The Haunting of Maddy Clare


Simone St. James - 2012
    Alistair Gellis—rich, handsome, scarred by World War I, and obsessed with ghosts—has been summoned to investigate the spirit of nineteen-year-old maid Maddy Clare, who is haunting the barn where she committed suicide. Since Maddy hated men in life, it is Sarah's task to confront her in death. Soon Sarah is caught up in a deperate struggle. For Maddy's ghost is real, she's angry, and she has powers that defy all reason. Can Sarah and Alistair's assistant, the rough, unsettling Matthew Ryder, discover who Maddy was, where she came from, and what is driving her desire for vengeance—before she destroys them all?

The Fortune Teller


Gwendolyn Womack - 2017
    Its author tells the story of a priceless tarot deck, now lost to history, but as Semele delves further, she realizes the manuscript is more than it seems. Both a memoir and a prophecy, it appears to be the work of a powerful seer, describing devastating wars and natural disasters in detail thousands of years before they occurred.The more she reads, the more the manuscript begins to affect Semele’s life. But what happened to the tarot deck? As the mystery of her connection to its story deepens, Semele can’t shake the feeling that she’s being followed. Only one person can help her make sense of it all: her client, Theo Bossard. Yet Theo is arrogant and elusive, concealing secrets of his own, and there’s more to Semele’s desire to speak with him than she would like to admit. Can Semele even trust him?The auction date is swiftly approaching, and someone wants to interfere—someone who knows the cards exist, and that the Bossard manuscript is tied to her. Semele realizes it’s up to her to stop them: the manuscript holds the key to a two-thousand-year-old secret, a secret someone will do anything to possess.

A Bridge Across the Ocean


Susan Meissner - 2017
    World War Two is over, but the recovery from the most intimate of its horrors has only just begun for Annaliese Lange, a German ballerina desperate to escape her past, and Simone Deveraux, the wronged daughter of a French Resistance spy.Now the two women are joining hundreds of other European war brides aboard the renowned RMS Queen Mary to cross the Atlantic and be reunited with their American husbands. Their new lives in the United States brightly beckon until their tightly-held secrets are laid bare in their shared stateroom. When the voyage ends at New York Harbor, only one of them will disembark... Present day. Facing a crossroads in her own life, Brette Caslake visits the famously haunted Queen Mary at the request of an old friend. What she finds will set her on a course to solve a seventy-year-old tragedy that will draw her into the heartaches and triumphs of the courageous war brides and will ultimately lead her to reconsider what she has to sacrifice to achieve her own deepest longings.

The Secret Tree


Patrick Bousum - 2013
    Beasley, he discovers how sinister the world can be, what true friendship means, and that being a hero in 1959 may cost him his life. Grieving from his father's disappearance and his grandfather's death, Andy is nearly hopeless. The intrigue of the secret, and his friendship with Mr. Beasley, give him a renewed sense of purpose. But when the men who used to run with the local mob discover that Andy knows about the "secret", they come out of the shadows and a hunt for the evil truth begins.Andy finds himself fighting for his life, committed to his promise, and searching for answers in a house haunted by a one-handed witch.

The C.J. Box Highway Quartet Collection: Back of Beyond; The Highway; Badlands; Paradise Valley


C.J. Box - 2017
    Box: Back of Beyond Cody Hoyt, although a brilliant cop, is an alcoholic struggling with two months of sobriety when his friend Hank Winters turns up dead in a remote mountain cabin. At first it looks like suicide, but Cody knows Hank better than that. As Cody digs deeper into the case, all roads lead to foul play. After years of bad behavior with his department, Cody in no position to be investigating a homicide. But he will stop at nothing to find out who murdered Hank. And why... The Highway When two sisters set out across a remote stretch of Montana road to visit their friend, little do they know it will be the last time anyone might ever hear from them again. The girls—and their car—simply vanish. Convinced by his son and his former rookie partner, Cassie Dewell, former police investigator Cody Hoyt begins the drive to the girls' last known location. As Cody makes his way to the stretch of highway where they went missing, Cassie discovers that Gracie and Danielle Sullivan aren't the first girls who have disappeared in this area. This majestic landscape is the hunting ground for a killer. Can Cassie overcome her doubts and lack of experience and use her innate skill? Can Cody Hoyt battle his own demons and find this killer before another victim vanishes on the highway?BadlandsTwelve-year-old Kyle Westergaard dreams of getting out of Grimstad and leading a better life. One day, while delivering newspapers, he witnesses a car accident and takes a mysterious bundle from the scene. Suddenly he’s in possession of a lot of money—and packets of white powder—and Kyle can’t help but wonder whether his luck has changed…for better or for worse. When a gang war heats up, it’s up to Cassie Dewell to help restore law and order. As she is propelled on a collision course with a murderous enemy, she finds that the key to it all might come in the most unlikely form: a boy on a bike named Kyle. He seems to know something that Cassie does not about what lies beneath the surface of this small and troubled town… Paradise Valley For three years, Investigator Cassie Dewell has been on a hunt for a serial killer known as the Lizard King whose hunting grounds are the highways and truck stops where runaways and prostitutes are most likely to vanish. Cassie almost caught him...once. Now, she has set what she believes is the perfect trap. But the plan goes horribly wrong, and the blame falls on Cassie. Disgraced, she loses her job. At the same time, Kyle Westergaard, has disappeared and Kyle's grandmother begs Cassie to find him. Cassie agrees—all the while hunting the truck driver. Kyle's disappearance may have a more sinister meaning than anyone realizes. With no allies, no support, and only her own wits to rely on, Cassie must take down a killer who is as ruthless as he is cunning.

The Shut Eye


Belinda Bauer - 2015
    . . and Daniel was gone.Now they are a pair of strangers who can't even look each other in the eye.Distrust and unspoken words fill the void where their son used to be.Anna will go to any lengths to find Daniel - a four-year-old doesn't just vanish into thin air. But how far will this desperate search push her?Right to the brink.And beyond.

The Haunted Mesa


Louis L'Amour - 1987
    For centuries the sudden disappearance of these people baffled historians. Summoned to a dark desert plateau by a desperate letter from an old friend, renowned investigator Mike Raglan is drawn into a world of mystery, violence, and explosive revelations. Crossing a border beyond the laws of man and nature, he will learn of the astonishing world of the Anasazi and discover the most extraordinary frontier ever encountered.

Touchstone


Laurie R. King - 2007
    King now takes us to a remote cottage in Cornwall where a gripping tale of intrigue, terrorism, and explosive passions begins with a visit to a recluse upon whom the fate of an entire nation may rest—a man code-named ... Touchstone.It’s eight years after the Great War shattered Bennett Grey’s life, leaving him with an excruciating sensitivity to the potential of human violence, and making social contact all but impossible. Once studied by British intelligence for his unique abilities, Grey has withdrawn from a rapidly changing world—until an American Bureau of Investigation agent comes to investigate for himself Grey’s potential as a weapon in a vicious new kind of warfare. Agent Harris Stuyvesant desperately needs Grey’s help entering a world where the rich and the radical exist side by side—a heady mix of the powerful and the celebrated, among whom lurks an enemy ready to strike a deadly blow at democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.Here, among a titled family whose servants dress in whimsical costumes and whose daughter conducts an open affair with a man who wants to bring down the government, Stuyvesant finds himself dangerously seduced by one woman and—even more dangerously—falling in love with another. And as he sifts through secrets divulged and kept, he uncovers the target of a horrifying conspiracy, and wonders if he can trust his touchstone, Grey, to reveal the most dangerous player of all ….Building to an astounding climax on an ancient English estate, Touchstone is both a harrowing thriller by a master of the genre and a thought-provoking exploration of the forces that drive history—and human destinies.

The Twelfth Enchantment


David Liss - 2011
    After the death of her beloved father, she is forced to maintain a shabby dignity as the unwanted boarder of her tyrannical uncle, fending off marriage to a local mill owner. But just as she is on the cusp of accepting a life of misery, events take a stunning turn when a handsome stranger—the poet and notorious rake Lord Byron—arrives at her house, stricken by what seems to be a curse, and with a cryptic message for Lucy. Suddenly her unfortunate circumstances are transformed in ways at once astonishing and seemingly impossible. With the world undergoing an industrial transformation, and with England on the cusp of revolution, Lucy is drawn into a dangerous conspiracy in which her life, and her country’s future, are in the balance. Inexplicably finding herself at the center of cataclysmic events, Lucy is awakened to a world once unknown to her: where magic and mortals collide, and the forces of ancient nature and modern progress are at war for the soul of England . . . and the world. The key to victory may be connected to a cryptic volume whose powers of enchantment are unbounded. Now, challenged by ruthless enemies with ancient powers at their command, Lucy must harness newfound mystical skills to prevent catastrophe and preserve humanity’s future. And enthralled by two exceptional men with designs on her heart, she must master her own desires to claim the destiny she deserves. The Twelfth Enchantment is the most captivating work to date of a master literary conjurer.

The Last Mona Lisa


Jonathan Santlofer - 2021
    Exactly what happens in the two years before its recovery is a mystery. Many replicas of the Mona Lisa exist, and more than one historian has wondered if the painting now in the Louvre is a fake, switched in 1911.Present day: art professor Luke Perrone digs for the truth behind his most famous ancestor: Peruggia. His search attracts an Interpol detective with something to prove and an unfamiliar but curiously helpful woman. Soon, Luke tumbles deep into the world of art and forgery, a land of obsession and danger.A gripping novel exploring the 1911 theft and the present underbelly of the art world, The Last Mona Lisa is a suspenseful tale, tapping into our universal fascination with da Vinci's enigma, why people are driven to possess certain works of art, and our fascination with the authentic and the fake.

The Girl With Nine Lives


E. Earle - 2013
    Job heading nowhere? Check. Mastermind criminal boss discovering you have unravelled their plot? Check. Talking cat with an addiction to catnip deciding to take control of the situation? Check. Welcome to the lives and adventures of the ginger moggy Ben and his human, Ellie.Ellena Blackwell is your average woman- desperate to make the best of her Degree and failing miserably. Falling into such a hole of self-pity, even her cat, Ben, is sick of her and tells her to snap out of it.And that's when Ellena realises she has a talking cat, and he's not going to go away anytime soon.Having a devious crime boss as Principal to the college she works at, Ellena discovers a dangerous secret that the Head Office would very much rather that she didn't know. Deciding to take control of her life, Ellena enlists the help of Ben to investigate as soon as her friend goes missing.But Detective Calloway is determined to get involved, and Ellena soon learns that Ben isn't the only one who thinks he has nine lives.

Ghostbird


Carol Lovekin - 2016
    Someone needs to forgive.‘Charming, quirky, magical’ Joanne HarrisNothing hurts like not knowing who you are.Nobody will tell Cadi anything about her father and her sister. Her mother Violet believes she can only cope with the past by never talking about it. Lili, Cadi’s aunt, is stuck in the middle, bound by a promise she shouldn’t have made. But this summer, Cadi is determined to find out the truth.In a world of hauntings and magic, in a village where it rains throughout August, as Cadi starts on her search, the secrets and the ghosts begin to wake up. None of the Hopkins women will be able to escape them.‘Carol Lovekin’s prose is full of beautifully strange poetry.’Rebecca Mascull, author of The Visitors and Song of the Sea Maid.‘Drawing on nature, witchcraft, age-old fairytales and secrets, Lovekin weaves a powerful, spellbinding tale.’Judith Kinghorn, author of The Last Summer.

Cheat the Hangman


Gloria Ferris - 2011
    To uncover the mystery, Lyris is aided by family psychic Aunt Clematis and Leander, a spirit guide with an attitude, who prefers hanging out with Winston Churchill and John Lennon. While nurturing a new relationship with Blackshore’s Chief of Police, avoiding her controlling ex-husband’s demands, hosting this year’s family reunion and engaging in a psychological battle with the mansion's butler, Lyris is taxed to her limits.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane


Katherine Howe - 2009
    But when her mother asks her to handle the sale of Connie's grandmother's abandoned home near Salem, she can't refuse. As she is drawn deeper into the mysteries of the family house, Connie discovers an ancient key within a seventeenth-century Bible. The key contains a yellowing fragment of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane. This discovery launches Connie on a quest--to find out who this woman was and to unearth a rare artifact of singular power: a physick book, its pages a secret repository for lost knowledge.As the pieces of Deliverance's harrowing story begin to fall into place, Connie is haunted by visions of the long-ago witch trials, and she begins to fear that she is more tied to Salem's dark past then she could have ever imagined.Written with astonishing conviction and grace, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane travels seamlessly between the witch trials of the 1690s and a modern woman's story of mystery, intrigue, and revelation.(katherinehowe.com)

The Watchers


Jon Steele - 2011
    Eerie things have been going on in and around his church, including tremblings in the underground crypt and a variety of gruesomely murdered bodies showing up in nearby streets. Across the square from the cathedral lives Katherine Taylor, a beautiful young American woman who is making phenomenal money as one of the highest-priced call girls in Switzerland; she's a bit too introspective for her own good and, unfortunately, much too observant of her clients' peccadilloes. Rochat's and Taylor's lives collide with Jay Harper, a British private eye who has been sent to investigate the killings and other strange doings; alas, he has no memory of who hired him or precisely why he was chosen for the job. And now all the clues are pointing skyward, where fallen angels are said to haunt Lausanne.