Known only as The Cur, he leaves no traces, save for the torn bodies of girls, on the verge of becoming women, who are known as trouble-makers; those who refuse to conform, to know their place. Girls who don’t know when to shut up.2019: Thirteen-year-old Lila Sawyer has secrets she can’t share with anyone. Not the school psychologist she’s seeing. Not her father, who has a new wife, and a new baby. And not her mother—the infamous Caroline Sawyer, a unique artist whose eerie sculptures, made from bent twigs and crimped leaves, have made her a local celebrity. But soon Lila feels haunted from within, terrorized by a delicious evil that shows her how to find her voice—until she is punished for using it.2004: Caroline Sawyer hears dogs everywhere. Snarling, barking, teeth snapping that no one else seems to notice. At first, she blames the phantom sounds on her insomnia and her acute stress in caring for her ailing father. But then the delusions begin to take shape—both in her waking hours, and in the violent, visceral sculptures she creates while in a trance-like state. Her fiancé is convinced she needs help. Her new psychiatrist waves her “problem” away with pills. But Caroline’s past is a dark cellar, filled with repressed memories and a lurking horror that the men around her can’t understand.As past demons become a present threat, both Caroline and Lila must chase the source of this unrelenting, oppressive power to its malignant core. Brilliantly paced, unsettling to the bone, and unapologetically fierce, Such a Pretty Smile is a powerful allegory for what it can mean to be a woman, and an untamed rallying cry for anyone ever told to sit down, shut up, and smile pretty.

    While Scott throws himself back into his law practice in Los Angeles, Kat is hesitant to rejoin the workplace and instead spends her days shell-shocked and confused, unable to focus.When an unwelcome face from Kat’s past in England emerges—the beautiful and imposing Sarah Cherrington—Kat’s marriage is thrown into a tailspin. Now wealthy beyond anything she could have imagined as a girl, Sarah appears to have everything she could need or want. But Sarah has an agenda and she wants one more thing. Soon Kat and Scott are caught up in her devious games and power plays.Against the backdrops of Southern California and Sussex, in spare and haunting prose, Mary McCluskey propels this domestic drama to its chilling conclusion.

    Singleton never spoke a word in her own defense throughout a brief trial that ended with a jury finding her guilty of first-degree murder. Ten years later, having accepted her fate, she sits on death row in a maximum-security penitentiary, just six months away from her execution date. Seemingly out of the blue, she is visited by Marlene Dixon, a high-powered Philadelphia attorney who is also the mother of the woman Noa was imprisoned for killing. Marlene tells Noa that she has changed her mind about the death penalty and Noa’s sentence, and will do everything in her considerable power to convince the governor to commute the sentence to life in prison, in return for the one thing Noa is unwilling to trade: her story.      Marlene desperately wants Noa to reveal the events that led to her daughter’s death—events that Noa has never shared with a soul. With death looming, Marlene believes that Noa may finally give her the answers she needs, though Noa is far from convinced that Marlene deserves the salvation she alone can deliver. Inextricably linked by murder but with very different goals, Noa and Marlene wrestle with the sentences life itself can impose while they confront the best and worst of what makes us human in this haunting tale of love, anguish, and deception.

    Rush has achieved the kind of critical and commercial success most authors only dream about: He has a top agent and publisher in New York, and his twenty-eight mystery novels have sold millions of copies. Only Stephen King, one of the few mystery writers whose fame exceeds his own, is capable of inspiring a twinge of envy in Rush. But Rush is hiding a dark secret. Under the pseudonym "Jack of Spades," he pens another string of novels—noir thrillers that are violent, lurid, masochistic. These are novels that the upstanding Rush wouldn't be caught reading, let alone writing. When his daughter comes across a Jack of Spades novel he has carelessly left out, she picks it up and begins to ask questions. Meanwhile, Rush receives a court summons in the mail explaining that a local woman has accused him of plagiarizing her own self-published fiction. Before long, Rush's reputation, career, and family life all come under threat—and in his mind he begins to hear the taunting voice of the Jack of Spades.

    A day no one in attendance will ever forget. New York Times bestselling author Laurie R. King is an award-winning master of combining rich atmospheric detail with riveting, keen-edged mystery. Now, in her newest standalone novel of psychological suspense, King turns her sharp eye to a moment torn from the headlines and a school under threat. A year ago, Principal Linda McDonald arrived at Guadalupe determined to overturn the school's reputation for truancy, gang violence, and neglect. One of her initiatives is Career Day--bringing together children, teachers, and community presenters in a celebration of the future. But there are some in attendance who reject McDonald's bright vision.A principal with a secret. A husband with a murky past. A cop with too many questions. A kid under pressure to prove himself. A girl struggling to escape a mother's history. A young basketball player with an affection for guns. Even the school janitor has a story he dare not reveal. But no one at the gathering anticipates the shocking turn of events that will transform a day of possibilities into an expolsive confrontation. Tense, poignant, and brilliantly paced, Laurie R. King's novel charts compelling characters on a collision course--a chain of interactions that locks together hidden lives, troubling secrets, and the bravest impulses of the human heart.

    Convicted of killing a priest, she is alone, in prison and has no memory of the murder.DNA evidence places Maria at the scene of the crime, yet she claims she’s innocent. Then she starts to remember…A strange room. Strange people. Being watched.As Maria gets closer to the truth she is drawn into a web of international intrigue and must fight not only to clear her name but to remain alive.As addictive as the Bourne novels, with a protagonist as original as The Bridge’s Saga Norén.Part one of The Project trilogyPraise for The Spider in the Corner of the Room‘A powerful, penetrating and intensely different read that seizes your attention from the very first page.’ – Liz Robinson, LoveReading‘An intriguing and original novel, with an underlying sense of menace and mystery.’ - Ruth Hunter, Booktime Editor at Bertram‘A great conspiracy thriller and a mind-bending tale!’ – Booktime‘Powerful and gripping – an adrenaline-filled thriller you won't forget' – Sunday Times bestseller Kimberley Chambers

    defense intelligence operative Kate Molares is investigating a suspicious international money trail.  Her instincts place her at the center of a plot involving a terrifying new kind of terrorism—financial terrorism— perpetrated by a suave, handsome Middle Eastern hedge fund mogul.   His goal is to wreck the West by bringing the global economy to its knees.Kate's mission takes her from the defense intelligence command center on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. to the oil-fueled economy of Caracas, Venezuela; from the Beaux-Arts buildings of Old Havana in Cuba to a hedge fund king’s magnificent back-country estate in Greenwich, Connecticut; from the United Nations to the site of a deadly Islamic conspiracy in the Iberian Peninsula.Kate is in a race against time to fit together the pieces of this global puzzle…or risk the catastrophic destruction of the world’s financial markets.

     A little girl dressed in a Snow White costume walks into a store and steals an apple . . . then the store blows up. One of the staff, Maggie Rogers, is conveniently out of the store when all this happens. Maggie turns out to have a past full of secrets and betrayal, and attracts the attention of the police as well as more sinister forces. Maggie and the little girl end up on the run, not knowing who’s on their side or even what their pursuers really want. Then they seem to have reached the end of the line. Nowhere else to run, nowhere else to hide. Maggie and the little girl face a desperate struggle for survival. Find out the answers in this beautifully written novel which will take you on a darkly gripping journey to a surprising end. Great for fans of Gillian Flynn, Ian McEwan or Paula Hawkins who love fast-paced suspense thrillers Also by Peter Tickler: DEAD IN THE WATER.

     Banking heiress Trish and her husband, James, seem to have it all, from a lavish lifestyle to a historic mansion in the nation’s capital. All that’s missing from their privileged life is a baby.So when Trish sees Anne Elise for the first time, it’s no surprise that she falls deeply in love. There’s just one problem: Trish isn’t the mother. The baby belongs to Laurel, James’s young mistress. And James and Laurel want the wife out of the picture.When Trish becomes perversely obsessed with making Laurel’s baby her own, the lovers come up with a wicked plan to end James’s marriage that quickly goes awry. As the love triangle becomes more and more dangerous, how far is each of them willing to go to get what they want?

    The first time Julia Ansdell picks up The Incendio Waltz, she knows it’s a strikingly unusual composition. But while playing the piece, Julia blacks out and awakens to find her young daughter implicated in acts of surprising violence. And when she travels to Venice to find the previous owner of the music, she uncovers a dark secret that involves dangerously powerful people—a family who would stop at nothing to keep Julia from bringing the truth to light.

    

    The man launches an unspeakably brutal attack on Harry as a horror-struck Julie watches, frozen by fear.Just an hour later the attacker, JP Carney, has handed himself in to the police. He confesses to beating Harry to death, but JP claims that the assault was not premeditated and that he didn't know the identity of his victim. With a man as notorious as Harry McNamara, the detectives cannot help wondering, was this really a random act of violence or is it linked to one of Harry's many sins: corruption, greed, betrayal?This gripping psychological thriller will have you questioning, who - of Harry, Julie and JP - is really the guilty one? And is Carney's surrender driven by a guilty conscience or is his confession a calculated move in a deadly game?

    Someone’s going to have to pay the price…Alfie Jenkins breaks a lot of rules. When he sets up an illegal casino in Soho there’s bad will all round and soon Alfie and those closest to him become embroiled in an all-out war with a dangerous gang.Unfortunately this gang is a deadly enemy to have. When Alfie’s teenage niece Chloe is kidnapped and there are rumours she’s been enslaved in a sex gang it becomes a terrifying race against time to save her. Will Alfie be able to right wrongs, build bridges and protect his family, whatever the cost?Praise for Jacqui Rose:‘Gritty and gripping – by a star in the making.’ Kimberley Chambers‘A thrilling and gripping novel.’ Roberta Kray‘A cracking good read.’ Jessie Keane‘A captivating read from one of my favourite emerging authors’ Mel Sherratt

    Suddenly multiple explosions rock the entire building. This is not an accident, not a gas leak, but a heinous act of terrorism. Among the injured is the mayor himself, and although he survives, the woman he loves does not. And the terrorism does not stop there. As the city’s other iconic sites are targeted, the mayor throws Manhattan into lockdown. In the chaos that ensues, law enforcement groups converge on New York City. The FBI, Homeland Security, the armed forces, even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President, come to the aid of the New York City Police Department. Amidst this massive joint effort, only New York City Police Commissioner Gina Carbone is closing in on the terrorists. Her tactics well outside legal bounds, her cell operating in total secrecy, Carbone takes vigilantism to a new level. Will her illicit actions succeed—or plunge the city into further catastrophe?Perfect for fans of Nelson DeMille’s John Corey While Manhattan Lockdown is a standalone novel, here is the publication order of Paul Batista’s legal thrillers:Death’s Witness Extraordinary Rendition The Borzoi Killings (Raquel Rematti Legal Thriller Series #1)Manhattan Lockdown The Warriors (Raquel Rematti Legal Thriller Series #2)Accusation (Raquel Rematti Legal Thriller Series #3) —coming in March 2022

    They're searching for Ruby's father, missing in the arctic wilderness.More isolated with each frozen mile they cover, they travel deeper into an endless night. And Ruby, deaf since birth, must brave the darkness where sight cannot guide her.She won't abandon her father. But winter has tightened its grip, and there is somebody out there who wants to stop them.Somebody tracking them through the dark.