The Missing


Chris Mooney - 2007
    His race to silence the witnesses was sure-footed and violent - but somehow Darby survived.Twenty-five years later, Darby is a crime-scene investigator for the Boston Police Department, and a chilling case - a woman's late-night abduction - has her uncovering strange leads to missing women, past and present. As forensic clues lead her closer to a psychopath called the Traveler, Darby must finally resolve the nightmare of her past and come face-to-face with a killer who is determined to keep the missing - and the horrors they endured at his hands - from ever coming to light.

Into the Water


Paula Hawkins - 2017
    Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged. Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has been dragged back to the place she deliberately ran from—a place to which she vowed she'd never return. With the same propulsive writing and acute understanding of human instincts that captivated millions of readers around the world in her explosive debut thriller, The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins delivers an urgent, twisting, deeply satisfying read that hinges on the deceptiveness of emotion and memory, as well as the devastating ways that the past can reach a long arm into the present. Beware a calm surface—you never know what lies beneath.

The Gingerbread House


Carin Gerhardsen - 2008
    When criminal investigator Conny Sjöberg and the Hammarby police begin to suspect that there’s a link between the murders, Sjöberg goes completely cold. There is a killer out there whose motives are very personal, and who will not be deterred.The Gingerbread House by Carin Gerhardsen is the first in the Hammarby series, thrillers with taut, suspenseful plots and unexpected twists and turns. This haunting novel explores schoolyard bullying among young children and the effect it has on them when people look the other way. Many of the scenes in this book are self-experienced and based on Gerhardsen’s own childhood. Urban settings and strong portraits of authentic characters are crafted in depth and detail, insuring the books will linger in the reader’s mind long after the finish.The Gingerbread House is written in the same tradition as the Sjöwall / Wahlöö crime novels, and has been described as a book version of the tv series The Wire. It is not only published by the same publisher as Stieg Larsson’s The Millennium Trilogy, but by the same editorial team.

The Innocence Game


Michael Harvey - 2013
    They’re young, brilliant, beautiful . . . and naïve enough to believe they can make a difference. For three graduate students, the exclusive innocence seminar at the nation’s most esteemed journalism school is supposed to teach them how to free the falsely accused from prison. Little do they know the most important lesson they’ll learn is how to stay alive. The first day of class for Ian Joyce and Sarah Gold starts like any other, until a fellow student, Jake Havens, pulls a wrinkled envelope from his backpack. Inside is a bloodstained scrap of shirt from a boy murdered fourteen years ago and an anonymous note taking credit for the killing. The only problem is the alleged murderer is already dead. Suddenly, the class has a new assignment: find the real killer. As the case unfolds, the bodies and questions begin to pile up.  Why are innocent men being framed? Who’s been getting away with murder? Drawn into a web of deceit and corruption, the students realize they, too, are being hunted. Ian, Sarah, and Jake are smart . . . but are they smart enough to stay alive?From Northwestern’s idyllic campus, to the grittiest corners of Chicago, to the frigid depths of Lake Michigan, The Innocence Game is irresistible, harrowing suspense from a writer at the top of his form.

The Abbey


Chris Culver - 2011
    Another year, and he'll be out of the department completely. That's the plan, at least, until his niece's body is found in the guest home of one of his city's most wealthy citizens. The coroner calls it an overdose, but the case doesn't add up. Against orders, Ash begins a danger-filled investigation to find his niece's murderer, but the longer he searches, the more entangled he becomes in a case that hits increasingly close to home. If he doesn't solve it fast, his niece won't be the only family member he has to bury.

City of Fire


Robert Ellis - 2007
    Best-case scenario for lead detective Lena Gamble: Nikki Brant’s husband killed her, case closed.Unfortunately for Lena, she knows that best-case scenarios only happen in the movies. The murder is only the first in a series of brutal crimes against beautiful women thought to be perpetrated by the same man, a serial killer dubbed Romeo in the press. It’s the case of a lifetime, and promises to either elevate Lena to the upper echelons of a publicity-hungry LAPD in need of heroes, or bring about a very public and painful fall from grace. Lena has been in the public eye before, on the night her rock-star brother was gunned down on a dark street in Hollywood--an unsolved murder so grisly she’s never recovered.As the investigation plays out and a massive forest fire blankets the city with acrid smoke, a cloud of conspiracy descends on Lena’s investigation, and she knows she’ll have to grind this one out . . . because Nikki Brant’s death just breathed new life into more than one closed case . . . because the web of conspiracy is spun more intricately than she can possibly imagine . . . and because Lena knows there’s only one rock solid rule to murder in L.A.: the deeper you dig, the darker it gets.

The Undesired


Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - 2012
    Though weak, it was sufficient to show Aldís a boy sitting in the gloom at the furthest table. He had his back to her, so she couldn't see who it was, but could tell that he was one of the youngest. A chill ran down her spine when he spoke again, without turning, as if he had eyes in the back of his head. 'Go away. Leave me alone.''Come on. You shouldn't be here.' Aldís spoke gently, fairly sure now that the boy must be delirious. Confused, rather than dangerous.He turned, slowly and deliberately, and she glimpsed black eyes in a pale face. 'I wasn't talking to you.'Aldis is working in a juvenile detention centre in rural Iceland. She witnesses something deeply disturbing in the middle of the night; soon afterwards, two of the boys at the centre are dead.Decades later, single father Odinn is looking into alleged abuse at the centre following the unexplained death of the colleague who was previously running the investigation. The more he finds out, though, the more it seems the odd events of the 1970s are linked to the accident that killed his ex-wife. Was her death something more sinister?

The Vanishing Season


Joanna Schaffhausen - 2017
    She's an officer in sleepy Woodbury, MA, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers. No one there knows she was once victim number seventeen in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only one who lived.When three people disappear from her town in three years―all around her birthday―Ellery fears someone knows her secret. Someone very dangerous. Her superiors dismiss her concerns, but Ellery knows the vanishing season is coming and anyone could be next. She contacts the one man she knows will believe her: the FBI agent who saved her from a killer all those years ago.Agent Reed Markham made his name and fame on the back of the Coben case, but his fortunes have since turned. His marriage is in shambles, his bosses think he's washed up, and worst of all, he blew a major investigation. When Ellery calls him, he can’t help but wonder: sure, he rescued her, but was she ever truly saved? His greatest triumph is Ellery’s waking nightmare, and now both of them are about to be sucked into the past, back to the case that made them...with a killer who can't let go.

Girl A


Abigail Dean - 2021
    She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents--her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her siblings - and with the childhood they shared.

While You Were Sleeping


Kathryn Croft - 2016
    Today you’ll find out that was all a lie.Tara Logan adores her perfect little family: husband, Noah, and two children, teenager Rosie and eleven-year-old Spencer. But her happiness is shattered when she wakes up one morning in her neighbour’s bed, with no memory of how she got there or what happened between them. And worse – he has been stabbed to death.Convinced she didn’t kill Lee and scared of losing everything she cares about, Tara flees home and stays silent, holding her breath as the investigation grips the neighbourhood.But as her daughter spirals out of control, and her husband becomes increasingly distant, Tara starts to wonder if someone in her life knows what really happened that night. When the police turn their questions towards her, Tara realises she has to find out. But what will it take to uncover the real story, and can she survive the truth?

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line


Deepa Anappara - 2020
    From his doorway, he can spot the glittering lights of the city’s fancy high-rises, and though his mother works as a maid in one, to him they seem a thousand miles away.Jai drools outside sweet shops, watches too many reality police shows, and considers himself to be smarter than his friends Pari (though she gets the best grades) and Faiz (though Faiz has an actual job). When a classmate goes missing, Jai decides to use the crime-solving skills he has picked up from TV to find him. He asks Pari and Faiz to be his assistants, and together they draw up lists of people to interview and places to visit.But what begins as a game turns sinister as other children start disappearing from their neighborhood. Jai, Pari, and Faiz have to confront terrified parents, an indifferent police force, and rumors of soul-snatching djinns. As the disappearances edge ever closer to home, the lives of Jai and his friends will never be the same again.Drawing on real incidents and a spate of disappearances in metropolitan India.

Presumed Guilty


Tess Gerritsen - 1997
    With her knife.Miranda is the obvious suspect, and she looks even guiltier when her bail is posted by an anonymous donor. Was this an act of kindness designed to buy her time to clear her name? Or is someone trying to manipulate Miranda and draw her into the dark and secret world of a murdered man, where everybody's presumed guilty?With her world falling around her, Miranda is determined to discover who killed Richard. But proving her innocence may become secondary to staying alive.…

The Rain Killer


Luke Delaney - 2015
    Perfect for fans of Mark Billingham, Peter James and Stuart MacBride.FIVE WOMEN HAVE BEEN MURDERED…All prostitutes. All with dark, straight hair. Snatched from the shadows of London’s red-light districts, their mutilated bodies left out in the pouring rain.ENTER DS SEAN CORRIGANHe’s been drafted in to assist the Streatham Police Department – much to the displeasure of the existing DI. But Corrigan has no time for petty squabbles – he has one mission only: find the one they call ‘The Reaper’, even if it means entering the dark and twisted mind of a cold-hearted killer.THE KILLER STRIKES AGAINA sixth victim is found and suddenly Corrigan knows what he must do to catch him. But is it worth risking yet another life?