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Crushed Gardenias by Heather Osborne
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A Brutal Hand: There's No Escape (SHORTZ)
Ravi Subramanian - 2020
Finding Viola: A Short Story
Bo Burnette - 2015
When the strict Mrs. Borg demands she leave the door alone, Miss Erikson's curiosity propels her to uncover the secrets of the ever-closed door. As she pursues the source of the inexplicable music, she must finally face the grief of the past she has long tried to ignore.
The Body Man
Eric P. Bishop - 2021
And he's vanished without a trace.In a town that's obsessed with dark secrets, where the currency of power is information, The White House has kept a huge one for decades. Charged with the task of protecting and defending the Office of the Presidency from threats both outside and in, the keeper of secrets-the Body Man-has been in the shadows since the 1960s.The Body Man has been a unique protector of American presidents ever since a previous well-known president used the first Body Man to usher women, diplomats, and other heads of state into the White House via a secret tunnel. The Body Man is drawn from the Secret Service, but he isn't on the classic protective detail, and he reports to no one. Once his term is over, he's given a huge payout and a one-way ticket to anywhere on Earth.With a CIA conspiracy buff named Zed and The Body Man's aged neighbor Rose, former US Army Ranger and FBI Special Agent Eli Payne and his new probationary agent Kat Stone must find the Body Man before it's too late-and the trail may lead directly to the Oval Office itself.
Daygo's Fury: Heroic Fantasy (The Daygo Stream Book 1)
John F. O' Sullivan - 2015
Liam is an orphan, living with eight others in a dilapidated flat. Every day is a battle in the war to survive. As conditions worsen, and casualties rise, Liam begins to lose faith. He looks at the bums on the side of the streets with hate. They’ve given up the fight. They are weak. But it frightens him, how he sometimes longs for their life. Panic grows within his chest. Racquel offers him hope, something good to live for, in a place where there seems nothing but dirt. But what form of survival is worth living for? And what is Liam willing to do to survive? What is he willing to become? Niisa lives in the great forests of the Chewe mountains. He knows he is the odd one in the tribe. He knows he is different. Daygo calls to him, it speaks to him in the sounds of the forest, in the falling of the rain, in brief glimpses of sunlight through the canopy of trees overhead. It is the life that inhabits all things, that fuels all movement. He will do anything to join the Waloleng de Kgotia, the famous priests of the daygo stream. The tribespeople might consider his actions evil … but they don’t understand. The world is on the brink of famine and war. New magic, yet to be discovered, is set to be unleashed. The beasts in the north, long forgotten, considered only a surreal page in history, raise their heads and consider, once again, marching south. Daygo flows, but which way will the current pull …
Hard Case
Bernard Lee DeLeo - 2012
He ran away from his alcoholic father at the age of fourteen. An old man in Texas takes an interest in him, helping the runaway get a new identity. The boy becomes John Harding.Harding joins the Marine Corps with his new identity, looking for a chance to get an education and start over. While in special ops overseas, he’s recruited by a CIA agent who sees something in Harding besides his knack for languages and combat skill. Denny Strobert knows he’s found a killer.HARDCASE begins in a back alley warehouse in East Oakland, CA, where Harding fights for money, and to keep his skills honed, coupled with the fact he likes it. Harding does odd jobs with the only guy he trusts implicitly, his handler and manager, Tommy Sands. They bodyguard, escort tourists around the Bay Area, and do bail bond, skip trace work for a lawyer named Tess Connagher.Tess Connagher, both fascinated and repulsed by Harding, cannot stay away from him. She rapidly finds out Harding is not some East Oakland leg-breaker, and being around him can be very dangerous, whether you’re his friend or his enemy. She makes a couple of serious errors in judgment - Tess thinks she can control Harding, and she uses him to help Lora, her older sister.
A New Life
David J. Antocci - 2013
She has no idea how she got there, and notices changes in herself that she cannot explain. Haunted by unsettling dreams of her past, she sets out to escape, joined by Eric, who finds himself in the same predicament. Standing in their way is a madman, and his band of willing followers, with a mind set on murdering their unwelcome visitors. An eccentric hermit who has been living there for years offers them refuge, but they must deny his generosity. Escape is their only option. Yet, they discover this deceptive paradise is harder to leave than they had ever imagined. One mystery leads to another, until their escape throws them into even greater danger as Abby’s frightening past finally catches up with her. Her escape is only the beginning.
The Undead: A Jack Nightingale Short Story
Stephen Leather - 2017
And when his nemesis Proserpine comes up from the bowels of Hell to ask for a favour, he has no choice other to help. Which is why the supernatural detective finds himself going up against The Undead, and putting his own life on the line. The Undead is a fast-paced supernatural story about 13,000 words long. Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers, an ebook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider’ Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels.
The Witnesses
James Patterson - 2016
Or so they think. No one will answer their questions. And the terrifying truth may come too late....BookShotsLIGHTNING-FAST STORIES BY JAMES PATTERSONNovels you can devour in a few hours. Impossible to stop reading. All original content from James Patterson.
Poison Orchids
Sarah A. Denzil - 2019
Denzil and Anni TaylorYoung backpackers Gemma and Hayley arrive at a remote mango farm, out of money and desperate for work. The farm's owner, Tate Llewellyn, welcomes them in with open arms. An enigmatic, wealthy chemist, Tate spends his days running his hobby farm and cultivating rare orchids in his greenhouse.The weeks go on, a blur of fruit-picking with the other international backpackers, parties, campfires and wading beneath waterfalls in the nearby hot springs. Tate calls the girls his orchids...his pretty orchids... Until the night the girls find themselves on a dark highway, bruised and bloodied.How did paradise turn so ugly?Senior Detective Bronwen McKay and psychologist Megan Arlotti question the terrified girls. But Hayley and Gemma are telling two very different stories of what happened to them over the past three months.Which story is the truth and what are the girls covering up?
Disruption
Clair M. Poulson - 2021
But when he returns home from an evening out with his older sister, Lilia, Timmy is faced with his greatest challenge yet: the house has been ransacked, and their parents have disappeared without a trace. With the help of two detectives who take a special interest in the case, Timmy and Lilia embark on a unique investigation guided by Timmy’s photographic memory and relying on one subtle clue from the night of their parents’ disappearance: the unusual presence of an old Ford Bronco. Using that single piece of information, Timmy and Lilia are drawn into a deadly conspiracy spanning the globe and are staying just ahead of a mysterious foe who has no patience for their meddling. The success of this unlikely team of investigators rests with Timmy’s intrepid problem-solving skills as the siblings race to find their parents before time runs out.
The Assassin, The Grey Man and The Surgeon
D.C. Stansfield - 2012
He had a hold on the producers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His receiver network was increasing and the distribution was now being handled by four of the biggest gangs in London. With business so good, he was starting to expand. He was becoming very, very rich.The only small annoyance had come from a little old lady who owned of all things a small corner shop. She had refused to accept any of his little parcels and wanted to go to the police, so she’d been given two bullets, the ‘double tap’, both to shut her up and to send a message to everyone else in the network.Unknown to Lee she was married to a specialist, a man who, in a former life killed men for a living. He had two friends, one a gatherer of information, the master in his field, one a breaker of men, who was so vicious that it was rumoured that each time he hit a man he cut him. Each of these three men had spent thirty years and more playing the ‘great game’. Inside the security company called ‘The Firm’ they were legends known only as The Assassin, The Grey Man and The Surgeon. Now living at the edge of the secret world and about to disappear into history, this atrocity had brought them back centre stage but the question is, do they still have what it takes to go up against today’s hard men?
Black Sky (A Mystery-Thriller)
Victor Methos - 2013
Woken one night when the body of a young woman is found torn apart, that peace is shattered as it dawns on him that a predator is among them.EVERYONE A SUSPECT...With little to go on, all the men in the town are potential suspects and Jesse begins an investigation that spans across the social spectrum. Unable to find the killer, the mayor goes against Jesse and decides to bring in bounty hunters. But the cure may be more dangerous than the disease.A WINDOW INTO THE DARKNESS OF MEN...As another murder occurs under their noses, Jesse realizes he is outmatched and facing an evil he has never encountered. He enlists the help of an alienist from Harvard University. Someone trained in the new science of the mind. Together they are about to journey into the darkest recesses of the human soul, and they may not make it out alive...
The Secret Letter: The Beginning
Roger Hayden - 2017
She's quick to dismiss the letter and focus instead on her busy day, amidst a preoccupied husband and eleven year-old-daughter. But the letter is only the beginning of a series of anonymous gifts, each more bizarre than the next, which shed light on a past long forgotten. Suspicious of her newfound admirer, Victoria soon finds herself trapped in a dangerous game of vengeance and betrayal, where her survival hangs in the very balance with every move that she makes.
The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted
Andrew E. Kaufman - 2011
STEPPING INTO HER WORST NIGHTMARE... Because when she returned, she found an open bedroom window and her three-year-old son, Nathan, gone. The boy would never be seen again. A NIGHTMARE THAT ONLY BECAME WORSE.A tip leads detectives to the killer, a repeat sex offender, and inside his apartment, a gruesome discovery. A slam-dunk trial sends him off to death row, then several years later, to the electric chair. CASE CLOSED. JUSTICE SERVED...OR WAS IT?Now, more than thirty years later, Patrick Bannister unwittingly stumbles across evidence among his dead mother's belongings—it paints her as the killer and her brother, a wealthy and powerful senator, as the one pulling the strings. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO NATHAN KINGSLEY?There's a hole in the case a mile wide, and Patrick is determined to close it. But what he doesn't know is that the closer he moves toward the truth, the more he's putting his life on the line, that he’s become the hunted. Someone's hiding a dark secret and will stop at nothing to keep it that way.The clock is ticking, the walls are closing, and the stakes are getting higher as he races to find a killer—one who's hot on his trail. One who's out for his blood.
Freaks
Tess Gerritsen - 2007
Homicide cop Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles have seen their fair share of mortal crimes, but the death of Kimberly Rayner may qualify as inhuman in more ways than one. When corpse of the emaciated seventeen-year-old girl is discovered next to an empty coffin in an abandoned church, mysterious bruises around the throat suggest foul play. Caught fleeing the scene is the victim’s closest friend, Lucas Henry, an equally skeletal, pale teenager who claims he’s guilty only of having a taste for blood—a craving he shared with Kimberly. But the victim’s distraught father doesn’t believe in vampires, only vengeance. And now, another life may be at risk unless Rizzoli and Isles can uncover the astonishing truth. Includes a special preview of Tess Gerritsen’s new Rizzoli & Isles novel, The Silent Girl, on sale July 5 And don’t miss the season premiere of TNT’s hit series Rizzoli & Isles on July 11