In the next powerful mystery from Julia Keller, a murder investigation leads West Virginia prosectuing attorney Bell Elkins to the shattering truth about her own past.

Based on a real-life event, Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Keller's latest Bell Elkins novelFast Falls the Nighttakes place in a single 24-hour period, unfurling against the backdrop of a shattering personal revelation that will change Bell's life forever.

The first drug overdose comes just after midnight, when a young woman dies on the dirty floor of a gas station bathroom. To the people of the small town of Acker's Gap, West Virginia, it is just another tragedy. It is sad - but these days, depressingly familiar.

But then there is another overdose. And another. And another.

Prosecutor Bell Elkins soon realizes that her Appalachian hometown is facing its starkest challenge yet: a day of constant heroin overdoses from a batch tainted with a lethal tranquilizer. While the clock ticks and the bodies fall, Bell and her colleagues desperately track the source of the deadly drug - and engage in fierce debates over the wisdom of expending precious resources to save the lives of self-destructive addicts.