My Sister's Grave


Robert Dugoni - 2014
    She doesn’t believe that Edmund House — a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder — is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers.When Sarah’s remains are finally discovered near their hometown in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington State, Tracy is determined to get the answers she’s been seeking. As she searches for the real killer, she unearths dark, long-kept secrets that will forever change her relationship to her past — and open the door to deadly danger.

Without Mercy


Lisa Jackson - 2010
    When her troubled sister Shaylee is sent to an elite boarding school in Oregon called the Academy, a place where several girls have disappeared, Jules gets a teaching position at the school to keep an eye on Shay and discovers that something evil lurks in the halls of this prestigious institution.

At Risk


Patricia Cornwell - 2006
    His boss, the district attorney, attractive but hard-charging, is planning to run for governor, and as a showcase she's planning to use a new crime initiative called At Risk; its motto: "Any crime, any time." In particular, she's been looking for a way to employ cutting-edge DNA technology, and she thinks she's found the perfect subject in an unsolved twenty-year-old murder—in Tennessee. If her office solves the case, it ought to make them all look pretty good, right?Her investigator is not so sure—not sure about anything to do with this woman, really—but before he can open his mouth, a shocking piece of violence intervenes, an act that shakes up not only both their lives but also the lives of everyone around them. It's not a random event. Is it personal? Is it professional? Whatever it is, the implications are very, very bad indeed ... and they're about to get much worse.Sparks fly, traps spring, twists abound—this is the master working at the top of her game.

A Killer's Mind


Mike Omer - 2018
    Doubting the findings of the local PD’s profiler, The FBI calls on forensic psychologist Zoe Bentley to investigate.Zoe quickly gets off on the wrong foot with her new partner, Special Agent Tatum Gray. Zoe’s a hunter, intense and focused; Tatum’s a smug maverick with little respect for the rules. Together, they must descend into a serial killer’s psyche and untangle his twisted fantasies, or more women will die. But when the contents of three inconspicuous envelopes reveal a chilling connection to gruesome murders from Zoe’s childhood, suddenly the hunter becomes the hunted.

Land of the Living


Nicci French - 2002
    She is hooded and bound, with no idea where she is or how she got there. Kept alive by a man she never sees, his only promise is that eventually he will kill her - like the others.

Déjà Dead


Kathy Reichs - 1997
    In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Quebec. When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Temperance detects an alarming pattern and she plunges into a harrowing search for a killer. But her investigation is about to place those closest to her, her best friend and her own daughter, in mortal danger...

The Cuckoo's Calling


Robert Galbraith - 2013
    Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

Bad Men


John Connolly - 2003
    The dead ones. They were dead, but they had lights. Why do the dead need light?Three hundred years ago, the settlers on the small Maine island of Sanctuary were betrayed to their enemies and slaughtered. Since then, the island has known peace. Until now. A gang of four men are descending on Sanctuary, intent on committing a brutal and relentless massacre. All that stands in their way are rookie police officer Sharon Macie and the strange, troubled officer Joe Dupree.But Joe is no ordinary policeman. He knows the island has been steeped in blood once and that it will never again tolerate the shedding of innocent blood. The band of killers who are set to desecrate Sanctuary will unleash the fury of its ghosts upon themselves and all who stand by them. On Sanctuary, all hell is about to break loose ...

The Face of Deception


Iris Johansen - 1998
    Her own daughter murdered and her body never found, the job is Eve's way of coming to terms with her personal nightmare. But more terror lies ahead when she accepts work from billionaire John Logan. Beneath her gifted hands a face emerges from the skull he has given her to reconstruct—a face no one was ever meant to see. Now Eve is trapped in a frightening web of murder and deceit. Powerful enemies are determined to cover up the truth, and they will make certain that truth goes to the grave...even if Eve gets buried with it.

Sleeping Beauty


Phillip Margolin - 2004
    Tonight the audience waits to hear Miles discuss recent developments in his sister's case -- unaware that pieces of this complex puzzle of violence, unknown even to the author, are about to be revealed.Six years earlier, life was much simpler for everyone involved, especially seventeen-year-old Ashley Spencer, a popular high school soccer star. Then one night an intruder entered Ashley's home and murdered her father and her best friend. Traumatized and suffering from a crippling sense of survivor guilt, Ashley is ready to give up on both soccer and life until help comes from an unexpected source -- a scholarship to an elite private school is extended to her by school dean Casey Van Meter. The school quickly becomes a haven for both Ashley and her mother, Terri. As Ashley regains her sense of self through the school's soccer program, Terri joins a writing group for adults led by Joshua Maxfield, a former literary wunderkind who has disappeared from the bestseller lists since his second book was panned by both critics and fans.Then tragedy strikes again and Ashley has to run for her life, unaware that the key to her survival is in the one book she's afraid to read -- Sleeping Beauty.

The Forgotten Girls


Alexa Steele - 2014
    That doesn’t happen in Greenvale, with its immaculate lawns, exclusive yacht clubs and multi-million dollar mansions. But behind its perfect façade, its trimmed hedges and luxury cars, a darkness lies. Girls, dependent on Adderall, outmaneuver each other to get into top colleges, while the mothers’ need to live vicariously only makes it worse. Bella DeFranco is one of the Bronx’s top SVU detectives. At only 37, she disarms everyone with her stunning good looks, yet she is as tough as most men—and a lot smarter, too. Yet when is summoned to Greenvale, she finds herself getting lost in a case that even she can’t comprehend. She stumbles into a land of secrets, a place where husbands hide their pasts from their wives, where friends are not what they seem, and where no one wants to know too much. As she digs deeper into layers of suburban dysfunction, she comes to learn that, behind all the fake smiles, there is a subtle violence--rivaling even her crime-ridden streets of the Bronx. With a killer on the loose, time running out, and a new partner who never recovered from his washed-up alcoholic days, the odds are stacked against Bella. She is determined, though, to save these girls, whatever the cost. Yet as she gets close, the depth of psychosis she discovers shocks even her….

Presumed Innocent


Scott Turow - 1987
    Presumed Innocent brings to life our worst nightmare: that of an ordinary citizen facing conviction for the most terrible of all crimes. It's the stunning portrayal of one man's all-too-human, all-consuming fatal attraction for a passionate woman who is not his wife, and the story of how his obsession puts everything he loves and values on trial—including his own life. It's a book that lays bare a shocking world of betrayal and murder, as well as the hidden depths of the human heart. And it will hold you and haunt you ... long after you have reached its shattering conclusion.

The Listerdale Mystery And Eleven Other Stories


Agatha Christie - 1934
    Among the stories in this enjoyable early collection are "The Girl on the Train," "Jane in Search of a Job," and "Philomel Cottage," which was made into the film "Love from a Stranger.

Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories


Michael Connelly - 2011
    In "Cielo Azul," Bosch is haunted by a long-ago closed case -- the murder of a teenage girl who was never identified. As her killer sits on death row, Bosch tries one last time to get the answers he has sought for years. In "One Dollar Jackpot," Bosch works the murder of a professional poker player whose skills have made her more than one enemy. Whether investigating a cold case or fresh blood, Bosch relentlessly pursues his quarry, always on the lookout for the "tell." In this first collection of Harry Bosch stories, Michael Connelly once again demonstrates that he is the master of "fast-paced, brilliantly plotted crime fiction.... Harry Bosch is back on the case, and not a moment too soon" (Chicago Sun Times).

The Black Dahlia


James Ellroy - 1987
    The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia—and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops, friends, and rivals in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia—driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches—into a region of total madness.