by Brian Hand
First published 2026
Ry Birk is days away from closing a startup sale that could finally turn his career around. Then something from the past arrives, and the deal stops being the most dangerous thing on his calendar. Decades ago, a plane crash left Ry and his closest childhood friends bound together by guilt, silence, and choices they never fully accounted for. They built lives on top of that silence. It held, until now. Someone knows what happened. Someone has decided the debt is overdue. As Ry digs into who is coming for them and why, every answer he finds opens onto another lie. His circle of friends, once a source of loyalty, becomes a source of suspicion. The line between a person seeking justice and a person seeking revenge turns out to be very hard to locate. Set in contemporary Chicago, Ripples In Their Wake is a story about what happens when the past stops waiting. Ry did not expect to be fighting for his life over something that happened so long ago. But some debts, it turns out, do not expire.
Genres: crime, contemporary, adult-fiction, thriller, psychological-thriller, mystery-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, fast-paced, suspenseful, tense, thought-provoking
Tropes: debt-repayment, found-family-fractured, secrets-revealed, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Chicago
Period: Contemporary, Decades ago
369 pages · Paperback · Timelines Publishing
Content warnings: death, murder