Gripping Thriller

Jack Palms tackles the dark underbelly of SF crime! Once hired by the SFPD to investigate the mysterious murder of a crooked cop, Jack Palms now finds himself in the path of Alexi Akakievich, a cruel drug lord with a ring of sex slaves tapped directly into the city’s political elite. What’s unclear is whether Akakievich wants the power they can give him or if he just wants to tear the city down. Whether Jack likes it or not, he finds himself in the way.

Longtime detective Stanford Carter and his wife, forensic scientist Jill Seacrest, have always felt one was the yin to the other's yang. Carter is formal, logical, detached, and incredibly reserved. As team leader, he displays an unflagging commitment to duty, a keen sense of logic and strategy, and the poker face of a true champion. Despite his ardent desire to learn the secrets of the universe and its plan for us all, the introspective student of Zen demonstrates an extraordinary inability to understand himself or anyone else.

My husband and I are the dream couple: deeply in love, the envy of all our friends and neighbors. He surprises me with flowers; I make him his favorite meals and prepare picnics to enjoy with our son. It’s little gestures like this that keep our romance alive. But nobody knows how frightened I am at night. Oliver promises he’ll keep me safe, but I can’t stop feeling like someone from my past is watching me. Coming for me. I could have sworn I saw someone watching me through the window, lurking in the shadows across the street.

Gary and I have always been happy. Our fridge is covered in the love notes I leave him every morning, we always start the day on the doorstep with a goodbye kiss, and I make sure we never, ever fight. But since Gary’s sister Lisa moved in, things have been different… The day Lisa arrived at the school where I work, asking for help, I knew we had to welcome her into our home. Gary hasn’t spoken to his parents in years, and his childhood was far from perfect. But now every time Lisa enters a room, I watch him sneak out the door.

Newly retired Sarah Vane is completely settled in Merstairs, enjoying the quirky, quaint feel of her new home. With some time on her hands, she decides to surprise her friend Daphne by cleaning her dusty, cluttered seafront shop. But when she arrives there early one morning, Sarah is shocked to find a dying woman on the doorstep, who utters one word before she takes her last breath: ‘Wits…’ The victim is Abi Moffat—a much loved schoolteacher. Who could want her dead, and what could ‘wits’ possibly mean? Could the answer to Abi’s death be in Whitstable—the posher town along the coast?

As the only survivor of a horrific car crash, Lila Amberson believes she's on the road to recovery after being released from the hospital. Her memories of the accident are blurred though and a series of unsettling incidents leave her fearing for her safety. Does she have survivor's guilt or is something more sinister at play? Jack Foley's reeling from the shock of losing his sister in the crash, so when he first meets Lila, he lashes out, blaming her for Stephanie's death. But when she gives him a locket that she believes belonged to his sister, it presents more questions than answers.

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?

Megan has to climb round and step across the body to get a proper view. What's left is like a chalk white mask in the rough shape of a face. The innocence is still there, and a hint of the cheekiness. But perhaps she is imagining that. Detective Megan Thomas moved to Devon for a fresh start, after years spent undercover. She's staying with her sister and swimming in the sea daily, battling the tides and letting the waves wash her past away. But she can't outrun everything.

Single mom and school historian Beth Haldane has promised her new beau, Detective Harry York, that her sleuthing days are behind her. But when she stumbles over the body of local artist Mark Smeaton while ambling in the park, it’s clear a dangerous killer is on the loose in peaceful Dulwich Village. Shocked, Beth can’t resist delving into the mystery. Snooping around the nearby cozy cafes, Beth listens carefully to gossip and soon learns Mark's graffiti-style art was famously controversial. There are plenty who might want him gone.

The Devil's Liar is the ninth in the best-selling Psychic Surveys series, that feature plot twists, compelling characters, and a mystery at its dark heart. As a young woman, Theo was confronted by the spirit of a child who had killed other children, but decided she could be of no help, shutting down all possibility of further communication. Now older and wiser, Theo comes to regret that decision and wants to make amends, involving the Psychic Surveys team in her quest.

Black-ops specialist Jon Reznick is hoping for some well-earned down time under the Florida sun when he gets a surprise call from the CIA. An embittered US counterintelligence expert is about to sell a career’s worth of state secrets to the Russians, and the Agency wants Reznick to track him down. With the spook holed up somewhere in the diplomatic cauldron of the Middle East, protected by highly trained Russian mercenaries, Reznick knows it’s almost certainly a suicide mission.

Ian McAllister has searched the world over, hunting for that all-elusive perfect photograph. He finds it on a tourist trip to North Korea when he stumbles upon a young street kid foraging for roots. Unaware that this single act will brand him a spy and cost his freedom, Ian takes the shot. Now, he must pay the penalty.

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.

When the bodies of 11 and 12-year-old sisters, Tessa and Megan, are found at the bottom of a ravine - dressed in matching pastel summer outfits, their small bodies broken from the fall - Detective Katie Scott is called to one of the most shocking and heartbreaking crime scenes of her career.

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 moment Joanna told me she was engaged, I had this awful feeling that something was wrong. We used to speak on the phone every day. Growing up I spent more time at her house than I did at my own. I’d always imagined what it would be like to see her get married, and now I didn’t even know her fiancé’s name. She asked me to come and meet Mark and I intended to tell her to slow down. When I got to Joanna’s front door, only Mark was there. He was charming and gorgeous and nothing but nice to me, and I started to understand....And then he told me that Joanna was missing.

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.