Quiet Dell, Phillips’ fifth novel, based on the true story of the 1931 murders of Chicago widow Asta Eicher and her three children in the hamlet of Quiet Dell, WV, is a fictional portrayal of one of the nation's first sensationalized serial murders. Quiet Dell takes as its protagonist nine-year-old Annabel Eicher (victim, with her family, of con man Harry Powers, who found his victims through Depression-era matrimonial agencies) and Emily Thornhill, a Chicago Tribune journalist who commits herself to finding justice for the Eichers. A Kirkus Review Fiction Pick of the Year and Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year, Quiet Dell was called "a story both splendid and irreparably sad" by the Chicago Tribune: “As Phillips has proved throughout her decades of fiction writing, there is evil in the world but there are some who will stand in its way.” Quiet Dell was praised by the Philadelphia Review of Books: “It is the texture of the telling that elevates this recounting from true crime to the realm of literary eminence.”