Book picks similar to
The Silent Cradle by Margaret Cuthbert
fiction
thriller
mystery
margaret-cuthbert
The Blue
Scott Kelly - 2012
He'd love to: getting assaulted, stabbed and spied on is taking its toll on his mind. But, Derek is incapable of recognizing the man tormenting him, or anyone else - not even his own face in the mirror. A brain injury left the young artist with face blindness, a rare condition that renders him unable to identify people by their appearances.Anyone in Derek's world of strangers could be his stalker. In this mind-bending thriller, the talented painter is pushed to a tipping point as his reality unravels at the hands of a madman.The Blue is a gritty, cerebral suspense novel from Scott Kelly, author of the award-winning internet sensation "[SIC]".
Terminal
Robin Cook - 1992
Sean Murphy, a young medical student, investigates the incredible success rate at a prestigious Florida medical center and finds an international conspiracy willing to put a price tag on life itself to fund the staggering cost of medical research.
Deadly Double
Adrianne Byrd - 2005
Raised in luxury, Josie has only been accustomed to the best. Her privileged and sheltered world, however, comes crashing down when she attends the funeral of her parents and comes face–to–face with an identical twin sister she never knew she had.Josephine and Michelle are twins that were somehow separated at birth. Unlike Josie though, Michelle was not fortunate enough to be placed in a stable household –– instead she knew only poverty, abuse and envy. Now Michelle wants Josie's life.More than happy to get acquainted with her sister, Josie welcomes Michelle into her home...then one day Josie wakes up in a mental hospital...and everyone addresses her as Michelle. Only with the help of a man from Josie's past can she have any hope of regaining her life –– before it's ended permanently.o Adrianne Byrd has a wonderful imagination that translates into well crafted stories with true–to–life passionate heroes and heroines. She has an engaging writing style that is entertaining and sexy. This is an author to watch.
The Sitter
Sharon Hawes - 2012
Stevie’s mother Jeannie is overcome with grief and her suspicion that Stevie’s death was not the accident Larry describes. Increasingly troubled, Jeannie begins to search for answers, risking everything to learn the truth about what really happened to Stevie, and the growing threat to her family that only she can see.
Critical Judgment
Michael Palmer - 1996
Abby Dolan was on the fast track at a major San Francisco hospital when she made a critical choice: to follow her fiance, Josh Wyler, to the picturesque California town of Patience, where he has a new job with manufacturing giant Colstar. Working in a small-town emergency room, knowing that her every move sparks gossip, Abby nonetheless begins to feel at home - until the first undiagnosable patients start showing up.Abby calls them NIWWs: No Idea What's Wrong. And despite her considerable skills, she can't crack these baffling, seemingly random cases. At the same time, Josh is experiencing blinding headaches and pain-driven episodes of manic, even violent, behavior.Abby wonders whether Colstar could somehow be poisoning the town. Her suspicions are shared by ER colleague Dr. Lew Alvarez, whose investigating committee has shrunk from several dozen members to a cautious three. When Abby finds herself playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Colstar's steely head of security, Lew warns her that her predecessor in the ER, a Colstar detractor, died in a dubious climbing accident.But Abby cannot back off. She loses a patient in the ER, the victim of a murderous rage in a normally easygoing man. Another patient nearly dies during a routine diagnostic test. And Abby starts to question everyone and everything in the now hostile town of Patience - while her most dangerous enemy is far closer than she thinks.
Embryo
J.A. Schneider - 2012
It came suddenly, a rushing whoosh of something that made her gag, and when she reached to wipe her mouth, her hand came away smeared with blood." So begins this thriller about a young intern, Jill Raney, determined to investigate tragedies and terror at a famous fertility and genetic engineering hospital. When two pregnant women die and a fetus is delivered with severe chromosomal abnormalities, Jill's superiors - including handsome, smitten-with-her resident David Levine - insist there's no common link. But her suspicions deepen with the grotesque murder near the hospital of another pregnant woman - her belly drained of amniotic fluid. And when a woman miscarries in the hospital and then disappears, Jill frantically searches for her - following a terrifying path that seems to link all the victims: Is someone playing with life...and the structures of human life itself? An unforgettable tale of suspense with a shocking denouement, Embryo takes you deep into the mind of malignant genius.. . . . . . .The heart-stopping ending of Embryo creates a new crisis in its sequel, Embryo 2: Crosshairs
In My Dark Dreams
J.F. Freedman - 2008
As a public defender in Los Angeles, this is par for the course. But Roberto Salazar is an unusual client: a kind, mild-mannered man with a clean record who has been accused of trafficking stolen goods. Jessica is happy to get this churchgoing gardener acquitted, but she's shocked when he's accused of murder. Roberto is arrested in connection with three savage murders, each committed on the night of a full moon. Is he innocent? Or did Jessica let a madman go free?
Trust No One
Gregg Andrew Hurwitz - 2008
But all of that shatters when, in the middle of the night, a SWAT team bursts into his apartment, grabs him and drags him to a waiting helicopter. A terrorist-- someone Nick has never heard of--has seized control of a nuclear reactor, threatening to blow it up. And the only person he'll talk to is Nick, promising to tell Nick the truth behind the events that shattered his life twenty years ago. At seventeen years old, Nick Horrigan made a deadly mistake--one that cost his stepfather his life, endangered his mother, and sent him into hiding for years. Now, what Nick discovers in that nuclear plant leaves him with only two choices--to start running again, or to fight and finally uncover the secrets that have held him hostage all these years. As Nick peels back layer after layer of lies and deception, buffeted between the buried horrors of the past and the deadly intrigues of the present, he finds his own life--and the lives of nearly everyone he loves--at risk. And the only thing guiding him through this deadly labyrinth are his stepfather's dying words: TRUST NO ONE. Acclaimed for years by both critics and his peers as one of the finest thriller writers today, Gregg Hurwitz has lived up to all the accolades and expectations with "Trust No One," an electrifying and compelling novel that will be remembered for years to come.
The Doomsday Papers
JanJan Untamed - 2017
No one knows who coughed, or where, but it changed everything. That cough did what Vladimir Putin and Bin Laden couldn’t do. It nearly exterminated the human population and toppled the invincible United States Government. It ruined me. Before the sickness, I was a meek, subservient woman. I was quiet and useful to my family, but I ate more than anyone else and I got the most thrashings. I was the unfortunate Dare girl. The fat one. That was before. The long journey, killing people and burning bodies, it all changed me. If only my family could see me now. They can't see me. They're dead. Dead and burned in the south field. Father used too much gasoline and the fire spread out of control. It burned acres of thirsty grapevines and almost took the barn. He cried over the grapes but not the two wives and fourteen children we cremated. Thinking about the dead makes me sad. Thinking about the food that I took for granted makes me sadder. Our ways kept us alive. Behind our walls, men can have six wives and father twenty children. The walls are high enough to keep strangers out and keep our secrets in. They were not high enough to keep out the sickness or wide enough to keep out death when it came to collect. The outsiders called us crazy. Uneducated. A cult. They all died. We didn’t just survive, we thrived. It was during this dark and tragic time that the most unusual thing happened. I found love in the most unexpected place. Me, the unfortunate one.
The Vision
Dean Koontz - 1977
He knows what you're doing. He knows what you're thinking. He's coming after you.DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES...He has a knife. The steel blade gleams. Whenever you close your eyes, you can see it--the tip of his knife, pointing at your chest.DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES...He's closing them for you."A master of sheer fright... the tension never lets up, building page by page to a nail-biting, hair-raising finale!" --Florida Times-Union
Poe's Tales of Mystery and Terror
Edgar Allan Poe - 1967
A delicious thrill of horror runs through the gro- tesque tales of Edgar Allan Poe, as in THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, when Doom personified intrudes on a gay and brilliant gathering, and even Time must pause.Edgar Allan Poe, bom in Boston in 1809, lived only 40 years—many of them desperately un- happy years at that—but in his short time he created a body of stories and poems that are still exciting and wonderful to read.Besides the tales of terror such as THE MASK OF THE RED DEATH, he is given credit with setting the pattern for detective stories in THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE.THE FALL OF THE HOVSE OF USHERTHE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATHTHE CASK OF AMONTILLADOTHE PIT AND THE PENDULUMTHE GOLD-BUGTHE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUETHE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGETTHE PURLOINED LETTER
Can You Keep a Secret?
Karen Perry - 2017
A night that shattered so many friendships - and left Rachel's father dead. Now Thornbury Hall is up for sale, and the old gang are back there, together again. A weekend to say goodbye to the old place, to talk about the past. But twenty years of secrets aren't given up lightly. Some won't speak about what happened that night. While others want to ensure that no one does. Surviving the weekend is going to depend on whether you can keep a secret . . .
Black Silk
Metsy Hingle - 2006
Mere hours before her wedding, the fiancee of real estate mogul JP Stratton is found strangled in her penthouse. New Orleans homicide detective Charlotte "Charlie" Le Blanc views the crime scene, finding a black silk stocking draped casually beside the body--a chilling calling card from the killer. The dramatic clue leads Charlie to a world of privilege and wealth, and before long she singles out a suspect whose identity creates a furor in the city: Cole Stratton, JP's estranged son. But what she doesn't know is that Cole has been set up, and while she sets out to prove his guilt a real killer is on the loose--a man who now has Charlie in his sights, a man with yet another black silk stocking.
Detective
Arthur Hailey - 1997
Malcolm Ainslie takes a phone call he would have been better off ignoring. The caller is the chaplain at Florida State Prison, delivering a message from Elroy Doil, the serial murderer Ainslie helped put on the prison's death row. On the eve of his execution, Doil has asked to make a confession. But there is a condition: he will deliver it only in person to Ainslie.Ainslie has no choice. Doil was convicted of a double murder, but he was suspected in ten more. No homicide detective could turn down the opportunity to close ten murder cases in a single night. What Ainslie learns from the condemned man, however, propels the ex-priest-turned-cop into an investigation that reaches into the most elite levels of his own department and the Miami city government. And it tests as never before his skills as a cop and his character as a man.Master storyteller Arthur Hailey is legendary for the scrupulously researched authenticity and electrifying realism of his novels, for taking readers inside the places where men and women endure and sometimes crack under the pressures of jobs that shape our lives and world. Bristling with the sights, sounds, and true-to-life details of a contemporary urban homicide division, and with all the narrative suspense that has made him one of the best-selling fiction writers of our time, Detective is the novel Arthur Hailey was destined to write.
Stray Dogs
John Ridley - 1997
I don't know what it is, but it works that way for man and animal alike. I've seen some peculiar things on a hot day too. I've seen a scorpion sting itself to death. It just keeps drivin' its tail into its body again and again. A little killer killing itself. And what a man'll do on a hot day. A man could get his self killed just for rubbing shoulders with another. . . ."A loner, a drifter, a gambler--John Stewart asks little of life. But when his '64 Mustang busts a radiator hose in the middle of the empty Nevada desert, he prays to God, Buddha, L. Ron. And rolls into the tiny town of Sierra. Where he finds . . . nothing. A gas station whose former owner is lying low in the cemetery. A strip of barren, dust-blown store fronts. A truck stop cafe with more flies than customers.Stewart wants out. Sucker-punched in a rigged poker game, he's got to get to Vegas to settle a debt. Or else.Then in walks Grace, a seductive knockout who can read fortunes in faces. In the next twenty-four hours, Stewart becomes ensnared in a web of dirty double-crosses, cold propositions, and desperate souls--deadly ground where murder is just one gasp away.A stunning, fast-paced novel, Stray Dogs unfolds with unrelenting tension, memorable characters, and shocking twists of plot. John Ridley has created a hypnotic story that is pure noir, from its first page until its shattering climax.From the Hardcover edition.