A frightened woman. A package of newborn diapers. A help-center flyer. And a rumor that becomes more dangerous every time someone tries to make it sound respectable. When a young woman named Kendra Voss passes through a Pine Needle pharmacy looking uneasy and asking questions, the town does what Pine Needle does best: it notices. Then it talks. Before long, a few ordinary details have become a story about a baby, a troubled mother, and the local Resource Center. The problem is that almost none of it can be traced to anyone who actually knows the truth. Clara May has learned to be suspicious of stories that arrive already explained. With Trisha Mae beside her and Derry noticing the things other people overlook, Clara begins following the rumor backward—through pharmacy records, church prayer lists, county paperwork, public statements, and the reassuring language of good people trying to protect a good institution. But the more respectable the story becomes, the more Clara wonders what it is protecting. And where Kendra Voss has gone. TRUE RUMORS, the third Pine Needle Mystery from Tim Bryant, is a sharply observed small-town mystery about gossip, good intentions, public trust, and the dangerous distance between what happened and what people decide it must mean. Because the worst rumors aren’t completely false. They begin with something almost true.