Book picks similar to
Touching Shadows by Gracie O'Neil


romantic-suspense
group-read
new-zealand
nz-australian-authors

Jett (Chicago Protection Task Force Book 6)


Leanne Tyler - 2021
    

The Shape of Night


Tess Gerritsen - 2019
    So she flees Boston and rents an old home named Brodie’s Watch on a remote coastal peninsula of Maine, hoping to work on a cookbook inspired by New England cuisine that she’s been trying to finish for months. She immediately feels at peace in the isolated house–until she starts to hear strange noises.Rumor has it that a sea captain named Brodie has haunted the house for decades. Then, one night, Ava is awakened to find herself face to face with an apparition who looks–and feels–all too real. Meanwhile, there’s been a series of accidental deaths nearby that don’t add up. And as Ava starts to check into the previous renter’s mysterious disappearance, she starts to realize that there’s a disturbing secret some in town are desperate to keep hidden.Soon all of Ava’s waking hours are consumed by her investigation, and her nights are ignited by Captain Brodie’s ghostly visits. But even as she questions her own sanity, she knows she must uncover the truth before a killer strikes again.

Gray Wolf Security (Shifters)


Glenna Sinclair - 2018
    6 Paranormal Romance Books. Full Length. No Cliffhangers. More than 1,000 pages :) In a largely unincorporated county in Minnesota, the newest office of Gray Wolf Security have just moved in... BOOK ONE Tunstall Grayson has been on the run longer than he can recall. He thought living among humans would be easy, but it’s one of the hardest, and loneliest, things he’s ever done. After causing the death of a woman he cared deeply for, Tunstall has shut himself off from all human relationships. Therefore, when Ash Grayson finds him—with a little help from a friend—Tunstall tries to push him away. But Ash knows more than he lets on and he wants to offer Tunstall something he has never had: a true family. With the responsibility of growing a new office of Gray Wolf Security, Ash has not only given Tunstall a place to call home, he’s given him a reason to gather other misfit shifters and build his own pack, one that won’t betray him or hunt him down. One he can truly trust. But if Tunstall thinks he can continue to avoid human contact, he’s got another think coming. BOOK TWO Tunstall has a list of things he needs to do to make a success of his branch of Gray Wolf Security: find a good office manager, hire a strong technology expert, and develop a good relationship with local law enforcement. Tunstall has successfully fulfilled the first two requirements, but he finds himself struggling to develop a relationship with the local sheriff, Erik Os. Ironically enough, Erik is also a shifter like Tunstall and his band of operatives. Unfortunately, Erik is a wolverine, a bear-like creature whose natural enemy is the gray wolf. Erik doesn’t want Tunstall in his county. However, when Erik meets Regan Smith, Tunstall’s young office manager, he can’t quite dismiss the instant attraction that develops between them. BOOK THREE Orson was assigned to a simple case: watch the lawyer representing the men who attacked the lodge. Nothing more. However, while performing this task at the only hotel within fifty miles, Orson meets Talia - the wife of his biological brother, a man he barely knows. Orson has no interest in revisiting a past he’s closed the door on, but when he sees a man bribe a waiter to poison Talia, he has no choice but to rush to her rescue. Where that rescue will take them is something he never could have predicted. BOOK FOUR Tunstall travels to Austin to get help from Gray Wolf security expert, David Grayson, for the security system that seemed to fail his people in Minnesota. He’s joined unexpectedly by newest recruit, Garrick Hamilton, a naive, but likeable shifter with almost no experience at the security game. They’re not in Austin more than an hour before Garrick invites himself onto a case, protecting a pretty, but terminally ill, social worker who’s been getting threats from someone wanting to find one of her young wards. BOOK FIVE Clancy Drake was minding her own business in Austin when Tunstall walked into her life and turned it upside down. Now she finds herself in Minnesota, watching the man she’s been crushing hard on pine over a woman who’s been keeping time with another guy. She wants nothing more than to be there to pick up the pieces when Tunstall gets his heart broken, but the wolf, Ciarrai, walks into her life, making threats she knows he’ll follow through on. He leaves her with two choices: betray Tunstall or allow him to learn her truth about her past. BOOK SIX Tunstall knows now that war is coming. The new leader of the Mahoney Cartel has a personal vendetta to carry out against him.

The Elusive Language of Ducks


Judith White - 2013
    They were well meaning, and it could have done the trick. However, Hannah's focus on the duck progressively alienates those around her. As the duck takes over her world, past secrets are exposed. Will Hannah's life unravel completely? This funny, moving and insightful novel contemplates the chemistry between one person and another: a man and another man's wife; a woman and a duck; a woman and her dead mother; a drug addict and his drug. Beautifully written, it is a penetrating and compassionate view of marriage, dependency, obsession, addiction, and love.

Paint Your Wife


Lloyd Jones - 2004
    His special favorite was Alice, who returned his attentions. Her husband George came home from the war, and set out to prove his love and reclaim his wife by shifting a hill with a wheelbarrow to improve the view. Now, decades later, Alma's 'in lieu of' payment is revived so that an abandoned mother living in a depressed town can make her way. For the other townspeople looking to escape various corners of despair, drawing classes provide the answer. For when you draw, the only thing that matters is what lies before you.

Amanda/Haunting Rachel


Kay Hooper - 2005
    And all because a stranger says her name is... Amanda.Others have claimed to be Amanda Daulton, but now a beautiful, self-assured woman has stepped out of the shadows of the past, insisting she's the missing heiress to a multimillion-dollar fortune. One look is all it takes to assure the family patriarch that she's his beloved granddaughter. But others at the magnificent Southern mansion called Glory are not as easily convinced, others with much to lose from her sudden reappearance. Soon suspicion erupts in a chilling attempt on her life, and after the traumatic ordeal, she begins to have flashes of a nightmarish vision. What, if anything, happened twenty years ago to drive a mother and her nine-year-old daughter away from their privileged life? The struggle to find the elusive answer exposes a frightening trail of secrets—a trail that leads shockingly to the present and to the enigmatic woman who calls herself... Amanda.Haunting RachelDanger wears many faces....Ten years ago Rachel Grant's fiancé, Thomas, disappeared. His body was never found. Now there's a stranger in town, a man who could be Thomas's twin--or his ghost.His name is Adam Delafield. He's been watching Rachel for days. He has the locket she gave Thomas before he vanished. And he says he owed her father three million dollars.But there's no record of the loan—or a shred of proof that Adam is who he claims to be. And he's always nearby as accidents begin to threaten Rachel's life.Is he an innocent man who only wants to repay a debt? Or a figure from the past with a score to settle? Rachel must expose lies and unravel stories, find out who wants her dead and why...before the next attempt to kill her succeeds.

The Bright Side of My Condition


Charlotte Randall - 2013
    After escaping from the Norfolk Island penal colony on a whaling ship, Bloodworth and his three fellow convicts are left on a remote southern island by a captain who promises to pick them up in a year's time.It will be many years before they see another ship.Durign that time four men, with nothing in common but a desire to escape and a need to survive, live together in cramped and freezing isolation. Slangam believes hard work will see them though, Toper puts his faith in the divine, Gargantua leans on his learning and Bloodworth watched – both his fellow felons and the inhospitable environment.Based on the true story of four convicts who spent more than nine years on the Snares Islands in the early years of the nineteenth century, Charlotte Randall's latest novel is a riveting, intelligent and powerful work of fiction.

Houses of Stone


Barbara Michaels - 1993
    While racing against other scholars to bring Ismene's true identity to light, she is haunted by a tormented voice screaming out to her from the Virginia woods.

Legacy of Magick


Ellen Dugan - 2015
    Autumn Bishop was just your average grad student...who happens to be a Seer. When she moves in with her long lost aunt and cousins, they look like a relatively normal family from the outside, however they turn out to be so much more. When ancient traditions, longstanding magickal feuds, ghostly visitors, and Witches with malicious intentions start coming out of the woodwork, Autumn finds herself smack in the middle of the action as everything she thought she knew is turned upside down. Drawn, as if by fate, into her family’s legacy of magick, a new world unfolds for her, as her old one is left irretrievably behind.

As the Earth Turns Silver


Alison Wong - 2009
    It is the early 1900s and brothers Yung and Shun, immigrants from China, eke out a living as greengrocers in Wellington. The pair must support their families back home, but know they must adapt if they are to survive and prosper in their adopted home. Meanwhile, Katherine McKechnie struggles to raise her rebellious son and her daughter following the death of her husband, Donald. A strident right-wing newspaperman, Donald terrorized his family, though was idolized by his son. One day, Katherine comes to Yung's shop and is touched by the Chinaman's unexpected generosity. Over time a clandestine relationship develops between the immigrant and the widow, a relationship Katherine's son Robbie cannot abide ...During the First World War, as young men are swept up on a tide of macho patriotism, Robbie takes his family's honour into his own hands. In doing so, he places his mother at the heart of a tragedy that will affect everyone and everything she holds dear. Powerful, moving and utterly unforgettable, "As the Earth Turns Silver" announces the arrival of a bold new voice in contemporary fiction.

The Changeover


Margaret Mahy - 1984
    From the moment she saw it, Laura Chant knew that something dreadful was going to happen. It wasn’t the first time she’d been forewarned. But never before had anything so terrible happened. The horrifyingly evil Carmody Braque touched and branded her little brother – and now Jacko was very ill, getting steadily worse.There was only one way to save him. Laura had to change over: had to release her supernatural powers. And that meant joining forces with the extraordinary and enigmatic Sorenson Carlisle…

Keeper of Secrets


Lynda Stacey - 2019
    The story is what inspired Cassie to become an archaeologist.But Aggie has a secret that she’s buried as deep as the tunnels and when excavation work begins on the site, Cassie is the only one who can help her keep it. With the assistance of her old university friend, Noah Flanagan, she puts into action a plan to honour Aggie’s wishes.It seems the deeper Noah and Cassie dig, the more shocking the secrets uncovered – and danger is never far away, both above and below the ground …

Good Cop Bad Cop (Maggie Delaney Police Thriller Book 2)


Linsey Lanier - 2020
     Tonight she’s been sent out to investigate a tragic domestic homicide. But it's much worse than that. And when she realizes who the likely killer is, she can’t believe what the evidence is telling her. Maybe she shouldn’t. She knows this man. Or thought she did. Now she has to prove him innocent of crimes he didn’t commit. But is he innocent or a sadistic serial killer? And will she be the next victim? THE MIRANDA'S RIGHTS MYSTERY SERIES Someone Else's Daughter Delicious Torment Forever Mine Fire Dancer Thin Ice THE MIRANDA AND PARKER MYSTERY SERIES All Eyes on Me Heart Wounds Clowns and Cowboys The Watcher Zero Dark Chocolate Trial by Fire Smoke Screen The Boy Snakebit Mind Bender Roses from My Killer The Stolen Girl Vanishing Act Predator Retribution Most Likely to Die (more to come) MAGGIE DELANEY POLICE THRILLER SERIES Chicago Cop Good Cop Bad Cop

You Again 2: A Fated Love


J. Peach - 2018
    Akilious and Titanya are faced with that harsh reality when their exes go beyond reason to try and prove their ever dying love for them. With a promising storm of chaos surrounding them, will Titanya and Akilious be able to escape their exes deadly clenches? Or will they die trying to keep the fated love they have? Find out in You Again 2: A Fated Love…

The Russell House


Donna Foley Mabry - 2016
    The young military widow leaves dozens of messages for her father but receives no response. Looking for a copy of her mother’s obituary, Roxie reads an article in the newspaper and discovers her entire life is a web of lies, secrets, and deceit. The story sends her off in search of the truth about the man she idolized. She drives to her father’s birthplace—Manhattan, Kansas—and moves into her grandmother’s huge, three-story, hundred-and-fifty-year-old house. It’s been vacant for decades, but Roxie begins to believe she’s not the only occupant. She doesn’t know if there’s an intruder or if the spirit of her grandmother is watching over her. In only a matter of days, someone has made several attempts on her life. She calls in her best friend, Janice Tallchief—retired on a disability from the Kansas City Police Department—to act as her bodyguard. Can Jan and Roxie unravel the mystery before the killer succeeds?