The Passing Storm


Christine Nolfi - 2021
    With her father, Connor, she tends to their Ohio farm, a forty-acre spread that itself has enjoyed better days. As memories sweep through her, some too precious to bear, Rae gives shelter from a brutal winter to a teenager named Quinn Galecki.Quinn has been thrown out by his parents, a couple too troubled to help steer the misunderstood boy through his own losses. Now Quinn has found a temporary home with the Langdons—and an unexpected kinship, because Rae, Quinn, and Connor share a past and understand one another’s pain. But its depths—and all its revelations and secrets—have yet to come to light. To finally move forward, Rae must confront them and also fight for Quinn, whose parents have other plans in mind for their son.With forgiveness, love, and the spring thaw, there might be hope for a new season—a second chance Rae believed in her heart was gone forever.

Lockdown


Peter May - 2020
    'They said that twenty-five percent of the population would catch the flu. Between seventy and eighty percent of them would die. He had been directly exposed to it, and the odds weren't good.' A CITY IN QUARANTINE London, the epicenter of a global pandemic, is a city in lockdown. Violence and civil disorder simmer. Martial law has been imposed. No-one is safe from the deadly virus that has already claimed thousands of victims. Health and emergency services are overwhelmed. A MURDERED CHILD At a building site for a temporary hospital, construction workers find a bag containing the rendered bones of a murdered child. A remorseless killer has been unleashed on the city; his mission is to take all measures necessary to prevent the bones from being identified. A POWERFUL CONSPIRACY D.I. Jack MacNeil, counting down the hours on his final day with the Met, is sent to investigate. His career is in ruins, his marriage over and his own family touched by the virus. Sinister forces are tracking his every move, prepared to kill again to conceal the truth. Which will stop him first - the virus or the killers?

Ms. Never


Colin Dodds - 2019
    Never – a new science-fiction novel by Colin Dodds – takes on (and possibly answers) in startling fashion. THE STORY Farya Navurian seems like an ordinary young woman trying to get ahead in the city while struggling with depression. But her depression is anything but ordinary - it has the power to destroy time and space. Growing up the moody daughter of a space-faring hero of The Greater Anointed Imperial Ohioan Commonwealth, Farya annihilated most of that world and its history, leaving behind the husk-like Buckeye State. One day at a record swap, she meets Bryan, a divorced telecom CEO. More than record collecting, what they share is that they each carry a howling secret. Bryan’s business is a cover for a bigger operation that buys human souls and sells luxury afterlives using shady terms of service in mobile-phone contracts. The two of them fall in love, and as they start a life together, their secrets back them into a corner where they have to come clean - and take drastic steps - to save themselves, and possibly reality itself. Ms. Never is a distinctly 21st-century vision of consent, memory, and the ways we create and destroy the world every day. REVIEWS! “(A) transfixing, fantastic narrative… The author executes the story with exacting, direct prose and characters who live and breathe in the mind… an exceptional work. Existential dread takes on new meaning in a fantastical tale…” – Kirkus Reviews “Ms. Never is a big-picture novel, which encompasses the nature of reality, the universe, and life after death… a crazy world, but even the craziest parts of it have a ring of truth to them… Dodds’ prose is exquisite… Farya’s battle is the battle we all face: to impose a meaning on a world we only partially understand by fighting to retain what is worthwhile and battling against those people and events that cheapen everything around us… Ms. Never is a soaring novel, an imaginative, creative triumph and one that has some power to change the reader” – Lost Coast Review “Smart and mysterious… With themes uniquely developed and a musicality to the prose… this is a great story with a powerful theme and just about enough mystery to keep you asking questions. It introduces a really unique concept on understanding depression and its impact… this one is sure to satisfy” – Independent Book Review “MS. NEVER is a vast, multifaceted undertaking… adjectives like ‘riveting, complex, detailed, skillfully crafted’ come immediately to mind… delves into comparisons between worlds imagined and worlds that were… manipulating spiritual infrastructures, making a fast buck from knock-off universes… chock full of intriguing ideas” – IndieReader Reviews

We Are All the Same in the Dark


Julia Heaberlin - 2020
    Psychologically absorbing, original and atmospheric. I could not turn the pages fast enough."--Elin Hilderbrand, #1 New York Times bestselling author of 28 SummersIt's been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her pretty face still hangs like a watchful queen on the posters on the walls of the town's Baptist church, the police station, and in the high school. They all promise the same thing: We will find you. Meanwhile, her brother, Wyatt, lives as a pariah in the desolation of the old family house, cleared of wrongdoing by the police but tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and in a new documentary about the crime.When Wyatt finds a lost girl dumped in a field of dandelions, making silent wishes, he believes she is a sign. The town's youngest cop, Odette Tucker, believes she is a catalyst that will ignite a seething town still waiting for its own missing girl to come home. But Odette can't look away. She shares a wound that won't close with the mute, one-eyed mystery girl. And she is haunted by her own history with the missing Tru.Desperate to solve both cases, Odette fights to save the lost girl in the present and to dig up the shocking truth about a fateful night in the past--the night her friend disappeared, the night that inspired her to become a cop, the night that wrote them all a role in the town's dark, violent mythology.In this twisty psychological thriller, Julia Heaberlin paints unforgettable portraits of a woman and a girl who redefine perceptions of physical beauty and strength.Praise for We Are All the Same in the Dark"[Julia] Heaberlin knows how to build to a truly shocking twist, how to break a reader's heart and then begin mending it. 'What's coming is always unimaginable, ' Odette's one-time therapist tells her, 'and by that, I mean just that. It cannot be imagined. What's coming never acts or behaves the way we think it will.' That's true for this novel, too."--Dallas Morning News

The Rescue


Steven Konkoly - 2019
    Hired by an influential US senator to liberate his daughter from a human-trafficking ring, Decker never anticipated sabotage or that the assault could go so disastrously wrong. The hostage is dead. His team is wiped out, and so are their families, including Decker’s own wife and son—eliminated one by one by the Russian mafia. And he’s survived to take the fall.When he’s inexplicably freed soon into a ten-year sentence in federal prison, Decker suspects another setup. And private investigator Harlow Mackenzie knows he’s right. She has evidence that a power greater than the Russian mob was behind the raid that ruined Decker’s life.The next move in a nationwide cat-and-mouse game of high-level sedition is up to them. Fueled by revenge and an obsession to clear his name, Decker has only one mission: to destroy a growing conspiracy before it’s too late.

Playing Nice


J.P. Delaney - 2020
    . . .Pete Riley answers the door one morning and lets in a parent's worst nightmare. On his doorstep is Miles Lambert, a stranger who breaks the devastating news that Pete's son, Theo, isn't actually his son--he is the Lamberts', switched at birth by an understaffed hospital while their real son was sent home with Miles and his wife, Lucy. For Pete, his partner Maddie, and the little boy they've been raising for the past two years, life will never be the same again.The two families, reeling from the shock, take comfort in shared good intentions, eagerly entwining their very different lives in the hope of becoming one unconventional modern family. But a plan to sue the hospital triggers an official investigation that unearths some disturbing questions about the night their children were switched. How much can they trust the other parents--or even each other? What secrets are hidden behind the Lamberts' glossy front door? Stretched to the breaking point, Pete and Maddie discover they will each stop at nothing to keep their family safe.They are done playing nice.

The List


J.A. Konrath - 2009
    One of them is a homicide cop who's determined to find out. All of them are marked for death--because they're next on . . .THE LISTThe explosive new thriller from bestselling author J.A. Konrath, THE LIST takes you deep inside a top-secret techno-conspiracy that's too shocking to comprehend, too insidious to detect, and far too powerful to stop . . .

Close to Home


Nolon King - 2019
    Lately he’s been having the sense that the only thing keeping him from that path is his wife, Selena, who understands the mind of serial killers rather better than the general public. So when a rash of murders disturbs the sleepy town of Almond Park, California, and Selena is asked to help with the investigation, Adam is not sure he won’t be found out. If he is, he’ll lose everything that truly matters to him. Close to Home is Nolon King’s new book, an intense psychological thriller. Pick up your copy today!

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.

Cold Moon Over Babylon


Michael McDowell - 1980
    Her killer is rich and powerful, beyond the grasp of earthly law.Now, in the murky depths of the local river, a shifting, almost human shape slowly takes form. Night after night it will pursue the murderer. It will watch him from the trees. And in the chill waters of the river, it will claim him in the ultimate embrace.The cold moon rises, the awful squishing sounds begin...

The Bones of Others


Vickie McKeehan - 2013
    Not this one.Brutalized as a young girl by a vile sexual predator, Skye Cree is a survivor. Guided by the visions of her mystical spirit guide to the whereabouts of abducted girls, she uses her unique abilities to turn her horrifying past into a positive force for justice. Fighting the demons that have haunted her for years, she trusts only in herself—until she falls hard for a man for the first time in her life. Now, discovering her abductor is back with a vengeance, she becomes locked in a deadly race against time to stop the horrors of an evil human-trafficking ring that threatens to tear her world, and her newfound love apart.

Mycophoria


Tom G.H. Adams - 2018
    How long it has occupied the fibrous soil of that place is uncertain, but Dr Jim Alburton estimates it is close to ten million years. Then again, this is not his sphere of expertise. He would normally consult Jane Milner, the county’s only resident fungus expert. But Jane is dead, along with her partner — victim of a rare, acute brain disease. Alburton found her on the floor of a laboratory, sticky orange fluid oozing from her ears. This was disturbing enough, however her partner’s face was mutilated beyond recognition, an apparent result of his girlfriend’s killing frenzy. Alburton comes to know of the fungus because of Jane’s notebook, which describes its discovery but gives little scientific detail or where it is located. He can’t help thinking the discovery is bound up with her sudden death and that of her partner. The police are moving too slow for Alburton’s liking and don’t accept there’s a connection between this incident and an increasing number of horrific deaths rapidly blooming in the area. A woman walking her dogs along a popular pathway is savagely attacked, a local student inexplicably kills the school nurse, a care-worker suffers a psychotic episode and attacks an elderly man in his home. The news bulletins deliver more reports by the hour. As the number of incidents mounts, Alburton becomes convinced the county is quickly becoming the epicentre of a fungal disease epidemic that could spread nationwide. He concludes the fungus must be acting on its host’s nervous system, causing them to become depraved killing machines. Yet few believe him as he has little evidence for his theory. Now he faces the responsibility of tracking down the source of the disease, persuading the authorities and somehow preventing a cascade of bloody murders. With the newly christened phenomenon known as Mycophoria accelerating in its impact, there are only days or perhaps hours to accomplish this before the disease goes pandemic.

Lie to Me


J.T. Ellison - 2017
    They seem made for each other, but the truth is ugly. Consumed by professional and personal betrayals and financial woes, the two both love and hate each other. As tensions mount, Sutton disappears, leaving behind a note saying not to look for her.Ethan finds himself the target of vicious gossip as friends, family and the media speculate on what really happened to Sutton Montclair. As the police investigate, the lies the couple have been spinning for years quickly unravel. Is Ethan a killer? Is he being set up? Did Sutton hate him enough to kill the child she never wanted and then herself? The path to the answers is full of twists that will leave the reader breathless.

A Deadly Influence


Mike Omer - 2021
    As the hostage negotiation instructor for the NYPD, she deals with worst-case scenarios every day. Nothing fazes her anymore.That all changes when she gets a call from Eden Fletcher, a fellow survivor of the infamous Wilcox cult. The two haven’t spoken since the night of a tragic, fiery massacre, when their paths diverged. But now Eden needs Abby’s help: someone has kidnapped her son and is demanding a $5 million ransom. As Abby throws herself into the case, she can’t help but wonder why the kidnapper has targeted Eden. But Eden refuses to talk. She’s silent about the relics of their shared past hanging on her walls. About the kidnapper’s possible motives. About what’s happened in the years since she and Abby parted ways.As the truth closes in, Abby realizes that her past may not be as far behind as she thought…and it’s come home to collect.

Punishment


Scott J. Holliday - 2018
    Thanks to a technologically advanced machine, detectives have access to the memories of the living, the dying, and the recently dead. But extracting victims’ experiences firsthand and personally reliving everything up to the final, brutal moments of their lives—the sights, the sounds, the scents, the pain—is also the punishment reserved for the criminals themselves.Barnes has had enough. Enough of the memories that aren’t his. Enough of the horror. Enough of the voices inside his head that were never meant to take root…until a masked serial killer known as Calavera strikes a little too close to home.Now, with Calavera on the loose, Barnes is ready to reconnect, risking his life—and his sanity. Because in the mind of this serial killer, there is one secret even Barnes has yet to see…