Family Skeleton: HOLY FUCK, THIS BOOK.

Wow, got to say that your description of the book's contents reminds me very closely of the infamous Oven Murder case from over here - a true story of a woman who simply up and disappeared in 1960 and whose son kept insisting for years that his mother's violent alcoholic husband must have killed her and buried her inside the house oven due to the extremely creepy behaviour of his father at the time when he had come home a day early to find his father alone in there. Finally 12 years later the police decided to revisit the case, and figured there must be something to the son's story, so they obtained a warrant to examine the oven... which revealed that Hilkka Saarinen was indeed buried inside the large oven and had certainly been there ever since 1960.

Even more infamously Hilkka Saarinen's husband was convicted of murder but ultimately released by appeals court despite that:

• Hilkka Saarinen's husband was known to be violent and had occasionally threatened to kill her.
• Her husband was very likely the last person to see her alive.
• She was found deliberately buried inside an oven inside their shared home.
• Her husband had been behaving very oddly when her son came home earlier than he expected, and had clearly been doing work on the oven while very insistent that the son shouldn't go into the room where it was.

But regardless, the 12 year delay in investigation and unclear manner of death precluded a murder conviction according to the appeals court, and for manslaughter the statute of limitations had already run out, so her husband was released and eventually died alone in the house (which in turn was finally torn down in 2015 after having stood abandoned since 1986).