Kill Jill


John Locke - 2012
    Her clothes are filthy, her appearance disheveled. She has no purse, no wallet, no luggage, but her back pocket is stuffed with hundred dollar bills. She's also carrying a credit card belonging to Jack Russell, the town's most eligible bachelor, who hasn't been seen for a month.Claiming to be Jack's fiance', Emma immediately moves into his expensive lake house. The local sheriff gets a bad feeling that only turns worse when he discovers Emma's ID belongs to a dead woman.

Firebird: The Spy Thriller of the 1960s


Noel Hynd - 2018
     It is 1968, one of the most tumultuous years of the 20th Century. Frank Cooper, a former star investigative reporter now writes obituaries for a popular New York City tabloid. He hears the confession of a dying man named Leonard Rudawski, a former American diplomat, who bitterly questions the fate of Pavel Lukashenko, a would-be Soviet defector in Paris in 1965. Lukashenko promised to expose the espionage secret of a generation if he could get to the West. But the defector, code named “Firebird,” vanished. Or did he? Cooper teams with Lauren Richie, a young NY/Latina reporter from the same tabloid. They prowl into the dying man’s confession. Soon they are onto the story of their lifetimes, reviving a dangerous once-cold trail of back channel/back alley CIA and KGB intrigue and tradeoffs, all of which factor into the 3-way racially tinged American election of that year: Nixon vs. Humphry vs. the segregationist George Wallace. Murder, espionage, romance, betrayal and conspiracy intertwine. Readers will meet and recognize dozens of memorable “real life” characters: reporters, gangsters, diplomats, call girls, spy masters, politicians and assassins. The story is tough, large, sprawling and historically precise. "Russians sabotage and destabilize the west," says one experienced reporter with KGB knowledge. "It's not just what they do. It's what they do best." The story straddles the decades from World War Two to 2018, even throwing a cynical light on Russian-American relations of today. “Hynd is a solid, dependable writer with enough literary flair to move him up a few notches above the Ludlums and Clancys of the world. —Booklist

Deadly Waters


Dot Hutchison - 2020
    She tries to keep up with her studies, her friends, and her hot-tempered roommate, Ellie, who regularly courts trouble with the law.When a male student’s remains are found in alligator-infested waters, the university warns students to stay away from the reptiles. But then a second body shows up, and the link is undeniable. Both men belonged to the same fraternity and had a reputation for preying on and hurting women.Ellie has previously threatened to kill men who don’t take no for an answer. Rebecca and her friends thought Ellie was kidding. But now a vigilante killer is roaming campus—someone who knows how to dispose of rapists. Someone determined to save female students from horrible crimes.With each passing day, those who know Ellie become more convinced she’s responsible. But if she is, stopping her might not be in everyone’s best interest…

Lying Next to Me


Gregg Olsen - 2019
    It’s the perfect getaway to unplug—and to calm an uneasy marriage. But on Adam’s first day out on the water, he sees Sophie abducted by a stranger. A hundred yards from shore, Adam can’t save her. And Sophie disappears.In a nearby cabin is another couple, Kristen and Connor Moss. Unfortunately, beyond what they’ve heard in the news, they’re in the dark when it comes to Sophie’s disappearance. For Adam, at least there’s comfort in knowing that Mason County detective Lee Husemann is an old friend of his. She’ll do everything she can to help. She must.But as Adam’s paranoia about his missing wife escalates, Lee puts together the pieces of a puzzle. The lives of the two couples are converging in unpredictable ways, and the picture is unsettling. Lee suspects that not everyone is telling the truth about what they know—or they have yet to reveal all the lies they’ve hidden from the strangers they married.

Sleeping Beauty


Phillip Margolin - 2004
    Tonight the audience waits to hear Miles discuss recent developments in his sister's case -- unaware that pieces of this complex puzzle of violence, unknown even to the author, are about to be revealed.Six years earlier, life was much simpler for everyone involved, especially seventeen-year-old Ashley Spencer, a popular high school soccer star. Then one night an intruder entered Ashley's home and murdered her father and her best friend. Traumatized and suffering from a crippling sense of survivor guilt, Ashley is ready to give up on both soccer and life until help comes from an unexpected source -- a scholarship to an elite private school is extended to her by school dean Casey Van Meter. The school quickly becomes a haven for both Ashley and her mother, Terri. As Ashley regains her sense of self through the school's soccer program, Terri joins a writing group for adults led by Joshua Maxfield, a former literary wunderkind who has disappeared from the bestseller lists since his second book was panned by both critics and fans.Then tragedy strikes again and Ashley has to run for her life, unaware that the key to her survival is in the one book she's afraid to read -- Sleeping Beauty.

Next Girl to Die


Dea Poirier - 2019
    Claire has finally carved out a life for herself as a homicide detective in Detroit, but the past comes calling when the local police back home ask for her help with a murder eerily similar to Rachel’s.Still haunted by Rachel’s cold case, Claire returns home, hoping to solve the crime and finally put her grief to rest. As she starts investigating, the last thing she needs is tenacious journalist Noah Washington asking questions she’s not ready to answer. But like her, Noah won’t give up until he finds the truth—and Claire reluctantly finds herself relying on him more and more when disturbing new details about Rachel’s death come to light.When the killer strikes once again, Claire knows he’s not done. Now he’s set his sights on Claire, who will have to find the courage she needs to survive a deadly confrontation years in the making.

Eleventh Hour / Blindside / Blowout


Catherine Coulter - 2006
    Then Nicola "Nick" Jones, a homeless woman and the only witness to the shooting, is scared out of her mind because she is trying to hide from her own monsters—who are drawing closer and closer.Blindside:When six-year-old Sam Kettering is kidnapped and then manages to save himself, Savich and Sherlock join his father—former FBI agent Miles Kettering—to determine why Sam would be abducted and brought to eastern Tennessee. Though the local sheriff, Katie Benedict, catches up with Sam before the kidnappers do, the case isn’t over—not by a long shot.Blowout:A long weekend in the Poconos is cut short when Sherlock and Savich are helicoptered back to Washington to lead the investigation into the brutal murder of a Supreme Court Justice. Savich allows Callie Markham, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post, to partner with local Metro Police liaison Ben Raven, since she’s got the inside track—she’s the stepdaughter of the murdered justice.

Everything to Lose


Andrew Gross - 2014
    A car ahead of her careens down a hill and slams into a tree. Stopping to help, she discovers the driver dead--and a satchel stuffed with a half a million dollars.That money could prevent her family's ruin and keep her special needs son in school. In an instant, this honest, achieving woman who has always done the responsible thing makes a decision that puts her in the center of maelstrom of dark consequences and life-threatening recriminations--a terrifying scheme involving a twenty-year-old murder, an old woman who's life has been washed out to sea, and a powerful figure bent to keep the secret that can destroy him hidden.With everything to lose, everything she loves, Hilary connects to a determined cop from Staten Island, reeling from the disaster of Sandy, to bring down an enemy who will stop at nothing to keep what that money was meant to silence, still buried.

No One to Trust


Iris Johansen - 2002
    And he has the means to get whatever he wants. And what Rico Chavez wants most is Elena Kyler--and he wants her dead. Trained as an assassin, Elena didn’t need anyone to survive. But now she finds herself on the run from one dangerous man and turning for help to another.Sean Galen was a man without illusions. He knew it was only desperation that caused Elena to accept his help--a mother’s desperation to save her young son from a psychopath father who would raise their son in his own chilling image. And yet he was determined to get this woman who had never been able to trust anyone or anything in her whole life to accept him as her ally. But both Galen and Elena know that Chavez’s power and wealth mean there is no place they can be safe and no one they can trust--not even each other. Already Chavez’s assassins and connections to those in the highest positions of power have turned this into a war with no rules. With two shocking acts of brutal violence, Chavez shows he will stop at nothing and that nothing will stop him. Soon a trail of horrifying murders will follow Galen and Elena across country to a last stand and a shattering showdown. For Chavez is a master of control and he wants more than just to take Elena’s life. He wants her alive long enough to see him destroy every reason she has for living. He wants her to turn against everything and everyone she ever believed in. He wants her to commit the ultimate act of betrayal. And by the time he is through, he wants her to beg him to take the only thing she’ll have left to give: her life.

Mantis


Richard La Plante - 1993
    The murderer is a kind of Hannibal Lecter, pure psychopath, a real frightener. Mantis is an unusual and utterly gripping thriller.--Finesse Magazine.

Busted


Karin Slaughter - 2013
    This electrifying eBook novella featuring Will Trent is a prequel to Slaughter’s upcoming novel, Unseen.   Detective Will Trent is standing in a Georgia convenience store, waiting on an obstinate Icee frozen drink machine. To the surveillance cameras and bored staff of the Lil’ Dixie Gas-n-Go, however, Will appears to be someone very different—the menacing ex-con Bill Black. Going undercover as Bill, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent is about to infiltrate the most corrupt town in the most corrupt county in the new American South. But first: his Icee.   Everything changes in one horrific instant, as all hell breaks loose at the Lil’ Dixie. A cop is shot. A bag of cash goes flying across the floor. A young woman disappears while a killer takes off in a battered pick-up truck. Within seconds, Will is in pursuit.  Includes an exclusive preview of Karin Slaughter’s thrilling new novel of suspense, Unseen.

The Estate


Liza Costello - 2020
    She's fine. Great. Settled in her single life. Until friends start peeling away, moving on to careers and family, leaving her feeling impatient and angry. When she bumps into Jason at a party, she spots the opportunity for her own fresh start - to turn her back on a reckless life of drinking and missed deadlines. She can build a new life, too...can't she? When she discovers that Jason has the opportunity to house-sit a new build out of town, she glimpses her chance. There's only one catch - Jason needs to stay in town for the sake of his new job. But Beth can keep their dreams alive on her own, can't she? As her drinking worsens, and new friends turn out to be prospective enemies, her sense of reality begins to unravel. As Beth comes to confront the mysteries of her own past, she moves closer to understanding the desperate crime at the heart of the estate. But first she must learn who is behind the strange attacks on her new home. And is Jason who she thought he was? Can she even trust him?In this taut crime novel set in the aftermath of the Irish recession, a change for the better turns into a nightmare of uncertainty. An edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller, perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Cass Green.

The Inn at Ocean's Edge


Colleen Coble - 2015
    She showed up a year later at the same hotel, with a note pinned to her dress but no explanation. Nobody knows where Claire spent that year—and until now, Claire didn’t even know she had ever been missing.But when Claire returns to the Hotel Tourmaline for a business meeting with her CEO father, disturbing memories begin to surface . . . despite her parents’ best efforts to keep them forgotten.Luke Rocco lost his mother under equally mysterious circumstances—at the same time Claire disappeared. After a chance encounter reveals the unlikely link between them, Claire and Luke set out together to uncover the truth about what happened that fateful year.With flashbacks swimming just beneath her consciousness and a murderer threatening her safety, Claire’s very life depends on unscrambling her past . . . even if her family refuses to acknowledge it. Someone—maybe everyone—is hiding something from Claire Dellamare, and it will cost her everything to drag the truth out into the light.

Girls Like Us


Cristina Alger - 2019
    Nell and her father, Homicide Detective Martin Flynn, have never had much of a relationship. And Suffolk County will always be awash in memories of her mother, Marisol, who was brutally murdered when Nell was just seven.When Martin Flynn dies in a motorcycle accident, Nell returns to the house she grew up in so that she can spread her father's ashes and close his estate. At the behest of her father's partner, Detective Lee Davis, Nell becomes involved in an investigation into the murders of two young women in Suffolk County. The further Nell digs, the more likely it seems to her that her father should be the prime suspect--and that his friends on the police force are covering his tracks. Plagued by doubts about her mother's murder--and her own role in exonerating her father in that case--Nell can't help but ask questions about who killed Ria Ruiz and Adriana Marques and why. But she may not like the answers she finds--not just about those she loves, but about herself.

The Silencer


Ditter Kellen - 2019
    Especially when it's personal. Former FBI profiler, Oliver Quick, has spent the past six years obsessed with catching a serial killer known as the Silencer. But the trail’s gone cold. Until the FBI asks for his help on a case involving a mutilated woman found beneath the pier of a local tourist attraction. The chase is on, with Oliver hunting not one but two serial killers. The Silencer is back, and he’s toying with Quick. Oliver finds himself trapped in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with one of the most notorious serial killers to ever live. Will he finally catch the Silencer and put his demons to rest, or is the Hunter about to become the Hunted…