Gripping Thriller

My life changes forever when my little girl appears in a basket on my doorstep, her long lashes fluttering, only a few hours old. She’s so tiny and precious; my heart is hers in an instant. My husband Tom and I have always longed for a child, so we agree not to tell the authorities. We won’t risk them taking her away. And I know if they find out my history, they’d never let me keep her…I’m so grateful to have my beautiful baby, who we call Daisy. But while Tom refuses to talk about it, I can’t stop wondering who her biological parents are and why they left her with us?

1999: In the small town of Rutherford, Kansas, four teenagers work the night shift in a local store for the summer. Three are loners. One is new in town. Together they’re a perfect fit. 2010: Tupper, the owner of the store and a pillar of the community, dies. Of the night shift, only three return to their hometown for his funeral.

Joelle Lawton wishes for a simpler life . . . a life where her husband doesn't cheat, her children don't resent her, and her career doesn't pose veiled threats. She wishes she could get past the depression that seeped into her life over a year ago, after the loss of her third child.

When Rory Richards wakes up from a failed suicide attempt, he learns that his wife, Maggie, has vanished without a trace. All Rory can remember about the previous night is that the two had the fight of a lifetime. The dispute causes him to storm out of the house and steal prescription pills from his neighbors in an attempt to overdose. After that, everything is a blur.

The last time Katy saw Jude was on a school trip: Jude was attacked by a stranger, and Katy ran away. Twenty years later, Jude is back, and her reappearance coincides with a series of unsettling incidents: a stranger appears in the downstairs flat, Katy's house is vandalized, her mother is mugged, and her home ransacked. Jude also seems to know an uncomfortable amount about Katy's current life.

When Athene walks into Mary’s cafe and asks for directions to a holiday cottage she has rented, Mary tells her it burned down 20 years earlier. Since Athene has nowhere to stay, Mary suggests that she checks into a local pub for the night. What Athene doesn’t know is that the burnt-out house was where Mary’s friend, Bella, lived - the only person she ever loved, who died in terrible circumstances. Brought on by Athene’s arrival, Mary feels her past leaking into the present. There’s a secret to Bella’s death, something she’s kept buried for years.

Archaeologist Louise Cantor returns home to Sweden, and makes a devastating discovery: her only child, twenty-eight-year-old Henrik, dead in his bed. The police rule his death a suicide, but she knows he was murdered; her quest to find out what really happened to Henrik takes her across the globe to Barcelona, where her son kept a secret apartment; Sydney, Australia, to find Aron, her estranged ex-husband and Henrik's father; and to Maputo, Mozambique, where she learns the awful truth behind an AIDS hospice.

A lifeless girl slips into the river, cold and crumpled. Her body washes away with the rain. Her killer remains a mystery. Sheriff Elven Hallie has been longing for a new case that would add some excitement to his small-town life. But a dead girl wasn’t what he expected. On the last murder case he worked, he was just a deputy with an experienced Sheriff to guide him and they were looking for an outsider. This time, he’s in charge, and the killer is part of their community.

Audrey Singer revels in her position as the admissions director of an exclusive Manhattan private school. Parents cater to her whims and desires, desperate to give their children an edge. Audrey’s power is undeniable; privilege comes with the territory. Her perfect marriage completes the glossy picture of her life. Until the arrival of the neurotic, vulnerable Sarah Price. Determined to get her son into the city’s most coveted kindergarten class, Sarah inserts herself into Audrey’s world, testing boundaries at every turn.

Jerome Prentice is a good guy. Loyal to a fault, he always stays on the right side of the law. But everything changes the night he is awoken by the sound of masked kidnappers entering his home. Holding him at gunpoint, they drag his beloved wife, Alicia, out of the house with a promise to kill her if he goes to the police. Their demand: betray the company he’s worked for his entire adult life.

I used to have it all. My ex-boyfriend and I were madly in love and dreamed of starting a family. When I found out I couldn’t have children, it broke me. Now, at my job at the fertility clinic, I give other couples what I could never have. The day my ex and his new wife walk into my clinic, my heart shatters all over again. He’s back. Now, I stand here with a syringe trembling in my hand and an impossible decision to make: Do I help them conceive a child—even though I know he’s keeping a dangerous secret? Or do I protect his wife—my patient, now—and take what’s rightfully mine?

Having left the big city behind, Sarah Vane is fully embracing her calmer life in the quaint coastal town of Merstairs. With more time for hobbies, she joins a very popular life drawing class at the local tea shop. But when their usual model, the ever-punctual Mr Williams, doesn’t turn up, Sarah’s worried. He’d been complaining of a cough just last week so she decides to check up on him. Arriving at his crooked little cottage, it appears the front door isn’t quite shut. Stepping inside, Sarah is shocked to find Mr Williams slumped in his armchair.

In a quiet Manchester suburb, a man sets himself on fire in a petrol station. Nearby, a fourteen-year-old girl murders her mother in cold blood. At the Coroner's Officer, Detective Inspector Ridpath is called in to investigate both of these baffling deaths. Is one a suicide and the other an unexplained murder? Or does something more sinister link the two seemingly unconnected tragedies? As Ridpath delves deeper, he must confront the darkness lurking in the most unexpected places, where even innocent facades can hide the darkest of truths. Can he prevent more deaths?

When Amy Chang, partner of NSA hacker Trevelle Williams—a friend of Jon Reznick—is found dead on a Manhattan subway, everyone says it was a suicide. But Trevelle knows that someone had been watching Amy’s every move, and he isn’t about to let them slip away. Trevelle calls on Jon Reznick to help him uncover what happened to Amy and protect Amy’s brother, Kevin Chang, a Hong Kong student-activist living in New York. Before long, two government organizations are hunting them, forcing the trio to go on the run.

It’s their daughter’s graduation and Rachel and Ed Hartley are expecting it to be one of their family’s happiest days. But when she stumbles and falls on stage during the ceremony, a beautiful moment turns to chaos: Gemma has been shot, and just like that, she’s fighting for her life. PI Matthew Hill is one of the first on the scene. A cryptic message Gemma received earlier in the day suggests someone close to her was about to be exposed. But who?

At the center of the novel is a private investigator named Archie Lightman. Archie and his partner Delia Sanchez stumble upon a pattern of killings in which the victims are all criminals who---in an age of rampant plea bargaining---are often too lightly punished for their crimes. The investigation leads them to a support group modeled along the lines of a traditional 12-step program called COSOVO, Circle of Survivors of Violent Offenses. Its members the surviving kin of murdered loved ones.

Washington, DC, is a town full of powerful people hiding ugly secrets. The blackmailer, a renaissance man, keeps his promise: Pay me, I'll return the juicy evidence I have against you, and you'll never hear from me again. Jack McCall, a former operative for the US intelligence community and now a private investigator, hunts this wily and diabolical madman.

After five years away from her hometown of Fawn Lake, Detective Freya Sinclair isn’t expecting a warm welcome from the people she’s sworn to protect. She became a detective to bring serial killers like her parents to justice, but the tight-knit North Carolinian community can’t see past her twisted roots. Minutes after stepping foot back home, the body of a dark-haired young girl is pulled from the river and Freya races to the scene.

Penny has never met anyone smarter than her. That’s par for the course when you’re a savant—one of less than one hundred in the world. But despite her photographic memory and super-powered intellect, there’s one question Penny doesn’t know the answer to: where did her father go when he left her and her mother years ago? On Penny’s 21st birthday, she receives a card in the mail from her father, just as she has every year since he left. But this birthday card is different. For the first time ever, there’s a return address.

It’s been six months since I woke up next to the body of the man I’d chatted to in a bar the night before. I still remember the metallic scent of his blood, the stillness of the room, and the panic that rose in my throat when I realized he was dead. I remember him buying cocktails. We talked. We went up to my room. And then...nothing. But I know I didn’t kill him.