Book picks similar to
Silent Night, Deadly Night by Richard L. Mabry
mystery
christian-fiction
christmas
suspense
The Other People
C.J. Tudor - 2020
She mouths one word: 'Daddy.' It's his five-year-old daughter, Izzy.He never sees her again.Three years later, Gabe spends his days and nights travelling up and down the motorway, searching for the car that took his daughter, refusing to give up hope, even though most people believe that Izzy is dead.Fran and her daughter, Alice, also put in a lot of miles on the motorway. Not searching. But running. Trying to keep one step ahead of the people who want to hurt them. Because Fran knows the truth. She knows what really happened to Gabe's daughter.Then, the car that Gabe saw driving away that night is found, in a lake, with a body inside and Gabe is forced to confront events, not just from the night his daughter disappeared, but from far deeper in his past.His search leads him to a group called The Other People.If you have lost a loved one, The Other People want to help. Because they know what loss is like. They know what pain is like. They know what death is like.There's just one problem . . . they want other people to know it too.
56 Days
Catherine Ryan Howard - 2021
Now one of them is dead. Could this be the perfect murder?56 DAYS AGOCiara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin the same week Covid-19 reaches Irish shores.35 DAYS AGOWhen lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests that Ciara move in with him. She sees a unique opportunity for a new relationship to flourish without the pressure of scrutiny of family and friends. He sees it as an opportunity to hide who - and what - he really is.TODAYDetectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.Will they be able to determine what really happened, or has lockdown provided someone with the opportunity to commit the perfect crime?
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.
Five Total Strangers
Natalie D. Richards - 2020
Desperate to get to her grief-ridden mother in the wake of a family death, Mira hitches a ride with a group of friendly college kids who were on her initial flight.As the drive progresses and weather conditions become more treacherous, Mira realizes that the four other passengers she's stuck in the car with don't actually know one another.Soon, they're not just dealing with heavy snowfall and ice-slick roads, but the fact that somebody will stop at nothing to ensure their trip ends in a deadly disaster.
Twelfth Night
Deanna Raybourn - 2014
But before Lady Julia and her handsome sleuthing husband, Nicolas Brisbane, can take to the stage, a ruckus in the stable yard demands their attention. An abandoned infant is found nestled in the steel helm of St. George. What's more, their only lead is the local legend of a haunted cottage and its ghastly inhabitant—who seems to have returned.Once again, Lady Julia and Nicholas take up the challenge to investigate, and when the source of the mystery is revealed, they'll be faced with an impossible choice—one that will alter the course of their lives…forever.
Ties That Bind
Anne Patrick - 2010
As with most profilers, she is able to take the evidence, background of the victims, and crime scene photos, and reenact in her mind what took place between the killer and the victim. But what if there are no crime scenes and the victims have been decapitated in order to hide their identity? This is where Jo's unusual gift comes into play. Unlike other profilers in her field, she is able to sense what the victim felt prior to death. She not only feels their emotions, she feels their pain.Sheriff Austin Garrett doesn't quite know what to think of the beautiful and sassy profiler with a unique gift that defies all reason. He's willing to try anything, though, to stop the monster plaguing his community.But can Jo and Austin find the killer before he makes it even more personal?
The Book of Fate
Brad Meltzer - 2006
None of us knew it was coming."So says Wes Holloway, a young presidential aide, about the day he put Ron Boyle, the chief executive's oldest friend, into the president's limousine. By the trip's end, a crazed assassin would permanently disfigure Wes and kill Boyle. Now, eight years later, Boyle has been spotted alive. Trying to figure out what really happened takes Wes back into disturbing secrets buried in Freemason history, a decade-old presidential crossword puzzle, and a two-hundred-year-old code invented by Thomas Jefferson that conceals secrets worth dying for.
The Princess Game
Soman Chainani - 2020
To find the killer, rookie detective Callum Pederson has gone undercover where the Princes hold court. He’s found enough secrets among the bros to bring them in for questioning—but he could very well get lost in the games the Princes play.
Good as Gone
Amy Gentry - 2016
Her family was shattered, but managed to stick together, hoping against hope that Julie is still alive. And then one night: the doorbell rings. A young woman who appears to be Julie is finally, miraculously, home safe. The family is ecstatic—but Anna, Julie’s mother, has whispers of doubts. She hates to face them. She cannot avoid them. When she is contacted by a former detective turned private eye, she begins a torturous search for the truth about the woman she desperately hopes is her daughter.
The Perfect Daughter
D.J. PalmerD.J. Palmer - 2021
Palmer, the author of The New Husband.Grace never dreamt she’d visit her teenaged daughter Penny in the locked ward of a decaying state psychiatric hospital, charged with the murder of a stranger. There was not much question of her daughter’s guilt. Police had her fingerprints on the murder weapon and the victim’s blood on her body and clothes. But they didn’t have a motive.Grace blames herself, because that’s what mothers do—they look at their choices and wonder, what if? But hindsight offers little more than the chance for regret.None of this was conceivable the day Penny came into her life. Then, it seemed like a miracle. Penny was found abandoned, with a mysterious past, and it felt like fate brought Penny to her, and her husband Arthur. But as she grew, Penny's actions grew more disturbing, and different "personalities" emerged.Arthur and Grace took Penny to different psychiatrists, many of whom believed she was putting on a show to help manage her trauma. But Grace didn’t buy it. The personas were too real, too consistent. It had to be a severe multiple personality disorder. One determined psychiatrist, Dr. Mitch McHugh, helped discover someone new inside Penny—a young girl named Abigail. Is this the nameless girl who was abandoned in the park years ago? Mitch thinks Abigail is the key to Penny’s past and to the murder. But as Grace and Mitch dig deeper, they uncover dark and shocking secrets that put all their lives in grave danger.
The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted
Andrew E. Kaufman - 2011
STEPPING INTO HER WORST NIGHTMARE... Because when she returned, she found an open bedroom window and her three-year-old son, Nathan, gone. The boy would never be seen again. A NIGHTMARE THAT ONLY BECAME WORSE.A tip leads detectives to the killer, a repeat sex offender, and inside his apartment, a gruesome discovery. A slam-dunk trial sends him off to death row, then several years later, to the electric chair. CASE CLOSED. JUSTICE SERVED...OR WAS IT?Now, more than thirty years later, Patrick Bannister unwittingly stumbles across evidence among his dead mother's belongings—it paints her as the killer and her brother, a wealthy and powerful senator, as the one pulling the strings. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO NATHAN KINGSLEY?There's a hole in the case a mile wide, and Patrick is determined to close it. But what he doesn't know is that the closer he moves toward the truth, the more he's putting his life on the line, that he’s become the hunted. Someone's hiding a dark secret and will stop at nothing to keep it that way.The clock is ticking, the walls are closing, and the stakes are getting higher as he races to find a killer—one who's hot on his trail. One who's out for his blood.
Never Smile at Strangers
Jennifer Jaynes - 2011
But few clues are unearthed, and before long another young woman disappears.As locals continue to vanish, residents begin to discover that they might not know those closest to them as well as they had thought. Lies and insecurities quickly surface, leading everyone to question one another…and their involvement in the disappearances.Meanwhile, an unstable, twisted killer is hiding quietly in their midst. Ever since his mother’s murder four years earlier, he’s been forced to raise his disturbed teenage sister. He’s terrified of her—and of women in general—and his world revolves around his fear of and obsession over them.In this USA Today bestselling thriller, debut novelist Jennifer Jaynes delivers a psychologically riveting page-turner that is packed with surprises and will have readers guessing to the very last page.
The Whistler
John Grisham - 2016
Their integrity and impartiality are the bedrock of the entire judicial system. We trust them to ensure fair trials, to protect the rights of all litigants, to punish those who do wrong, and to oversee the orderly and efficient flow of justice.But what happens when a judge bends the law or takes a bribe? It’s rare, but it happens.Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the Board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption. But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined. And not just crooked judges in Florida. All judges, from all states, and throughout U.S. history.What’s the source of the ill-gotten gains? It seems the judge was secretly involved with the construction of a large casino on Native American land. The Coast Mafia financed the casino and is now helping itself to a sizable skim of each month’s cash. The judge is getting a cut and looking the other way. It’s a sweet deal: Everyone is making money.But now Greg wants to put a stop to it. His only client is a person who knows the truth and wants to blow the whistle and collect millions under Florida law. Greg files a complaint with the Board on Judicial Conduct, and the case is assigned to Lacy Stoltz, who immediately suspects that this one could be dangerous.Dangerous is one thing. Deadly is something else.
Black Hills
Nora Roberts - 2009
But things are a bit more bearable now that he's discovered the neighbor girl, Lil Chance, and her homemade batting cage. Even horseback riding isn't as awful as Coop thought it would be. Each year, with Coop's annual summer visit, their friendship deepens from innocent games to stolen kisses, but there is one shared experience that will forever haunt them: the terrifying discovery of a hiker's body.As the seasons change and the years roll, Lil stays steadfast to her aspiration of becoming a wildlife biologist and protecting her family land, while Coop struggles with his father's demand that he attend law school and join the family firm. Twelve years after they last walked together hand in hand, fate has brought them back to the Black Hills when the people and things they hold most dear need them most.Coop recently left his fast-paced life as an investigator in New York to take care for his aging grandparents and the ranch he has come to call home. Though the memory of his touch still haunts her, Lil has let nothing stop her dream of opening the Chance Wildlife Refuge, but something ... or someone ... has been keeping a close watch. When small pranks and acts of destruction escalate into the heartless killing of Lil's beloved cougar, recollections of an unsolved murder in these very hills have Coop springing to action to keep Lil safe.Lil and Coop both know the natural dangers that lurk in the wild landscape of the Black Hills. Now they must work together to unearth a killer of twisted and unnatural instincts who has singled them out as prey.
The Family Lawyer
James Patterson - 2017
But this loving father is also a skilled criminal defense attorney. And something here doesn't add up... NIGHT SNIPER with Christopher Charles: Cheryl Mabern is the NYPD's most brilliant detective--and the most damaged. Now she must confront her darkest fears to stop a calculating killer committing random murders.THE GOOD SISTER with Rachel Howzell Hall: Her beloved sister's cheating husband has been found dead. Now, Dani Lawrence must decide if she will help the investigation that could put her sister away...or obstruct it by any means necessary.