Daughters of the Lake


Wendy Webb - 2018
    Tucked in the folds of the woman’s curiously vintage gown is an infant, as cold and at peace as its mother. No one can identify the woman. Except for Kate. She’s seen her before. In her dreams…One hundred years ago, a love story ended in tragedy, its mysteries left unsolved. It’s time for the lake to give up its secrets. As each mystery unravels, it pulls Kate deeper into the eddy of a haunting folktale that has been handed down in whispers over generations. Now, it’s Kate’s turn to listen.As the drowned woman reaches out from the grave, Kate reaches back. They must come together, if only in dreams, to right the sinister wrongs of the past.

The Roommate


Dervla McTiernan - 2019
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The Distant Echo


Val McDermid - 2003
    The only suspects in her brutal murder were the four young men who found her: Alex Gilbey and his three best friends. With no evidence but her blood on their hands, no one was ever charged.Twenty five years later, the Cold Case file on Rosie Duff has been reopened. For Alex and his friends, the investigation has also opened old wounds, haunting memories-and new fears. For a stranger has emerged from the shadows with his own ideas about justice. And revenge.When two of Alex's friends die under suspicious circumstances, Alex knows that he and his innocent family are the next targets. And there's only way to save them: return to the cold-blooded past and uncover the startling truth about the murder. For there lies the identity of an avenging killer...

The One I Left Behind


Jennifer McMahon - 2013
    Thirteen, awkward, and without a father, she finds herself mixed up with her school's outcasts-Charlie, the local detective's son, and Tara, a goth kid who has a mental hold over Reggie and harbors a dark secret. That same summer a serial killer called Neptune begins kidnapping women. He leaves their severed hands on the police department steps and, five days later, displays their bodies around town. Just when Reggie needs her mother Vera-an ex-model with many "boyfriends" and a thirst for gin-the most, Vera's hand is found on the steps. But after five days, there's no body and Neptune disappears.Now a successful architect who left her hometown behind after that horrific summer, Reggie doesn't trust anyone and lives with few attachments. But when she gets a call from a homeless shelter saying that her mother has been found alive, Reggie must confront the ghosts of her past and find Neptune before he kills again.With her signature style, Jennifer McMahon portrays the dark side of adolescent friendship and introduces characters who haunt the imagination, along with a disturbing web of secrets, betrayals, and murder.

Now We Are Dead


Stuart MacBride - 2017
    Now he’s back on the streets and women are being attacked again. Wallace has to be responsible, but if Detective Sergeant Steel goes anywhere near him, his lawyers will get her thrown off the force for good.The Powers That Be won’t listen to her, not after what happened last time. According to them, she’s got more than enough ongoing cases to keep her busy. Perhaps she could try solving a few instead of harassing an innocent man?Steel knows Wallace is guilty. And the longer he gets away with it, the more women will suffer. The question is: how much is she willing to sacrifice to stop him?

The Long and Faraway Gone


Lou Berney - 2015
    Six movie-theater employees were killed in an armed robbery, while one inexplicably survived. Then, a teenage girl vanished from the annual State Fair. Neither crime was ever solved.Twenty-five years later, the reverberations of those unsolved cases quietly echo through survivors’ lives. A private investigator in Vegas, Wyatt’s latest inquiry takes him back to a past he’s tried to escape—and drags him deeper into the harrowing mystery of the movie house robbery that left six of his friends dead. Like Wyatt, Julianna struggles with the past—with the day her beautiful older sister Genevieve disappeared. When Julianna discovers that one of the original suspects has resurfaced, she’ll stop at nothing to find answers.As fate brings these damaged souls together, their obsessive quests spark sexual currents neither can resist. But will their shared passion and obsession heal them, or push them closer to the edge? Even if they find the truth, will it help them understand what happened, that long and faraway gone summer? Will it set them free—or ultimately destroy them?

Unleashed


Emily Kimelman - 2011
    This left him unconscious on the floor of my home. Amazingly, this bullet did not kill him. Ten years ago I adopted Blue as a present to myself after I broke up with my boyfriend one hot, early summer night with the windows open and the neighborhood listening. The next morning I went straight to the pound in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Articles on buying your first dog tell you never to buy a dog on impulse. They want you to be prepared for this new member of your family, to understand the responsibilities and challenges of owning a dog. Going to the pound because you need something in your life that's worth holding onto is rarely, if ever, mentioned. I asked the man at the pound to show me the biggest dogs they had. He showed me some seven-week-old Rottweiler-German shepherd puppies that he said would grow to be quite large. Then he showed me a six-month-old shepherd that would get pretty big. Then he showed me Blue, the largest dog they had. The man called him a Collie mix and he was stuffed into the biggest cage they had, but he didn't fit. He was as tall as a Great Dane but much skinnier, with the snout of a collie, the markings of a Siberian husky, the ears and tail of a shepherd and the body of a wolf, with one blue eye and one brown. Crouched in a sitting position, unable to lie down, unable to sit all the way up, he looked at me from between the bars, and I fell in love. "He's still underweight," the man in the blue scrubs told me as we looked at Blue. "I'll tell you, lady, he's pretty but he's skittish. He sheds, and I mean sheds. I don't think you want this dog." But I knew I wanted him. I knew I had to have him. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Blue cost me $108. I brought him home, and we lived together for years. He was, for most of our relationship, my only companion. But when I first met Blue, a lifetime ago now, I had family and friends. I worked at a crappy coffeehouse. I was young and lost; I was normal. Back then, at the beginning of this story, before I'd ever seen a corpse, before Blue saved my life, before I felt what it was like to kill someone in cold blood, I was still Joy Humbolt.I'd never even heard the name Sydney Rye.P.S. The dog does not die.**Beware: If you can’t handle a few f-bombs, you can’t handle this series.**

The Caretakers


Eliza Maxwell - 2020
    But there’s no escaping the past in this chilling novel from the bestselling author of The Unremembered Girl. Filmmaker Tessa Shepherd helped free a man she believed was wrongly imprisoned for murder. When he kills again, Tessa’s life is upended.She’s reeling with guilt, her reputation destroyed. Worse, Tessa’s mother has unexpectedly passed away, and her sister, Margot, turns on her after tensions from their past escalate. Hounded by a bullying press, Tessa needs an escape. That’s when she learns of a strange inheritance bequeathed by her mother: a derelict and isolated estate known as Fallbrook. It seems like the perfect refuge.A crumbling monument to a gruesome history, the mansion has been abandoned by all but two elderly sisters retained as caretakers. They are also guardians of all its mysteries. As the house starts revealing its dark secrets, Tessa must face her fears and right the wrongs of her past to save herself and her relationship with Margot. But nothing and no one at Fallbrook are what they seem.

Walk Into Silence


Susan McBride - 2016
    Did she simply run off, or is something darker at play?When Patrick Dielman shows up at Detective Jo Larsen’s desk insisting that his wife, Jenny, is missing, Jo wonders if it’s a case of a bored housewife running away.But as she digs deeper into Jenny’s life, Jo learns that Dielman keeps a stranglehold on the family finances, down to the last nickel, and that Jenny’s first marriage dissolved following the death of her young son. By all accounts—including her doctor’s—she never recovered from the loss. Between a controlling husband, a tragic past, and a callous ex-husband, Jo can’t be sure if she should suspect foul play or accept that the woman may have wanted to disappear.For Jo, whose own demons are shadowing her every step, finding Jenny becomes more than the typical protect-and-serve.

The CEO


Peter Ralph - 2007
     He was forty-five and time was running out when fate dealt him an unexpected opportunity. The company was old, staid and well-respected but it was under performing and Aspine was determined to turn it around no matter who he had to crush. Soon he was at war with the company's employees, unions, suppliers, financiers and co-directors but nothing was going to stop him. Not his chairman, not his wife, not his mistress, not the anonymous death threats and definitely not the press. Aspine could almost taste the glory, the riches and peer recognition he'd craved for so long. He knew he had countless detractors and enemies who he contemptuously labelled "losers"and paid no heed to. Would this prove to be a miscalculation of monumental proportions or would he prevail?

Open House


Katie Sise - 2020
    A town still held in the grip of an unsolved mystery. A breathtaking novel of psychological suspense by the bestselling author of We Were Mothers.A decade ago in upstate New York, art student Emma McCullough walked into the woods and was never seen again. It’s a mystery that still haunts her bucolic university town and her broken family, especially her sister Haley, whose need for closure has become an obsession. But now, finally, the first piece of evidence in the vanishing has been found: Emma’s bracelet, lodged in a frozen piece of earth at the bottom of a gorge. For Emma’s three best college friends, for a beloved former teacher, and for Haley, the chilling trinket is more than a clue in a resurrected cold case. It’s a trigger.Then a woman is attacked during an open house, and the connections between the two crimes, ten winters apart, begin to surface. So do the secrets that run as deep and dark as the currents in this quiet river town.

The Cut


George Pelecanos - 2011
    Includes a bonus work of short fiction focusing on Spero's early life.Spero Lucas has a new line of work. Since he returned home to Washington, D.C. after serving in Iraq, he has been doing special investigations for a defense attorney. He's good at it, and he has carved out a niche: recovering stolen property, no questions asked. His cut is forty percent. A high-profile crime boss who has heard of Lucas's specialty hires him to find out who has been stealing from his operation. It's the biggest job Spero has ever been offered, and he quickly gets a sense of what's going on. But before he can close in on what's been taken, he tangles with a world of men whose amorality and violence leave him reeling. Is any cut worth your family, your lover, your life? The first in a series of thrillers featuring Spero Lucas, The Cut is the latest confirmation of why George Pelecanos is "perhaps America's greatest living crime writer." (Stephen King)

Foreign Deceit


Jeff Carson - 2012
    All that trouble falls to background noise, however, when Wolf learns his brother has just committed suicide in northern Italy. Devastation and resentment of his sibling's selfish act is short-lived, because Wolf knows one thing is for certain: his brother would never kill himself. Or would he? A nagging suspicion there's more to the story is enough to pull Wolf from his volatile life, to Lecco, Italy--a picturesque city along the shores of Lake Como, where danger lies amid the ancient cobblestone alleys.With the aid of a beautiful Carabinieri agent, can Wolf piece together what really happened to his brother without suffering the same fate?

The Good Girl


Mary Kubica - 2014
    I know where she buys her groceries, where she works. I don't know the color of her eyes or what they look like when she's scared. But I will.One night, Mia Dennett enters a bar to meet her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But when he doesn't show, she unwisely leaves with an enigmatic stranger. At first Colin Thatcher seems like a safe one-night stand. But following Colin home will turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia's life. When Colin decides to hide Mia in a secluded cabin in rural Minnesota instead of delivering her to his employers, Mia's mother, Eve, and detective Gabe Hoffman will stop at nothing to find them. But no one could have predicted the emotional entanglements that eventually cause this family's world to shatter.

Famished


Meghan O'Flynn - 2016
    At least, it feels that way until a serial killer starts dicing up women from the shelter where she volunteers. Despite the ever-present tingling at the nape of her neck, Hannah manages to convince herself that the killings have nothing to do with her brutal past—until her boyfriend is murdered in the same ruthless manner as the others. It doesn’t help that the police think she might have done it. But the cops are right about one thing: Hannah is responsible. Because she knows who the killer is. Now she must face the fact that she brought a monster with her to Ash Park—and his appetite for blood is insatiable. Everyone's hungry for something. Some are more famished than others.