Book picks similar to
Jacked Up! by J.A. Konrath


jack-daniels
humour
dont-have
novellas

Bone Music


Christopher Rice - 2018
    If only the nightmare had ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her tabloid-ready story for fame and profit—until Charlotte finally broke free from her ghoulish past and fled. Just when she thinks she has buried her personal hell forever, Charlotte is swept into a frightening new ordeal. Secretly dosed with an experimental drug, she’s endowed with a shocking new power—but pursued by a treacherous corporation desperate to control her.Except from now on, if anybody is going to control Charlotte, it’s going to be Charlotte herself. She’s determined to use the extraordinary ability she now possesses to fight the kind of evil that shattered her life—by drawing a serial killer out from the shadows to face the righteous fury of a victim turned avenger.

Justice for Some


Kate Wilhelm - 1993
    She leaves for her father's California home to think about it, and reunite with her moody son and pregnant daughter. Then her father dies suddenly. A private detective is killed. And one of her own children is a murder suspect. Suddenly, everything she holds dear is at stake. She's desperatetly trapped between her unrelenting love for her familiy and her staunch loyalty to the law. Whose justice should she serve?

Last Act of All


Aline Templeton - 1996
     Inevitably, its inhabitants greet the intrusion of television soap star Neville Fielding and his wife Helena with deep suspicion. But no one anticipates the storm that will cause havoc in this small, rural community. Driven by Neville's brutal philandering, Helena divorces him and remarries into one of Radnesfield’s oldest families. When Neville is murdered she is caught out in a string of lies and confesses to the killing. But Detective Sergeant Frances Howarth is haunted by a nagging fear for Helena's own safety. With her release from prison the storm breaks, and Radnesfield’s diseased heart is shockingly exposed… And 'The Last Act of All' is more shocking than anyone could have imagined. 'The Last Act of All' is a compelling crime thriller that will keep readers hooked from the first page to the last. Praise for Aline Templeton: `Templeton's a considerable writer, both intelligent and intuitive' Literary Review 'Atmospheric eeriness . . . [and a] much-too-real feel' Oxford Times 'A creepy combination of detective and gothic' Sunday Post, Dundee 'A tense and atmospheric thriller, which builds up to a crescendo of superb suspense . . . An engrossing tale of tragedy' Bolton Evening News Aline Templeton lives in Edinburgh with her husband, in a house with a balcony built by an astronomer to observe the stars over the beautiful city skyline. She has worked in education and broadcasting and has written numerous articles and stories for newspapers and magazines. Her books include ‘Shades of Death’, ‘Night and Silence’ and ‘Past Praying For’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent publisher of digital books.

Robbers


Christopher Cook - 2000
    Now, with a pack of cigarettes, a stolen Caddy, and no plan, the two must think fast-and move faster, in this novel with "a lyric voice that sings itself raw."(New York Times Book Review) "My kind of book." (James Ellroy) "Cook's plot tumbles from scene to scene with jarring brilliance, the pathos of his characters lending his otherwise brutal world a certain beauty." (Publishers Weekly) "Elmore Leonard's laconic flair with the dumb and dangerous [and] James Lee Burke's lyric feel for the dark hearts in a New South-Robbers ranges wild and wide, deep through the heart of Texas." (Michael Malone, author of Time's Witness) "Cook clearly has the suspense-building gene...The nerve-jangling plot tick-tick-ticks toward its explosive end." (Texas Monthly) "High-octane...Cook takes the noir chase novel on some remarkable detours." (Booklist, starred review) "This is a terrific book. I haven't enjoyed a novel this much in years." (James Crumley, author of The Last Good Kiss)

The Death Factory


Greg Iles - 2014
    A long short story featuring Penn and Tom Cage that fills in a critical period in their past, one that helps to set up the action in the coming trilogy, Natchez Burning, The Bone Tree and Unwritten Laws.

Fresh Meat: Pray you aren't served up next (Book 1 of the Serial Killer Death Match Series)


Carolyn McCray - 2013
    The gore level is a cross between Saw and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Much of Fresh Meat is set in a dungeon filled with vicious serial killers. It isn't a matter of when blood will spill, it is how much.Praise for McCray's Horror/Suspense Thrillers..."Wickedly macabre and blisteringly paced, PLAIN JANE marks the debut of a thriller for the new millennium. Brash, funny, terrifying, and shocking, here is a story best enjoyed with all the lights on. Don't say I didn't warn you!"James RollinsNYT Best SellerBloodline"Oh, unless you have a strong stomach, you probably will not want to eatanything while reading this book. It is very, very graphic and will mostlikely give me nightmares. Supper is about a group of college kids whogo out on a fact-finding vacation during spring break. They find morethan they're looking for when they run out of gas on a dark deserted,creepy part of nowhere. Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacrecomes to mind. But things aren't always what they seem. Get's ya in themood for a ghoulish Halloween. Baaahaaaahaaaha!"RileybugAmazon ReviewerOverview:What do you get when you put 8 serial killers in a dungeon together, besides mayhem? Now add in some very feminine fresh meat and see what happens! Meanwhile on the outside a just off mental illness leave detective is desperately searching for a shy, missing woman. Will he find her before she is just another statistic?More praise for McCray's Horror/Supsense Thrillers..."I am an avid reader always looking for something original and fresh.Well, Carolyn Mcray is it!! By accident I came across this author, shemay have been recommened to me by Amazon itself. This summer she was mygo to author could not get enough of her books, or short stories!!!With this short story you have the Texas Chain Massacre family meets the2012 Cannabalistic Tullocks Farm. That's when itbecomes twisted!!! This is all I will say. Some of the reviews I've beenreading lately are telling me the whole entire story. What's thepoint??? Could not put it down....You will love it!!!!"Robin LeeAmazon Reviewer"I have been an avid reader of horror for many years and this is thefirst book I have ever read that made me sleep with the lights on!"JasonAmazon ReviewerIf you enjoy Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, satisfy your appetite with Fresh Meat!**If you were looking for McCray's #1 Police Procedural/Hard Boiled blockbuster mystery check under Plain Jane: A Patterson style thriller with a dash of Hannibal.**If you were looking for more McCray mysteries, check out Down & Dirty, McCray's crime collection.**If you were looking for more thrillers, check out Got Thrills? A McCray thriller collection. It includes all of the prequel to all of McCray's thriller series.**If you were looking for another stand alone horror/mystery check out All Hallow's Eve: The one night it is BAD to be good.

Double Play


Kelley Armstrong - 2016
    It’s as close to normal as a pair of contract killers can get. Jack knows that sometimes being very, very good at what you do can be very, very bad — for those around him. He’s gone to great lengths to keep his past from catching up with Nadia. He also knows it’s only a matter of time … Jack is halfway around the world when the trap is triggered. They’re coming for Nadia. And he has no way to warn her. Note: This is a novella, not a full-length novel.

Have You Seen Dawn?


Steven Saylor - 2003
    Menace turns to fear when layers of secrets and mistrust are peeled back to reveal a darkness deeper and more terrifying than anything the young visitor could ever have imagined. Duty and love of her wheelchair-bound grandmother compel Rue Dunwitty to travel from her new home in San Francisco back to the quiet little Texas town where she was raised.For Rue, arriving in Amethyst evokes the cozy comfort of returning to a safe haven where everyone knows her name and nothing ever seems to change. Then, in the window of the local grocery store, she sees a sign with a picture of a teenage girl and the question, "Have you seen Dawn?" Rue's bittersweet nostalgia is abruptly replaced by a growing sense of dread.Dawn is the daughter of a single mother who recently moved to town. When Rue encounters Dawn's twin brother, she is disconcerted by his precocious, brooding intensity. Also unnerving is the change that seems to have come over Rue's old friends. Have they simply grown apart, or is there something more sinister at play?Then, late at night, Rue sees a strange light in the field outside her grandmother's house, moving across the abandoned farm that once had been home to her father, from whom she is now estranged.In short order, Rue finds herself confounded by a series of disturbing discoveries -- about the husband of her best friend from high school days; about the intentions of the town's handsome deputy sheriff; about her father, who moved away fromAmethyst years ago but may have secretly returned; about her brother, who lives in Austin, but who seems to have taken a leave from both his job and his marriage; and about her boyfriend from San Francisco, who suddenly shows up in town and who seems not to be a stranger there.Atmospheric and grippingly suspenseful, "Have You Seen Dawn?" is a thrilling novel of brooding menace, devious twists, and startling surprises.

Back to Lazarus


Judy K. Walker - 2014
    He beat and choked her to death. I'm told that he was found hanging from a homemade noose in his cell. I want to know why he waited so long to do it." Sydney Brennan isn't sure how to answer her client's question, short of holding a séance, and the Tallahassee detective has some questions of her own. Why does Noel Thomas remember so little about her childhood? Why is she delving into her father's suicide now? And, most importantly, why isn't Noel telling her the truth?Sydney crisscrosses the Florida Panhandle, reconstructing the tragic Thomas family history. The violence that destroyed the Thomas family connects to a present-day web of deceit and corruption through a desperate man willing to do anything to keep his secrets safe. To discover his identity, Sydney must go Back to Lazarus, back to the town where Noel's beautiful but troubled mother began her inevitable descent over twenty years ago. But by following in the footsteps of the murdered woman, does Sydney risk sharing her fate?Rooted in bars and back roads and Panhandle prisons, forgotten towns and forgotten people, at its heart Back to Lazarus is about stories: the stories people tell us, the stories we tell ourselves, and what happens when we realize it's all a lie.

Five Complete Travis McGee Novels: A Tan and Sandy Silence/The Dreadful Lemon Sky/The Empty Copper Sea/The Green Ripper/Free Fall in Crimson


John D. MacDonald - 1985
    There were no cell phones and no computers. Entertainment was found in other forms and activities and Travis McGee lived and roamed freely on the edges of that era and made us all wish we had more adventure in our lives. I bought this volume because the Travis McGee novels qualify to me as worth keeping around and re-reading on a rainy day, a snowy day, a home sick in bed with the flu day, or just any day when you need to escape to another place and another time and be entertained by one of the best loved characters, even if from another era and one that few under 30 have heard of. I did not have the pleasure to buy the leather bound Grand Masters copy of this book. My copy is one of the book store copies. Well worth getting and reading. But all of John D. McDonalds books are. /BEST VALUE ON THIS GIFT QUALITY BOOK /FAST SHIPPING/OUTSTANDING CUSTOMER SERVICE/

Open Your Heart (Matt Bolster, #2)


Neal Pollack - 2013
    With attendance now hitting the double digits, nothing can stop the Bolster express.When Bolster gets invited to teach at The Gathering, a prestigious yoga retreat run by the renowned Tom Hart, it seems like things can’t get any better. Bolster is a little dubious about the cultish atmosphere, but, as they say in L.A., it’s an honor just to be nominated. What starts off as a relaxing, decadent retreat quickly spirals into deadly chaos that forces Bolster to use all his yoga-detective powers, and also his fists.Open Your Heart, like Neal Pollack's first Matt Bolster book, Downward-Facing Death, is a biting satire of trendy, sexually-driven yoga culture, where ancient principles of loving enlightenment clash with the darkest corners of human nature. The latest in the Matt Bolster Yoga Mystery series will thrill readers, whether they read it while in Crow Pose or on the couch.

Promissory Payback


Laurel Dewey - 2011
    She’s rock hard, but capable of extraordinary tenderness. She’s a brilliant cop, but she’s capable of making life-altering mistakes. She’s uncannily talented, and she’s heartbreakingly human.In this novelette, Jane is called in to investigate the gruesome murder of a woman who profited greatly from the misfortunes of others. The case leaves Jane with little question about motive...and with a seemingly endless number of suspects.

The Blue Girl


Alex Grecian - 2013
    October 1889: Constable Colin Pringle is a man of few illusions, but there is something about the girl in the canal, her skin a delicate shade of blue, that bothers him more than he expected it would. Perhaps it’s because Dr. Kingsley’s forensic examination suggests that she was a just-married bride. Someone needs to find out just who she was and what happened to her, Pringle decides, and he sets out to do exactly that. But the answers will not be anything like what he expects. In fact, they will shake his view of the world to the core.

Keller on the Spot


Lawrence Block - 2013
    Keller on the Spot is one of ten stories that are collected as the episodic novel, Hit Man.

The Flight of the Scarlet Tanager


C.L. Bevill - 2010
    The entire event is caught on videotape by a tourist and is heavily publicized. When Teddy wakes up in a hospital, she has no idea that she has just inadvertently put herself back into a very precarious limelight. Realizing her dilemma, Teddy escapes the hospital. Only a few steps behind her are the dangerous individuals who work for a man who frantically wants her dead and buried, her own uncle. Not only does she escape but she witnesses the murder of a security guard and kidnaps a young man named Fitch, who happens to be driving by the hospital at the wrong time. A seventeen year old runaway, Teddy is now fleeing for her life, and Fitch, the son of an Army general and far more intelligent than Teddy would have liked, is caught up in the treacherous situation. Once nicknamed after a bird, a scarlet tanager, by her father, Teddy, has secrets that could burst a dam, and Fitch is a young man who doesn’t know how to back down from a challenge.