Was it an accident or something more sinister?If you like short stories, try this free collection, from the best selling crime, thriller and mystery author Wendy Cartmell. It's an excellent introduction to the best-selling Sgt Major Crane crime thriller series, perfect for fans of Angela Marsons, Rachel Abbott and Robert Dugoni.What readers are saying about No Mercy"Excellent read from a slick pacey writer - leaves you wanting more!" Andrew ButlerCartmell Rocks! This collection of short stories showcases Wendy Cartmell's fresh style and engaging prose. She presents a variety of situations of people caught in intriguing circumstances. The author delivers a twist to many of her stories in this collection.Ed Benjamin Author

     Faced with his parents’s divorce, eleven-year-old Lucas runs away from his house with the hope that his family will get back together to find him. On his way walking through the empty streets, he is picked up by a mysterious woman who offers to take care of him and provide him with a loving family. The boy then wakes up in shackles, confined to a bed in a decrepit house in the middle of nowhere and will have to face his deepest fears in order to survive in his new home. Join Lucas in a desperate attempt to get back to his family in Madhouse, the first published book from horror-thriller author Miguel Estrada.

     Allie loves social media because it makes her feel close to her friends. It never occurs to her that some are jealous of the seemingly perfect lives they see displayed online. The embers of jealousy ignite when one of her friends flaunts his new-found wealth with a party to unveil his lavish home. A tragedy at the party seems to bring all of them closer together. But when one of Allie’s friends goes missing, their lives are suspended. No one knows whether they’re looking for an abductor or a killer. Will social media help them discover the truth? As the cords in Allie’s lifelong friendships start to fray, and her marriage is threatened by her addiction to social media, she discovers secrets she wishes she’d never known. You’ll love this gripping novel of envy and lust because you’ll recognize some of the characters from your own social media circle.  Get a copy of this page-turning novel today.

    A dark ritual turns a woman obsessed with supernatural powers against the people who love her most. A possessed TV proves that old B-Movie monsters can still terrify an unsuspecting audience…Scare Street’s roster of authors brings you eleven new tales of supernatural horror, in one blood-chilling volume. This macabre collection of short stories is guaranteed to get your pulse racing, and send shivers down your spine.Each deliciously dark tale will haunt your dreams, and keep you reading long past the witching hour. But wait…What was that noise? Did something move in the shadows?Just keep telling yourself… it’s only a story.

    Meanwhile, an L.A. playboy beds a gorgeous redhead and wakes up with a psychopath trying to kill him. Neither Val nor Kilo know it yet, but they are on a collision course with a sexy marine biologist and one lethally dysfunctional family in this "dark, comic tour de force" (James Ellroy).

    Somewhere between a good cop and a bad screwup, he botched a marriage and a career. His fellow officers think he’s a joke. His commanders are tired of cutting him breaks. Even his wife has left him for a flashy homicide detective. Busted to night patrol at a robbery-prone Omaha supermarket, Worth is doing time, wearing his uniform and asking shoppers if they want paper or plastic. If that isn’t enough, he suspects he might be falling for Gwen, the shy checkout girl who may be an even bigger mess than he is. It couldn’t get any worse. Until it does.When Gwen comes to him one night scared and desperate for help, Worth discovers just how far he’s willing to go to protect and serve. The next thing he knows, he’s driving a stolen car with a corpse in the trunk, a pistol in the glove box, and no way to turn back. Everything he doesn’t know could get them killed. And things haven’t even begun to get messy yet....

    Death stalks the streets of Los Angeles, targeting the most innocent of victims – and for LAPD Detective Robert Card, the next outrage may strike terrifyingly close to home.

    Few know these characters—and their creators—better than Sarah Weinman. One of today’s preeminent authorities on crime fiction, Weinman asks: Where would bestselling authors like Gillian Flynn, Sue Grafton, or Tana French be without the women writers who came before them? In Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, Weinman brings together fourteen hair-raising tales by women who—from the 1940s through the mid-1970s—took a scalpel to contemporary society and sliced away to reveal its dark essence. Lovers of crime fiction from any era will welcome this deliciously dark tribute to a largely forgotten generation of women writers.

    Bodies Never Found. Police Remain Silent. The headlines ran across the top of every newspaper and television report in Sacramento, California, making the entire city uneasy, especially since “police remain silent” is usually code for “don’t have a clue.” Kitally never considered herself a victim, but when she becomes the kidnapper’s next acquisition, she’s thrown into a nightmare so horrific she wonders if this is the end. Private investigator Lizzy Gardner and her assistants, Hayley and Jessica, set out to find Kitally before she becomes a cannibal’s next meal. Can Lizzy find Kitally before she’s dead meat?

    His destination today is Pier 13, the ocean front amusement park his family visited every summer when he was a child, and his purpose for coming here is simple: he wants to understand why so many people have been dying in such violent acts... but that might not be the only answer he finds at the old docks.Running Rain:In the year since their son was the first victim of a serial killer known as the The Riverside Strangler, a devastated husband and wife have tried to pretend life can somehow be normal again... but the secrets they're keeping from each other are pushing their relationship to the brink. To make matters worse, The Riverside Strangler was never caught, and now the husband is obsessed with running along the river at night, searching for the truth about why his son died: a truth he may not really want to know...Answering the Call:A young man's very unusual job is taking a heavy toll on him. He stays in homes during the owner's funeral. Someone needs to be there to answer the phone, receive deliveries, and deter thieves who might have seen the obituary in the newspaper and decided this would be a good time for a break-in. The young man has seen a lot of strange things over the years in the homes of the dead, and sometimes his job is truly a matter of life and death...The Punishment Room:Assuming Michael manages to escape the Punishment Room with his sanity and his life, he isn't sure if he'll be able to go on living with the knowledge of what he did to survive... but then again, that's a dilemma he wouldn't mind confronting, given the finality of the alternative.What They Left Behind:There's something lurking in the basement of the old Timlico office building. This thing is evil, the result of the tragic fire that killed dozens of Timlico employees and sent that business spiraling into bankruptcy -- or maybe the thing was the cause of the fire. Scott and a few friends will learn more about this thing before the day is over, including some very bad news for everyone: the thing in the basement is still hungry.A Dreamlike State:Daniel is driving back to his hometown for the first time in six years because his father is dying, but he knows there's more than a sick patriarch waiting for him in the house where he grew up. He has a heart full of questions, and all of his childhood ghosts are patiently waiting for him... and they have a few questions of their own.Where Sunlight Sleeps:A grieving father and his young son, both dealing with their loss in their own ways. A Saturday ritual, retracing the last steps of the woman they loved more than any other. A search for the place where the sunlight sleeps, where bad feelings can be released. And a trip down a memory lane lined with jagged edges and vicious traps that just won't let them go.(The only short story currently listed on Amazon that is missing from this bundle is "The Silent Attic," which is an experimental piece closely related to "A Dreamlike Sleep." If you like "A Dreamlike Sleep", be sure to download "The Silent Attic" to see another glimpse of that same world.)

    or is he? And somewhere within those recordings is the truth about a murder trial and a web of lies stretching back three decades.Written by Ben H. Winters, the best-selling author of Underground Airlines, The Last Policeman, and the Audible OriginalInside Jobs, Q&A is a tantalizing puzzle and a gripping tale of obsession and revenge.Because you can never really know the truth of a conversation—even when it's all on tape.Length: 2 hrs and 8 mins

    Army Rangers are called in to descend into the depths and find them.A larger threat now stirs with an insatiable hunger and begins to spread rapidly—leaving scores dead or missing…But the military seeks to contain, not to kill.Armed with her dying father’s secrets, Liz, Cody, Scott and their team of rogue civilians seek another way down through an abandoned mine—and are possibly the only hope Salt Lake City has against the scourge.Harvest Deep: The Descent resumes the epic journey of a group of friends through survival, revenge, redemption, and betrayal.An intense, fast-paced, and adrenaline-pumping adventure of subterranean horror that will grip you by the throat and not let go.*Harvest Deep: The Descent is part of a series and is not a stand-alone story. For a better reader experience, one should read in order.

    For 50 years Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine has offered its readers a wide range of the finest crime and detective stories available and stands today as one of the foremost magazines of mystery and suspense. In anticipation of AHMM's golden anniversary, Ms. Landrigan invited readers to nominate their favorite stories, and this collection is packed with popular authors and well-known characters, including Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder, Bill Pronzini's Nameless Detective, and Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski. Linda Landrigan is editor-in-chief of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, She lives in New York.

    Have you met Scarlett Bell? She's the expert profiler the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit calls upon to catch the nation's deadliest serial killers. Cunning, beautiful, deadly. And hunted. Someone wants Scarlett Bell dead. When a teenage girl is brutally murdered in an idyllic lake community, the local sheriff calls upon Scarlett Bell to find the murderer. Another girl goes missing, and the special agent must stop the killer before time runs out. The killer is a ghost, a phantom hiding in plain sight, and Scarlett must untangle a confusing web of evidence if she hopes to track him down. But Scarlett is the killer's next target.

    There's no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues. But that's just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...? No one but Stephen King could tell this story about the darkness at the heart of the unknown and our compulsion to investigate the unexplained. With echoes of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon and the work of Graham Greene, one of the world's great storytellers presents a surprising tale that explores the nature of mystery itself...