Shades of Gray


Andy Holloman - 2011
    Get your copy today."Debut novelist Andy Holloman speeds us on a journey with punch, twist, and emotional dilemmas straight from our worst fears. Shades of Gray is a colorful, rollicking ride from start to finish." - Franz Wisner, New York Times bestselling author of "Honeymoon with My Brother" and "How the World Makes Love" "Wow! Holloman delivers on a taut thriller that will keep you turning the pages far into the night. This book should be at the top of everyone's reading list for 2012"- S. Burnham, PeakCityPublishing.com ---------------------------------------------------How far would you go to save your child's life? Could you break the law? What if your travel business was suddenly in danger of going under because of 9/11? A single father decides to partner up with woman from the opposite side of the tracks.Can their partnership deliver the cash they BOTH desperately need?Could they fall in love? And will they survive to see the Summer of 2002? ------------------------------------------------Start with "Breaking Bad", add dash of "Cops", and stir in a darker version of the "Love Boat" and you get all the right flavors for "Shades of Gray".

A Thousand Cuts


Simon Lelic - 2009
    Samuel Szajkowski, a recently hired history teacher, walked into a school assembly with a gun and murdered three students and a colleague before turning the weapon on himself. It was a tragedy that could not have been predicted. Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Yet as Detective Inspector Lucia May- the only woman in her high-testosterone office in the Criminal Investigations Department-begins to piece together the testimonies of the various witnesses, an uglier and more complex picture emerges, calling into question the innocence of others. But no one, including Lucia's boss, is interested. As the pressure to close the case builds and her colleagues' sexism takes a sinister turn, Lucia begins to realize that she has more in common with the killer than she could have imagined, and she becomes deter­mined to expose the truth. Brilliantly interweaving the witnesses' accounts with Lucia's own perspective, A Thousand Cuts is a narrative tour de force from a formidable new voice in fiction.

Drowning Instinct


Ilsa J. Bick - 2012
    (This is not one of those stories.)Jenna Lord’s first sixteen years were not exactly a fairytale. Her father is a controlling psycho and her mother is a drunk. She used to count on her older brother—until he shipped off to Afghanistan. And then, of course, there was the time she almost died in a fire. There are stories where the monster gets the girl, and we all shed tears for his innocent victim. (This is not one of those stories either.)Mitch Anderson is many things: A dedicated teacher and coach. A caring husband. A man with a certain... magnetism. And there are stories where it’s hard to be sure who’s a prince and who’s a monster, who is a victim and who should live happily ever after. (These are the most interesting stories of all.)Drowning Instinct is a novel of pain, deception, desperation, and love against the odds—and the rules.

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

Night Waking


Sarah Moss - 2011
    She also has an insomniac toddler, a precocious, death-obsessed seven-year-old, and a frequently-absent ecologist husband who has brought them all to Colsay, a desolate island in the Hebrides, so he can count the puffins. Ferociously sleep-deprived, torn between mothering and her desire for the pleasures of work and solitude, Anna becomes haunted by the discovery of a baby's skeleton in the garden of their house. Her narrative is punctuated by letters home, written 200 years before, by May, a young, middle-class midwife desperately trying to introduce modern medicine to the suspicious, insular islanders. The lives of these two characters intersect unexpectedly in this deeply moving but also at times blackly funny story about maternal ambivalence, the way we try to control children, and about women's vexed and passionate relationship with work. Moss's second novel displays an exciting expansion of her range - showing her to be both an excellent comic writer, and a novelist of great emotional depth.

Beach Traffic: The Ocean Can Be Deadly


Judith Lucci - 2019
    Kat’s childhood friend, Heidi is looking for great sex and a fantastic weekend hookup. But, things turned bad quickly when they learn a friend of theirs had been brutally attacked. Federal and local law enforcement officials are concerned about a vicious murder on the beach and the disappearance of five women. Scroll Up and Grab Your Copy Today!

Everything Is Lies


Helen Callaghan - 2018
    At least that is what she's always believed.Everyone has secretsUntil the day she arrives at her childhood home to find a house ringing with silence. Her mother is hanging from a tree. Her father is lying in a pool of his own blood, near to death.Especially those closest to you The police are convinced it is an attempted murder-suicide. But Sophia is sure that the woman who brought her up isn't a killer. As her father is too ill to talk it is up to Sophia to clear her mother's name. And to do this she needs to delve deep into her family's past - a past full of dark secrets she never suspected were there . . .What if your parents had been lying to you since the day you were born?

The Pillowman


Martin McDonagh - 2003
    His tricks and turns have a purpose. They are bridges over a deep pit of sympathy and sorrow, illuminated by a tragic vision of stunted and frustrated lives.' Fintan O'Toole, Irish TimesMartin McDonagh's searingly brilliant new play premi�res at the National Theatre, London in November 2003.

Charisma


Jeanne Ryan - 2015
    The effects are instant. She’s charming, vivacious, and popular. But strangely, so are some other kids she knows. The media goes into a frenzy when the disease turns contagious, and then deadly, and the doctor who gave it to them disappears. Aislyn must find a way to stop it, before it's too late.Part medical thriller, part social justice commentary, Charisma will have readers on the edge of their seats.

The Wish List


Jane Costello - 2013
    . . and she has some unfinished business.Emma and her friends are about to turn thirty, and for Emma it's a defining moment. Defined, that is, by her having achieved none of the things she'd imagined she would.Her career is all wrong, her love life is a desert and that penthouse apartment she pictured herself in simply never materialised. Moreover, she's never jumped out of a plane, hasn't met the man she's going to marry, has never slept under the stars, or snogged anyone famous - just some of the aspirations on a list she and her friends compiled fifteen years ago.As an endless round of birthday parties sees Emma hurtle towards her own thirtieth, she sets about addressing these issues. But, as she discovers with hilarious consequences, some of them are trickier to tick off than she'd thought…

The Mud Sisters


Edie Claire - 2012
    But some promises are hard to keep...When hospital social worker Teagan Hansen is called to the bedside of a Jane Doe who has been beaten and left for dead with no ID and no memory, she expects to be dealing with a victim of domestic violence. The last thing she expects is to look into the eyes of the childhood friend who disappeared abruptly from her life fourteen years before.Concussed, broken, and hypothermic, Jamie can’t remember her own name, much less what personal circumstances brought her to such tragedy. But as the pieces of her memory begin to fit together, she does remember how much her friendship with Teagan meant to her through the long years of foster care, hard work, and heartbreak that followed that one magical summer.As the indomitable Teagan vows to help Jamie get back on her feet again, the women’s bond strengthens anew. But with Jamie’s life under threat from a man she can’t remember--a man who is determined to find her again before she does--Teagan’s loyalties to her friend, her profession, and her new marriage are tested to their limits. And when the women realize that their pasts have been intertwined far more than deeply than either of them knew, the fate that separated them once before threatens to tear apart them again. And this time, it could be forever.

Elephants in the Room


Suraj Laxminarayanan - 2018
    Novices to crime, they are driven more by emotions than skill - their plan seems foolproof, or so they think. In another part of the city, a gang of seasoned dacoits has botched up a job and now owes money to the local crime lord. They have to either pay up or pay for it with their lives - and time is running out... In a bizarre twist of fate, both these groups are brought face to face. Trapped in a situation beyond the realm of their planning and experience, they must think on their feet, form quick alliances and rally behind an unlikely leader. Set against the backdrop of Chennai, where men sing gaana songs in kuppams (fishing hamlets) nestled against swanky glass-fronted buildings and life-size cutouts of film stars and politicians, a story of love, greed, friendship, fate and the absurdity of the human condition unfolds.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption


Stephen King - 1982
    He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking.com

Black Silk


Metsy Hingle - 2006
    Mere hours before her wedding, the fiancee of real estate mogul JP Stratton is found strangled in her penthouse. New Orleans homicide detective Charlotte "Charlie" Le Blanc views the crime scene, finding a black silk stocking draped casually beside the body--a chilling calling card from the killer. The dramatic clue leads Charlie to a world of privilege and wealth, and before long she singles out a suspect whose identity creates a furor in the city: Cole Stratton, JP's estranged son. But what she doesn't know is that Cole has been set up, and while she sets out to prove his guilt a real killer is on the loose--a man who now has Charlie in his sights, a man with yet another black silk stocking.

Last Chance


Phillip Burrows - 2007
    His film is good and he is the only cameraman on the volcano. Now he can go home. But then he finds Jenny and she is dying. Rocks start to move and Mike is afraid. Can they get off the volcano alive? And what happens to Mike's camera and film?