Showing results by author "Brian Freeman"

Deputy Shelby Lake was abandoned as a baby, saved by a stranger who found her in the freezing cold. Now, years later, a young boy is missing - and Shelby is the one who must rescue a child. The only evidence of what happened to 10-year-old Jeremiah Sloan is a bicycle left behind on a lonely road. After a desperate search fails to locate him, the close bonds of Shelby’s hometown begin to fray under the weight of accusations and suspicion. Everyone around her is keeping secrets.

Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial are both investigating high-profile murders in Las Vegas. A celebrity is assassinated during a fling with a prostitute, and a young boy is killed in a brutal hit-and-run incident. When the cases converge, Jonathan and Serena find themselves racing the clock against a determined serial killer and searching for a connection to the unsolved murder of a showgirl years earlier.

In a riveting debut thriller that has drawn comparisons to masters of the genre like Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly, Brian Freeman weaves obsession, sex, and revenge into a story that grips the reader with vivid characters and shocking plot twists from the first minute to the last.

When Henry was a child, something terrible happened in the woods behind his home, something so shocking he could only express his terror by drawing pictures of what he had witnessed. Eventually, Henry's mind blocked out the bad memories, but he continued to draw, often at night by the light of the moon. Twenty years later, Henry makes his living by painting his disturbing works of art. He loves his wife and his son, and life couldn't be better...except there's something not quite right....

Four years after serial killer Rudy Cutter was sent away for life, San Francisco homicide inspector Frost Easton uncovers a terrible lie: his closest friend planted false evidence to put Cutter behind bars. When he's forced to reveal the truth, his sister's killer is back on the streets. Desperate to take Cutter down again, the detective finds a new ally in Eden Shay. She wrote a book about Cutter and knows more about him than anyone. And she's terrified. Because for four years, Cutter has been nursing revenge day after stolen day.

Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn't like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco - as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks - Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie's controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories...and all the victims were her patients.

On a rainy June morning, tens of thousands of people crowd into Duluth for the city's biggest annual event: the Duluth Marathon. Exhausted runners push to reach the finish line and spectators line the streets to cheer them on. Then, in a terrifying echo of the Boston bombing, there is an explosion along the race course, leaving many people dead and injured. Within minutes, Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial, and Maggie Bei are at work with the FBI to find the terrorists behind the tragedy.

A taut thriller about two rural Minnesota towns locked in a deadly feud - and a teenage girl caught in the crossfire. In affluent Barron, a powerful and secretive scientific research corporation enriches its residents, while downriver in blue-collar St. Croix, victims of that company’s carcinogenic waste struggle to survive. The bad blood between the communities escalates into open warfare when the beautiful Ashlynn, daughter of the corporation’s president, is found shot dead - and a St. Croix girl, Olivia Hawk, is accused of the crime.

Ten years ago, six-year-old Catalina Mateo hid under the porch of her family home while a knife butchered her mother and a bullet killed her father. Now a rough-sleeping orphan, Cat arrives at the house of Detective Jonathan Stride, pleading for protection. Drenched in the icy waters of Lake Superior, she claims to have narrowly escaped a cold-blooded killer. Stride's raw instinct is to protect Cat, whose late parents' case - and his personal guilt associated with it - still sends a shiver down his spine. As a result, he takes the troubled teenager under his wing.

When a freak accident kills a driver on the remote roads outside Duluth, Jonathan Stride is disturbed to discover that the victim appears to be a "ghost", with a false identity and no evidence to suggest who he really was. What's worse, the man has a gun locked in the trunk - and it has recently been fired. The next day Stride learns that a Duluth college student has vanished and worries that the two incidents are related. But what would have put an ordinary young woman in the crosshairs of a man who has all the hallmarks of an assassin for hire?

On his way back to Duluth, Stride stops to visit the grave of his mother in a small Wisconsin town. After a shocking occurrence in the cemetery, Stride becomes enmeshed in a gruesome and suspenseful search for a killer who knows things no one else alive should know.

It has been almost a decade since Duluth said good-bye to its innocence. The city creeps ever closer to the 10th anniversary of the year in which it found itself both gripped by murder and united in terror and during which the pillar of its community, DS Jonathan Stride, had his home and heart torn to ribbons by the claws of cancer. Cat Mateo, an orphan with a knack for landing on her feet, has bid farewell to a life on the streets. This once-stray teenager owes her rescue to Detective Stride, the father figure she holds close to her heart.

Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is quietly recovering from injuries sustained on his latest case when a rich doctor's baby is kidnapped and his peace is shattered. As suspicion builds that the doctor may have staged the baby’s disappearance, the relationship between the doctor and his wife and neighbors begins to disintegrate.

Hilary and Mark Bradley are trapped in a web of suspicion. Last year, accusations of a torrid affair with a student cost Mark his teaching job and made the young couple into outcasts in their remote island town off the Lake Michigan coast. Now another teenage girl is found dead on a deserted beach... and once again, Mark faces a hostile town convinced of his guilt. Hilary Bradley is determined to prove that Mark is innocent, but she’s on a lonely, dangerous quest.

San Francisco homicide detective Frost Easton hadn’t seen his estranged friend Denny in years. Not until he dies in Frost’s arms uttering a final inexplicable word: Lombard. Denny appears to be the latest victim in a string of murders linked by a distinctive clue: the painting of a spiraled snake near the crime scenes. Is it the work of a serial killer? Or is Denny’s death more twisted and personal? To find the answer, Frost reaches into a nest of vipers - San Francisco’s shady elite - where the whispered name of Lombard is just one secret. 

Attractive and popular politician Diane Fairmont is running for the Florida governorship, but a chill is cast over the campaign when she receives an anonymous note announcing the return of the assassin who killed her husband 10 years earlier. Because of complicated ties between Fairmont and his mother, movie actress Tarla Bolton, Detective Bolton is assigned to the case.

Little Boy Zombie lives on a big farm just outside of Romero Town with Mama Zombie, Papa Zombie, and Rex the Zombie Dog. One day, while Mama Zombie and Papa Zombie are away, Boy Zombie is left in charge of the farm. But when he gets bored, he decides to play a prank on the citizens of Romero Town. He yells toward town, "Humans here, humans here!" And everyone comes shambling to the farm to help. When they discover they've been tricked, Boy Zombie is warned by his elders: "Don't cry 'humans' when there are no humans!" But will he learn his lesson in time?

A third woman dead in two months, and for the third time, Alison Malville isn't sure her husband was home all night. When the killer sends the usual photo of his victim to the press, she sees an item of her clothing left with this body, too. Could you believe your own husband was capable of murder? Would you turn him in?

It's been twenty years since the five friends known as the 'Lightning Five' visited their hunting cabin together. Twenty years spent living in the shadow of something they did in high school - an event that forever defined them in the minds of everyone in their small town. Now they're returning to the cabin to reminisce about old times and forget their troubles...but mother nature has other plans in mind. Before too long, supplies will run low and they will have to make some hard choices - like who gets to live and who has to die...