter? As spring blooms on the Oregon coast, are there also blossoming forbidden feelings within him?

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Code: Tsunami

Code: Tsunami (#3)

Woken by the “Big One,” an earthquake at his Oregon beach-front home, things would only get worse from there for Matt Horning. Would the monster tsunami claim his life and ruin Port Stirling forever?

As if Mother Nature exploding on the rugged Oregon coast wasn’t enough, a decades-old skeleton is unearthed, and its mysterious murder leads to difficult questions. Who was the victim, and why was the body placed here? Is it hiding an ugly story from Oregon’s history?

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Dark Sand

Dark Sand (#4)

Police chief Matt Horning thought life in Port Stirling, Oregon was returning to normal after the earthquake. He was dead wrong.

Almost one year has passed since the earth shook up Matt Horning and his coastal village. Now, the world’s foremost scientists have flocked to the remote town to study the aftereffects on the sea and land.

Turns out, one of them isn’t a nice man. Famous geologist British Lord Phineas Stuart goes missing, and when the investigation into his disappearance gets underway, Matt and his colleagues quickly realize they’re not hurting for suspects who wish the geologist harm. Has Stuart just taken off somewhere, or is a jealous competitor responsible for the missing scientist?

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Phantom Cove

Phantom Cove (#5)

The honeymoon is over for Police Chief Matt Horning…in more ways than one. Secrets from the past return, hiding a killer. Winter on the Oregon coast—it doesn’t get any darker.

The alarming discovery of a ghost gun in a routine arrest in Port Stirling sets off warning bells for Matt Horning and his police colleagues. Is it the tip of the iceberg?

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Mourning Bay

Mourning Bay (#6)

A prominent local woman, Hannah Oakley, drives to beautiful Mourning Bay State Park on the rugged southern Oregon coast, leaves her glasses and a mysterious note on a piece of driftwood, and then walks into the bay, committing suicide—or does she?

Police chief Matt Horning makes a promise to the woman’s grieving husband to further investigate the disappearance of his wife, but with no body, no crime scene, and no witnesses, he doesn’t have much to go on. Matt’s colleagues join in to solve this twisty case, but will an aggressive new detective in the Port Stirling police department upset the camaraderie of the local cops?

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Cold Rock Island

Cold Rock Island (#7)

Coming May 15!

Police Chief Matt Horning and State Department Special Agent Fern Byrne return in a thrilling tale of international intrigue that begins with a heartbreaking death on a mysterious island in the Pacific Ocean, and ends up on powerful desks in Washington, D.C.

West Coast billionaire Rohn Reid calls his old friend, the U.S. Secretary of State, to tell him he’s just found a dead body on his private island—Cold Rock Island, about thirty minutes off the southern coast of Oregon. The victim is Hiroshi Matsuda, a military hero who once worked on the island. The nearest police jurisdiction is Port Stirling, and Matt and Fern are enlisted to investigate, and are soon at odds with the billionaire and his family.

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