The Absence of Mercy


John Burley - 2013
    Safe from the crime and congestion of city life, it is the perfect place to raise a family . . . or so they thought.Life as the town medical examiner is relatively unhurried for Dr. Ben Stevenson. With only a smattering of cases here and there-car accident victims, death by natural causes-he has plenty of time to spend with his loving wife and two sons. That is until a teenager's body is discovered in the woods and Ben, as the only coroner in the area, is assigned to the case. But as the increasingly animalistic attacks continue, the case challenges Ben in ways he never suspects.With its eerie portrait of suburban life and nerve-fraying plot twists, this is psychological suspense at its best-an extraordinary debut that challenges as much as it thrills.

Lay Death at Her Door


Elizabeth Buhmann - 2013
    In 1986, while Kate was a college student at Sweet Briar in western Virginia, she was raped and witnessed a murder. Kate’s eyewitness testimony convicts a man who’s released more than 20 years later based on DNA evidence. The development isn’t a complete surprise to Kate, who has lived with the knowledge that she perjured herself. Her life since the trial has been a disappointment, and her social life is limited by her possessive and creepy father, Pop, who keeps her on a tight leash. That constraint becomes even more difficult to bear when Kate, who works as a landscaper, falls for a gardener, Tony, and hopes she has found the love of her life. Things don’t go smoothly, and more blood is shed along the way to a jaw-dropping, but logical, climax that will make veteran mystery readers eager for more of Buhmann’s work. Big Al's Books & Pals 2014 Readers' Choice Awards: Mystery Nominee Twenty years ago, Kate Cranbrook’s eyewitness testimony sent the wrong man to prison for rape and murder. When new evidence exonerates him, Kate says that in the darkness and confusion, she must have mistaken her attacker’s identity. She is lying. Kate would like nothing better than to turn her back on the past, but she is trapped in a stand-off with the real killer. When a body turns up on her doorstep, she resorts to desperate measures to free herself once and for all from a secret that is ruining her life.

Murder By Design: ...a young girl dreams of topping haute couture!


Mary Jane Forbes - 2011
    Lack of money is a high hurdle. Living with her grandfather, and working as a casino barmaid, she saves her tips to take classes in Seattle. With her eye to one day having her own clothing label, the redhead, keeps her eye on the prize, leaving men smitten with her beauty in her wake—a preacher, an American Indian law student, and a NY fashion designer. It isn’t until a newspaper reporter appears on her door step that she pauses to take a second look. But reporter Skip Hunter has no time for women. He is driven to become a N.Y. Times best-selling mystery writer using his reporting of crime on the streets of Seattle as fodder. Will the New York designer who borrows Gillianne’s sketches end her dream? Will a heist of a billion dollars worth of gold bullion give the reporter his big break? Will the intersection of their lives drive the pair into each other’s arms? Or, will their life plans, force them apart?

Moorlands Murders


Oliver Davies - 2020
    The York police call it a suicide, so it's up to Mitchell to clear his dead friend's name. Little does he realize that, in this sleepy town, lies a web of deceit, blackmail, and murder, one that now endangers him and everyone he cares about.

Falling Off Air


Catherine Sampson - 2004
    After learning she was pregnant with twins and being abandoned by her irresponsible boyfriend, Adam, she's settling into life as a single mother. But one night, after putting the children to bed, she hears what she thinks is an argument outside. Then, suddenly, a body falls past her window. Running outside, she finds Paula Carmichael, a renowned activist, dead on the ground. Although Robin and Paula weren't acquainted, the police find Robin's name mentioned - frequently - in the dead woman's diary. Robin then learns that her ex-boyfriend had been making a documentary about Paula and may know more than he lets on. But before she can ask him, he's killed by a hit-and-run driver - who was driving Robin's car. Now a suspect herself, Robin must figure out who wanted both Robin and Adam dead before she loses her freedom, her children, and her life.

The Lost Girls of Devon


Barbara O'Neal - 2020
    When she learns that her old friend and grandmother’s caretaker has gone missing, Zoe and her fifteen-year-old daughter return to England to help.Zoe dreads seeing her estranged mother, who left when Zoe was seven to travel the world. As the four generations of women reunite, the emotional pain of the past is awakened. And to complicate matters further, Zoe must also confront the ex-boyfriend she betrayed many years before.Anxieties spike when tragedy befalls another woman in the village. As the mystery turns more sinister, new grief melds with old betrayal. Now the four Fairchild women will be tested in ways they couldn’t imagine as they contend with dangers within and without, desperate to heal themselves and their relationships with each other.

This Side of Midnight (Tildas Islands #4)


Tamsen Schultz - 2021
    But when tourists start dying under suspicious circumstances, she never imagines that the biggest battle she’d have to fight is within her own department. That is, until her friend, Dominic Burel, and the FBI Task Force he’s a part of, prove she’s right to be concerned.As an FBI agent and former PJ with the elite Air Force Pararescue Unit, Dominic Burel has been happy to move through life solely focused on work. But when a family visit leaves him shaken, he realizes his friendship with Anika could, and should, be so much more. Now he has to change her mind about them and he’s not above using his investigative skills to finagle his way into her case—and life—to do it.As Anika and Dominic hunt a killer, they quickly realize they’ve uncovered something much more sinister. The simple murders aren’t so simple and there’s a much grander plan at play. And when they find they aren’t the only ones hunting, it will take everything they have to stay out of the true killer’s crosshairs.If you revel in escaping into a story, this friends-to-lovers romantic suspense will keep you turning the pages.

The Lake House Secret


Debra Burroughs - 2013
    When human remains are discovered not far from town, Jenessa is assigned the story, throwing her into the thick of town drama.Caught between her old boyfriend, with whom she shares a sordid past, and her new love interest, who offers her something she has desperately been wanting, Jenessa is embroiled in a homicide investigation that ends up pointing the finger at someone she cares very much about. Can she uncover the truth of this murder before it destroys her family and any chance she has for a happy life?

You Only Die Twice


Christopher Smith - 2012
    A violent act killed her, but heroics brought her back. Now, if she can't save herself from two serial killers hunting her in the Maine woods, she's about to die again, this time from two men armed with a Bible, guns, a deep belief in God, and their twisted interpretation of his word.Fueled by their righteous fury, they are determined to find Cheryl and murder her for what they perceive as her "life's worth of sins." What they don't know is what Cheryl knows. She's a Maine girl, born and raised--and she knows how to use these woods in ways that might, if she's lucky, turn them against each man.From the #1 international best-selling author of many thrillers, including "Fifth Avenue," "You Only Die Twice" is a blistering page-turner first, and a comment on Biblical interpretation second. It's Christopher Smith's most controversial and gripping novel to date.*Warning: "You Only Die Twice" is not for the faint of heart. This is a story of madness and the fight for survival, and it depicts realistic adult situations without hesitation.

A Mother's Lie


Jo Crow - 2017
    When the two-year-old is diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer, only an experimental treatment can save his life. She desperately needs money to pay for the surgery, but she’ll have to travel back to the site of her darkest memories to get it.
 Clara has escaped the demons of her youth—or so she thinks. It’s been ten years since the mysterious disappearance of her parents. Widely suspected of murdering her mother and father, Clara fled west to start a new life. Now, a documentary film crew is offering cold, hard cash—enough to pay for James’s treatment—in exchange for the sordid secrets of her past.
 With no other choice but to delve into a long-ago tragedy, Clara must unravel the lies surrounding that terrible night. Facing hostile gossip, Clara is fighting to clear her name and learn the truth about what really happened. But how far will she go into the dark to save her son—and herself?

What If It's True?


Dixie Burns - 2015
    Our dreams are haunted with them. For unclear reasons, some of them won’t go away, leaving our collective heads to hang in shame. Or worse, create celebrity out of all proportion.We live in narrow spaces. Believing me-and-mine are special but not vulnerable. Evil exists, just not on our street. We carry the rumors with us. Like sand in our shoes, the stories seldom stop us in our tracks. We will deal with them later.But the grit in our soles whispers, “What if it’s true?”What If It’s True? Takes place in a small Southern town. A good solid town. Neat and efficient in all its circumstances. A woman of a different truth moves there coincidentally with rumored sins of the faithful. The truth of this book is secrecy can become malignant in a community until an outsider raises questions.

The Crooked Branch


Jeanine Cummins - 2013
    Then, at her childhood home in Queens, Majella discovers the diary of her maternal ancestor Ginny—and is shocked to read a story of murder in her family history. With the famine upon her, Ginny Doyle fled from Ireland to America, but not all of her family made it. What happened during those harrowing years, and why does Ginny call herself a killer? Is Majella genetically fated to be a bad mother, despite the fierce tenderness she feels for her baby? Determined to uncover the truth of her heritage and her own identity, Majella sets out to explore Ginny’s past—and discovers surprising truths about her family and ultimately, herself.

After the Fall


Charity Norman - 2012
    He's fallen from the upstairs veranda of an isolated farmhouse, and his condition is critical. At first, Finn's fall looks like a horrible accident; after all, he's prone to sleepwalking. Only his frantic mother, Martha McNamara, knows how it happened. And she isn't telling. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Tragedy isn't what the McNamara family expected when they moved to New Zealand. For Martha, it was an escape. For her artist husband Kit, it was a dream. For their small twin boys, it was an adventure. For sixteen-year-old Sacha, it was the start of a nightmare.They end up on the isolated east coast of the North Island, seemingly in the middle of a New Zealand tourism campaign. But their peaceful idyll is soon shattered as the choices Sacha makes lead the family down a path which threatens to destroy them all.Martha finds herself facing a series of impossible decisions, each with devastating consequences for her family.

The Song of the Mockingbird


Bill Cronin - 2013
    Only one problem: Jack cannot write a single word. Devastatingly depressed and hopelessly blocked Jack embarks on a personal journey back to the summer of 1961 when three childhood events created a psychological time-bomb that, thirty-five years later, threatened to destroy his marriage and end his writing career. Vibrant characters, settings like Charleston, Savannah and Key West and a tightly wound plot make this novel a “must read.” The Song of the Mockingbird is Bill Cronin’s second novel following five-star reviews for his first novel “Dial Tone.”

Wreckage


Emily Bleeker - 2015
    On the surface, she looks like a brave survivor of a plane crash. But she’s been lying to her family, her friends, and the whole world since rescue helicopters scooped her and her fellow survivor, Dave Hall, off a deserted island in the South Pacific. Missing for almost two years, the castaways are thrust into the spotlight after their rescue, becoming media darlings overnight. But they can’t tell the real story—so they lie.The public is fascinated by the castaways’ saga, but Lillian and Dave must return to their lives and their spouses. Genevieve Randall—a hard-nosed journalist and host of a news program—isn’t buying it. She suspects Lillian’s and Dave’s explanations about the other crash survivors aren’t true. And now, Genevieve’s determined to get the real story, no matter how many lives it destroys.In this intriguing tale of survival, secrets, and redemption, two everyday people thrown together by tragedy must finally face the truth…even if it tears them apart.