Her career is on the ropes. Her daughter is dying — there are only hours left before the end, and decisions have to be made. Museum curator Blake Daniel is a man on the edge of destruction. Cursed with the ability to “read” objects — to see where they’ve come from, and the bloody histories they experience — Blake splits his time between working as a researcher at the British Museum… and binge-drinking to forget his nightmare visions.Together, these two broken souls are all that stand between London and a serial killer. A young woman has been murdered, her uterus and unborn child removed during a gala event at a college of surgeons, any of whom could have committed the crime. The only clue is a small ivory figure of a woman undergoing a Cesarean section, dating to the seventeenth century.Body modification, grave robbery, Nazi eugenics, a laboratory that specializes in extreme genetic experiments. All come together to create a mystery unlike any Jamie has experienced, and a danger greater than any Blake has ever seen in his visions. It will take all Jamie’s detective skills, and all Blake’s psychic abilities, to find the killer. To end the murders. To stop something that wants to destroy all that is good… and leave behind only DESECRATION.Desecration is the first book in a thrilling new series by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.F. Penn: a blend of crime, psychological thriller — and the supernatural.

    Charlotte Stone sees what others do not. A sought-after expert in criminal pathology, Charlie regularly sits face-to-face with madmen. Obsessed with learning what makes human monsters commit terrible crimes, Charlie desires little else from life—no doubt because when she was sixteen, she herself survived a serial killer’s bloodbath: A man butchered the family of Charlie’s best friend, Holly, then left the girl’s body on a seaside boardwalk one week later. Because of the information Charlie gave police, the Boardwalk Killer went underground. She kept to herself her eerie postmortem visions of Holly and her mother. And even years later, knowing her contact with ghosts might undermine her credibility as a psychological expert, Charlie tells no one about the visits she gets from the spirit world. Now all-too-handsome FBI agent Tony Bartoli is telling Charlie that a teenage girl is missing, her family slaughtered. Bartoli suspects that after fifteen years, the Boardwalk Killer—or a sick copycat with his M.O.—is back. Time is running short for an innocent, kidnapped girl, and Bartoli pleads for Charlie’s help. This is the one case Charlie shouldn’t go near. But she also knows that she may be the one person in the world who can stop this vicious killer. For Charlie—whose good looks disguise a world of hurt, vulnerability, and potent psychic gifts—a frantic hunt for a madman soon becomes a complex test of cunning, passions, and secrets. Aiding Dr. Stone on her quest to catch a madman is a ghostly presence with bad intentions: the fiery spirit of seductive bad boy Michael Garland who refuses to be ignored, though in his cat and mouse game they may both lose their hearts. Dr. Charlotte Stone sees what others do not. And she sees the Boardwalk Killer coming for her.

    Above all, she’s a loving partner to her wonderful husband, Collin.Then there are the parts of herself that Mel keeps hidden. She’s exhausted, worried and unfulfilled. So much so that one night, after a writers’ group meeting, Mel begins an affair with a successful local author named Luke. Suddenly she’s transformed into a role she doesn’t recognize—a woman who deceives with unseemly ease. A woman who might be capable of just about anything.When Mel finds Luke’s dead body in his lavish rented house, she realizes just how high the stakes have become. Not only does she have to keep her affair a secret in order to preserve her marriage, but she desperately needs to avoid being implicated in Luke’s death. But who would want to kill him? Who else in her life is keeping secrets? And most terrifying of all, how far will they—and she—go to keep those secrets hidden?

    A stolen child. Revenge. Death. And an ordinary house at the end of an ordinary street.All these things are true. And yet they are all lies...You think you know what's inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you've read this story before. That's where you're wrong.In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it's not what you think...

    Gabriel Blackstone is a cool, hip, thoroughly twenty-first century Londoner with an unusual talent. A computer hacker by trade, he is also a remote viewer: able to 'slam a ride' through the minds of others. But he uses his gift only reluctantly - until he is asked to find a young man last seen months earlier at Monk House, in the company of two mysterious women. Gabriel becomes increasingly bewitched by the house, and by its owners, the beautiful Monk sisters. But even as he falls in love, he suspects that one of them is a killer. But which one? And what is the secret they are so determined to protect? * World Book Day: Book to Talk About Award 2009

    Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that’s what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America’s founding, were forced from their land, but they didn’t move far, and some didn’t move at all…Now, a century later, the repercussions of human arrogance are finally making themselves known. An inspector assigned to oversee the dam, dangerously neglected for decades, witnesses something inexplicable. It turns out that more than the village was left behind in the waters of the Chill when it was abandoned. The townspeople didn’t evacuate without a fight. A dark prophecy remained, too, and the time has come for it to be fulfilled. Those who remember must ask themselves: who will be next? For sacrifices must be made. And as the dark waters begin to inexorably rise, the demand for a fresh sacrifice emerges from the deep...

    The university was mourning the loss of one of its own: Nicole Werner, a blond, beautiful, straight-A sorority sister tragically killed in a car accident that left her boyfriend, who was driving, remarkably—some say suspiciously—unscathed.Although a year has passed, as winter begins and the nights darken, obsession with Nicole and her death reignites: She was so pretty. So sweet-tempered. So innocent. Too young to die.Unless she didn’t.Because rumor has it that she’s back.

     Her Saturday night started normally. Recently separated from her husband, Ali has been persuaded by her friends to go on a date with a new man. She is ready, she is nervous, she is excited. She is about to take a step into her new future. By Sunday morning, Ali’s life is unrecognisable. She wakes, and she knows that something is wrong. She is home, she is alone, she is hurt and she has no memory of what happened to her. Worse still, when she looks in the mirror, Ali doesn’t recognise the face staring back at her. She can’t recognise her friends and family. And she can’t recognise the person who is trying to destroy her…

    It's not the kind of place you'd want to end up. But it's where Jess Moulson could be spending the rest of her life.It's a place where even the walls whisper.And one voice belongs to a little boy with a message for Jess.Will she listen?

    At 9pm, Nick is being held in jail, accused of Mary's murder. He saw her bloody corpse; he knows that she is dead. That's when a grey haired gentleman presents him with a talisman that allows him to go back in time, one hour at a time, for a total of twelve hours. With each hour that Nick journeys back in time, he finds more clues to the identity of Mary's real killer, but he also discovers that his actions in the past have unexpected repercussions on the future. All his good intentions of saving Mary's life may in fact lead to a far greater catastrophe than he could have imagined. If he hasn't set things right by the thirteenth hour, all will be lost. A surprising and utterly original thriller that blends a dash of fantasy with page-turning suspense, The 13th Hour has all the ingredients of a massive international bestseller.

    Every night, on the point of losing his mind, he drowns their screams in drink. His solution is to kill those who engineered their deaths.From the greedy politicians to the corrupt security forces, the street thugs to the complacent bystanders who let it happen, all are called to account. But when Fegan's vendetta threatens to derail a hard-won truce and destabilise the government, old comrades and enemies alike want him dead.Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Thriller.

    Forty-year-old June Bennett believed that the island had been sold after the summer of her father's disappearance when she was only twelve years old. It's months after the shocking death of her older sister May in a fatal car accident, that June finds out that the cottage was never sold. Avril Island is still owned by the Bennett family and now it's hers.Still reeling from the grief of losing her sister, June travels back to Avril lsland in search of answers. As she digs, she learns that the townspeople believe her father may have, in fact, been murdered rather than abandoning his family in the dead of night, as she was led to believe by her mother. And that's when she begins to notice strange things happening on the island--missing family possessions showing up on her bed, doors open when she had locked them closed. It takes June no time at all to realize that her childhood summers at Avril Island were not at all what they had seemed to be.

    It’s taken Joan Lurie three years to write her article exposing a famous newspaper tycoon as a sexual predator. On the eve of its publication, she celebrates at a party thrown in her honor and is riding high…only to be brutally attacked as she is returning home late that night. Traumatized and suffering the effects of a concussion, she moves to a highly secure new apartment building in northern Manhattan called the Refuge. Safely sequestered away, she tries to begin writing a book that expands her much-lauded exposé.At the Refuge, Joan encounters a frail 96-year-old woman who has been living in the building since the 1940s when it was a Magdalen Laundry and Refuge for Fallen Women. When Lillian first arrived, she was hiding out from the infamous Murder, Inc mobsters. As Lillian relates her story about the long-ago incriminating incident she witnessed that forced her into hiding, Joan recalls certain details of her own investigation.The more Joan learns about Lillian and the fabled story of the Refuge, the more she realizes they may be linked to the book she is writing—and to her attacker that fateful night. As Joan starts to connect the clues and unravel decades worth of history, she must stay one step ahead of those who are desperate to make sure Joan never uncovers the final truth.

    The tragedy has become a local legend, but Cara has moved past her grief to have a successful career and a happy family. Pity about Anna. Recently released from incarceration, she’s struggling with addiction, guilt, and shame—a shattered life. Cara’s forgiveness seems to be the only thing that helps her pick up the pieces.But as Anna pulls herself together, her memories of that night on the bridge start to come into focus. And few of them match her sister’s.As past secrets unfold and nothing is what it seems anymore, Anna desperately searches for the truth. But what if Cara doesn’t want her to find it?

    Sophie Dunston knows all too well how dreams can kill. As one of the nation’s top sleep therapists, she specializes in the life-threatening night terrors that her ten-year-old son, Michael, suffers from. But she is also an expert in another kind of terror–the kind that can turn a dream life into a living nightmare in the blink of an eye.Someone is watching. He’s a shadowy figure from out of her darkest fears and he hasn’t forgotten her. In one shocking moment of violence, he’d shattered Sophie’s world forever and left her with only one thing to live for: her son. But the nightmare isn’t over for Sophie Dunston. It’s just begun. He’s been waiting. Sophie was supposed to die the first time around, but fate intervened. This time he’ll make sure that not even a miracle will save her.It wasn’t a miracle that saved Jock Gavin, but it was pretty close. A semiretired hit man, commando, and jack-of-all-deadly-trades, he knows what Sophie is up against–and that she’ll need help. But the man he’s chosen for the job is as unpredictable as he is dangerous. Matt Royd is a wild card–hard, cool, merciless–and putting him into play changes the game completely. But to whose advantage?Sophie will soon find out. She will have to trust Royd because she has no choices left. Because the bogeyman haunting her dreams is all too real and he’s on the hunt again. Because the nightmare he’s got planned for Sophie won’t end when she wakes up screaming. It won’t end. Ever.From the Hardcover edition.