Blood Harvest


Sharon J. Bolton - 2010
    A devastating fire burned down their home, but she remains convinced her daughter survived.Now you don'tTen-year-old Tom lives by a neglected church. Is he the only one who sees the strange, solitary child playing there? And what is she trying to tell him?Now you runThere's a new vicar in town -- Harry. But menacing events suggest he isn't welcome. What terrible secret is this town hiding?Sometimes I wish that she'd just leave me in peace.

Broken Stern


Jack Hardin - 2018
     In the clear waters of Pine Island, Florida darkness is swirling. Trained to be a killer, Ellie O’Conner opts for a new life of quiet privacy away from the bloated bureaucracy that has become the CIA. Now, she wants nothing more than to catch up on years lost to the wind. But when a horrifying death shocks her sleepy fishing community Ellie is compelled by a sense of duty to track down the killer. And along the way, she finds out that some of Pine Island’s residents may have not the cleanest of hands. And dark waters swirl fiercest in the daylight.

Dead Dwarves Don't Dance


Derek J. Canyon - 2010
    Injured and alone, he embarks on a brutal quest for vengeance into the squalid underbelly of the Regional Atlanta Metroplex, through the desert wasteland of the not-so-pristine wilderness, and to the peerless towers of elite society.The year is 2134. The nations of previous centuries are gone, consumed by the United Globe government. Citizens are confined to vast metroplexes while the rest of Earth is restored to wilderness. Neohumans are grown in vats, each type genetically engineered to serve humanity – flawless pleasers for gratification and ecstasy, hulking goons for war and violence, accidental psykers wreaking havoc, and more of any shape and size imaginable.An action-packed, hard-boiled science fiction novel of redemption and revenge.

Touch


Claire North - 2015
    But when reaching out to the murderer for salvation in those last dying moments, a sudden switch takes place.Now Kepler is looking out through the eyes of the killer himself, staring down at a broken and ruined body lying in the dirt of the alley.Instead of dying, Kepler has gained the ability to roam from one body to another, to jump into another person’s skin and see through their eyes, live their life — be it for a few minutes, a few months or a lifetime.Kepler means these host bodies no harm — and even comes to cherish them intimately like lovers. But when one host, Josephine Cebula, is brutally assassinated, Kepler embarks on a mission to seek the truth — and avenge Josephine’s death.

Mama's Boy


Charles H. King - 1992
    NYPD detective Jake Harrowing spree and suicide, but proving it was murder seems impossible--until Jake discovers the small child who witnessed the slaughter from his secret hiding place.

Iron House


John Hart - 2011
    Time to burn and time to kill, time for two young orphans to learn that life isn’t won without a fight. Julian survives only because his older brother, Michael, is fearless and fiercely protective. When tensions boil over and a boy is brutally killed, there is only one sacrifice left for Michael to make: He flees the orphanage and takes the blame with him.To keep her safe...      For two decades, Michael has been an enforcer in New York’s world of organized crime, a prince of the streets so widely feared he rarely has to kill anymore. But the life he’s fought to build unravels when he meets Elena, a beautiful innocent who teaches him the meaning and power of love. He wants a fresh start with her, the chance to start a family like the one he and Julian never had. But someone else is holding the strings. And escape is not that easy. . . . Go to Hell, and come back burning....    The mob boss who gave Michael his blessing to begin anew is dying, and his son is intent on making Michael pay for his betrayal. Determined to protect the ones he loves, Michael spirits Elena—who knows nothing of his past crimes, or the peril he’s laid at her door— back to North Carolina, to the place he was born and the brother he lost so long ago. There, he will encounter a whole new level of danger, a thicket of deceit and violence that leads inexorably to the one place he’s been running from his whole life: Iron House.

The Ice Beneath Her


Camilla Grebe - 2015
    An unidentified woman lies beheaded in a posh suburban home—a brutal crime made all the more disturbing by its uncanny resemblance to an unsolved killing ten years earlier. But this time there’s a suspect: the charismatic and controversial chain-store CEO Jesper Orre, who owns the home but is nowhere to be found.To homicide detectives Peter Lindgren and Manfred Olsson, nothing about the suave, high-profile businessman—including a playboy reputation and rumors of financial misdeeds—suggests he conceals the dark heart and twisted mind of a cold-blooded killer. In search of a motive, Lindgren and Olsson turn to the brilliant criminal profiler Hanne Lagerlind-Schön. Once a valued police asset, now marooned in unhappy retirement and a crumbling marriage, she’s eager to exercise her keen skills again—and offer the detectives a window into the secret soul of Jesper Orre. But they’re not the only ones searching. Two months before, Emma Bohman, a young clerk at Orre’s company, chanced to meet the charming chief executive, and romance swiftly bloomed. Almost as quickly as the passionate affair ignited, it was over when Orre inexplicably disappeared. One staggering misfortune after another followed, leaving Emma certain that her runaway lover was to blame and transforming her confusion and heartbreak into anger. Now, pursuing the same mysterious man for different reasons, Emma and the police are destined to cross paths in a chilling dance of obsession, vengeance, madness, and love gone hellishly wrong.

The Knives


Richard T. Kelly - 2016
    But that is the mission you accepted, David. So you have to face the knives, with fortitude. Just as we ask of the great British public...'As Home Secretary in Her Majesty's Government, David Blaylock's daily work involves the control of Britain's borders, the oversight of her police force, and the struggle against domestic terror threats. Some say the job is impossible; Blaylock insists he is tough enough. But around Westminster the gossip-mongers say his fiery temper is a liability.An ex-soldier from a modest background, Blaylock has a life-story that the public respects. Privately, though, he carries pain and remorse - over some grievous things he saw in the army, and his estrangement from an ex-wife and three children for whom he still cares. A solitary figure in a high-pressure world, with no place to call home, Blaylock is never sure whom he can trust or whether his decisions are the right ones. Constantly in his mind is the danger of an attack on Britain's streets. But over the course of one fraught autumn Blaylock finds that danger moving menacingly closer to his own person.

A Good Death


Elizabeth Ironside - 2000
    . . Ironside's landscapes are rich, if decimated, and her characters extraordinarily intriguing--"Birmingham Post" (UK).

Bloody Season


Loren D. Estleman - 1987
    Corral is the ultimate Western adventure--and Estleman's novel is the definitive account* Estleman is the author of This Old Bill, Journey of the Dead, Billy Gashade, and City of Widows "High Drama... Estleman's account of events following the O.K. Corral gunfight is the best one I've ever read, by far."--Elmore Leonard

Tragic Deception


M.A. Comley - 2016
     For important background information, please read the novella CLEVER DECEPTION first. "Seek liberty, Foxy, and you'll find me."Sergeant Alexandra Fox came to America to find the man who had brutally murdered her sister. A man the press called The Escape Artist. Could a British Sergeant fit in with the NYPD? Not if Commander Patterson had anything to do with it.Suspended with only two friends in America-- Chief Brown, a long time family friend, and retired Sergeant Matt "Nobby" Adams, Alex has seven days to find three kidnapped babies, or look for a new job.Her investigation leads her into a world of deception, that turns tragic before it even begins, and a helping hand from the one person she hated the most--The Escape Artist.

Father Brown: The Essential Tales


G.K. Chesterton - 1935
    K. Chesterton’s Father Brown may seem a pleasantly doddering Roman Catholic priest, but appearances deceive. With keen observation and an unerring sense of man’s frailties–gained during his years listening to confessions–Father Brown succeeds in bringing even the most elusive criminals to justice. This definitive collection of fifteen stories, selected by the American Chesterton Society, includes such classics as “The Blue Cross,” “The Secret Garden,” and “The Paradise of Thieves.” As P. D. James writes in her Introduction, “We read the Father Brown stories for a variety pleasures, including their ingenuity, their wit and intelligence, and for the brilliance of the writing. But they provide more. Chesterton was concerned with the greatest of all problems, the vagaries of the human heart.”

Little Pretty Things


Lori Rader-Day - 2015
    BUT SOME RIVALS DO.Juliet Townsend is used to losing. Back in high school, she lost every track team race to her best friend, Madeleine Bell. Ten years later, she’s still running behind, stuck in a dead-end job cleaning rooms at the Mid-Night Inn, a one-star motel that attracts only the cheap or the desperate. But what life won’t provide, Juliet takes. Then one night, Maddy checks in. Well-dressed, flashing a huge diamond ring, and as beautiful as ever, Maddy has it all. By the next morning, though, Juliet is no longer jealous of Maddy—she’s the chief suspect in her murder.To protect herself, Juliet investigates the circumstances of her friend’s death. But what she learns about Maddy’s life might cost Juliet everything she didn’t realize she had.

One Good Deed


David Baldacci - 2019
    When war veteran Aloysius Archer is released from Carderock Prison, he is sent to Poca City on parole with a short list of do's and a much longer list of don'ts: do report regularly to his parole officer, don't go to bars, certainly don't drink alcohol, do get a job--and don't ever associate with loose women.The small town quickly proves more complicated and dangerous than Archer's years serving in the war or his time in jail. Within a single night, his search for gainful employment--and a stiff drink--leads him to a local bar, where he is hired for what seems like a simple job: to collect a debt owed to a powerful local businessman, Hank Pittleman.Soon Archer discovers that recovering the debt won't be so easy. The indebted man has a furious grudge against Hank and refuses to pay; Hank's clever mistress has her own designs on Archer; and both Hank and Archer's stern parole officer, Miss Crabtree, are keeping a sharp eye on him.When a murder takes place right under Archer's nose, police suspicions rise against the ex-convict, and Archer realizes that the crime could send him right back to prison . . . if he doesn't use every skill in his arsenal to track down the real killer.

The Church of Dead Girls


Stephen Dobyns - 1997
    The two disciplines collide in The Church of Dead Girls, a lyrical novel that inspired Stephen King to comment, "If ever there was a tale for a moonless night, a high wind and a creaking floor, this is it ... I don't expect to read a more frightening novel this year." Aurelius is a drowsy bedroom community in upstate New York that is rocked by a vicious, seemingly random killing. A woman is found murdered in her bed, her left hand missing. Just when the grisly details begin to fade, a young girl vanishes. The only clue: a bag with the girl's washed and folded clothes and a mannequin's left hand. Soon two more girls disappear, and when clues remain elusive, conjecture and rumour take over. The town awakens to a nightmare of suspicion and vigilantism. As the killer spirals in to kill again, the town spins out of control, and The Church of Dead Girls heads to a jolting conclusion. It'll give you goosebumps even if you read it at the beach.