Nothing Ever Happens
Here
By Seraphina Nova Glass
On Sale: February 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781525831591
Graydon House Paperback
Price: $18.99
About the Book:
“A
charming cast of characters, a twisty mystery, and a diabolical killer make Nothing Ever Happens Here impossible to
put down. A riveting page-turner with a sly sense of humor.” —Robyn Harding,
internationally bestselling author of The
Haters
Nothing ever happens in small towns…
When Shelby Dawson survives a harrowing attack that should
have left her dead, she tries to move past it—for herself, and for her family.
Fifteen months later, with the help of her best friend, Mackenzie, she finally
feels safe again in the snowy Minnesota town she calls home. But when an
anonymous note appears on her windshield bearing the same threats her attacker
made, Shelby realizes that her nightmare has only just begun.
As new evidence surfaces, and a group of well-meaning
senior citizens accidentally makes the case go viral online, the situation
quickly goes from bad to worse. And with suspicious accidents targeting those
closest to her happening all over town, Shelby can’t shake the feeling that
she’s being watched. Fighting to stay one step ahead of disaster, she finds
herself asking the question on everyone’s lips: Who attacked her that night?
But Shelby isn’t the only one with questions. Mackenzie’s
husband, Leo, vanished without a trace on that terrible night, and over a year
later, no one knows why. Until a deep dive into his finances reveals a history
of debts, mismanaged funds, and hidden accounts—one of which is still active.
Their suspicion that Leo is still alive only complicates things further,
though, and when another person connected to Shelby goes missing, she’s caught
in a race against time before her attacker becomes a killer.
Excerpted from NOTHING EVER HAPPENS HERE by
Seraphina Nova Glass. Copyright © 2025 by Seraphina Nova Glass. Published by Graydon
House, an imprint of HarperCollins.
3
Florence
Fifteen Months Later
I
read a story on the internet about how elderly people without hobbies are among
the saddest sacks on earth, although I’m sure I have that wrong and they didn’t
use the word “sacks.” Anyway, it went on to say how having hobbies could
greatly reduce one’s chances of developing dementia. They didn’t give a
percentage and I would have liked a percentage, because if it’s only a one
percent chance reduction, well then, why bother? But I guess they wouldn’t have
written the whole article, in that case, or used the words “greatly reduce
one’s chances” for that matter either, would they? So I decided I would like a
hobby.
So, when I Googled “how to start a hobby” the first
advice given was to break it into small steps so you’re not overwhelmed. For
Christ’s sake, I didn’t Google how to embezzle diamonds from the Russian mafia,
I was simply thinking I might take up cookie making or something. How could I
get overwhelmed? Anyway…then I learned that professional cookie decorators call
themselves “cookiers” and I just found the term so irritating I gave up on the
whole thing.
Then Millie told me I could knit with her and I told
Millie that she’s shamefully cliché, and how does she not have carpal tunnel by
now? And it’s not really a hobby, is it? She’d be sitting in front of the
television watching Bonanza with or without her knitting in hand, so it’s quite
mindless, and I don’t think a hobby should be mindless. Bernie has taken up
winemaking, but his room smells like a boiled egg, so I don’t think he’s doing
it right. It’s still at the top of my list, though.
Gardening was a contender too. I was quite the
gardener once, but the snow won’t melt until April, so that seems a long wait.
I could be dead by then for all I know. But then Herb said I should make a
podcast about gardening and share my wisdom with the world. This intrigued
me—because I was once a news announcer on public radio, and in a way it’s a
perfect idea. My love for plants and helping people learn, hmm. But how would
one even begin? I just showed up and talked into a mic at the station, and that
was long ago. I would need to figure out a lot of things, but learning it all
would keep me busy, and maybe that’s a hobby all in itself. I was almost sold
on the idea.
But then something very serendipitous happened. I was
at Murph Moyer’s funeral, which was such a sad occasion since Murph had just
had a hair transplant he was very excited about, and had planned a trip to the
Bahamas to swim with the pigs. I guess that’s a thing… He even bought a bottle
of spray tan on Amazon, and then just like that, a fall on the ice on his way
down to The Angry Trout for a pint one night and that was it. And now he looks
orange in his casket, poor Murph, and he never even got to put his new hair to
good use. It’s like that these days, though. When you get to be our age, you
start receiving invitations to a lot more funerals. And part of you gets used
to it, but the main part of you never does.
At the reception, I was chatting with Rosie and Susan
by the punch bowl. We were sitting in metal folding chairs and holding little
slices of white cake on napkins when I noticed Winny pouring a long pull of
scotch into a Santa Claus coffee mug and sitting by herself next to a fake
ficus in need of dusting. She was hunched over her drink, and I saw her dot her
eye with the corner of a napkin, so I excused myself and went to sit with her.
I could tell it wasn’t her first scotch because she
had a glassy-eyed look and loose lips, but that’s a good thing. It was easy to
get her to confide in me and tell me why she’d missed our bridge game last
Tuesday and what in the world was the matter. I mean, I know her husband passed
only a couple of months ago, of course. But he’d been battling severe diabetes
complications and was in the hospital for who knows how long. He was even left
unable to speak after a diabetes-induced stroke. Lord help him. It was a mercy,
really, him passing. It was very expected. So I am quite surprised at what
Winny tells me—that she thinks her husband was murdered and didn’t die of
natural causes. Well, I had to set my punch on the floor next to me and rest my
hand on my heart a moment.
“Sweetheart, why would you say that? Otis was so sick,
bless him,” I say to her, placing my hands on her knees. I thought she lost the
plot, if I’m honest, but I was still going to be sympathetic. She picks at
Santa’s chipping glitter beard and talks into her lap.
“Something wasn’t right there,” she says with a
haunted look on her face.
“What do you mean, love?” I ask, trying to look in her
eyes so she’s forced to look back at me, but she continues to mumble. And I
suppose I would speak quietly too if I were saying the crazy thing she was
about to say.
“Someone there killed him,” she whispers.
“At the hospital?”
“Yes, Florence. I… Yes. I’m not just—I’m not crazy.
I’m not making shit up.”
“Of course you’re not, dear,” I say, but I don’t
really mean it. “Well, did you tell the police?” I ask, because what else does
one ask in this sort of situation? “Of course, but they don’t believe me. I can
tell. They say they’ll ‘have a look,’ whatever that means, but I know when I’m
being condescended to. They will not have a look. Plus that old detective Riley
has a head full of chipped beef. Has he ever helped anyone solve anything in
this town?” she asks, becoming louder and more agitated as she goes. She puts
her mug down and takes a deep breath.
To be fair, the only crime I can remember happening in
the last few years in this town, besides petty bike theft or drunk fistfights,
is the tragedy that happened to Mack and Shelby that terrible night last year,
but I can’t blame Riley for that. It absolutely baffled everyone. He does have
a head full of chipped beef though, I’ll give her that.
“Why would you think something like that, love? You
know all of the hospital workers,” I say, which is a given. She pretty much
knows everyone around here. “You think one of them hurt Otis? That’s…” I stop,
because I don’t know what to say. It’s absurd and makes me worry for Winny. I
wonder if she’s gone around telling other people this sort of thing.
“He told me,” she says, and since I know he was unable
to speak, now I really zip my lip and just look over at the bottle of scotch on
the refreshments table with a longing gaze, wondering how to kindly extract
myself from the conversation.
“Something’s goin’ on around here, Flor. Something is
happening. First Shel and Mack, and poor Leo wherever the hell he really is.
Now this.” It’s strange to hear someone say “poor Leo,” because the general,
mostly unspoken consensus is that he’s a rat bastard who ghosted his wife. I
hope I’m using that term correctly. Ghosted. Anyway, I wonder if it would be
rude to lean over and pick a few cucumber sandwiches off of the table while
she’s talking. I do hate to be rude, but I really am famished, and I know Liddy
Wingfield made them, and she uses the pimento cream cheese on them, which is a
dream.
Before I can decide, Winny leans in conspiratorially.
“Can I show you something?” she asks.
“Of course,” I agree, giving up on my chance for a
cucumber sandwich as she motions for me to follow her. The reception is at
Dusty Waltman’s house because he and Murph were very good friends. I suppose
he’s a nice enough man, I just can’t get past the urge to take a bottle of
Pledge and a washrag after him each time I hear the name Dusty. Not his fault,
I suppose, and his house is quite tidy, although too drafty for my taste.
Even so, I follow Winny down his front hall with the
brown plaid wallpaper and creaky wood floors, and we pull our coats from a pile
of other sad-looking black and navy down coats draped over an old steamer trunk
near the door and walk out into the frozen air. It’s so cold the snow is having
trouble trying to fall, and it swirls around the lampposts in light, icy
specks. Before I can complain about freezing to death, I hear “My Heart Will Go
On” start to play inside, and now I’m happy to be out here, so I give her a
minute as I shift from foot to foot and blow on my hands while she pulls
something from her pocket. Why do they play songs like that at funerals?
Everyone is already sad, and now I can hear sobs from inside. I hope they play
“Another One Bites the Dust” at my funeral. And have it at a Dave &
Buster’s, where everyone will get free mojitos and play free SkeeBall, and not
in a drafty house with peely wallpaper and stale sheet cake.
Winny finally fishes out whatever it is she’s been
digging for, then shoves the pieces of a ripped-up sheet of paper at me. I take
it, examining it and have no idea what the hell she’s playing at.
“What is it?” I ask. She takes the papers back, swipes
a layer of snow off of Dusty’s porch swing, and sits. I sit next to her, and
she lays them out on her knees.
“Look,” she says, and I do. I see a scrap with the
words “Help me” scrawled across it, and another that reads “Trying to kill me.”
But the words before it are torn away. She stares at me, waiting for a
response. “Well, what is this?” I ask. “Otis wrote it. Look! This is the
clearest one.” She puts a scrap on top of the others. It says, “You have to
tell someone what’s happening here.” The last part says, “Warn Mack and Shel…”
but the end of her name is torn away.
“See,” she says, “and then it stops, like he couldn’t
finish.”
“I don’t… Why is this in scraps? Why would he write
this?” I’m shivering from the cold, and my words come out in white puffs.
“All I can think is that he was trying to get this
note to me. Maybe something happened when I went home that last night, because
he was gone by morning and he never had a chance to give it to me. And then I
think back to all the people who were in the room when I was there, and maybe
he couldn’t risk giving it to me then, but I was there so much it’s all a blur.
I can’t keep it all straight. I found it just a few days ago in the wooly
sweater he always wore over his hospital gown. It was sitting in a bag for
weeks and then I went through it all and… God. He was begging for help. I’ll
never forgive myself. Maybe he didn’t want someone to find he’d written
it—someone he was afraid of. I don’t know,” she says, tears welling in her eyes
as she pushes the paper shreds back into her pocket.
“Why else would it be torn up?” she asks before I even
have a chance to respond to all this shocking information. “I mean, that’s all
that makes sense, right? For why it’s torn up? It’s like he was afraid of
someone finding it, I mean why else? He was trying to warn me—to get help, and
he was afraid the person who was after him would find it. I know how that
sounds, but I have gone over this a million times in my head, and what other
reason could there be?”
“Shit” is all I manage to say.
“My poor Otis, I couldn’t help him and he was all
alone there with someone trying to hurt him. But who would want to hurt Otis? I
mean, who in the world?” she says, and that’s exactly what I was going to ask.
“And you told all of this to Detective Riley?” I ask.
“Yeah right. What do you think he’d say—that Otis had
a stroke and we didn’t know the extent of the damage, so this was probably some
delusion or paranoia?” she says, and he would have a point, of course. “But I
know my Otis, and he seemed different those last days. I know, of course, a
stroke makes people different, but I still know him, Florence. I know him, and
I saw his eyes change. Now I think it was fear, not just being sick, but…this…”
She half motions to the papers in her pocket.
“I can’t let it go. I can’t have his cries for help
literally in my hand and blow it off as paranoia. I need to find out the truth.
And fine, people can think whatever they want about me, but what about Mack…and
poor Shelby Dawson. It was a warning to them too.”
“You think he meant they’re in danger?” I ask. She
closes her eyes and blows a cone of white mist into the frozen air, shaking her
head. “I don’t know,” she says. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“This could all be connected,” I sort of mumble to
myself, thinking about any reason why, even if he was suffering from some
delusion, he would bring Mack and Shelby into it. That’s pretty specific for a
delusional man’s imaginings. Winny holds her head in her hands and I put my arm
around her shoulder. We shiver together for a few moments.
“I believe you,” I say.
“You do?” she asks, straightening up and looking at me
with wet, desperate eyes.
“If there’s some motherfucker out there responsible
for this, we’re gonna find him,” I say. She puts her arms around me and cries
while I hold her and tell her it’s going to be okay.
And that’s the moment everything was set in motion. I
didn’t know it then, but hunting a killer would become my new hobby, not
gardening, as it turns out.
Buy Links:
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Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=9781525836725&tag=hcg-02-20
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Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/p/books/everyone-knows-something-a-thriller-original-seraphina-nova-glass/21448569?ean=9781525836725
About the Author:
Seraphina Nova Glass
is an assistant professor of instruction and playwright in residence at the
University of Texas, Arlington, where she teaches film studies and playwriting.
Her novel On A Quiet Street was nominated for an Edgar Award, was a New York Times
Summer Read, an Amazon Bestseller and Editor’s Pick, and also featured in the
Boston Globe and Bustle. Publishers Weekly has named her “a writer to watch.”
She’s also an award-winning playwright and holds an MFA degree in dramatic
writing from Smith College and a second MFA in directing from the University of
Idaho. She is a proud dog mom and loves to travel the world with her husband.
She resides in Dallas, Texas.
Social Links:
Author Website: https://www.seraphinanovaglass.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seraphinanovaglass/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8061717.Seraphina_Nova_Glass
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seraphinasnovaglass/
𝐏𝐄𝐀𝐊 𝐂𝐑𝐔𝐄𝐋𝐓𝐘 𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐃𝐑𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐃 
