Book picks similar to
Vanished by Karen Lewis
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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.
More Short Fuses (Four Free Short Stories)
Stephen Leather - 2014
The short stories are: Rules of Engagement (where Spider Shepherd has to help a friend who is in serious trouble with the police), The Constituency Meeting (where a group of old folks decide to commit a murder), Ghost Kids (where a holidaymaker takes more home from Thailand than he expected) and Massage Therapy (where the massage skills of a Thai masseuse change a man's life forever). There are also tasters of five of his bestselling novels, including Hard Landing, The Stretch and The Tunnel Rats. Stephen Leather is one of the UK’s most successful thriller writers, an eBook and Sunday Times bestseller and author of the critically acclaimed Dan “Spider’ Shepherd series and the Jack Nightingale supernatural detective novels. Before becoming a novelist he was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mirror, the Glasgow Herald, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He is one of the country’s most successful eBook authors and his eBooks have topped the Amazon Kindle charts in the UK and the US. In 2011 alone he sold more than 500,000 eBooks and was voted by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the UK publishing world. Born in Manchester, he began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series and two of his books, The Stretch and The Bombmaker, were filmed for TV. You can find out more from his website www.stephenleather.com and you can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenleather
Night Game
Carol Davis Luce - 1996
The exclusive King’s Club resort casino is a glittering playground for gamblers with everything to gain…and the hunting ground for a shadowy killer with nothing to lose. So far, the odds are in his favor. Until casino owner Jay King places his bets on a beautiful private invesigator. . .Kasey Atwood is an expert at undercover surveillance, and no stranger to this dazzling world of high stakes and low morals. Her attraction to the sensual, enigmatic King is immediate–and incendiary. As their love affair heats up, she becomes a pawn in a dangerously seductive game of passion and revenge. Then more innocent blood is shed, and Kasey knows she can’t afford to make one false move. At risk is nothing less than her heart–and her life. . .
Like Souls Series (Books 1-4): Blood of Like Souls, Tears of Like Souls, Promises of Like Souls, Secrets of Like Souls
Val Conrad - 2017
Blood of Like Souls Julie Madigan's career with the New Mexico State Police ended in the puddle of blood on the floor when she survived having her throat cut. But a year of recovery left her desperate to hide the scars and to escape her past. She moved to Michigan, away from friends and coworkers who knew her secrets. Now a Medical Examiner Investigator, Julie Madigan plays by the rules, but the rules change when a killer sends her clues and evidence about two victims, taunting her with his unusual methods of murder, pulling her into his twisted game, targeting those she cares about. His goal - to prove Julie will kill like he does. While trying to identify him, Julie discovers the monster has been closer to her than she imagined, leaving her in a race to save the victims he's selected, forcing her to choose who lives and who dies. Tears of Like Souls Medical Examiner Investigator Julie Madigan might have survived her half-brother's brutal crime spree, but the emotional wounds left by Anthony Bock's evil run deep. She begins a walk down the path to healing with the one man who's always loved her - Zach Samualson, who works for the Drug Enforcement Agency. They begin to establish a new life together in Washington - until he reveals a secret of his own. Julie's torn between trusting him and running from her inner demons and the one question that's haunted her since she was sixteen -did Bock make her kill her father? Promises of Like Souls After a small wedding to Zach in Albuquerque, Julie Madigan, now Julie Samualson, goes back to Michigan to pack and say goodbye to her friends and coworkers before moving to the log cabin Zach had built for them prior to Julie's yes to marriage. But her arrival in paradise was without her groom, who had stayed behind in New Mexico to finish an assignment with his DEA unit while awaiting a transfer. Zach, however, faces a startling surprise that will change both their lives completely - that he is the father of a teenage daughter, whose mother was kidnapped by one of Zach's ex-partners who had turned against the agency and his partners. By a man with a single goal - to destroy Zach and all he holds precious. Secrets of Like Souls On her way down the stairs, Julie Samualson falls and injures her ankle, disrupting more than her family. She limps on to a Portland hospital to begin an investigation into the burns suffered by the sister of one of the sheriff's dispatchers - burns that don't appear to have been sustained in a fall. Then the wife of a fellow deputy goes missing, and the van found near the Columbia River. On crutches, Julie can only help process evidence. Meanwhile, Amber, her stepdaughter, asks if they can continue searching for clues about the bag they found on a trail ride - the contents include an old library card and piece of tattooed human skin made into leather. But when the three different cases begin to connect and threats get closer to her loved ones, Julie's world begins to unravel.
Judgment Call
J.C. Ryan - 2016
After ten years inside he had abandoned all hope and resigned himself to the fact that he would remain there for the rest of his life. But the fact that Andy has admitted defeat and thrown in the towel didn’t mean his wife, Jamie, did. Disillusioned and worn out by the justice system, the Honorable Judge Regan St Clair was just about to pack in too when a letter from Jamie Gibbons arrived on her desk… Before long Regan St Clair and Jake Westley, a former Special Forces operator, stumble into a quagmire world of deceit and menace. A world where nothing is as it seems, and no one and nothing can be trusted. Is Andy Gibbons really innocent? Can he be exonerated? At what price? ~~~ JUDGMENT CALL is a full-length novel, a crime suspense-thriller about a corrupt organization with a sinister agenda that exploits every weakness and every dark corner of the fallible justice system. This fast-paced legal thriller is the first book in J C Ryan’s Exonerated Series.
Nerve Damage
J.L. Myers - 2017
The sole survivor. And the dark hooded stranger that wants her dead.When a terrible accident—not accident—stole my parents’ lives, my whole perfect life changed. My memories are hazy, and there are scars on my wrists. I’ve been locked away for my own protection…until I prove my sanity, until I lie. There was no hooded figure on the road that day, no one standing over me as I lay paralyzed watching my parents burn.I am Cassidy Lockheart…20-year-old orphan.Determined to free my caged mind, I find myself far away on an unexpected trip to help return my forgotten past. The snow was part of my life before, but now it’s like a blank slate, until an avalanche changes everything. But I’m not alone. These other ‘lucky’ trip winners may not be the strangers they pretend to be. And my hooded attacker…I see him everywhere.Is this real? Or delusion caused by head trauma?Either way, I’m being watched. I can sense it. I can feel it. Someone is after me; maybe they’re after us all. The avalanche was no accident. It was staged to deliver us to this abandoned place. A place where the walls whisper dark secrets of a sinister past…a past no one can escape. Trapped, this snow won’t let up…it won’t let us leave. My lost memories hold clues, but they’re buried so deep, polluted and twisted in my every waking nightmare. What is real? I don’t have the answers. But I need them. Time is ticking and if I don’t figure this all out soon it will be too late.The past is coming for us all…and it wants blood.Warning - This book contains some graphic scenes that are only for an adult audience.Psychological Thriller / Horror
When The Tik-Tik Sings
Doug Lamoreux - 2015
More victims follow, each killed under the oddest circumstances, each bearing an identical but unidentified wound, each attack accompanied by the most eerie, musical ticking. When the lead homicide investigator goes missing, Police Sergeant Erin Vanderjagt is forced into the fray and into a personal hell she never imagined.Who or what could be behind the bizarre deaths, and why is Erin's boyfriend suddenly acting crazy? Why has her idyllic world suddenly fallen apart? And – as the murders continue – what can Erin do, where can she go, how can she fight the horror... When the Tik-Tik Sings?
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.
Flight For Control
Karlene Petitt - 2012
But her husband, Captain Bill Jacobs, has his concerns. While her twin daughters are off at camp, and Bill is actively campaigning for the Pilot Union Presidency, Kathryn secretly begins her investigation. What she learns will shock the nation. Flight For Control is a thriller that reads like a mystery. But to Kathryn, there is no mystery on the condition of the airline industry—it’s broken. Planes are crashing. Pensions are lost. Pilots are financially and emotionally bankrupt due to fatigue, furloughs, and loss of seniority. It’s time that someone takes control before it’s too late—unless it already is. Your life is in your pilot’s hands. Do you know who’s flying your plane?
The Silence of the Stones
Rebecca Bryn - 2014
Twists and turns will keep you guessing to the end. Alana is a struggling artist and sculptor, scarred by her parents' relationship and a lost love but determined to grab life by the throat, whatever the cost. Opportunity beckons when she is left a cottage in a West Wales’ village by an aunt she didn’t know existed, but strange runes painted on her door and carved onto ancient stones in a stone circle, hint at a dark undercurrent of tragedy and intrigue and she is caught up in the village’s conspiracy of silence over a thirty-year-old crime. An eccentric old woman, a young female investigative journalist, a two-year-old girl, a good-looking male busker and an ex-lover make unlikely bedfellows but combine to send Alana on a voyage of self-discovery that changes her world forever.
Lost Girls
Celina Grace - 2012
She was never seen again.In the present day, Maudie is struggling to come to terms with the death of her wealthy father, her increasingly fragile mental health and a marriage that’s under strain. Slowly, she becomes aware that there is someone following her: a blonde woman in a long black coat with an intense gaze. As the woman begins to infiltrate her life, Maudie realises no one else appears to be able to see her. Is Maudie losing her mind? Is the woman a figment of her imagination or does she actually exist? Have the sins of the past caught up with Maudie’s present... or is there something even more sinister going on?Lost Girls is the new novel from the author of The House on Fever Street: a dark and convoluted tale which proves that nothing can be taken for granted and no-one is as they seem
Missing Girls: In Truth Is Justice
Larry Crane - 2015
After a stranger abducts Marcella and Gavin’s young daughter, Hannah, on her way to school, the couple struggles not only with the horror of her loss, but also with their utter helplessness. They hire a private detective and try to get on with their lives—moving halfway across the country to New Jersey in search of a new start. Once in New Jersey, however, Marcella becomes obsessed with the infamous Edgar Smith, accused of murdering a young girl—and with finding out the truth about his involvement in the crime. As Marcella’s investigation takes her deeper into the heart of the mystery, new information about Hannah’s disappearance comes to light and calls into question Marcella and Gavin’s ability to face the truth about themselves, their marriage, and their daughter’s disappearance. Missing Girls is a blisteringly smart novel that weaves together mystery, thriller, true crime, and alternate history into a fast-paced psychological drama.
Clouds Gathering
David Beers - 2016
His corner office looks out on Dallas’s beautiful skyline. His amazing wife and children love him. His father and sister adore him. John has it all. Except every few years, when Harry shows back up. Harry wants John to kill people. Harry wants to watch the world burn. Murderous thoughts take hold of John, and as flames ignite across his life, the sky doesn’t send cool rain water, but blood to feed their hunger. If you love taut, psychological thrillers, grab Red Rain today and prepare to sleep with the lights on!