Family Thriller

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?

Felled by a cowardly shot to the back, Stanton Youngblood has just enough time before he dies to leave a single clue to his killer's identity: the word Wayne, scrawled in his own blood. That word means everything to his widow. Leigh Youngblood was once Leigh Wayne, but she left her wealthy family behind thirty years ago when she fell in love with Stanton, a betrayal the Waynes have never forgiven. Now she publicly vows to discover which of her siblings thinks money and power are enough to cover up a murder.

Raven Ledger is running from people who blame her for her brother’s crime. The city is grappling with the murders of twenty-one people at Allegheny High School. The news of the shooting is on every television station. The nation is talking about what happened . . . They’re also talking about the shooter’s twin sister who has disappeared. Raven is being hunted by a gang that lost members in the massacre. Her nemesis, Blanco, the girl Raven saved at school that day, leads the chase. Blanco and the other gang members are out for blood and won’t give up until they get revenge.

Jessica Chamberlain, newly separated and living with her two sons in a small Iowa town, can't believe a tragedy in another state could have anything to do with her. But when her phone rings one quiet morning, her world is shattered. As she tries to pick up the pieces and make sense of what went wrong, Jess begins to realize a tragic death is just the beginning. Soon, she is caught in a web of lies and half-truths - and she's horrified to learn everything leads back to her seven-year-old adopted son, Gabriel.

Mayfair Cummings is young, beautiful, and brilliant. But her intelligence makes her the outcast of both the private school she attends and the broken family she hopes to salvage. When she catches the eye of both a popular senior and her handsome English teacher, not even her brilliant mind can help her navigate the explosive new relationships she is forming or a scandal that is brewing....

I planned the perfect vacation. But now my son is missing. Everyone believes my husband Donovan and I have it all—a loving marriage, two adorable children and the dream house. But beneath the surface of our enviable American lifestyle lies a secret that binds us tighter than our vows.

Isabel Spellman's life consists of 24-hour surveillance, routine investigations into her acquaintances, and listening devices planted in her deadbolt-locked room. For a 28-year-old in a family composed almost entirely of private investigators or former cops, the tools of the trade turn typical family dysfunction into commonplace espionage.

Lillia, Kat, and Mary had the perfect plan. Work together in secret to take down the people who wronged them. But things didn’t exactly go the way they’d hoped at the Homecoming Dance. Not even close. For now, it looks like they got away with it. All they have to do is move on and pick up the pieces, forget there ever was a pact. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, burn for a burn. A broken heart for a broken heart. The girls are up to the task. They’ll make Reeve fall in love with Lillia and then they will crush him. It’s the only way he’ll learn.

Late one winter afternoon in upstate New York, George Clare comes home to find his wife killed and their three-year-old daughter alone—for how many hours?—in her room across the hall. He had recently, begrudgingly, taken a position at a nearby private college (far too expensive for local kids to attend) teaching art history, and moved his family into a tight-knit, impoverished town that has lately been discovered by wealthy outsiders in search of a rural idyll.

After a whirlwind romance, a young woman returns to the opulent, secluded Long Island mansion of her new fiancé, Max Winter - a wealthy politician and recent widower - and a life of luxury she’s never known. But all is not as it appears at the Asherley estate. The house is steeped in the memory of Max’s beautiful first wife, Rebekah, who haunts the young woman’s imagination and feeds her uncertainties, while his very alive teenage daughter, Dani, makes her life a living hell.

While Ben and Ro found happiness as a couple in part 1, Ben's obsession with his sister's murderer continues to consume him. Now, on Christmas day, he will make his way to Berkeley, hoping to find answers before the killer strikes again. Will Ben and Ro find the missing pieces before it's too late?

When a music festival rolls through the sleepy town of Hesterville, Georgia, the Dixon family’s lives are forever changed. On the final night, a storm muffles the sound of the blaring music, and Rachel tucks her baby into bed before falling into a deep sleep. So deep, she doesn’t hear the kitchen door opening. When she and her husband wake up in the morning, the crib is empty. Emily is gone. Vicki Robart is one of the thousands at the festival, but she’s not feeling the music. She’s feeling the emptiness over the loss of her own baby several months before.

When battlefield nurse Bess Crawford returns from France for a well-earned Christmas leave, she finds a bruised and shivering woman huddled in the doorway of her London residence. The woman has nowhere to turn, and propelled by a firm sense of duty, Bess takes her in.

Gossip Girl meets The Sopranos in this fast-paced drama about a teenage mafia heiress who would do anything to avenge her family, even join forces with her handsome enemy. Inside the tony suburb of Scarsdale is New York’s worst-kept secret: The mob runs everything, and the Nicastro...

Ethan Faulkner is a precocious child with a brilliant but troublesome sister, a war vet for a father, and a weary mother trying to manage their family. One night a young woman rings their doorbell, desperate to hide from two men who are pursuing her, when one of the two barges in after her. The struggle leaves both of Ethan's parents dead. Years later, Ethan has a successful teaching career and a budding relationship with a coworker. But he hasn't quite followed through on his promise to his dying father - to take care of his sister. Susannah is not an easy person to keep tabs on....

As an infant, Kit McKittrick’s foster sister Akiko was abandoned at a firehouse. Now 32, Akiko has received an unsettling phone call from a woman who says that she knew her birth mother but refuses to divulge any details except in person. Akiko is nervous but also thrilled at the prospect of finally learning about her blood relations. Kit has a bad feeling about this and insists on accompanying Akiko to meet the woman. Sure enough, as they stand on Mary Sherman’s doorstep, shots are fired and Kit is hit...and inside the house is a corpse: Mary Sherman herself.

The next chilling thriller set in New Zealand by New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh.

Eleanor Murray will always remember her childhood on Edisto Island, where her late father, a local shrimper, shared her passion for music. Now her memories of him are all that tempers the guilt she feels over the accident that put her sister in a wheelchair and the feelings she harbors for her sister's husband. To help support her sister, Eleanor works at a Charleston investment firm during the day, but she escapes into her music, playing piano at a neighborhood bar. Until the night her enigmatic boss walks in and offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt, Helena, back on Edisto.

Lorsque Maëlla-Rose, Naomi et Juliette arrivent au camp de vacances Cité-Sauvage, elles ne se doutent pas que l’été leur réserve bien des surprises. C’est en découvrant la mystérieuse légende d’une cité disparue qu’elles se retrouvent au cœur d’une sombre forêt en compagnie de Zak, un garçon qui en sait plus que ce qu’il laisse croire. Réussiront-ils à trouver la cité d’Éléalix et à percer tous ses secrets ? Une chose est certaine, l’expédition s’annonce dangereuse et les quatre amis devront faire preuve d’un grand courage pour y arriver.

Laura Brandon's promise to her dying father was simple: to visit an elderly woman she'd never heard of before. A woman who remembers nothing-except the distant past. Visiting Sarah Tolley seemed a small enough sacrifice to make. But Laura's promise results in another death: her husband's. And after their five-year-old daughter, Emma, witnesses her father's suicide, Emma refuses to talk about it - to talk at all.Frantic and guilt ridden, Laura contacts the only person who may be able to help.