Book picks similar to
Touched by Death by Dale Mayer


romance
romantic-suspense
suspense
contemporary

Mark of the Loon


Molly Greene - 2012
    She struggles with the inability to put down roots years after the sudden death of her beloved parents. Madison and her three wise, hilarious friends all wonder if she uses her busy, work-centric lifestyle as an excuse to avoid connection with anyone but them.When Madison checks out a probate sale outside Healdsburg, California, she falls in love with the European-style house on a private tract of land overlooking Lake Sonoma. In fact, she likes the place so much she climbs in the window for a private tour. With help from lawyer and friend Genevieve Delacourt, Madison soon learns that the estate’s corrupt attorney has manipulated the sale and is attempting to steer the purchase to an anonymous client in a deceitful plan for personal gain.Good fortune enables her to purchase the Blackburne’s property, but far more than a new home and lush gardens await discovery during this renovation. As Madison works on the remodel, she’s drawn into an old love story with dangerous consequences. In the process, she discovers herself as she unearths buried secrets. The series of events both endanger Madison and lead her to love – and a permanent home. Mark of the Loon is the skillful combination of history, mystery, and romance in a novel that explores deep friendship, choices, and how individuals cope with loss.

Mirror Image


Sandra Brown - 1990
    But it also makes her the crucial player in a drama of violent passions and deadly desires. After plastic surgery transforms her face, Avery is mistaken for the glamorous, selfish wife of Tate Rutledge, the famous senatorial candidate and member of a powerful Texas dynasty. As she lays helpless in the hospital, Avery makes a shattering discovery: someone close to Tate planned to assassinate him. Now, to save him, she must live another woman's life -- and risk her own.

Long Time Coming


Edie Claire - 2003
    But back at home, the past is ready and waiting to haunt her...Eighteen years have passed since Joy's childhood best friend, Jenny, met her death in a tragic car accident just a few days after their senior prom. A broken Joy left their small Kentucky hometown shortly after - determined never to come back. But when her father's illness forces her to return, she realizes that neither time nor distance have truly healed her troubled soul.Plagued with nightmares of the accident and crippled by a vague fear whose source she can't identify, Joy realizes that in order to move on she must face the truth behind several disturbing gaps in her memory of that fateful spring. But the only person who can help her is a man she despises - Jenny's erstwhile boyfriend Jeff, now a respected doctor, whose carelessness as a teenager was the cause of Jenny's horrendous death - and Joy's own emotional destruction. Can she ever forgive? She may have no choice but to try. Because both the danger she sensed - and the childhood friendship she treasured - now suddenly seem very much alive...

Make Mine a Cowboy


Sandy Sullivan - 2013
    Being a romance writer has it perks and its drawbacks. She spends a lot of time alone in front of her computer, but she gets to fantasize about incredibly hot men wearing cowboy boots and Stetsons. While visiting San Antonio, Texas for a writer’s conference, she finds herself stranded on the back roads of Bandera only to be rescued by one of the most gorgeous men she’s ever encountered, be it fantasy or for real.Joel Young is a cowboy. From the top of his Stetson to the tip of his dirty cowboy boots, he’s cowboy through and through. Along with rescuing women when they do silly things like running out of gas miles from town on a dirt road, he spends his days herding cattle, fixing fences and breaking horses.Can one handsome cowboy and a city-girl from LA find common ground is the Hill Country long enough to see beyond a quick fling?

Speak No Evil


Tanya Anne Crosby - 2013
    But a killer is making headlines, and Caroline may have unwittingly stepped into the crosshairs. Even as she mends the tattered bonds of sisterhood, a sinister force beyond their control may tear them apart forever…Reading order for The Oyster Point ThrillerBook 1: Leave No TraceBook 2: Speak No EvilBook 3: Tell No Lies

Thread of Fear


Laura Griffin - 2008
    Her skill at mining victims' memories to re-create the faces of sadistic criminals has left her haunted and wary, and only Jack Bowman's dogged persistence convinces her to help him. The rugged police chief is hunting a serial killer who's targeting teenage girls. But what seems like a simple assignment is fraught with complications, including a searing attraction to Jack that's tempting Fiona to let her guard down in potentially dangerous ways. Jack never intended for Fiona to become so deeply involved in the case -- or in his life. But every instinct tells him she's his best hope for finding a psychopath who's lurking in plain sight, growing more ruthless with each passing day. And now that Fiona is right in the killer's crosshairs, the only way to keep her safe is to unravel a small town's darkest secrets, one terrifying thread at a time....

The Cocky Thief


Mallory Crowe - 2017
    Austin Miles can get into any building, safe or vault in the world if he wanted to,but when a former cop obsessed with revenge threatens his most important asset,his reputation, he finds himself accepting a job that even the best would balk at. The only silver lining as he's putting his life on the line is the sexy,mysterious Jennifer Murray. Somehow when he's flirting with her the threat of death doesn't seem quite so bad. Jennifer Murray thought she was going to her eccentric's mother's wedding. The only thing that made the ordeal bearable was the tall dark and handsome man across the hall from her. But when she learns her mother's true motives for elaborate wedding, it becomes apparent that this isn't a party. It's a job. With both Jennifer and Austin after the same payday, there can only be one winner. But no one ever said the score of a lifetime would be easy...

Cade


V.A. Dold - 2014
    In her opinion, men are self-centered and will never love her for who she is, a beautiful, plus sized woman. All except the fantasy man that she’s been meeting in her dreams for five years. She just never expected her fantasy to be a real live alpha shifter... Cade Le Beau isn't what he seems. He’s a billionaire wolf. A Shifter. He laments his missed chance six months ago to meet his fantasy woman in the flesh. Just as his second chance presents itself, his fantasy woman, his mate, is threatened by the local mob boss and her ex-husband. Now, he has forty eight hours to deal with this threat once and for all or chance losing her again. Is it Anna who’s in danger, or the humans who unwittingly threaten her? The heat is on the moment they lay eyes on each other. Neither, age, children, horrid ex-husbands, nor mob bosses will stop this love affair.

The Deepest Cut


J.A. Templeton - 2011
    Guilt-ridden over the belief that she’s somehow responsible for her mom’s death, Riley is desperate to see her mother’s elusive spirit to gain her forgiveness. When her father moves the family to Scotland so they can all start over, Riley believes her life couldn’t get worse––that is until the ghost of nineteen-year-old Ian MacKinnon catches her purposely cutting herself. An uneasy truce quickly turns into friendship, and soon Riley’s falling hard for Ian. Riley believes her gift could help Ian end the curse that has kept him tied to the land for centuries, but that would mean letting him go forever and she’s not sure she is strong enough to do that. As if her life wasn’t complicated enough, the spirit of the woman who killed Ian returns and she’ll stop at nothing to keep Riley from helping Ian find eternal peace.

The Obsession


Nora Roberts - 2016
    She took a step back, then two, as the urge to run fell over her.” Naomi Bowes lost her innocence the night she followed her father into the woods. In freeing the girl trapped in the root cellar, Naomi revealed the horrible extent of her father’s crimes and made him infamous. No matter how close she gets to happiness, she can’t outrun the sins of Thomas David Bowes. Now a successful photographer living under the name Naomi Carson, she has found a place that calls to her, a rambling old house in need of repair, thousands of miles away from everything she’s ever known. Naomi wants to embrace the solitude, but the kindly residents of Sunrise Cove keep forcing her to open up—especially the determined Xander Keaton. Naomi can feel her defenses failing, and knows that the connection her new life offers is something she’s always secretly craved. But the sins of her father can become an obsession, and, as she’s learned time and again, her past is never more than a nightmare away.

Shattered With You


J. Kenner - 2019
    But Quincy isn’t the man he appears to be.When the woman whose body he once worshipped and whose heart he broke pleads for his help, Quincy knows he must either turn his back on her or risk revealing his dark secrets to the one woman who can—and will—tear open his old wounds.For years, struggling actress Eliza Tucker has tried to forget the decadent weeks she shared with Quincy Radcliffe. His smoldering good looks had drawn her in, while his British charm had enchanted her. But it was the wildness of his seduction and the ferocity of his passion that captured her. She’d given herself to him—and he’d shattered her like glass when he’d walked away.Now, he’s the only person who can help find her missing sister. She’ll use him because she has too. She’ll pay any sensual price he demands. But she won’t fall for him again.

The Night Before


Lisa Jackson - 2003
    . .In the dark shadows of a sultry southern town, a serial killer strikes. It's an act of sinister precision that has happened many times before. . .every victim an offering to a hunger that can never be sated. . .Night After Night. . .The next morning, Caitlyn Montgomery Bandeaux wakes covered in blood. But Caitlyn has no memory of the night before, when her estranged husband was brutally murdered like so many others she has known. . . After Night. . .Wanted by the police and haunted by horrifying, fragmented memories, Caitlyn turns to Adam Hunt, the town's new psychologist. But how far can she really trust him? For as a twisted killer strikes again and again, Caitlyn's about to discover that those who appear the most innocent are usually the most evil. . .

Elusive


Sara Rosett - 2012
    Zoe Hunter loves living on the edge. Free-spirited and spontaneous, she’s built a life stringing together various freelance gigs that keep her bank account barely in the black. But when her ex, Jack, goes missing along with several million dollars from his business and the FBI zeros in on her as a person of interest, Zoe’s life goes from delightfully unpredictable to downright frightening. Plunged into a world of fake identities, deception, and murder, she’s afraid to trust anyone. Zoe impulsively skips town in a search for answers that takes her from Las Vegas to Italy, but instead of tracking down answers, she only uncovers more questions. Who was Jack? Is he dead or did he fake his disappearance? And, what was he mixed up in—art theft, the mafia, espionage, or all three? SERIES NOTES: On the Run Series Book #1: Elusive Book #2: Secretive

Secrets in the Shadows


T.L. Haddix - 2010
    So what if she gets lonely from time to time? With a healthy, beautiful daughter, and a successful coffee shop-cafe, the divorced single mother convinces herself she doesn’t have time for love. When she gets her first glimpse at her parents’ handsome new neighbor, though, she starts reconsidering her stance. Once Charlie Clark begins breaking through her defensive walls, Lauren finds him hard to resist. Just as Lauren is learning to let go of the past and embrace the future, her personal demons rear their ugly heads in the guise of a vandal hell-bent on destroying Lauren’s happiness. When another local businesswoman is brutally murdered, the investigation into the crime reveals an unexpected connection to Lauren’s past. The message is clear--the past has come calling, and it’s out for blood. Note for Readers: This book does deal with the issues of incest and sexual abuse, more with the effects on the victims than the abuse itself. Reader Discretion Advised. “Secrets in the Shadows” is the first book in the Shadows Collection, a series of novels set in small-town Indiana. Other titles include “Under the Moon's Shadow,” “Shadows from the Grave,” “Hidden in the Shadows,” "In the Heart's Shadow," and "Deception in the Shadows."

The Huntress


Dorothy McFalls - 2009
    Her prey, ex-special forces officer Grayson Walker, is ruthless, a killer. She shouldn't feel attracted to him. Even so, the closer she gets to finding Grayson, the louder her instincts shout that things are not what they seem.It's only murder...Grayson Walker is dangerous...and determined. Someone is killing those closest to him, and he's desperate to find out why. When a firecracker of a bounty hunter comes close to capturing him, he fights back and ends up shooting her. Yet not even a gunshot wound can cool the sparks that fly between them whenever they're together. Soon, his life turns into a deadly race to earn Vega's trust, track down a killer, and avoid falling in love.