Book picks similar to
Tainted Lives by Mandasue Heller


mandasue-heller
crime
mystery
thrillers

Trapped


Jacqui Rose - 2013
    But they didn′t know they were from rival gangland families in London′s criminal underworld. Going public with their relationship would have brought them more trouble than they could handle, so for years they concealed the truth. But their house of cards won′t be safe for much longer.Maggie′s violent father Max has always been out for the Taylors′ blood and treats his own family with barely more sympathy. There′s a long-buried reason for the vendetta that no one talks about, a secret so shocking it could tear each family - and Maggie and Johnny - apart...A gritty story of bitter feuds and unbreakable bonds, Trapped is the perfect read for fans of Mandasue Heller and Martina Cole.

Billie Jo


Kimberley Chambers - 2008
    Kimberley Chambers is a talent to match Martina Cole.From the Paperback edition.

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?

The Make


Jessie Keane - 2011
    Until the police turn up at her door one day and her world is turned upside down. She is given news that her two estranged brothers have been viciously attacked. George is in hospital on a ventilator and worringly, Harry is missing.Gracie has no option but to leave the good life and dip her toe into the murky waters of her East End past. She leaves for London in an attempt to avenge her brothers and in doing so uncovers some unsavoury secrets about the lifestyle they've been leading. Their little games have got them into big trouble with the wrong people…She must keep her wits about her and try to find Harry, or it could prove fatal…

Girl, Missing


Sophie McKenzie - 2006
    How can she find her biological parents? And are her adoptive parents really responsible for kidnapping her?

Black Friday


James Patterson - 1986
    Blue: Welcome to James Patterson's classic superthriller, Black Friday. A courageous federal agent, a powerful and resourceful woman lawyer - only they can possibly stop the unspeakable from happening. New York City is under siege by a secret militia group - and that's just the beginning of the relentless terror of Black Friday. I love to lose myself in a thriller — especially the rare one that moves along like an out-of-control freight train. The thriller that actually got me started writing was The Day of the Jackal. With Black Friday, I wanted to concoct a shamelessly manipulative story that the reader couldn't wait to finish, but didn't want to end. Now get on this freight train!--- James PattersonOriginally published in 1987 as Black Market, also by James Patterson.

Dead Run


Erica Spindler - 2002
    I've uncovered something.... They're watching...."That panicked message on her answering machine is the last time Liz Ames hears from her sister Rachel, pastor of Paradise Christian Church in Key West, Florida.Compelled to uncover the truth about her sister's disappearance, she heads to Key West. Within hours of her arrival a successful banker jumps to his death. Then a teenage girl whom Rachel was counseling is found brutally murdered. The ritualistic style of the killing is hauntingly similar to that used by the notorious "New Testament" serial killer--now on death row. Could the teen's murder be related to Rachel's disappearance? Is a copycat killer at work? And why do the police refuse to help?For answers, Liz turns to Rick Wells, a former Miami cop who worked the fringes of the "New Testament" investigation. Together they peel away layers of deception to reveal a terrifying adversary--and the unspeakable evil at the heart of this island paradise.

In the Dark


Mark Billingham - 2008
    A gun is fired into a car which swerves on to the pavement, killing the person standing at a bus stop. It seems that a chilling gang initiation has cost an innocent victim their life. But the reality is far more sinister.

Avenger


Frederick Forsyth - 2003
    But Dexter is no ordinary man.The summer before he goes to college, Ricky Colenso travels to Bosnia to volunteer as an aid worker. A few weeks later, he disappears and is never heard from again. A family grieves and is offered little hope--in the fog of that horrible time and place, the killer, too, has vanished.Or so it would seem. For in a world that has forgotten right and wrong, there are few like Cal Dexter who can settle the score. And so, years later, a worldwide chase is on and Dexter begins to draw a net around the killer. But this time CIA agent Paul Devereux must find a way to stop Dexter before his quest for vengeance throws the world into chaos.A heart-stopping novel of murder and mystery, double-cross and triple-cross, old loyalties and new hatreds, Avenger has all of Frederick Forsyth's page-turning trademarks.

Rising Sun


Michael Crichton - 1992
    In a novel set within the arena of volatile Japanese-American relations, business moguls compete for control of the international electronics industry.

One Good Deed


David Baldacci - 2019
    When war veteran Aloysius Archer is released from Carderock Prison, he is sent to Poca City on parole with a short list of do's and a much longer list of don'ts: do report regularly to his parole officer, don't go to bars, certainly don't drink alcohol, do get a job--and don't ever associate with loose women.The small town quickly proves more complicated and dangerous than Archer's years serving in the war or his time in jail. Within a single night, his search for gainful employment--and a stiff drink--leads him to a local bar, where he is hired for what seems like a simple job: to collect a debt owed to a powerful local businessman, Hank Pittleman.Soon Archer discovers that recovering the debt won't be so easy. The indebted man has a furious grudge against Hank and refuses to pay; Hank's clever mistress has her own designs on Archer; and both Hank and Archer's stern parole officer, Miss Crabtree, are keeping a sharp eye on him.When a murder takes place right under Archer's nose, police suspicions rise against the ex-convict, and Archer realizes that the crime could send him right back to prison . . . if he doesn't use every skill in his arsenal to track down the real killer.

True Evil


Greg Iles - 2006
    Chris Shepard, a busy young doctor in Natchez, Mississippi, has never seen his new patient Alex Morse before. But the attractive young woman with the scarred face has come to Dr. Shepards office on a mission to catch a killer. This New York Times bestseller is available in a tall Premium Edition.

Running from the Law


Lisa Scottoline - 1995
    And it's no coincidence that the judge is her live-in lover's father. Then the action turns deadly, and Rita finds herself at the center of a murder case. She probes deep into the murder, uncovering a secret life and suspects in shocking places. When the killer viciously ups the ante, Rita decides to end this lethal game. She lays it all on the line for the highest stakes ever—her life.

Sight Unseen


Robert Goddard - 2005
    Her seven-year-old sister Miranda was knocked down and killed by the abductor’s van. The girls were in the care of their nanny, Sally Wilkinson.One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a Ph.D student who was waiting at the village pub to keep an appointment with a man called Griffith who claimed he could help Umber with his researches into the letters of “Junius,” the pseudonymous eighteenth century polemicist who was his Ph.D subject. But Griffin failed to show up, and Umber never heard from him again. The two-year-old, Tamsin Hall, was never seen again either. The Hall family fell apart under the strain. Sally Wilkinson, the nanny, wound up living with Umber, whom she had met at the inquiry. But she never recovered from the incident, suffered increasingly from depression, and eventually committed suicide.In the spring of 2004, retired Chief Inspector George Sharp receives a letter signed “Junius” reproaching him for botching the 1981 investigation. Sharp confronts Umber, whose explanation for being at the scene of the tragedy has always seemed dubious. Obliged to accept Umber’s denial of authorship of the letter, he nonetheless forces him to join in a search for the real culprit — and hence the long-concealed truth about what happened 23 years previously. It is a quest that both will later regret having embarked upon. Too late they come to understand that some mysteries are better left unsolved.

Gravity


Tess Gerritsen - 1999
    The cells begin to infect the crew with deadly results. Emma Watson struggles to contain the deadly microbe while her husband and NASA try to retrieve her from space, before it's too late.