Skip to main content
book cover for The Reckoning

The Reckoning

You must sign in to see if this title is available for request. Sign In or Register Now

Book 1 of A Renata Drake Thriller
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date Jan 06 2026 | Archive Date Jan 06 2026

Talking about this book? Use #TheReckoning #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

SHE KILLED A MAN.
HE DESERVED IT.
BUT JUSTICE ISN’T YET DONE.

First in an explosive new thriller series set in the eighties from the author of the critically acclaimed Miranda Corbie series introduces the fierce feminist Renata Drake—on the run from the FBI for the execution-style murder of her little sister’s killer.


“Vivid and haunting. I’m eager to hear more from the tenacious and resourceful Renata Drake” Meg Gardiner, #1  New York Times bestselling author

California, Southern Humboldt County, 1985.  Renata Drake steps off a Greyhound bus and into small-town Garberville, hoping to disappear. She checks the papers. She’s not headline news. Not yet.

But she’s made a mistake. The FBI have the cannabis-producing “Emerald Triangle” town— and its corrupt residents—in their sights. Even worse, a teenage girl is missing, and when she turns up dead, the third in three years, it’s clear a serial killer is living among them.

Renata knows about murdered girls and the burning desire for justice—and for revenge. Her younger sister Josie is gone, and now, so is the man who killed her. Renata didn’t stay in Washington, D.C. to be arrested for executing a murderer, and she shouldn’t stay here either. But Renata decides to investigate, and what she uncovers will trigger a final reckoning: For herself, for a killer, and for all of Southern Humboldt.

This powerful, page-turning thriller explores the human cost of corruption and the psychological toll that violence takes on women.

SHE KILLED A MAN.
HE DESERVED IT.
BUT JUSTICE ISN’T YET DONE.

First in an explosive new thriller series set in the eighties from the author of the...


Advance Praise

“Kelli Stanley’s atmospheric mystery immerses us in a land of beauty, crime, and danger. Set during the unsettling era of 1980s west coast serial killers, the story is vivid and haunting. I’m eager to hear more from the tenacious and resourceful Renata Drake”
Meg Gardiner, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Kelli Stanley’s atmospheric mystery immerses us in a land of beauty, crime, and danger. Set during the unsettling era of 1980s west coast serial killers, the story is vivid and haunting. I’m eager...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781448317547
PRICE $29.99 (USD)
PAGES 336

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Reader (EPUB)
NetGalley Shelf App (EPUB)
Send to Kindle (EPUB)
Send to Kobo (EPUB)
Download (EPUB)

Average rating from 1 member