The Girl You Lost

"Your daughter is dead." When Kat Cavanaugh hears the words every mother dreads, her perfect world shatters. She takes in the beautiful long blonde hair, torn yellow dress, and chipped blue nail-varnish. It can’t be real. And then the police add the word "suicide". But Kat refuses to believe them. Even when they show her the familiar looping handwriting and smudged ink on the note her little girl left behind. She knows her bubbly, vivacious daughter would never take her own life.

Flora Dane is a victim. Seven years ago, carefree college student Flora was kidnapped while on spring break. For 472 days, Flora learned just how much one person can endure. Flora Dane is a survivor. Miraculously alive after her ordeal, Flora has spent the past five years reacquainting herself with the rhythms of normal life, working with her FBI victim advocate, Samuel Keynes. She has a mother who's never stopped loving her, a brother who is scared of the person she's become, and a bedroom wall covered with photos of other girls who've never made it home.

Nicole Cutty and Megan McDonald are both high school seniors in the small town of Emerson Bay, North Carolina. When they disappear from a beach party one warm summer night, police launch a massive search. No clues are found, and hope is almost lost until Megan miraculously surfaces after escaping from a bunker deep in the woods. A year later the best-selling account of her ordeal has turned Megan from local hero to national celebrity.

Max and Alissa have a fairy tale life - newlywed, madly in love and enviously rich. Then Max is brutally stabbed to death at their home and Alissa, miraculously, escapes with her life. But why was she spared? The hunt for the killer begins, uncovering a number of leads - was Max's incredible wealth the motive? Had his shady business practices finally caught up with him? Or was it a stalker with a dangerous obsession?

"Take her out back and finish her off." She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know where she is, or why. All she knows when she comes to in a ransacked cabin is that two men are arguing over whether or not to kill her.And that she must run.

Mia Hamilton lived the perfect life with her husband, university teacher Zach, and their two-year-old daughter. But everything changed when Zach committed suicide on the same night one of his students vanished. Five years later, just when Mia is beginning to heal, stranger Alison walks into her life, saying her husband didn't kill himself. Fragile, slight Alison leads Mia on a path into Zach's past, and Mia begins to think she never really knew her own husband.

For as long as she can remember, Sabine has lived two lives. Every twenty-four hours she 'Shifts', living each day twice. She has one life in Wellesley, Massachusetts...and another, completely different life in Roxbury, Boston. In one life she's surrounded by glamorous friends and dresses in designer clothes, in the other her family struggles to make ends meet. In one life she’s a straight-A student with the perfect boyfriend, in the other she’s considered a reckless delinquent.

To Rebecca it was a brave decision that led to her freedom from domestic abuse. To Solomon it was the ultimate betrayal. It's been ten years since Rebecca's testimony saw Solomon locked away. Enough time for the nightmares to recede, the nerves to relax; enough time to rebuild her life and put the past behind her. Then one day a phone rings in her bedroom - but it's not her phone.

Frank Rath thought he was done with murder when he turned in his detective's badge to become a private investigator and raise a daughter alone. Then the police in his remote rural community of Canaan find an '89 Monte Carlo abandoned by the side of the road, and the beautiful teenage girl who owned the car seems to have disappeared without a trace. Soon Rath's investigation brings him face to face with the darkest abominations of the human soul.

Tara Logan adores her perfect little family: husband, Noah, and two children, teenager Rosie and 11-year-old Spencer. But her happiness is shattered when she wakes in her neighbour Lee Jacobs' bed, with no memory of how she got there or what happened between them. And worse - he has been stabbed to death. Convinced she didn't kill Lee, Tara flees home and stays silent, holding her breath as the investigation grips the neighbourhood.

In her latest suspense masterpiece, Karin Slaughter weaves together moving, powerful human stories of characters as real as they are complex and unforgettable. At the same time she has crafted a work of dazzling storytelling and spine-tingling mystery - as three people, with their own wounds and their own secrets, are all that stand between a madman and his next crime.

Aila Quinn's mother, Juliet, has always been a mystery. Vibrant yet guarded, she keeps her secrets beyond Aila's reach. When Juliet dies, Aila and her younger brother, Miles, are sent to live in Sterling, a rural town with mysteries of its own. In Sterling, the experiences that weave life together - scents of flowers and food, reflections from mirrors and lakes, even the ability to dream - vanish every seven years. No one knows what causes these Disappearances or what will slip away next.

You think you know the truth about the people you love. But one discovery can change everything.... Eight-year-old Billy goes missing one day, out flying his kite with his sister, Rose. Two days later he is found dead. Sixteen years on, Rose still blames herself for Billy's death. How could she have failed to protect her little brother? Rose has never fully recovered from the trauma, and one of the few people she trusts is her neighbour Ronnie, who she has known all her life.

When Ella Longfield overhears two attractive young men flirting with teenage girls on a train, she thinks nothing of it - until she realises they are fresh out of prison and her maternal instinct is put on high alert. But just as she's decided to call for help, something stops her. The next day, she wakes up to the news that one of the girls - beautiful, green-eyed Anna Ballard - has disappeared.

Declan Fitzgerald had always been the family maverick, but even he couldn't understand his impulse to buy a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of New Orleans. All he knew was that ever since he saw Manet Hall, he'd been enchanted - and obsessed - with it. So when the opportunity to buy the house comes up Declan jumps at the chance to live out a dream.