Book picks similar to
The Girl Next Door by Lisa Aurello
mystery
unlimited
thriller
crime
The Shepherd's Calculus
C.S. Farrelly - 2017
But when his routine research reveals disturbing ties to cases of abuse and clues to a shadowy deal that trades justice for power, everything he believed about his friend is called into question. With the US presidential election looming, incumbent Arthur Wyncott is quickly losing ground among religious voters. Meanwhile, Owen Feeney, head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, is facing nearly a billion dollars in payments to victims of sex abuse. When Feeney hits on a solution to both men’s problems, it seems the stars have aligned. That is until Ally Larkin—Wyncott’s brilliant campaign aide—starts to piece together the shocking details. As the election draws closer and the stakes get higher, each choice becomes a calculation: Your faith, or your church? Your principles, or your candidate? The person you most respect, or the truth that could destroy their legacy? When the line between right and wrong is blurred, how do you act, and whom do you save?
The Other Family
Wendy Corsi Staub - 2022
Here, a family making a fresh start moves into a house which was the site of an unsolved triple homicide--and are watched by an unknown person...The watcher sees who you are...and knows what you did. It's the perfect home for the perfect family: pretty Nora Howell, her handsome husband, their two teenage daughters, and lovable dog. As California transplants making a fresh start in Brooklyn, they expected to live in a shoebox, but the brownstone has a huge kitchen, lots of light, and a backyard. The catch: its previous residents were victims of a grisly triple homicide that remains unsolved.Soon, peculiar things begin happening. The pug is nosing around like a bloodhound. Nora unearths a long-hidden rusty box in the flowerbed. Oldest daughter Stacey, obsessed with the family murdered in their house, pokes into the bloody past and becomes convinced that a stranger is watching the house. Watching them.She's right. But one of the Howells will recognize his face. Because one of them has a secret that will blindside the others with a truth that lies shockingly close to home--and to this one's terrifying history.
Her Greatest Mistake
Sarah Simpson - 2018
which has become the perfect lie. Gone is the charming, attentive Gregg - instead Eve wakes up each morning beside a manipulative and sinister man who controls his wife's every move. So Eve flees her immaculate marital home to keep herself, and young son Jack safe. Yet no matter how careful she has been, she knows Gregg will be relentless in his pursuit of his missing family. And that one day, when she's least expecting it, he will find them... What was Eve's greatest mistake? Marrying Gregg? Leaving him? Or leaving him alive...?
When an Angel Whispers
Tess Thompson - 2015
Macy Adams, a beautiful law student, is abducted and assaulted by a vicious serial killer known as the Bayou Butcher. She escapes with the help of a guardian angel and Houston Police Detective Chance O’Brien. After fleeing her captor, she begins to build a new life, but is plunged back into his murderous grasp by circumstances beyond her control. More women are murdered, and only Macy can help the FBI catch the Butcher before he kills again. What they don’t know is that this time he is out for revenge and is pulling Macy into his carefully planned trap.
The Girl Who Disappeared Twice
Andrea Kane - 2004
Struggling to escape her kidnapper.Despite all her years determining the fates of families, veteran family court judge Hope Willis couldn't save her own. Now she's frantically grasping at any hope for Krissy's rescue. Her husband dead–set against it, she calls Casey Woods and her team of renegade investigators,Forensic Instincts.A behaviorist.A techno–wizard.An intuitive.A former Navy SEAL. Unconventional operatives.All with unique talents and personal reasons for being part of Casey's group, they'll do whatever it takes.Able to accurately read people after the briefest of encounters, Casey leads her crew to Krissy's home. There, she picks up the signs of a nervous spouse, a guilty conscience, a nanny that hides on her cell. She watches as secrets beg to creep into the open.Forensic Instincts will dig through each tiny clue and eliminate the clutter. But time is running out, and even working around the clock, the authorities are bound by the legal system. Not so Casey's team. For they know that the difference between Krissy coming back alive and disappearing forever could be as small as a suspect's rapid breathing, or as deep as Hope's dark family history.
Looking for Leo
J.A. Baker - 2021
Lynda, a stern secondary school teacher who unwillingly gave evidence against him, recognizes her tutor as the troubled boy from all those years ago, bringing him the unwelcome attention he fears.When Sarah, a bored housewife, hears about Ashton’s return, she convinces herself he is responsible for Leo’s disappearance and reports him to the police.Terrified, the boy remains locked in a soundproof room, growing ever more scared of his unpredictable captor.But just who took Leo and why?And will he be found before it’s too late?
Lie Still
Julia Heaberlin - 2013
Pregnant with her first child, Emily just wants to start over. But as she is drawn into a nest of secretive Texas women—and into the unnerving company of their queen, Caroline Warwick—Emily finds that acceptance is a very dangerous game. It isn’t long before Caroline mysteriously disappears and Emily is facing a rash of anonymous threats. Are they linked to the missing Caroline? Or to Emily’s terrifying encounter in college, years earlier? As the dark truth about Caroline emerges, Emily realizes that some secrets are impossible to hide—and that whoever came for Caroline is now coming for her.
The Good Liar
Catherine McKenzie - 2018
She was supposed to be in the building that day. Instead, she stood on the street and witnessed it going down, with her husband and best friend inside. Kate, now living thousands of miles away, fled the disaster and is hoping that her past won’t catch up with her. And Franny, a young woman in search of her birth mother, watched the horror unfold on the morning news, knowing that the woman she was so desperate to reconnect with was in the building.Now, despite the marks left by the tragedy, they all seem safe. But as its anniversary dominates the media, the memories of that terrifying morning become dangerous triggers. All these women are guarding important secrets. Just how far will they go to keep them?
Disturbed
Jennifer Jaynes - 2017
She was found hiding in her apartment’s bathtub, barely clinging to life.With only fragments of shattered memory, she’s been trying her best to move past the nightmares ever since. Now in Boston, she lives a somewhat reclusive life, working from home as a medical transcriptionist and bingeing on mindless television shows.She can’t shake the fear that her attacker is out there, waiting to finish what he started, and Elizabeth, a nurse she met after the murders, is the only person she can trust.When someone from her past reemerges, Chelsea starts receiving disturbing messages and worries that her every move is being watched. As the messages mount and her memories begin to return, she’s led to a very terrifying and lonely place. But she needn’t be afraid. She won’t be alone there for long.
Keep Her Safe
K.A. Tucker - 2018
But all that changes the night she reveals a skeleton that's been rattling in her closet for years, and succumbs to the guilt of destroying an innocent family's life. Reeling with grief, Noah is forced to carry the burden of this shocking secret.Gracie Richards wasn't born in a trailer park, but after fourteen years of learning how to survive in The Hollow, it's all she knows anymore. At least here people don't care that her dad was a corrupt Austin cop, murdered in a drug deal gone wrong. Here, she and her mother are just another family struggling to survive...until a man who clearly doesn't belong shows up on her doorstep.Despite their differences, Noah and Gracie are searching for answers to the same questions, and together, they set out to uncover the truth about the Austin Police Department's dark and messy past. But the scandal that emerges is bigger than they bargained for, and goes far higher up than they ever imagined.Complex, gritty, and thrilling, Keep Her Safe solidifies K.A. Tucker's reputation as one of today's most talented new voices in suspense.
The Woman in the Dark
Vanessa Savage - 2019
But after her mother's death, Sarah spirals into depression and overdoses on sleeping pills. While Sarah claims it was an accident, her teenage children aren't so sure. Patrick decides they all need a fresh start and he knows just the place, since the idyllic family home where he was raised has recently come up for sale. There's only one catch: for the past fifteen years, it has become infamous as the "Murder House", standing empty after a family was stabbed to death within its walls.Patrick believes they can bring the house back to its former glory, so Sarah, uprooted from everything she knows, pours her energy into painting, gardening, and giving the rotting old structure the warmth of home. But with locals hinting that the house is haunted, the news that the murderer has been paroled, strange writing on the walls, and creepy "gifts" arriving on the doorstep at odd hours, Sarah can't shake the feeling that something just isn't right. Not with the house, not with the town, or even with her own, loving husband--whose stories about his perfect childhood suddenly aren't adding up. Can Sarah uncover the secrets of the Murder House before another family is destroyed?
Scavenger Hunt
Charles Welch - 2021
She is to solve the clue in the envelope to find the next clue. Each clue will lead to another until she finds her husband and her anniversary surprise. Excited to celebrate their day, she solves the first riddle and finds the next clue. As one clue leads to another, the tasks become harder and the clues hint at a more devious plan. A terrible reality dawns on her as she realizes she must complete the game to its end to save her marriage and possibly her life. Rachel’s adventure is not the celebration she imagined, and the creator of the game has a different prize in mind. At the end of the game, he waits for her to complete his revenge. But who created the game? Why does he seek revenge? And who will be waiting for her at the end of her Scavenger Hunt?
The Night Shift
Alex Finlay - 2022
Y2K is expected to end in chaos: planes falling from the sky, elevators plunging to earth, world markets collapsing. A digital apocalypse. None of that happens. But at a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one survives. Police quickly identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again.Fifteen years later, in the same town, four teenage employees working late at an ice cream store are attacked, and again only one makes it out alive. Both surviving victims recall the killer speaking only a few final words... “Goodnight, pretty girl.”In the aftermath, three lives intersect: the survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who’s forced to relive her tragedy; the brother of the original suspect, who’s convinced the police have it wrong; and the FBI agent, who’s determined to solve both cases. On a collision course toward the truth, all three lives will forever be changed, and not everyone will make it out alive.Twisty, poignant, and redemptive, The Night Shift is a story about the legacy of trauma and how the broken can come out on the other side, and it solidifies Alex Finlay as one of the new leading voices in the world of thrillers.
The Woman
David Bishop - 2011
This is a story of just one woman. As the story unfolds Linda gradually learns that some people do deserve to die, but that she is not one of those people. Linda Darby is a seven-year divorcee, living quietly in a small let-the-world-go-by beach town on the coast of Oregon, who day trades for a living. Her only close friend is a widowed elderly woman who manages a small consulting company, which, as is later discovered, never has visitors, sends and receives its business correspondence only by courier, and is not listed in any phone directory. No one in town knows what kind of consulting the company does, but the rumor is that whatever they do is done for the government. Linda doesn’t date local men. When her celibacy grows intolerable, she visits nearby towns to frequent the watering holes of successful men. Her motto: No relationships. No second dates. No use of her real name during one-night stands. Then one evening, Linda goes for a walk and nothing for her is ever the same. She is dragged into an alley by two men, but saved by a third, a stranger who disappears as suddenly as he appeared. The next day she finds out the two men in the alley had been killed, the town’s first murders ever. The following day she learns that hours before she had been dragged into the alley, her close friend was tortured and killed.
For Fallon
Soraya Naomi - 2014
Fallon’s mask is real, what you see is what you get. Growing up with two loving parents in Chicago, graduating in Chicago, and now working a job she loves, she enjoys her life. Her untarnished world is shaken when Luca crosses her path. Luca’s mask is tightly controlled. Distrust, rivalry, and violence rule his life.When confronted with insecurities, when the one you love wears his mask perfectly, when your life unravels and you don’t know why, do you keep trusting the person you love? Everyone has a façade. Everyone has an ulterior motive.A contemporary romance/ romantic thriller in dual point of view. Contains sexual content and violence.