The One I Left Behind


Jennifer McMahon - 2013
    Thirteen, awkward, and without a father, she finds herself mixed up with her school's outcasts-Charlie, the local detective's son, and Tara, a goth kid who has a mental hold over Reggie and harbors a dark secret. That same summer a serial killer called Neptune begins kidnapping women. He leaves their severed hands on the police department steps and, five days later, displays their bodies around town. Just when Reggie needs her mother Vera-an ex-model with many "boyfriends" and a thirst for gin-the most, Vera's hand is found on the steps. But after five days, there's no body and Neptune disappears.Now a successful architect who left her hometown behind after that horrific summer, Reggie doesn't trust anyone and lives with few attachments. But when she gets a call from a homeless shelter saying that her mother has been found alive, Reggie must confront the ghosts of her past and find Neptune before he kills again.With her signature style, Jennifer McMahon portrays the dark side of adolescent friendship and introduces characters who haunt the imagination, along with a disturbing web of secrets, betrayals, and murder.

Sugar & Spice


Saffina Desforges - 2010
    Based on research and details from the case of Robert Black, a UK serial killer, Sugar & Spice was deemed "Too controversial for the British market."100,000 + readers thought otherwise. Sugar & Spice is now one of the biggest-selling e-books in the UK of 2011.It has also just been voted as a 'Red Adept Reviews' 2011 indie award winner for mystery!If you like cosy crime, this is NOT for you.Sibel Hodge (author) called it "Patricia Cornwell meets Silence of the Lambs." The author draws heavily on the classic of the thriller genre, from Cornwell's Scarpetta and Thomas Harris through James Patterson, John Grisham, Dan Brown, Stieg Larsson and A.K. Alexander, to produce a truly unique and ground-breaking debut novel.Would you trust a convicted sex offender to help you find your daughter's killer? Claire did...Inspired by a news story of a man who begged a Judge to give him a longer sentence, because he knew he would harm another child if released without treatment, Sugar & Spice is meticulously researched, asking the questions society prefers not to have answered.At once disquieting and challenging, Sugar & Spice is car-crash reading.~It's every parent's worst nightmare: A child fails to return home. As hours turn to days, all they can do is hope. Some children never come back...Driven by the need to know why, a mother confronts the man accused of her daughter's murder, He presents a compelling defence, convincing Claire not only that he is innocent of harming her daughter, but that his previous convictions were not what they seemed.Teaming up with a second-year psychology student and a fourteen year-old truant schoolboy, Sugar & Spice is the story of a mother's fight to bring one man's reign of terror to an end.~Be warned: In Sugar & Spice not all things are nice...

The Other Daughter


Lisa Gardner - 1999
    Gifted with a loving family, Melanie has always considered herself lucky. Until tonight.Tonight, a has-been reporter turns up investigating her past. Tonight the first note arrives, saying, "You Get What You Deserve." And tonight, Melanie has her first, horrifying vision of the past.Melanie has no memory of her life before the adoption. Now someone wants to give it back, even if it includes the darkest nightmare the Stokes family ever faced: the murder of their first daughter in Texas. As Melanie desperately searches for her real identity, two seemingly unrelated events from the past will come together in a dangerous explosion of truth.

Shadow Dancers


Herbert Lieberman - 1989
    . . and he just picked up a copycatFor Police Lieutenant Frank Mooney, life is a series of problems and complications; he has his hands full with a savage rapist and murderer dubbed “the Dancer.” Despite Mooney and the NYPD’s efforts, the Dancer has already accrued an alarming body count—and Mooney’s job is on the line if he doesn’t put a stop to the savage murder spree. However, this is no average serial killer case: The Dancer has a copycat, dubbed “the Shadow Dancer,” reenacting his brutal work.Shadow Dancers chronicles the harrowing manhunt that engulfs Manhattan as Mooney attempts to bring these two psychopaths to justice. As the lieutenant gets closer to his suspects, he finds two murderers as chilling and unexpected as any in crime literature.Herbert Lieberman has created an unforgettable trio with Frank Mooney, the Dancer, and the Shadow Dancer—one that will have readers whipping through the pages to reach the story’s shocking conclusion.

Mortal Fear


Greg Iles - 1997
    But at night, Harper serves as system operator for E.R.O.S., a highly exclusive, sexually explicit on-line service whose clients range from the glitterati of Hollywood to the literati of New York. Shielded by a guarantee of absolute anonymity, these clients pour their secrets into the digital confession box of E.R.O.S. Only "sysops" like Harper - the high priests of the system - know and see all. When six female clients inexplicably drop off the network, Harper suspects that something is amiss. But when a world-famous New Orleans author - and E.R.O.S. client - is decapitated in her mansion, Harper breaks the code of silence and contacts the police. They are as shocked as Harper to learn that all six women have been brutally murdered, each with a different weapon, and in a different city. And each time the killer has claimed the same bizarre trophy. Horrified to find himself the prime suspect in the murders he reported, Harper is swept into a secret manhunt led by the FBI's Investigative Support Unit. While the FBI uses the technology of the future and the psychology of the past to trap the brilliant killer, Harper realizes that he alone stands a chance of luring the elusive madman into the open.

Hostage


Robert Crais - 2001
    Hotly pursued by the police, they crash into the suburban home of an accountant and take the family hostage. Soon the mafia are on the scene.

The Girls He Adored


Jonathan Nasaw - 2001
    Pender has been investigating the apparently random disappearances of a dozen women across the country. The only detail the cases have in common is the strawberry blond color of the victims' hair, and the presence of a mystery man with whom they were last seen.Then, in Monterey, California, a routine traffic stop erupts into a scene of horrific violence. The local police are stunned by a disemboweled strawberry blond victim and an ingenious killer with multiple alternating personalities. Pender is convinced he has found his man, but before he can prove it, the suspect stages a cunning jailbreak and abducts his court-appointed psychiatrist, Irene Cogan.In a house on a secluded ridge in Oregon, Irene must navigate through the minefield of her captor's various egos -- male and female, brilliant and naive, murderous and passive -- all of whom are dominated by Max, a seductive killer who views her as both his prisoner and his salvation. Irene knows that to survive she must play along with Max's game of sexual perversion. Only then will she be able to strip back the layers to discover a chilling story of a shattered young boy -- and all the girls he adored.A sexually charged thriller of extraordinary originality and page-turning suspense, The Girls He Adored moves furiously from the inner recesses of the psyche to its final, startling climax. Jonathan Nasaw brilliantly portrays two equally intense characters -- a deviant killer and the expert who can unlock his darkest secrets -- and introduces one of the most likable sleuths in recent fiction.

Ashes to Ashes


Tami Hoag - 1999
    He has already claimed three lives, and he won’t stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn’t talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still. Her superiors are interested only because the latest victim may be the daughter of Peter Bondurant, an enigmatic billionaire. When Peter pulls strings, Special Agent John Quinn gets assigned to the case. But the FBI’s ace profiler of serial killers is the last person Kate wants to work with, not with their troubled history. Now she faces the most difficult role of her career—and her life. For she’s the only woman who has what it takes to stop the killer . . . and the one woman he wants next.

The Whisperer


Donato Carrisi - 2009
    Five of them appear to belong to missing girls between the ages of eight and eighteen. The sixth is yet to be identified. Worse still, the girls' bodies, alive or dead, are nowhere to be found.Lead investigators Mila Vasquez, a celebrated profiler, and Goran Gavila, an eerily prescient criminologist, dive into the case. They're confident they've got the right suspect in their sights until they discover no link between him and any of the kidnappings except the first. The evidence in the case of the second missing child points in a vastly different direction, creating more questions than it answers.Vasquez and Gavila begin to wonder if they've been brought in to take the fall in a near-hopeless case. Is it all coincidence? Or is a copycat criminal at work? Obsessed with a case that becomes more tangled and intense as they unravel the layers of evil, Gavila and Vasquez find that their lives are increasingly in each other's hands.THE WHISPERER, as sensational a bestseller in Europe as the Stieg Larsson novels, is that rare creation: a thought-provoking, intelligent thriller that is also utterly unputdownable.

The Cradle Will Fall


Mary Higgins Clark - 1980
    This is a reissue of a novel by a popular author often described as the 'Queen of Suspense'.

Stay Close


Harlan Coben - 2012
    Now she’s got two kids, a perfect husband, a picket fence, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Ray used to be a talented documentary photographer, but at age forty he finds himself in a dead-end job posing as a paparazzo pandering to celebrity-obsessed rich kids. Jack is a detective who can’t let go of a cold case—a local husband and father disappeared seventeen years ago, and Jack spends the anniversary every year visiting a house frozen in time, the missing man’s family still waiting, his slippers left by the recliner as if he might show up any moment to step into them. Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn’t recede. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realization that they may not want to forget the past at all. And as each confronts the dark side of the American Dream—the boredom of a nice suburban life, the excitement of temptation, the desperation and hunger that can lurk behind even the prettiest facades—they will discover the hard truth that the line between one kind of life and another can be as whisper-thin as a heartbeat. With his trademark combination of page-turning thrills and unrivaled insight into the dark shadows that creep into even the happiest communities, Harlan Coben delivers a thriller that cements his status as the master of domestic suspense.

Creep


Jennifer Hillier - 2011
    . .Dr. Sheila Tao is a professor of psychology. An expert in human behavior. And when she began an affair with sexy, charming graduate student Ethan Wolfe, she knew she was playing with fire. Consumed by lust when they were together, riddled with guilt when they weren’t, she knows the three-month fling with her teaching assistant has to end. After all, she’s finally engaged to a kind and loving investment banker who adores her, and she’s taking control of her life. But when she attempts to end the affair, Ethan Wolfe won’t let her walk away.. . . no one else can.Ethan has plans for Sheila, plans that involve posting a sex video that would surely get her fired and destroy her prestigious career. Plans to make her pay for rejecting him. And as she attempts to counter his every threatening move without her colleagues or her fiancé discovering her most intimate secrets, a shattering crime rocks Puget Sound State University: a female student, a star athlete, is found stabbed to death. Someone is raising the stakes of violence, sex, and blackmail . . . and before she knows it, Sheila is caught in a terrifying cat-and-mouse game with the lover she couldn’t resist—who is now the monster who won’t let her go.

The Poet


Michael Connelly - 1996
    So when his homicide detective brother kills himself, McEvoy copes in the only way he knows how--he decides to write the story. But his research leads him to suspect a serial killer is at work--a devious murderer who's killing cops and leaving a trail of poetic clues. It's the news story of a lifetime, if he can get the story without losing his life.

Killing Kate


Alex Lake - 2016
    HE HAS A TYPE: ALL HIS VICTIMS LOOK THE SAME. AND THEY ALL LOOK LIKE YOU.Kate returns from a post break-up holiday with her girlfriends to news of a serial killer in her home town – and his victims all look like her.It could, of course, be a simple coincidence. Or maybe not.She becomes convinced she is being watched, followed even. Is she next? And could her mild-mannered ex-boyfriend really be a deranged murderer?Or is the truth something far more sinister?

The Pact


Sharon J. Bolton - 2021
    In return, they each agree to a 'favour', payable on her release from prison.Twenty years later Megan is free.Let the games begin . . .Richard & Judy bestseller Sharon Bolton is back, with her twistiest thriller yet.