Book picks similar to
Hideaway by Roger Hayden


apocalyptic-distopian
freebie
genre-mystery
recording-studio

Not Famous in Hollywood


Leonie Gant - 2015
     When Trudie Eyre came to Hollywood as personal assistant for the famous and indulged, she expected to see wealth, glamour and maybe a little crazy. What she did not expect was to be wedged in a doggie door, trying to rescue America’s Sweetheart from a potentially career destroying booty call with Hollywood’s Sexiest Man Alive. Finding the dead body of Hollywood’s favorite bad boy slumped in a shower did not feature in the job description either. Blackmailed by the police for her help, Trudie must navigate the world of the famous and not so famous, while keeping her distance from her gorgeous fake undercover cop boyfriend, before she becomes the next target.

The End Came With A Kiss (Beautiful Dead)


John Michael Hileman - 2014
    But when it came, it was nothing like the movies had portrayed. We couldn't have had it more wrong. There was no gore. There was no blood or tearing of flesh. It was the most beautiful thing the world had ever seen, and that was what took us by surprise. We were not prepared to have our destruction lure us in like a harlot. You see, the end did not come with a scratch or a bite. It came with a kiss.

Only Time Will Tell


James Kipling - 2014
    Will she make the right choice? An unknown woman is murdered and detectives Pierce Carson, Chelsea Madden and a new recruit, Dean Weston, are assigned to the case. Their search for the killer leads to several dead ends and a suspected drug connection, as even more people are killed. In the process of helping to solve the first murder and those that follow, Chelsea realizes that she is walking a very thin line between personal revenge and professional responsibility. She too has suffered at the hands of a murderer, who brutally snuffed out the life of her parents, giving her a reason to join the police force. To complicate matters, she finds herself attracted to Dean. She knows little about the newcomer to Homicide, only that he’d been a successful undercover agent. Normally a loner, she finds him surprisingly easy to talk to, as she unburdens herself of her past, kept secret for years. As the case becomes more complicated and passions are stirred, questions arise about a mole in the force, and Dean is on the list of possible suspects. Chelsea is torn between trust and doubt, fear and love; her desire for vengeance and belief in the system of which she is now a part. The strands of the plot become intertwined, with unexpected twists and turns, and Chelsea finds herself caught in a life and death struggle in a most unexpected way. Only time will tell if she survives to right the wrong or decides to let it go and find a new direction for her life. Detective Chelsea Madden is the cool, calm, and collected hero of Only Time Will Tell. Putting her life on the line, she doesn’t pull any punches, searching only for the truth, and for the person who takes lives on her watch. Intelligent, resourceful, and uncompromising, Chelsea will take readers on a memorable, white-knuckled journey in this suspenseful, gripping serial killer thriller. <

The Warren


Brian Evenson - 2016
    He thought he had one—or many—but that might be the result of the failing memories of the personalities imprinted within him. Or maybe he really is called X.He’s also not as human as he believes himself to be.But when he discovers the existence of another—above ground, outside the protection of the Warren—X must learn what it means to be human, or face the destruction of their two species.

Area Zero


William Bowden
    Unfortunately, stumbling across such a something came close to getting Nathan fired. An innocent when it came to the discovery, to be sure, but it would nevertheless be fair to say that Nathan wasn’t entirely blameless in the matter, having run roughshod over all manner of military regulations. Despite the repeated screw-ups, Nathan remains an asset to the auditing firm, Mace Forensics. So, in a last ditch effort to keep him out of trouble, the firm banishes Nathan to a relic of the Cold War, a third-rate air base situated somewhere in the Nevada desert. Nathan is a forensic accountant, and he is to audit said base until every pencil, and every paperclip has been entered into the ledger. There he will be safely out of sight, and out of mind. Welcome to Area Zero, Nathan.

Murder Upstream: A Detective Mystery


Mark Hazard - 2016
     Detective Kyle Villante gets his first call after coming off a two-year undercover stint that ended in a bloodbath and marred his reputation with the brass. But he doesn’t get to work the case alone. Detective Solomon Aduwo of the State Police has arrived in Harding to assist with the investigation. Villante bristles at the perceived leash around his neck, but he and Aduwo set out to work the case, all while Villante struggles to keep secrets and ghosts of the past from coming back to haunt him. Meanwhile, Aduwo has come to Harding with secrets of his own and an agenda that could doom Villante’s future. Murder Upstream is a thrilling mystery, full of vivid characters, puzzling questions, action and suspense.

Darknet


Matthew Mather - 2015
    Thousands of miles away in Hong Kong, data scientist Jin Huang finds a list of wealthy dead people in a massive banking conspiracy. Problem is, some of the people don't stay dead. As Jin begins her investigation, she's petrified to discover her own name on the growing list of dead-but-alive...On the run, they race across continents to uncover a dark secret spreading like a cancer into the world. Why was Sean killed, and how is the list of wealthy dead connected? Are some of them really coming back to life? But all this becomes irrelevant when Jake's wife and daughter are attacked...MORE ABOUT DARKNETDarknet follows on the heels of Matthew Mather's bestseller CyberStorm, translated into sixteen languages and now in development for film by 20th Century Fox.

Selfie: Device Kids Book One


D.S. Murphy - 2019
    Death had other plans. ☤☠♥ My name is Brianna Harmond. I’m a straight C student who’s kind of good with tech. When I got involved in a fight I shouldn’t have, the teacher forced me to work with a band of misfits. David’s a geek who asked me out once. Brad is a cocky asshole who takes nothing seriously. Greg is my secret crush and the school’s basketball star. And then there’s Amy, the artist—my best friend. When the government announced a revolutionary new wellness technology, I was furious that they were too late to save my mother. Then my little sister was diagnosed with cancer, and I refused to lose her too. So we hacked the government bots and changed the code to edit DNA. Then we built an app and made millions overnight. I thought I was just helping my sister. I didn’t realize we might accidentally destroy the human race. Now, someone else is using our device to kill people, and the FBI is blaming us. And we’ve started changing, in unexpected ways. The government is afraid of us, of what we can do, of what we’re becoming. So they’ve started taking us out. Thousands at a time. City by city. Soon we’ll be the last ones left. Selfie is a near-future, apocalyptic young adult technothriller that deals with themes of bullying, body modification and advances in the health care industry that challenges what it means to be human.

Maze


Tony Bertauski - 2017
    Their consciousness thrown into the Maze—a virtual reality where anyone is anything and anywhere. Battles are fought, riddles are solved. To win a lifetime of riches one has to escape the Maze. First, they have to remember who they are.Some never do.

The Last Day


Andrew Hunter Murray - 2020
    The hunt has just begun.It is 2059, and the world has crashed. Forty years ago, a solar catastrophe began to slow the planet's rotation to a stop. Now one half of the globe is permanently sunlit, the other half trapped in an endless night. The United States has colonized the southern half of Great Britain--lucky enough to find itself in the narrow habitable region left between frozen darkness and scorching sunlight--where both nations have managed to survive the ensuing chaos by isolating themselves from the rest of the world.Ellen Hopper is a scientist living on a frostbitten rig in the cold Atlantic. She wants nothing more to do with her country after its slide into casual violence and brutal authoritarianism. Yet when two government officials arrive, demanding she return to London to see her dying college mentor, she accepts--and begins to unravel a secret that threatens not only the nation's fragile balance, but the future of the whole human race.

Extracted


R.R. Haywood - 2017
    But his good intentions turn catastrophic when an early test reveals something unexpected: the end of the world.A desperate plan is formed. Recruit three heroes, ordinary humans capable of extraordinary things, and change the future.Safa Patel is an elite police officer, on duty when Downing Street comes under terrorist attack. As armed men storm through the breach, she dispatches them all.'Mad' Harry Madden is a legend of the Second World War. Not only did he complete an impossible mission—to plant charges on a heavily defended submarine base—but he also escaped with his life.Ben Ryder is just an insurance investigator. But as a young man he witnessed a gang assaulting a woman and her child. He went to their rescue, and killed all five.Can these three heroes, extracted from their timelines at the point of death, save the world?

Dirty Barry


Mark Farrer - 2020
     Barry Sullivan is a sordid dentist who resorts to blackmail to keep his string of married women compliant. But now Cullen has toothache - and a very different interpretation of the dental code of practice. The Tartan Hiaasen strikes again with another tale which roars along - and which will have you roaring along with it. This laugh-out-loud novella is a prequel to the highly entertaining CULLEN series of full-length novels.

I Am Legend


Richard Matheson - 1954
    but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood.By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.How long can one man survive like this?

Closet Full of Bones


A.J. Aalto - 2017
    Together, the Hearth sisters quietly bury their secrets and form a formidable team during any crisis. Purchasing the old Blymhill house with the hopes of turning it into an artists’ retreat, the sisters are finally living their dream. But when Frankie’s stable ground is rattled by a vengeful ex-boyfriend, an unstable friend from the past shows up unannounced with delusions of intimacy, and a cold case cop starts sniffing around their door, the sisters are forced to wonder how far they will go to keep their secrets safe. Gillian discovers that, this time, her fight is about to land her in the crosshairs of a dangerous predator who will use any means necessary to remove her from the equation. With everything she holds dear under threat, Gillian battles to keep her head above water and her skeletons in the closet.

The Damaged One


Mimi Harper - 2014
    Born to a drug-addicted prostitute, Augustus and his siblings never had a chance. He gave them a chance. He got them out. He gave them a life. But was it all for nothing? Jackie, Augustus’ youngest sister, was the most innocent. The damaged one. She fell into the same drug abyss that swallowed their mother whole. When Augustus gets that call, the one he had secretly known would come, but the one he prayed he would never get, he has to learn the truth. He has to find the person to blame. Toby Voss was a student psychotherapist. More importantly, she was the last person to see Jackie alive. Augustus believes she is the one who has the answers he needed. It doesn’t help that she happens to be the most beautiful woman he has ever met. Or that her touch awakens something in his soul that died long ago. Augustus is determined to fulfill one last promise to Jackie. He just has to find a way to ignore the primal need to bury himself in the one woman who can fulfill his every dream or shatter his very existence.