When she learns that the boy in the painting was deaf, like her dead son, she starts to try to communicate with his ghost.Meanwhile, Clayton finds himself entangled in an equally undesirable friendship with a retired fire chief who knows more about the painting than he is prepared to let on.Is The Crying Boy painting cursed, and can numerous house fires be linked to it?Struggling with their unstable marriage, the couple find themselves in further danger as an increasingly disturbing bond develops between Avril and The Crying Boy.In a twist of events Avril's irrational behavior is brought to a dramatic halt when she discovers she is pregnant. With her affections once again restored for Clayton, she decides to dispose of the sinister portrait. But the cast off painting wants revenge and its anger towards Avril's unborn child might just prove immeasurable.

    The couple is spending the summer of 1969 in the rooms below hers while Frances is researching the architecture in the surrounding gardens. But she's distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she finds a peephole that gives her access to her neighbors’ private lives.To Frances' surprise, Cara and Peter are keen to get to know her. It is the first occasion she has had anybody to call a friend, and before long they are spending every day together: eating lavish dinners, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, and smoking cigarettes until the ash piles up on the crumbling furniture. Frances is dazzled.But as the hot summer rolls lazily on, it becomes clear that not everything is right between Cara and Peter. The stories that Cara tells don’t quite add up, and as Frances becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of the glamorous, hedonistic couple, the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong, begin to blur. Amid the decadence, a small crime brings on a bigger one: a crime so terrible that it will brand their lives forever.

    But he has a side job, killing people for shadowy cabal of politicians, billionaires and military leaders. With each assignment, he learns more about their plot and their aims, and he grows more intrigued.Even in his secret life, things are not what they seem, because there’s something inside of Seth. And it has big plans for him, plans that it and others like it have nursed for centuries. But when Seth is assigned to watch a troubled young woman, all of those plans fall into question.

    But the "party" has just begun.Now, Chris and Riley face their demons as they fight to survive a hellish nightmare full of spoiled secrets, carnage, and vengeful spirits lost to the hotel dating back to the turn of the 20th century.Will they survive the night? Or will their souls be devoured by the most haunted building in Michigan?

    She was Kimberly Baker, a little girl who - with her friend - murdered another girl at their school. Kimberly was taken away by the authorities and sent to a psychiatric hospital. She grew up surrounded by doctors and nurses, knowing nothing of the real world. Now she's free again. Living a humdrum life in a quiet town, under the new name Jane Smith, Kimberly just wants to forget her past. She can handle the occasional glimpses of a ghostly figure in her apartment. She knows the supposed ghosts are just figments of her imagination. She just wants to live and be left alone. And then a little boy goes missing. Suddenly Kimberly is thrust back into the spotlight. For the police, the kidnapping is extremely similar to the crime that Kimberly committed all those years ago. Mysterious markings have been left on trees, hinting at a demonic plot. Kimberly used to hear a voice in her head, a voice that told her to kill. The voice has been gone for a long time now, but has it returned in someone else's mind? Can Kimberly trust herself? And is the Devil finally going to prove that he exists? 16 FRAMES OF THE DEVIL'S FACE is the story of a woman who wants to forget her past, but who starts to realize that she's linked forever to a powerful force that refuses to stay buried.

    She's not expecting to meet another rich man who makes her want to use her nimble fingers for other, not thieving, things. But Robert Shimizu is just that man. The two share a night of fast cars, expensive champagne and the best sex of her life. But Cleo is who she is and when Robert wakes up the next morning, she's long gone... with his car and a few other very expensive possessions. It takes him months to track down the woman who stole his favorite watch and his heart, but when he does, there's fireworks. Content Warnings: Mentions of parental illness and death

    She relished the fact that she was a rebel. A wild, carefree, type of girl. She basked in the glory of being the type of girl who stood up to authority. Unfortunately for her, her upfront, honest and bitchy nature always managed to land her in some kind of trouble.Adam Jacobs was everything Ellory was not. Not only was he beautiful, but he was smart, artistic, and sweet. To almost every girl he seemed like the total package- that all around perfect guy. But in a town were nothing particularly interesting happens, and gossip seems like the only fun thing to do, sometimes those perfections become flaws. And it doesn’t take long for Ellory to find out, even Adam has secrets.But Adam’s secrets, are the kind of secrets people die for...

    With help from childhood friend Noah she begins to uncover the truth about Jack's death and the company that employed him and Noah.Jocelyn's twin brother Jack was the only family she had growing up in a world of foster homes-and now he's dead, and she has nothing. Then she gets a cryptic letter from "Jason December"-the code name her brother used to use when they were children at Seale House, a terrifying foster home that they believed had dark powers. Only one other person knows about Jason December: Noah, Jocelyn's childhood crush and their only real friend among the troubled children at Seale House.But when Jocelyn returns to Seale House and the city where she last saw Noah, she gets more than she bargained for. Turns out the house's powers weren't just a figment of a childish imagination. And someone is following Jocelyn. Is Jack still alive? And if he is, what kind of trouble is he in? The answer is revealed in a shocking twist that turns this story on its head and will send readers straight back to page 1 to read the book in a whole new light.

    in a second conspiracy to commit murder.

    

    The author deftly puts you inside the mind of a serial killer--succeeding not in writing about madness, but in writing with the logic of madness.

    An advertisement lured him to the island, offering a job renovating the old lighthouse and ramshackle buildings. What he didn't know was that he was the only applicant. None of the locals wanted the job...no one dared. Isolated and alone, Tom soon discovers why. Messages from disembodied voices; ghostly visitations and escalating horrors draw Tom deeper into the island's evil past...a darkness that forces Tom to unbury the truth and bring demons of his own into the light.

    But after her mother's death, Sarah spirals into depression and overdoses on sleeping pills. While Sarah claims it was an accident, her teenage children aren't so sure. Patrick decides they all need a fresh start and he knows just the place, since the idyllic family home where he was raised has recently come up for sale. There's only one catch: for the past fifteen years, it has become infamous as the "Murder House", standing empty after a family was stabbed to death within its walls.Patrick believes they can bring the house back to its former glory, so Sarah, uprooted from everything she knows, pours her energy into painting, gardening, and giving the rotting old structure the warmth of home. But with locals hinting that the house is haunted, the news that the murderer has been paroled, strange writing on the walls, and creepy "gifts" arriving on the doorstep at odd hours, Sarah can't shake the feeling that something just isn't right. Not with the house, not with the town, or even with her own, loving husband--whose stories about his perfect childhood suddenly aren't adding up. Can Sarah uncover the secrets of the Murder House before another family is destroyed?

    For Omaha nurse Elisabeth Holland, it’s a shock that her brother is even alive. Now she must ask herself a more grave question: Is he a hostage or a traitor?Seasoned FBI special agent Frank Schwaller is asking this too. He’s come to Nebraska armed with countless hours of video, audio, and email surveillance. The object of his unyielding gaze is Elisabeth. But the more Schwaller uncovers about her—from her and Tyler’s evangelical Christian upbringing to her shattered youthful dreams to her broken marriage to a drifter—the more mystifying Elisabeth and the two men in her life become.To find out the truth about these entwined lives—and the desperation that comes from love, fear, and the need to disappear—Agent Schwaller will discover how even the most lonesome corners of the Plains can be darkened by the long shadow of war.From Kings of Broken Things author Theodore Wheeler comes an exploration of love lost, the failure of humanism, and the revelations of how deeply the US government spies on the personal lives of its citizens.

     Once upon a time, my name was not Alice. Once upon a time, I didn't know how lucky I was. When Alice was ten, Ray took her away from her family, her friends -- her life. She learned to give up all power, to endure all pain. She waited for the nightmare to be over. Now Alice is fifteen and Ray still has her, but he speaks more and more of her death. He does not know it is what she longs for. She does not know he has something more terrifying than death in mind for her. This is Alice's story. It is one you have never heard, and one you will never, ever forget.