Book picks similar to
Ben's Story by Andrew M. Stafford


mystery
ebook
detective
mystery-thriller

Hawthorn Inn


Heidi Willard - 2013
    New friends introduce him to legends and rumors that have swirled around the inn since time-immemorial, and he finds plenty of proof to believe them as strange noises and twisted shadows stalk the halls.Worst of all, his estranged grandfather has invited himself to join them at the inn. Creepy doesn't begin to describe that black-cloaked gentleman with the pale skin and weird, ever-constant glasses. Old secrets, mysterious sealed-up rooms and creeping shadows abound as Jack tries to manage his new life at Hawthorn Inn.

Ring Around the Rosie


Jullian Scott - 2016
    The Homecoming Dance is just one night away and she can already feel the weight of the crown upon her head. But when she leaves her home that Friday night, it’s for the very last time. When her body is found in a park the next morning, a whole town is turned upside down and a family is torn apart. Fifteen years later, Olivia still hasn’t moved on from her sister’s murder. Not only does she still see the ghost of her dead sister, she is pursuing a career studying the very monsters that destroyed Rosie and hundreds of other helpless victims. Olivia is desperate to find closure, but a new murder with connections to her past has reopened old wounds. Nate Tucker is a successful Chicago detective. He also happens to be Olivia’s best friend. Nate has been fascinated by the Thompson case since the first time Olivia mentioned her dead sister to him. When a dead girl shows up in the city under circumstances eerily similar to Rosie’s murder, he is quick to make the connection. Now, with stale evidence and fifteen-year-old memories to guide him, Nate has the chance to solve the current murder case, as well as the death of the Homecoming Queen that refuses to stop haunting the people she left behind. Dark and haunting, Ring Around the Rosie is utterly suspenseful and surprising to the end.

Boogie House


T. Blake Braddy - 2014
    Now it’s a rotten, hollowed out shell of a building, the kind of place where murderers dump their victims. But that might not be all. When Rolson McKane stumbles onto a savage crime scene in the abandoned juke joint, he’s surprised the old place hasn’t been torn down. He’s even more surprised when the long-dead patrons get up and start partying in the middle of the night. Rolson McKane is no stranger to misery, but the shock of realizing the supernatural is real might just be too much for him. Don’t get him wrong: he’s been haunted his whole life, just not by ghosts. The son of a son of a long line of drunks, he’s managed to amass a whole house full of demons, and they’ve destroyed just about everything: his marriage, his job as a local cop, his fleeting good sense. Now that he’s no longer an officer of the law, Rolson has finally decided to do some actual police work. No one seems to be interested in the murder of Emmitt Laveau, save for Rolson himself, and his only allies are his bail bondsman, the woman he nearly killed, and the dead man who visits his dreams.

Private Eye: Cameron Caldwell Mystery


Jason Deas - 2014
    But, after getting a DUI in his police cruiser it isn’t really an issue. The real issue now is staying alive. Cameron knows secrets that could cost him his life and flees to what he hopes is a quiet mountain retreat. Launching a detective agency in the town of Miner’s Bluff, he unknowingly stumbles into a world of murder, moonshine, shifty characters, and even deeper secrets. But the biggest secret belongs to him. It’s the cornerstone of all his troubles. Cam can look into another’s eyes and see their darkest sin—their most evil act. And it’s beginning to take a toll on his sanity. The murder investigations of his past and present collide as Cam tries to keep his life from unraveling and his eyes from tearing him apart.

Desecration


J.F. Penn - 2013
    Her career is on the ropes. Her daughter is dying — there are only hours left before the end, and decisions have to be made. Museum curator Blake Daniel is a man on the edge of destruction. Cursed with the ability to “read” objects — to see where they’ve come from, and the bloody histories they experience — Blake splits his time between working as a researcher at the British Museum… and binge-drinking to forget his nightmare visions.Together, these two broken souls are all that stand between London and a serial killer. A young woman has been murdered, her uterus and unborn child removed during a gala event at a college of surgeons, any of whom could have committed the crime. The only clue is a small ivory figure of a woman undergoing a Cesarean section, dating to the seventeenth century.Body modification, grave robbery, Nazi eugenics, a laboratory that specializes in extreme genetic experiments. All come together to create a mystery unlike any Jamie has experienced, and a danger greater than any Blake has ever seen in his visions. It will take all Jamie’s detective skills, and all Blake’s psychic abilities, to find the killer. To end the murders. To stop something that wants to destroy all that is good… and leave behind only DESECRATION.Desecration is the first book in a thrilling new series by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.F. Penn: a blend of crime, psychological thriller — and the supernatural.

Racked


Jude Hardin - 2013
    A private investigator, a police lieutenant, and a man wearing a Bugs Bunny mask walk into a bar...Unfortunately, it's no joke when Bugsy rigs the barrel of a twelve-gauge pump to the back of the bartender's neck.Together for the first time in this explosive tale of greed, betrayal, and blood-soaked terror (not really, but it's a fast-paced and funny mystery-thriller), Florida PI Nicholas Colt (Crosscut, Key Death) and Chicago cop Jacqueline Daniels (Whiskey Sour, Shaken) team up to stop the robber before another shotgun shell gets RACKED.

The Girl From Paradise Hill


Susan Lund - 2018
    With no crime scenes, no leads and no suspects, the cases have gone cold.Until today.The remains of one missing girl are discovered in a burned-out cabin at a remote campsite, reopening the case and suggesting the worst may be true – a ruthless child killer is operating in Washington State.TESS MCCLINTOCKCrime reporter and amateur cyber-sleuth Tess is obsessed with the cold cases of missing girls in Washington State. As she works to settle her father's estate, she's shaken to her core when she uncovers evidence pointing to his involvement. FBI SPECIAL AGENT MICHAEL CARTEROn leave after solving a particularly heartbreaking case of child abduction and murder for the FBI's Violent Crimes Against Children Task Force, Michael is back in Paradise Hill to recover and visit with family. Despite doctor's orders to stay clear of police work, Michael's drawn back in when Tess asks for his help understanding the secrets found in her father's attic.A RUTHLESS CHILD KILLER Having escaped justice for decades, he's bored and deliberately stirs the pot, revealing one of the dead girl's bodies. Despite hiding in plain sight, no one suspects that he's really a wolf and not the sheep he pretends to be. He sees Tess and Michael's involvement in the case as a challenge and views Tess as a temptation he can't resist.AN EIGHTEEN-YEAR OLD COLD CASEFor Tess and Michael, the cases are personal: Tess's best friend in public school, Lisa Tate, was one of the missing girls from Paradise Hill. Michael was babysitting the night little Lisa vanished. The guilt they harbor over their role in her disappearance drives them both. Desperate for answers, Tess and Michael join forces to track a killer and uncover the secrets Tess finds in her father's attic. Will the answers bring Tess peace or shatter her?THE GIRL FROM PARADISE HILL is the first book in the McClintock-Carter Crime Thriller Series.

Last Wish (Linh Davies #1)


M.D. Thomas - 2020
    Each new soul arrives with a story and a last wish. If she can grant their wish, they’ll move on and leave her be. But that isn’t always possible and her head is getting crowded... Three weeks from taking a new job, Linh gets fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Bauer stuck in her head. Another voice is bad enough, but Linh is horrified to learn that the girl’s last wish is for her father to die. When Linh refuses, Elizabeth decides there’s only one way to get what she wants—to take over Linh’s body and kill her father herself. During the struggle that follows Linh is forced to decide what’s more important—her life and the lives of those around her or her oath as a physician to do no harm.

The Missing Gun (Hawker of the Yard Book 1)


W.H. Oxley - 2014
    Hitler has just conquered Poland, but life in London continues much as it did in peacetime, albeit a little more restricted since the introduction of petrol rationing. No bombs have been dropped on the city as yet, but the population go about their daily business under the constant threat of German air raids, and a blackout remains in force at night. For Scotland Yard and the criminal fraternity, however, it is business as usual. When a pawnbroker’s assistant is wounded by a gunman wearing a gasmask, it appears to be a straightforward case of a bungled armed robbery, but as Hawker proceeds with his investigation, the more facts he uncovers the more confusing the affair becomes. A red-headed soldier, a missing gun, a dead cat, an empty violin case and a damaged violin are only a few of the threads that have to be unravelled before he can wrap up the case – with a little help from Sherlock Holmes.

The Haunting of Hardlocke House


Amy Cross - 2020
    

Book of Shadows


Alexandra Sokoloff - 2010
    But Garrett’s case is turned upside down when beautiful, mysterious Tanith Cabarrus, a practicing witch from nearby Salem, walks into the homicide bureau and insists that the real perpetrator is still at large. Tanith claims to have had psychic visions that the killer has ritually sacrificed other teenagers in his attempts to summon a powerful, ancient demon.  All Garrett's beliefs about the nature of reality will be tested as he is forced to team up with a woman he is fiercely attracted to but cannot trust, in a race to uncover a psychotic killer before he strikes again.

Murder Revisited


William Coleman - 2020
    But before he can make a start, he is suddenly reassigned by his boss, Terrance Singleton, to the cold case of Timothy Waters, who had served 20 years in prison for the murder of Elizabeth Mitchell, the daughter of the then mayor.A review of his conviction has set him free and as a friend of the family, Singleton wants to make sure Mallory finds more evidence to put him back behind bars.But the case is complex and before long Mallory discovers that there is a lot more to it than meets the eye; family tensions, a witness run out of town and the possibility the victim had a second boyfriend. It all points to a shoddy investigation and a blunder that sent an innocent man to prison.When Mallory’s investigation reveals a link between the girl in the alley, Elizabeth, and another murder victim from seven years ago, he can’t help but wonder if they are connected. With the motive unclear, and the perpetrator a mystery, Mallory must piece together the evidence that may solve three cases instead of one, overcome a miscarriage of justice and uncover a killer who may be closer than he thinks.

Shaman: The Awakening


V.R. McCoy - 2014
    When his ViCAP unit takes on another serial killer investigation, they soon find themselves in deeper than they bargained for. The killer seems to be ahead of them at every turn. The search for the mysterious killer takes Christopher and his unit from the Crossroads of New Mexico deep into the Navajo Nation. Shaman - The Awakening is a gripping supernatural thriller, filled with brilliant and in-depth descriptions and shamanistic lore.

The Flies of August


P.J. Lee - 2013
    

Desolation Run


James Snyder - 2013
    Actually, he has two. Or maybe three. The first is that he'll be dead from cancer, less than a year, which doesn't particularly concern him: "Things I've been through, dying is just one more page in a long bad book." But spending his last living days, taking his last living breath, behind steel bars does. That's the second problem: Inmate #78903 in the notorious level-four Washington State prison known as Horseneck Bay.Then there's the money. Two million dollars of stolen military payroll, supposedly buried in some remote and mysterious south-Texas mountain range called Los Despoblados, or The Uninhabited, which sounds to Oreny like one of those places his Mama Maybell always told him to avoid. But he'll worry about that later. He has to get there first. Problem number three.That's when he brings those two smoldering dynamite sticks he's attached himself to--his Luke-boy and Jaime--on board to help his tired old body break out of Horseneck and go dig up that money and then hightail it across the border into Mexico. And when they do break out, and Luke decides to bring his girlfriend Lauren along, and her enraged ex comes after them, and then the manhunt starts multiplying faster around them than those cancer cells inside him, Oreny still thinks he can control them. The problems, that is. At least, until Cade arrives.Cade, the prison investigator Oreny knows is dangerous and unpredictable as a six-foot-two wolverine on eight gallons of adrenalin gone bad. And who won't stop until he catches them and does to them what Cade does best.Cade, Oreny knows better than anything else, is their biggest problem of all.