Book picks similar to
Racing the Devil by Jaden Terrell
mystery
first-reads
suspense
fiction
Dark Road Home
Anna Carlisle - 2016
Her family fell apart, not to mention her relationship with her high school sweetheart, Jake. Now, almost twenty years later, Gin is living in Chicago and working as a medical examiner when she gets the call: a body's been found in the woods outside her small hometown. It could be her sister. After all these years, it's time for Gin to go home and face the demons she tried to leave behind.Confronting your past is never easy, but for Gin it also means confronting Jake, who was the prime suspect in Lily's disappearance. To find an answer to the question of what happened to her sister that fateful summer, Gin makes the difficult decision to use her talents as a medical examiner to help the police investigation. But as Gin gets deeper into the case, she uncovers a shocking truth that could change everything--if it doesn't destroy what's left of her and her family first.Buried secrets come to light in Dark Road Home, Anna Carlisle's sharp and simmering debut mystery.
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers
Louise Candlish - 2015
A picture-perfect street with a secret at its heart.When Joe and Christy Davenport step behind the Oxford Blue painted door of their 'for ever' home, they believe their dreams have come true.Yet the boxes aren't even unpacked before a series of events leads Christy to become obsessed with the previous occupant, the glamorous, enigmatic Amber Fraser, whose departure from Lime Park Road is shrouded in mystery.What happened to her? And why are Joe and Christy's attempts at friendship with neighbours met with an unnerving silence?As Christy unravels the shocking truth about the Frasers and the place she now calls home, she discovers that behind the closed doors of even the most desirable postcodes, terrible secrets lurk.
Lie Still
Julia Heaberlin - 2013
Pregnant with her first child, Emily just wants to start over. But as she is drawn into a nest of secretive Texas women—and into the unnerving company of their queen, Caroline Warwick—Emily finds that acceptance is a very dangerous game. It isn’t long before Caroline mysteriously disappears and Emily is facing a rash of anonymous threats. Are they linked to the missing Caroline? Or to Emily’s terrifying encounter in college, years earlier? As the dark truth about Caroline emerges, Emily realizes that some secrets are impossible to hide—and that whoever came for Caroline is now coming for her.
The Truth and Other Lies
Sascha Arango - 2014
A famous bestselling author who appears a modest everyman. A loving, devoted husband even though he could have any woman he desires. A generous friend and coworker. But Henry Hayden is a construction, a mask. His past is a secret, his methods more so. No one besides him and his wife know that she is the actual writer of the novels that made him famous.For most of Henry’s life, it hasn’t been a problem. But when his hidden-in-plain-sight mistress becomes pregnant and his carefully constructed facade is about to crumble, he tries to find a permanent solution, only to make a terrible mistake.Now not only are the police after Henry, but his past—which he has painstakingly kept hidden—threatens to catch up with him as well. Henry is an ingenious man and he works out an ingenious plan. He weaves lies, truths, and half-truths into a story that might help him survive. But bit by bit the noose still tightens.Smart, sardonic, and compulsively readable, here is the story of a man whose cunning allows him to evade the consequences of his every action, even when he’s standing on the edge of the abyss.
Vanishing Girls
Lisa Regan - 2018
Not a word, actually. A name… Everyone in the small American town of Denton is searching for Isabelle Coleman, a missing seventeen-year-old girl. All they’ve found so far is her phone and another girl they didn’t even know was missing. Mute and completely unresponsive to the world around her, it’s clear this mysterious girl has been damaged beyond repair. All Detective Josie Quinn can get from her is a name: Ramona. Currently suspended from the force for misconduct, Josie takes matters into her own hands as the name leads her to evidence linking the two girls. She knows the race is on to find Isabelle alive, and she fears there may be others… The trail leads Josie to another victim, a girl who escaped but whose case was labelled a hoax by authorities. To catch this monster, Josie must confront her own nightmares and follow her instinct to the darkest of places. But can she make it out alive? Fans of Angela Marsons, Helen Fields and Robert Dugoni will be utterly gripped and sleeping with the lights on once they discover the first in this unputdownable new crime thriller series.
The Last Resort
Marissa Stapley - 2019
Run by celebrity power couple Drs. Miles and Grace Markell, the "last resort" offers a chance for partners to repair their relationships in a luxurious setting on the gorgeous Mayan Riviera. Johanna and Ben have a marriage that looks perfect on the surface, but in reality, they don’t know each other at all. Shell and Colin fight constantly: after all, Colin is a workaholic, and Shell always comes second to his job as an executive at a powerful mining company. But what has really torn them apart is too devastating to talk about. When both couples begin Harmony's intensive therapy program, it becomes clear that Harmony is not all it seems—and neither are Miles and Grace themselves. What are they hiding, and what price will these couples pay for finding out? As a deadly tropical storm descends on the coast, trapping the hosts and the guests on the resort, secrets are revealed, loyalties are tested and not one single person—or their marriage—will remain unchanged by what follows.
Hanover House
Brenda Novak - 2015
Why do psychopaths act as they do? How do they come to be? Why don’t they feel any remorse for the suffering they cause? And are there better ways of spotting and stopping them?After having been kidnapped, tortured and left for dead when she was just a teenager—by her high school boyfriend—she’s determined to understand how someone she trusted so much could turn on her. So she’s established a revolutionary new medical health center in the remote town of Hilltop, Alaska, where she studies the worst of the worst.But not everyone in Hilltop is excited to have Hanover House and its many serial killers in the area. Alaskan State Trooper, Sergeant Amarok, is one of them. And yet he can’t help feeling bad about what Evelyn has been through. He’s even attracted to her. Which is partly why he worries.He knows what could happen if only one little thing goes wrong...
Trust Me
Hank Phillippi Ryan - 2018
An accused killer insists she's innocent of a heinous murder.A grieving journalist surfaces from the wreckage of her shattered life.Their unlikely alliance leads to a dangerous cat and mouse game that will leave you breathless.Who can you trust when you can't trust yourself?Trust Me is the chilling standalone novel of psychological suspense and manipulation that award-winning author and renowned investigative reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan was born to write.
The Girl Who Disappeared Twice
Andrea Kane - 2004
Struggling to escape her kidnapper.Despite all her years determining the fates of families, veteran family court judge Hope Willis couldn't save her own. Now she's frantically grasping at any hope for Krissy's rescue. Her husband dead–set against it, she calls Casey Woods and her team of renegade investigators,Forensic Instincts.A behaviorist.A techno–wizard.An intuitive.A former Navy SEAL. Unconventional operatives.All with unique talents and personal reasons for being part of Casey's group, they'll do whatever it takes.Able to accurately read people after the briefest of encounters, Casey leads her crew to Krissy's home. There, she picks up the signs of a nervous spouse, a guilty conscience, a nanny that hides on her cell. She watches as secrets beg to creep into the open.Forensic Instincts will dig through each tiny clue and eliminate the clutter. But time is running out, and even working around the clock, the authorities are bound by the legal system. Not so Casey's team. For they know that the difference between Krissy coming back alive and disappearing forever could be as small as a suspect's rapid breathing, or as deep as Hope's dark family history.
An Affair to Dismember
Elise Sax - 2013
That’s why Gladie is more than a little skeptical when her Grandma Zelda — who is more than a little psychic — recruits her into the family’s matchmaking business in the quaint small town of Cannes, California. What’s more, Gladie is also highly unqualified, having a terrible track record with romance. Still, Zelda is convinced that her granddaughter has her clairvoyant “gift.” But when the going gets tough, Gladie wonders if this gift has a return policy. When Zelda’s neighbor drops dead in his kitchen, Gladie is swept into his bizarre family’s drama. Despite warnings from the (distractingly gorgeous) chief of police to steer clear of his investigation, Gladie is out to prove that her neighbor’s death was murder. It’s not too long before she’s in way over her head — with the hunky police chief, a dysfunctional family full of possible killers, and yet another mysterious and handsome man, whose attentions she’s unable to ignore. Gladie is clearly being pursued — either by true love or by a murderer. Who will catch her first?
Ratlines
Stuart Neville - 2013
As the Irish people prepare to welcome President John F. Kennedy to the land of his ancestors, a German national is murdered in a seaside guesthouse. Lieutenant Albert Ryan, Directorate of Intelligence, is ordered to investigate. The German is the third foreigner to die within a few days, and Minister for Justice Charles Haughey wants the killing to end lest a shameful secret be exposed: the dead men were all Nazis granted asylum by the Irish government in the years following World War II.A note from the killers is found on the dead German's corpse, addressed to Colonel Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's favorite commando, once called the most dangerous man in Europe. The note simply says: "We are coming for you."As Albert Ryan digs deeper into the case he discovers a network of former Nazis and collaborators, all presided over by Skorzeny from his country estate outside Dublin. When Ryan closes in on the killers, his loyalty is torn between country and conscience. Why must he protect the very people he fought against twenty years before? Ryan learns that Skorzeny might be a dangerous ally, but he is a deadly enemy.
A Small Indiscretion
Jan Ellison - 2015
Henry Prize winner Jan Ellison delivers a brilliantly paced, beautifully written debut novel about one woman's reckoning with a youthful mistake. Named one of the best books of the year by San Francisco ChronicleAt nineteen, Annie Black trades a bleak future in a washed-out California town for a London winter of drinking and abandon. Twenty years later, she is a San Francisco lighting designer and happily married mother of three who has put her reckless youth behind her. Then a photo from that distant winter in Europe arrives inexplicably in her mailbox, and an old obsession is awakened. Past and present collide, Annie's marriage falters, and her son takes a car ride that ends with his life hanging in the balance. Now Annie must confront her own transgressions and fight for her family by untangling the mysteries of the turbulent winter that drew an invisible map of her future. Gripping, insightful, and lyrical, A Small Indiscretion announces the arrival of a major new voice in literary suspense as it unfolds a story of denial, passion, forgiveness—and the redemptive power of love.
Don't Make a Sound
T.R. Ragan - 2020
Now, after finally getting promoted at work, she is forced to return home and face her past.River Rock is where she’d been abandoned by her two older sisters to suffer alone, and in silence, the unspeakable abuses of her family. It’s also where Sawyer’s best friend disappeared and two teenage girls were murdered. Three cold cases dead and buried with the rest of the town’s secrets.When another girl is slain in a familiar grisly fashion, Sawyer is determined to put an end to the crimes. Pulled back into the horrors of her family history, Sawyer must reconcile with her estranged sisters, who both have shattering memories of their own. As Sawyer’s investigation leads to River Rock’s darkest corners, what will prove more dangerous—what she knows of the past or what she has yet to discover?
Cover Your Eyes
Mary Burton - 2014
Then a torrent of blows rains down upon their bodies until their eyes cloud over in final agony. The killer shows no remorse--just a twisted need to witness each victim's last terrified moments.Don't SpeakPublic defender Rachel Wainwright is struggling to reopen a decades-old case, convinced that the wrong man is in prison. Homicide detective Deke Morgan doesn't want to agree. But if Rachel's hunch is correct, whoever fatally bludgeoned young, beautiful Annie Dawson thirty years ago could be the source of a new string of brutal slayings.Just Prepare To DieRachel's investigation is about to reveal answers--but at a price she never thought to pay. Now she's become the target of a rage honed by years of jealousy and madness. And a murderer is ready to show her just how vicious the truth can be. . .
Boca Knights
Steven M. Forman - 2009
. ." - Lincoln Child In a debut novel sure to both excite passions and elicit laughter, author Steven M. Forman has created a different kind of hero in a most unlikely criminal hotbed: Boca Raton. Eddie Perlmutter's career as a much-honored Boston cop has come to an end. At sixty, he's still energetic and virile, but decades of harsh New England winters and collaring the pug-uglies of Boston's underworld have taken their toll - especially on his knees. So what does a lonely, retired cop with arthritic knees do? Heads to sunny Florida, of course. But instead of enjoying a relaxed, laid-back retirement, Eddie quickly discovers the darker side of Boca Raton's endless sun and palm trees, where hate crimes, counterfeiting, and worse lurk beneath the deceptively calm surface of the cushy retirement communities. With his no-nonsense crime-fighting skills and roll-with-the punches attitude, Eddie hits Boca Raton like of a Nor'easter from Hell, fast, fresh, and unstoppable. A compulsively readable comic thriller with an egalitarian message that will inspire readers of all ages, Boca Knights will have readers in stitches and keep them on the edge of their seats. "Boca Knights is a can't-put-down read, full of laugh out loud humor, fast paced hijinks, and lore. Part Robert Parker, part Carl Hiaasen, Eddie Perlmutter is a high-testosterone, no-nonsense detective with a tender core, and makes turning sixty a carnal, tropical ride." - Andrew Gross "Fast, funny, and incredibly wise . . . a compulsive read that will make you want to live next door to its hero, Eddie Perlmutter, who is without a doubt one of the best new characters to appear on the literary horizon in some years." - Gayle Lynds "Steve Forman strafes the south Florida scene with Boca Knights, an outrageously funny mystery novel with a raft of offbeat characters and prose that moves trippingly off the pen. His main man, Eddie Perlmutter, ex-Boston cop attempting semi-retirement in Boca Raton like a fish trying to retire out of the water, is a character for the ages. Carl Hiaasen, watch your back." - Douglas Preston "Ever wonder what would happen if you crossed Philip Roth with Elmore Leonard? This impressive crime debut novel provides a hint. . . . An entertaining mix of comedy and drama." - Booklist "Mystery fans who like their operatives macho with an offbeat sense of humor will certainly enjoy this book and look forward to the next in the series." - Library Journal