Boston College graduate Stephen Paul Sayers’ new book, Beneath Still, Dark Water (Milford House Press, 2026), is a haunting suspense novel set against the backdrop of a divisive historical event in Massachusetts: the forced displacement of 2,500 Swift River Valley residents to build the Quabbin Reservoir. In 1938, homes and businesses are burned to the ground as the state prepares to create the reservoir. A once-thriving community becomes a ghost town. Then a local girl disappears. But secrets have a way of floating to the surface. Twenty-five years later, Harrison “Brick” Bricker’s alcohol-ravaged memories begin to return, forcing him to confront what really happened before the dark waters settled over the place he once called home. Sayers is on the faculty at the University of Missouri. His previous works include The Carousel Man and the Caretakers trilogy.