Book picks similar to
Dumping Grounds by Lila Beckham


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Burntown


Jennifer McMahon - 2017
    But the most important invention of all was the one that Miles claimed came from the mind of Thomas Edison himself--a machine that allowed one to speak with loved ones long passed. Smuggled out of Edison's laboratory, the blueprints were passed down to Miles, and he's been using them to protect Eva, her mother, Lily, and her brother, Errol, ever since.Then, one night when a storm is raging and the river is threatening to flood, the machine whirrs to life on its own. Danger, it says. You're in terrible danger. The next thing Eva knows is waking up on the side of the river and seeing her mother's grim face. Eva's father and brother are dead, their house has been washed away and an evil man is searching for them both. They need to hide.Eva changes her name to Necco--a candy she always loved--and tries to put everything in her past behind her as she adapts to her new life off the grid. But when her boyfriend is murdered and her mother disappears, she knows that the past is starting to catch up to her.What really happened the night of the flood? As Necco searches for the truth, her journey unites her with two women who are on desperate quests of their own. And as the trio follows the clues to solving the mystery of Necco's past, they discover that sometimes it's the smallest towns that hold the strangest secrets.

What Burns Within


Sandra Ruttan - 2008
    Since then they've lost touch with one another and are working on different cases. It soon appears that their different cases could be connected after all.

Bedlam Boy: The Forger & The Traitor


Ian W. Sainsbury - 2020
    Sainsbury. Two short, punchy, action-packed episodes in each book.They murdered his parents, shot him in the head, and left him to die. They should have made sure.Twenty years after Tom Lewis watched his parents die, those responsible are being killed. One by one.Gentle, brain-damaged Tom, a giant of a man who can barely speak, can’t be responsible for their deaths. Can he?When Tom Lewis was shot, something new was created. Something unique. Something deadly. Something patient enough to plan revenge for twenty long years.Meet Bedlam Boy

Homesick


Richard Simms - 2013
    There was nobody watching her at cheerleading practice. Or as she walked home. Or when she was stopping her handsy boyfriend at second base. It was just her overactive imagination, that was all.Or was it?She had heard the stories about what went on in her house generations before her family took up residence. But that was all they were—just stories, tall tales told and retold for the singular purpose of giving gullible young girls goosebumps.Right?They had to be. If they weren’t, what could she do? Who could she tell? Where could she hide? If even half of what she had heard was true… God. The thought alone made her sick. And, scarier still, it also made her home sick!

The Senior Moment


Eva Hudson - 2013
    Events quickly slide from awful to worse when she discovers her son and his pregnant wife have disappeared, owing a fortune to a murderous loan shark. Hooking up with a newly retired NYPD cop, Jean tries to track down her son, but soon discovers the only way to get him back is to raise the money he owes herself. Hunted by the grocery store killer and struggling to persuade the handsome cop she's falling for that sometimes it's OK to break the law for the sake of justice, Jean devises an audacious plan to raise the cash and wreak revenge on the greedy Wall Street banks.But time is running out. Will she manage to save her son and hold on to her man? Or will the killer get to her first?A thrilling ride through lower Manhattan, with twists, spills and laughs aplenty, The Senior Moment is a funny romantic suspense thriller that proves you're never too old for action and adventure.

Two for the Show


Jonathan Stone - 2016
    Instead of pounding the pavement, he taps a computer keyboard. He can get the goods on anyone, and it’s all to make sure superstar Las Vegas mind reader Wallace the Amazing stays amazing. Thanks to Chas’s steady stream of stealthy intel, Wallace’s mental “magic” packs houses every night.But when someone threatens to call the psychic showman’s bluff, the sweet gig takes a sour—and sinister—turn. Who’s the clean-cut couple gunning for Wallace with an arsenal of dirty tricks? Why does Wallace keep upping the ante instead of backing down? And just how much does Chas really know about his mysterious boss’s life…or his own? The tangled truth—of blackmail, kidnapping, and false identities—quickly becomes the biggest case of his strange, secret career.

Visions of Wool, A Silo Story


Hanna Elizabeth - 2013
    She has visions. Visions of the world outside before it was forbidden, before they were buried underground, while the skies were still clear blue and animals beyond reckoning still roamed the earth. But her visions don't stop there. Grace is put to the test when she envisions an uprising in the Silo, and the death of the young man she loves.With the help of her visions and a mysterious book handed down through the centuries, she finds herself fighting against time, not only to save those she loves, but for the survival of future generations.

Orient


Christopher Bollen - 2015
    One late summer morning, the body of a local caretaker is found in the open water; the same day, a monstrous animal corpse is found on the beach, presumed a casualty from a nearby research lab. With rumors flying, eyes turn to Mills Chevern—a tumbleweed orphan newly arrived in town from the west with no ties and a hazy history. As the deaths continue and fear in town escalates, Mills is enlisted by Beth, an Orient native in retreat from Manhattan, to help her uncover the truth. With the clock ticking, Mills and Beth struggle to find answers, faced with a killer they may not be able to outsmart. Rich with character and incident, yet deeply suspenseful, Orient marks the emergence of a novelist of enormous talent.

Abomination


E.E. Borton - 2010
    They became unstoppable monsters. Four decorated U.S. Marines with spotless service records are wanted for the brutal rapes and murders of over a dozen women within four months. Their hunting grounds stretch from New York to Georgia. When Ryan Pearson and his team of FBI agents close in on the first killer, the cornered Marine nearly defeats three heavily armed assault teams with nothing but unbridled violence and grossly deformed hands.

Eeny Meeny


M.J. Arlidge - 2014
    As hunger and thirst set in, only one walks away alive.It’s a game more twisted than any Detective Helen Grace has ever seen. If she hadn’t spoken with the shattered survivors herself, she almost wouldn’t believe them.Helen is familiar with the dark sides of human nature, including her own, but this case—with its seemingly random victims—has her baffled. But as more people go missing, nothing will be more terrifying than when it all starts making sense....

The Battered Heiress Blues


Laurie Van Dermark - 2012
    While one child is spared, another is lost forever.Surviving a brutal assault in a small and desolate Peruvian town, Julia wakes to find that her unborn child has perished in a desperate, violent attack. Returning to the safety of her family's Savannah estate, she prepares to bury her tragically murdered son. Forced to confront the choices that led to her son's death, she is bombarded with resolving the details of her poorly conceived marriage, estrangement from a powerful and disapproving patriarch, and navigating the sudden renewal of a long forgotten flame - Henry Walker. Unable to find her way out of the grief and sorrow, those who profess love eventually leave on by one, but not before a precious gift is left behind that will change everything.WINNER OF THE NEW YORK BOOK FESTIVAL/ROMANCETHE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW: "The Battered Heiress Blues" is a riveting novel of the pain of the choices mothers make, RECOMMENDED.

The Beguiled


Thomas Cullinan - 1966
    Almost immediately he sets about beguiling the three women and five teenage girls stranded in this outpost of Southern gentility, eliciting their love and fear, pity and infatuation, and pitting them against one another in a bid for his freedom. But as the women are revealed for what they really are, a sense of ominous foreboding closes in on the soldier, and the question becomes: Just who is the beguiled?

The River Is Dark


Joe Hart - 2013
    His career, the only thing he ever knew how to do well, is over. The single solace each day brings is the ever-growing contemplation of suicide. But when his estranged brother and sister-in-law are brutally murdered in their bucolic town set on the banks of the Mississippi River, he is drawn into an investigation surrounding a string of killings unlike anything he has ever seen before. The murderer is ruthless, cunning, and without conscience. Soon Liam learns that the river is dark. And so are its secrets.Contains explicit language and violence.

Beer Run of the Dead


D.F. Noble - 2012
    Follow Kip, Rock and Steady, as they struggle to survive and stay completely shit-faced in the face of certain undead doom. These three unlikely heroes hold the key to humanity's salvation, but will they succeed being inebriated as they are? Not everyone who saves the world is a rocket scientist, a super hero, or a handsome actor turned politician. Sometimes people who save the world... they're fucking idiots.

Natural Causes


James Oswald - 2012
    So the murderer has killed himself; that just saves the time and cost of a trial. But a second murder days later bears haunting similarities to the first, even though once more the murderer swiftly confesses and kills himself.Detective Inspector Anthony McLean is investigating the discovery of a dead girl, walled up in the basement of an old Edinburgh mansion. She has been brutally murdered, her internal organs removed and placed around her in six preserving jars. The evidence suggests this all happened over sixty years ago, an attempt to re-enact an ancient ceremony that by trapping a demon in the dead girl’s body would supposedly confer immortality on the six men who took one of her organs each.McLean’s grandmother – the woman who raised him after his parents were killed when he was a young boy – dies after months in a coma following a stroke. On top of this he has to investigate a series of unusual, violent suicides and a cat-burglar who targets the homes of the recently dead. But as another prominent Edinburgh businessman is killed, he begins to suspect that there may be a connection between the murders, the suicides and the ritual killing of the girl found in the basement. The same names keep cropping up. He just can’t find a rational explanation as to how that connection works.As he digs deeper, and as the coincidences stack up, McLean is forced to consider an irrational explanation. Could there really be something evil stalking the city he has sworn to protect? And if so, how on earth can he hope to stop it?