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Depths of Deception


Diane M. Dickson - 2016
    Libby is a confident but strange girl who lives on the edges of society, working as a caretaker of a valuable property called The Willows.With apparent serendipity they meet. Not only does Jed feel attracted to his quirky young friend, it turns out she might secure him a lucrative contract, managing the sale of the building.Allured by the promise of a great deal and praise from his superiors, Jed turns a blind eye to certain irregularities that he cannot quite explain. The question is, by the time he realises not is all as it seems, will he be in too deep to surface?Diane M Dickson is the author of several crime fiction novels, all of which are available exclusively on Kindle. http://www.amazon.co.uk/DEPTHS-DECEPT...http://www.amazon.com/DEPTHS-DECEPTIO...

The Last Thing She Ever Did


Gregg Olsen - 2018
    . .The community along Oregon's Deschutes River is one of successful careers and perfect families. For years, up-and-comers Liz and Owen have admired their good friends and neighbors, Carole and David. They appear to have it all--security, happiness, and a beautiful young son, Charlie.Then Charlie vanishes without a trace, and all that seemed safe is shattered by a tragedy that is incomprehensible--except to Liz.It took one fleeting moment for her to change the lives of everyone she loves--a heartrending accident that can't be undone. Neither can the second-worst mistake of her life: concealing it. As two marriages crack and buckle in grief and fear, Liz retreats into her own dark place of guilt, escalating paranoia--and betrayals even she can't imagine. Because there's another good neighbor who has his own secrets, his own pain, and his own reasons for watching Liz's every move.And only he knows that the mystery of the missing boy on the Deschutes River is far from over.

After Anna


Alex Lake - 2015
    A girl is missing. Five years old, taken from outside her school. She has vanished, traceless. The police are at a loss; her parents are beyond grief. Their daughter is lost forever, perhaps dead, perhaps enslaved. But the biggest mystery is yet to come: one week after she was abducted, their daughter is returned. She has no memory of where she has been. And this, for her mother, is just the beginning of the nightmare.

Fossil River


Jock Miller - 2012
    To create oil, dinosaurs died. Now the tables are turning!The perfect energy storm is sweeping over the United States: Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown has paralyzed nuclear expansion globally, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has stalled deep water drilling, Arab oil countries are in turmoil causing doubt about access to future oil, the intensity of hurricanes hitting the Gulf’s oil rigs and refineries has intensified due to global warming, and the nation’s Strategic Oil Supply is riding on empty.As the energy storm intensifies, the nation’s access to Arab oil, once supplying over sixty percent of our fossil fuel, is being threatened causing people to panic for lack of gas at the pumps, stranding cars across the country and inciting riots.The U.S. Military is forced to cut back air, land, and sea operations sucking up 58% of every barrel of oil to protect the nation; U.S. commercial airlines are forced to limit flights for lack of jet fuel; and businesses are challenged to power up their factories, and offices as the U.S. Department of Energy desperately tries to provide a balance of electric power from the network of aged power plants and transmission lines that power up the nation.The United States must find new sources of domestic fossil fuel urgently or face an energy crisis that will plunge the nation into a deep depression worse than 1929.The energy storm is very real and happening this very moment. But, at the last moment of desperation, the United States discovers the world’s largest fossil fuel deposit found in a remote inaccessible mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve surrounding six and a half million acres.Preventing access to the oil is a colony of living fossil dinosaurs that will protect its territory to the death.Nobody gets out alive; nobody can identify the predator--until Dr. Kimberly Fulton, Curator of Paleontology at New York’s Museum of Natural History, is flown into the inaccessible area by Scott Chandler, the Marine veteran helicopter pilot who’s the Park’s Manager of Wildlife. All hell breaks loose when Fulton’s teenage son and his girlfriend vanish into the Park.Will the nation’s military be paralyzed for lack of mobility fuel, and will people across America run out of gas and be stranded, or will the U.S. Military succeed in penetrating this remote mountain range in northwestern Alaska to restore fossil fuel supplies in time to save the nation from the worst energy driven catastrophe in recorded history?

Justice Redeemed


Scott Pratt - 2015
    Now the hotheaded young lawyer is in the public eye yet again—this time, accused of murder.Jalen Jordan retained Street for what seemed to be a minor traffic violation, but when evidence turned up linking Jordan to the death of two boys, Street wanted out of the case. To ensure his lawyer’s cooperation and silence, Jordan threatened to make Street’s son the next victim. Shortly after, Jordan’s own body turned up with a bullet hole in his chest.Now Street is on trial for his life, and the enemy he made in the DA’s office is clearly out for blood. It’s one lawyer out to frame another. Can a desperate father escape punishment for a crime he didn’t commit?

The Twilight Wife


A.J. Banner - 2016
    With only brief flashes of the last few years of her life, her world has narrowed to a few neighbors on the island where she lives with her devoted husband. But when Kyra begins having visions—or are they memories?—of a rocky marriage, broken promises, and cryptic relationships with the island residents she believes to be her friends, she can’t help but wonder if her new life is all a carefully constructed lie. As Kyra races to uncover her past, it soon becomes clear that the truth is a terrifying nightmare.

The Summons


John Grisham - 2002
    He's forty-three, newly single, and still enduring the aftershocks of a surprise divorce. He has a younger brother, Forrest, who redefines the notion of a family's black sheep.And he has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi. He is known to all as Judge Atlee, a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for forty years. No longer on the bench, the Judge has withdrawn to the Atlee mansion and become a recluse.With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons for both sons to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. It is typed by the Judge himself, on his handsome old stationery, and gives the date and time for Ray and Forrest to appear in his study.Ray reluctantly heads south, to his hometown, to the place where he grew up, which he prefers now to avoid. But the family meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray.And perhaps someone else.

The Anvil of the Craftsman


Dale Amidei - 2011
    The Revised and Expanded Edition includes a Bonus Chapter."You have love, hate and indifference. Choose."A doctoral candidate in Theological Studies accepts recruitment by a friend in the U.S. State Department for an initiative to the most troublesome province in 2006 Iraq. The many challenges of nation building expand the mission from diplomacy to a survival situation as local and international interests position themselves to oppose a State Department initiative: one vital to progress in an uncertain theater.Terrorism and counter-terror operations threaten to keep the team from leaving the relative safety of Baghdad. Until, that is, a former USAF Special Tactics operative hunting the men who want to kill them draws duty as their protector. The simple questions posed during a tribal council threaten provincial and regional stability; the conclusions reached explode into a clash of faith, loyalty, schism and betrayal that will help shape the future of two nations.The Anvil of the Craftsman, the debut novel by author Dale Amidei, will be appreciated by fans of a broad range of fiction; from aficionados of the haunting themes of Ernest Hemingway to readers of the tightly woven plots of Tom Clancy and popular titles of authors like Vince Flynn, David Baldacci, W.E.B. Griffin and Richard Marcinko.The Anvil of the Craftsman is presented in its Kindle Edition with a fully functional Table of Contents and navigation controls (NCX). Approx. 97,900 words / 327 pp. print length. © 2011 Single Candle Press

Pinpoint


Sheila Mary Taylor
    Eyes that are like no other blue eyes she has ever seen - except for her own. So startling that she knows immediately she sees them that she has seen them before. But where? When? And why does the sight of him trigger memories of her youth - of something so terrible she has done that she cannot remember anything that happened before she was ten years old? And who is this evil man who calls himself Sam Smith, who threatens to tell the world what Julia did if she doesn't comply with his demands? Julia's dilemma takes her beyond any normal person's limit of endurance: how to protect herself and her daughter from Smith's threats; how to raise the quarter million pounds Smith is demanding; and how to keep alive her burgeoning relationship with Paul Moxon, the police superintendent hunting Smith ...

Killing Down the Roman Line


Tim McGregor - 2012
    Until now, when a stranger rolls into town claiming to be a long lost Corrigan. Inviting the locals to a tour of the derelict property, the stranger regales the townsfolk with a gruesome tale of how his family was slaughtered by an armed mob. The murderers, he claims, were the ancestors of everyone assembled before him. Jeered as a fraud, the man’s claims are dismissed but doubts linger over what happened all those years ago. Dissent grows as the stranger agitates for retribution and long dead feuds reignite. Caught in the middle is Jim Hawkshaw, a struggling farmer living near the old house. As he digs for the truth, Jim is forced to choose sides when the locals decide to take matters into their own hands and punish the outsider for his lies. While the town prepares for its first heritage festival, a band of vigilantes march on the old Corrigan house to exact revenge but this time... this time the Corrigans are ready for them.

Next to Disappear


Malcolm Richards - 2015
    Until disgraced ex-teacher Emily Swanson moves into the couple’s former home.Emily’s life is in ruins and she’s meant to be making a fresh start. But when she learns about the missing nurse, she sees a chance for redemption. Because finding Alina could help right the wrongs of Emily’s past. It could even mark the start of a new career in private investigation.But what Emily doesn’t know is that Alina had a horrifying secret. One about the care foundation where she worked. And the closer Emily gets to uncovering the truth, the closer she gets to terrible danger.Inspired by a shocking true crime, Next To Disappear introduces a thrilling, twist-filled series and a refreshingly different take on the private investigator genre.Revised edition: Previously published as Lost Lives.

The Darkest Flower


Kristin Wright - 2021
    Attempted murder? Inexplicable accident? Either way, a PTA mom struggled for her life in an elementary school cafeteria, poisoned by wolfsbane. Now all eyes are on the accused, the victim, and a woman hired to look deeper.Ambitious defense attorney and single mother Allison Barton is anxious to escape the shadow of the low-down dog of a marquee partner carrying their renowned Virginia law firm. A win for her high-profile new client will give Allison the career she deserves. And PTA president Kira Grant certainly appears innocent—except for the toxic bloom in her backyard and perhaps a bit of a malicious streak. But no one said the innocent had to be likable—or entirely honest. Besides, with an image as carefully cultivated as her garden, Kira would be insane to risk everything on something as outrageous as the attempted murder of one of her closest friends.What about those in Kira’s orbit, a sunny suburb of moms behaving badly? What do they really know about Kira? What does Kira know about them? For Allison, the answers are getting darker every day.

Not One of Us


Debbie Herbert - 2021
    Now, after moving back home to Alabama to care for her ailing grandmother and autistic brother, she comes face-to-face with the deadly mystery behind his disappearance.Jori has a rare form of synesthesia, meaning she can “hear” colors; to her, tones of voice are as unique as fingerprints. With the help of this ability and a sympathetic cop, Jori comes dangerously close to uncovering the truth. But those responsible will go to any length—including murder—to keep their dark secrets buried.Soon, it seems that no one in the sleepy bayou town is safe, and after Jori’s brother is kidnapped, she knows she must drop the investigation or risk losing her family. But when protecting them means letting an evil deed go unpunished, putting family first may be the last thing she’ll ever do.

Either Side of Midnight


Tori de Clare - 2013
    I rate this book as a ten-star and expect to see it as number one on the best selling list for many, many weeks.” Reviewed by Trudi LoPreto for Readers'Favorite.WHAT IF THE BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE TURNED INTO YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE?When nineteen-year-old Naomi Stone is snatched from her husband at knifepoint on the night of their wedding and taken to a deserted cemetery, she knows her life is finished. Drugged and disorientated, she loses consciousness as she lies in an open grave with a gun to her head. But the following day, she mysteriously awakes to find herself unharmed and secured to a bed. She's in a beautiful bedroom in a secluded cottage in open countryside. Only one person knows she’s there – the man in the balaclava who’s holding her, feeding her, revealing nothing. Naomi senses the unfolding of a plan. She should be on honeymoon in the Caribbean. Instead, she’s trapped with an emotionless psycho with no hope of escape . . . And his voice is chillingly familiar.Who is he? What does he want? What's happened to her husband? Where is she? Will anyone find her before it's too late?

The Lake


Natasha Preston - 2021
    They're excited to be back this year as CITs (counselors in training). Esme loves the little girls in her cabin and thinks it's funny how scared they are of everything--spiders, the surly head counselor, the dark, boys . . . even swimming in the lake! It reminds her a little of how she and Kayla used to be, once. Before . . . it happened.Because Esme and Kayla did something bad when they were campers. Afterwards, the girls agreed to keep it secret. They've moved on--or so they say--and this summer is going to be great. Two months of sun, s'mores, and flirting with the cute boy counselors. But then they get a note. THE LAKE NEVER FORGETS. And the secret they've kept buried for so many years is about to resurface.