A Field of Red


Greg Enslen - 2013
    Harper is visiting the small Ohio town of Cooper's Mill, trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter and a grandson he's never met. But he finds the town gripped in fear-two young girls have gone missing, taken in broad daylight from a busy street. And the police are coming up blank. But once Harper is drawn reluctantly into the investigation, he'll stop at nothing to find the girls. And he doesn't care who gets in the way.

The King Tides


James Swain - 2018
    And that of strangers, too. Wherever she goes, she’s being watched. Each stalker is different from the last, except for one thing—their alarming obsession with Nicki.Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Nicki’s father is turning to someone who can protect her: retired private detective and ex–Navy SEAL Jon Lancaster. Teaming up with FBI agent and former abduction victim Beth Daniels, Lancaster can help—his way. He’s spent most of his career dispatching creeps who get off on terrorizing the vulnerable. Unlicensed, and unrestricted, he plays dirty…But this case is unusual. Why so many men? Why this one girl? Does Nicki have something to hide? Or do her parents?Trawling the darkest depths of southern Florida, Lancaster faces a growing tide of secrets and deception. And the deeper he digs, the more he realizes that finding the truth won’t be easy. Because there’s more to this case than meets the eye.

House of Steel


Raen Smith - 2013
    One single moment can set the undoing in motion, unraveling our neat, tiny stitch of life. For young art professor Delaney Jones, the treacherous spiral begins when she makes one unforgivable mistake - she sleeps with her student. Her silent Wisconsin winter turns deadly after she witnesses the brutal murder of a man she had fought hard to forget. As Delaney battles to deal with the undoing of her tight-stitched life, the small liberal arts university is devastated by the discovery of a bloody crime scene on campus. A mysterious text entangles her in the violent scandal, and Delaney must follow the rules of the anonymous messenger to stop the perpetuating descent toward death. But the line between good and evil is blurry. And maybe, just maybe, there is no line at all.

The Watcher


Jo Robertson - 2011
    Working with a single-minded tenacity, she sets out to prove it.Deputy Sheriff Ben Slater hides his personal pain behind the job, but Kate's arrival in his county knocks his world on its axis. He wants to believe her wild theory, but the idea of a serial killer with the kind of pathology she proposes is too bizarre.Together they work to find a killer whose roots began in a small town in Bigler County, but whose violence spread across the nation. A Janus-like killer, more monster than man, he fixates on Kate. The killer wants nothing more than to kill the "purple-eyed girl again."

Summer People


Aaron Stander - 2000
    The summer residents are settling in for the season and the tourists are beginning to flood the highways and beaches. But the idyllic vision of a summer at the shore is suddenly shattered by a gangland-style shooting. This murder is quickly followed by the deaths of three more summer residents, each taking place under suspicious circumstances. At times hindered by local politics and the proverbial tension between the summer people and the natives, Sheriff Ray Elkins searches for the possible links between the four victims. As he probes into their tangled lives and dark histories, he finds both the motive and the possible murderer.

The Red Church


Scott Nicholson - 2002
    His sermons declared the existence of God s Second Son- whose mission is to undo all of Jesus work on Earth. McFall had the church painted red to summon the First Son to defeat the Second. But when he sacrificed a child to support his rantings, his congregation hung him from the rafters of his own sanctuary...For twenty years, the red church has stood empty. Crumbling to ruin, it has become a site for Halloween pranks and the setting for ghost stories- including one about the thing that lives in the bell tower, a creature being blamed for a brutal murder that occurred in the church s graveyard...Now, Archer McFall has purchased the church to house his Temple of the Two Sons, whose zealous worshippers will stop at nothing to see the Second Son return to his rightful glory...

Dark Visions


Jonas Saul - 2010
    Routine blackouts occur to her on a random basis. What’s different about her temporary unconsciousness is she wakes to various notes written by her own hand. These notes are prophecies. Dark Visions. Future events of dire circumstances. Circumstances that she can avert, for Sarah is what they call an Automatic Writer.The novel begins with Sarah perched under a bridge with no idea why she’s there, except what the note said;Sit under the Elizabeth St. Bridge at 10:18am. Bring hammer.There’s a car accident on the bridge, plunging a vehicle into the river below. If Sarah wasn’t there at the right time, with the hammer to force her way into the car, people would’ve died.The novel’s intensity increases as more blackouts occur, causing her to note them down. Her next task is to avert a kidnapping. She’s done it before. Couldn’t be that hard. But on this one, the kidnappers recognize her and nab her instead of their intended victim.People are killed. Witnesses place Sarah at the scene. The police find her notebook riddled with prophecies of accidents and crimes.They want answers. They want to know how she has such information.All this happens while the eighteen-year-old star in this first novel of a trilogy suffers from trichotillomania, which means she’s a puller.Most of her hair is missing.The story has numerous twists and turns and finally ends with a massive climax and a lead in to The Warning, which is Part Two of this trilogy.Overall a great read, combining the likes of John Saul, and Dean Koontz.

The Thinnest Air


Minka Kent - 2018
    Her husband, Andrew, is a charming and successful financial broker. She has two lovely stepchildren and is living in affluence in a mountain resort town. After three years of marriage, Meredith’s life has become predictable. Until the day she disappears.Her car has been discovered in a grocery store parking lot—purse and phone undisturbed on the passenger seat, keys in the ignition, no sign of struggle, and no evidence of foul play. It’s as if she vanished into thin air.It’s not like Meredith to simply abandon her loved ones. And no one in this town would have reason to harm her. When her desperate sister, Greer, arrives, she must face a disturbing question: What if no one really knows Meredith at all? For Greer, finding her sister isn’t going to be easy…because where she’s looking is going to get very, very dark.

Blood Ties


J.D. Nixon - 2011
    The Bycraft women are uncontrollable, the men violently obsessive and their kids feral. And nobody in town has suffered at their hands as much as the Fuller family.Surviving a traumatic childhood and the continued focus of sustained aggression from the Bycrafts, Tess Fuller has grown up scarred and wary, highly skilled in self-defence and armed at all times. Although glad to escape to the city at the first opportunity, her dying father brings Tess back to her home town. To support him she abandons her promising city cop career to take up duties as the town’s junior officer. But with a lazy, retiring sergeant as her only colleague and working the state’s worst resourced station, Tess has become increasingly lawless herself trying to police the hostile Bycrafts.Out on parole, predatory Red Bycraft is a constant threatening presence, and Tess’ life is further complicated by her widely condemned relationship with his brother, Jake.Tess’ new sergeant, Finn Maguire, is unimpressed with her approach to the job. He’s from the city – obstinate, taciturn and by-the-books. She’s grown used to working solo and struggles to be subordinate again, especially when he proves patronising and unwilling to respect her abilities or local knowledge. But they must work together to solve the intersecting mysteries of possible land fraud, an abandoned suitcase of money and a peeping tom with a preference for older women. All the while, Tess is the target of a revengeful week of escalating violence that ends in a dangerous confrontation with a gang of Bycraft men. Can Tess and the Sarge put aside their differences, team up to save her life and finally bring some order to Little Town?

Demolition Angel


Robert Crais - 2000
    Three years have passed since the detonation that killed Carol's partner and lover, but she is still severely scarred both mentally and physically. She can't bear to look in the mirror, and she hasn't been with another man since David Boudreaux left her bed that last morning he went to work. She gets through the day with the help of Tagamet and alcohol.When a bomb call takes the life of another colleague, Carol begins to investigate a series of explosions that seem to be designed to exterminate bomb technicians. She soon realizes that she's "the one that got away." With the help of an FBI agent whom she loathes professionally for interfering with her job but finds attractive anyway, Carol must track down one of the most frighteningly brilliant killers of the modern age.

Diamonds and Cole


Micheal Maxwell - 2013
    In the past, Cole a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Time Magazine. Now, he’s returned to the paper where he started his career, The Chicago Sentinel. Instead of writing the big stories, he’s doing the work of a rookie reporter. His “big story of the day” is a cat caught in a tree. During its rescue, the cat’s owner takes her Good Samaritan neighbor hostage. Cole witnesses something so disturbing it reawakens the journalist’s desire to write again.Returning to the paper, Cole finds a desperate message asking for help from Ellie, one that got away. The one that has continually haunted his life. Cole drops everything and flies to California. He must find what would make her so desperate, she would call him after so many years. Cole finds her terminally ill, and abandoned by her husband. He discovers while Ellie was heavily medicated, she mistakenly signed a Power of Attorney. Now her estranged daughter Erin’s inheritance, won’t go to her, but her abusive step-father. Cole vows to find the girl and right the situation.The path to keeping his word is blocked at every turn by the husband who abandoned her, his shady real estate deals, violent con men, street thugs and the lure of a fortune in diamonds that unite them. The anger, sorrow, and crippling guilt of twenty years fires Cole's drive to keep a promise, that in the end, will heal and return the soul to the great journalist.Beaten, bloody but determined, Cole Sage conquers greed and hatred with a strength that only love, and a will as hard as diamond, can achieve.

The Curse of Allie Mae


Aiden James - 2010
    David Hobbs, vacationing with his wife Miriam, inadvertently stumbles upon a small cloth 'keepsake' bag and a broken tooth. A human tooth. Miriam begs David to hand the bag and tooth over to park officials, but he ignores his wife's pleas and secretly keeps the 'harmless' items. The action opens a doorway that had been closed for nearly a hundred years and unleashes hell on earth, or at least hell in the lives of David and Miriam.Following the brutal murder of his best friend in Denver, and an aborted attack on his oldest son, David desperately seeks to understand why a mysterious teenage girl has chosen to terrorize him and the males closest to him. To prevent further devastation to his family and end the wanton bloodshed, he returns to the enchanted hills of eastern Tennessee, where a terrible truth awaits discovery...one that forces him to face the consequences for the unpaid sins of his ancestors.

Malevolent


Jana Deleon - 2015
     Everyone wondered about Shaye Archer’s past. Including Shaye. Shaye Archer’s life effectively began the night police found her in an alley, beaten and abused and with no memory of the previous fifteen years, not even her name. Nine years later, she’s a licensed private investigator, with a single goal—to get answers for her clients when there aren’t supposed to be any. And maybe someday, answers for herself. Emma Frederick thought her nightmare was over when she killed her abusive husband, but someone is stalking her and tormenting her with mementos from her past. With no evidence to support her claims, the police dismiss her claims as post-traumatic stress, but Shaye is convinced that someone is deliberately terrorizing Emma…playing a cat and mouse game with only one goal in mind. To kill Emma.

Girl Jacked


Christopher Greyson - 2013
    They were old friends. He knew only one way to deal with pain. Hunt it down and kill it." Police Officer Jack Stratton is hiding. Hiding from the world. From pain. From the memories of losing his best friend, Chandler, in Iraq. Suffering from PTSD and isolated from those he cares about, the last thing Jack expects to hear is his foster sister Michelle, Chandler’s sister, is gone. The words cut straight to his core. Although the police think she just took off, he knows Michelle would never leave those she loved behind–like he did. Now he must take action, find Michelle, and bring her home or die trying. The first novel in the Jack Stratton Collection introduces us to handsome rogue, Jack Stratton. A debt of honor to his dead foster brother drives Jack into a world of deception and lies. As Jack’s walls begin to crumble, he must navigate the quirky characters that seep into the mystery of his foster sister’s disappearance. And in the sleepy community of Darrington, like so many places in this world, nothing is as it appears. The hidden mysteries that often go unnoticed begin to emerge as Jack and his new unpredictable sidekick begin to turn over the rocks. Following a trail that has grown cold, Jack must tread carefully to protect his job, his family, and his life. This stand-alone novel features rogue hero Jack Stratton. Look for other books in the Jack Stratton Collection including Jack Knifed, Jacks are Wild, and now Jack and the Giant Killer. They can be read in any order, however, they are best experienced in sequence.

Absolution


Susan Fleet - 2008
    . . GETS WORSEVulnerable young women let a serial killer into their homes because they trust him.The killer tortures them, kills them and takes a gruesome trophy. IS THE KILLER A PRIEST?Everyone has something to hide. Some of the darkest secrets reside in a parish church. A tip from a prostitute leads New Orleans Detective Frank Renzi to believe the killer may be a priest. A ruthless stalker, the serial killer uses his position to snare more women. With Renzi hot on his trail, he persuades a teenaged girl to help him escape. Will Renzi be able to save her? Who would YOU trust? A police officer or a priest?