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After the Silence


Louise O'Neill - 2020
    When morning broke Nessa Crowley's lifeless body lay in the garden, her last breath silenced by the music and the thunder.The killer couldn't have escaped Inisrun, but no one was charged with the murder. The mystery that surrounded the death of Nessa remained hidden. But the islanders knew who to blame for the crime that changed them forever.Ten years later a documentary crew arrives, there to lift the lid off the Kinsellas' carefully constructed lives, determined to find evidence that will prove Henry's guilt and Keelin's complicity in the murder of beautiful Nessa.In this bold, brilliant, disturbing new novel Louise O'Neill shows that deadly secrets are devastating to those who hold them close.

Surviving Me


Jo Johnson - 2019
    Tom’s lost his job and now he’s been labelled useless. It’s surprisingly easy to set up a double life but rather harder to keep the deceit going. As Tom’s identity threatens to unravel, he starts to lose the plot… All the while, it turns out that one of Tom’s nearest and dearest has been leading his own double life – though for very different reasons.  This book tackles hard issues such as depression, dysfunctional families and degenerative diseases in an honest, life-affirming and often humorous way. It focuses particularly on the challenges of being male in today’s world and explores how our silence on these big issues can help push men to the brink.

Badge Of Evil


Craig Horowitz - 2015
    Badge of Evil is the first novel in a bold new thriller series from the writing team of private investigator Bill Stanton and award-winning journalist Craig Horowitz.All eyes are on New York City’s police commissioner Lawrence Brock after his hands-on role in a raid on a potential terrorist cell that turns into a blazing shootout. There’s even talk that he may be headed to Washington to take over Homeland Security.Investigative journalist A. J. Ross wants to expose the ruthless opportunist behind Brock’s heroic image. Freewheeling private investigator Frank Bishop is hired by the family of the lone surviving suspect, desperate to prove the young man’s innocence. A. J. and Bishop hate each other at first sight, but they’ll need to learn to work together quickly if they want to take down the commissioner—because Lawrence Brock will do anything to ensure the dark secrets of his past remain hidden.Badge of Evil introduces a dynamic new voice in thriller fiction, in the spirit of such bestselling authors as Harlan Coben and David Baldacci. It is a novel of our times and for our times—an all too familiar story of corruption and abuse at the highest levels, and how the lust for power can drive men to commit the most shocking acts.

A Confusion of Murders


Marina Johnson - 2017
    A brother obsessed with his looks, a dog that thinks it’s human and a happy though, dull routine. Until that is, her father starts talking nonsense and she makes a shocking discovery about herself. Not to mention the strange events occurring in Frogham – a missing person and a case of dog-napping. And then, on top of everything Louise finds romance in the unlikeliest place....

The Killing Game


Kate Bold - 2021
    Haunted by all the serial killers she caught, she left a stunning career behind to join the U.S. Marshals. As a Deputy Marshal, Alexa—fit, and as tough as she is brilliant—could immerse herself in a simple career of hunting down fugitives and bringing them to justice.But when a notorious serial killer escapes from a prison transport, it crosses the jurisdictions of the U.S. Marshals and the FBI’s BAU. The two departments are forced to come together on a new joint task force to hunt down the fugitive serial killer and bring him to justice. Alexa, to her dread, finds herself forced to confront the thing she fears the most—entering a killer’s mind. Doing so again, she knows, may just drag her down for good.Alexa and her new partner, each territorial, don’t take well to each other. Between their tension and all the clues leading to dead ends and the bodies piling up on the killer’s spree, Alexa knows that she, up against a ticking clock, can’t afford to get this wrong. Especially when she realizes that she herself may be the next target.To find this diabolical killer, Alexa will have to do what she fears most—enter his twisted mind, before he can strike again. It’s a life-and-death game of cat and mouse, and it’s winner takes all.But will the darkness swallow her whole?A page-turning and harrowing crime thriller featuring a brilliant and tortured Deputy Marshal, the ALEXA CHASE series is a riveting mystery, packed with non-stop action, suspense, twists and turns, revelations, and driven by a breakneck pace that will keep you flipping pages late into the night.

The Lost Ones


Vena Cork - 2016
    Single, childless and reduced to writing celebrity profiles, investigative journalist Suzannah Quinn’s life is not going to plan…Then, during an interview with top publisher Roland Winterbourne, she meets Jamie Davis.It’s love at first sight and within hours she has agreed to marry him.But Jamie insists on inviting no friends or family to the wedding and Suzannah’s millionaire father quickly suspects him of being a fortune hunter.At first the couple are blissfully happy.Suzannah’s only worry is Jamie’s mysterious past, which he refuses to talk about.However, when Suzannah suddenly inherits a flat off Portobello Road, everything changes.Whilst she is eager to reconnect with her happy childhood roaming the market before her father made his money, Jamie loathes Notting Hill.The move quickly triggers a change in their relationships and it’s not long before the arguments start.Then one morning, after a particularly bad row, Jamie goes to work and doesn’t return.Suzannah thinks he’s sulking, but when he still hasn’t returned after several days, she fears something’s happened to him.His colleagues are unconcerned because his job as a sales rep often takes him off the radar, but Suzannah becomes increasingly frantic.When she finds a scrap of paper in his jacket pocket with a name and address in North Devon, she is eager to investigate.What she discovers when she goes there brings her world crashing down.After a visit from a mysterious woman, who brings even more life-changing revelations, she realises that in order to move on she must find her missing husband and discover the truth about him once and for all.If Jamie is not what he claims to be then neither is her beloved Notting Hill, beneath whose perfection beats a dark and rotting heart that is finally exposed over a horrific Carnival weekend.

Devil House


John Darnielle - 2022
    That's what his mother always told him.Now, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success--and movie adaptation--to his name, along with a series of subsequent lesser efforts that have paid the bills but not much more. But now he is being offered the chance for the big break: To move into the house--what the locals call "The Devil House"--in which a briefly notorious pair of murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected 1980s teens. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected--back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.

The Bird that Sang in Color


Grace Mattioli - 2021
    However, he remains single, childless, and subsists in cramped apartments. She harbors guilt for her supposed failure until she discovers a sketch-book he’d made of his life, which prompts her own journey to live authentically.While this textured story combines serious issues such as alcoholism, death, and family conflict, it’s balanced with wit and humor and is filled with endearing, unforgettable characters. The story spans decades, beginning in 1970 and ending in the present. Readers will be immersed in this tale as it poses an intriguing question: “What pictures will you have of yourself by the end of your life?”“hugely moving, beautifully rendered, and brilliant,” Lidia Yucknavitch

After the End


Clare Mackintosh - 2019
    They're best friends, lovers—unshakable. But then their son gets sick and the doctors put the question of his survival into their hands. For the first time, Max and Pip can't agree. They each want a different future for their son. What if they could have both? A gripping and propulsive exploration of love, marriage, parenthood, and the road not taken, After the End brings one unforgettable family from unimaginable loss to a surprising, satisfying, and redemptive ending and the life they are fated to find. With the emotional power of Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper, Mackintosh helps us to see that sometimes the end is just another beginning.

Bury Me Deep (Detective Rozlyn Priest #1)


Jane A. Adams - 2021
    TWO MILLENNIA. ONE TIMELESS WEAPON.Theadingford dig site, present-day.Detective Rozlyn Priest never expected to find herself here. Teetering on the brink of an ancient grave. She takes a breath, willing herself to look down.Old bones, broken relics. That’s what should be buried here. Not the dead man staring back at her now.He is Charlie Higgins, a petty criminal Roz once called on for help.Is she the reason he’s dead? Slashed with a spear that belongs in the Dark Ages?Roz won’t rest until she finds the truth. But her investigation is leading nowhere. And now she’s seeing things — visions of a flame-haired Saxon warrior who shares her thirst for justice.But just how much deeper is Roz prepared to dig?

The Current


Tim Johnston - 2019
    One girl’s survival, and the other’s death—murder, actually—stun the citizens of a small Minnesota town, thawing memories of another young woman who lost her life in the same river ten years earlier, and whose killer may yet live among them. One father is forced to relive his agony while another’s greatest desire—to bring a killer to justice—is revitalized . . . and the girl who survived the icy plunge cannot escape the sense that she is connected to that earlier unsolved case by more than a river. Soon enough she’s caught up in an investigation of her own that will unearth long-hidden secrets, and stoke the violence that has long simmered just below the surface of the town. Souls frozen in time, ghosts and demons, the accused and the guilty, all stir to life in this cold northern place where memories, like treachery, run just beneath the ice, and where a young woman can come home but still not be safe.Brilliantly plotted, unrelentingly suspenseful, and beautifully realized, The Current is a gripping page-turner about how the past holds the key to the future as well as an unbreakable grip on the present.

Last Day


Luanne Rice - 2020
    The detective assigned to the case, Conor Reid, swore to protect the sisters from then on.Beth moved on, throwing herself fully into the art world, running the family gallery, and raising a beautiful daughter with her husband Pete. Kate, instead, retreated into herself and took to the skies as a pilot, always on the run. When Beth is found strangled in her home, and Moonlight goes missing again, Detective Reid can’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu.Reid immediately suspects Beth’s husband, whose affair is a poorly kept secret. He has an airtight alibi—but he also has a motive, and the evidence seems to point to him. Kate and Reid, along with the sisters’ closest childhood friends, struggle to make sense of Beth’s death, but they only find more questions: Who else would have wanted Beth dead? What’s the significance of Moonlight?Twenty years ago, Reid vowed to protect Beth and Kate—and he’s failed. Now solving the case is turning into an obsession . . .

All Our Darkest Secrets


Martyn Ford - 2021
    But what if that meant making the biggest mistake of all?James Casper is one of the good guys. A DEA agent. A loyal husband. With his sights set on the man at the top of the city’s opioid crisis, James is about to make the biggest bust of his career.Then his beloved wife Rosie does something terrible, and James must choose: report it—or help her. He knows how this works, and he tells himself he’s smart enough to get away with murder. But James’s worst enemy knows what they have done—and he won’t hesitate to use it to manipulate him.James is dragged into a dark and dangerous world. As events spiral and loyalties are tested, he realizes there’s only one way out. And that is to be even more ruthless than the people he’s working for.Whatever happens, no matter how far he falls, at least he’ll still have Rosie.Won’t he?

Kalyug


R. Sreeram - 2014
    The helplessness left him, in its place was a hardened resolve that he would still have the final say. A third option. The middle-finger to the middlemen who had driven him to this. A few moments later, Major General Iqbal Qureshi fired the shot that shook the nations conscience.The death of a decorated war veteran, one of India's foremost military officials, triggers a chain of events that threatens to spiral out of control. The democratically-elected government is overthrown and a new one is formed in its place.A fierce and pure regime that promises it's people the kind of governance they have been deprived of. Just. Fair. Unyielding. Operation Kalyug has begun. Caught in the middle is Bala Murali Selvam, a writer who is still tormented by the memories of his persecution at the hands of the erstwhile-establishment. As the new government battles factions fighting for control, international intervention, personal agendas and incompatible motives, Selvam is swept along, a bewildered-pawn in a high-stakes game. Forced to question everything he has believed so far, even his innate sense of justice, Selvam struggles to choose sides. Will his instincts fail him when he needs them the most?

Judith Wants To Be Your Friend


Annie Weir - 2015
    She’ll find out what you do and where you go. She’ll make sure she’s there too. 36-year-old Judith Dillon hasn’t found her place in society. She struggles to make and maintain relationships, especially with women. In Carlisle in September 2009, Judith becomes attracted to Joanna. She follows her, finds out about her family and infiltrates her life. By Christmas they are close enough for Joanna to insist that Judith spends Christmas Day with them. However, all does not go as planned as Joanna’s mother drinks too much and asks Judith awkward questions about her past. That is the start of Judith’s past life catching up with her. Suspensive and gripping, Judith Wants to be Your Friend will appeal to those looking for an intriguing story with thrilling undertones.