Promise Not to Tell


Jennifer McMahon - 2007
    On the night she arrives, a young girl is murdered—a horrific crime that eerily mirrors another from Kate's childhood. Three decades earlier, her dirt-poor friend Del—shunned and derided by classmates as "Potato Girl"—was brutally slain. Del's killer was never found, while the victim has since achieved immortality in local legends and ghost stories. Now, as this new murder investigation draws Kate irresistibly in, her past and present collide in terrifying, unexpected ways. Because nothing is quite what it seems . . . and the grim specters of her youth are far from forgotten.More than just a murder mystery, Jennifer McMahon's extraordinary debut novel, Promise Not to Tell, is a story of friendship and family, devotion and betrayal—tautly written, deeply insightful, beautifully evocative, and utterly unforgettable.

Remember Me


Mary Higgins Clark - 1994
    Determined to rebuild a life together around their precious baby, Menley and Adam decide to rent a house on Cape Cod for a month, confidant that the tranquility of the place will be ideal for Menley and little Hannah. But the peace they crave is disturbed when strange things start to happen - incidents which make Menley relive the horror of the accident in which she lost Bobby... incidents which make her fear for Hannah. And step by step, Menley and Adam are drawn into a dark and sinister web of events which threatens their marriage, their child and ultimately Menley's sanity.

The Moonspinners


Mary Stewart - 1962
    Then on her day off, she links up with two hiking companions who have inadvertently stumbledupon a scene of blood vengeance. And suddenly the life Nicola adores is in danger of coming to an abrupt, brutal, and terrifying end . .

The Face of Deception


Iris Johansen - 1998
    Her own daughter murdered and her body never found, the job is Eve's way of coming to terms with her personal nightmare. But more terror lies ahead when she accepts work from billionaire John Logan. Beneath her gifted hands a face emerges from the skull he has given her to reconstruct—a face no one was ever meant to see. Now Eve is trapped in a frightening web of murder and deceit. Powerful enemies are determined to cover up the truth, and they will make certain that truth goes to the grave...even if Eve gets buried with it.

The Gates of Evangeline


Hester Young - 2015
    . . When New York journalist and recently bereaved mother Charlotte “Charlie” Cates begins to experience vivid dreams about children she’s sure that she’s lost her mind. Yet these are not the nightmares of a grieving parent, she soon realizes. They are messages and warnings that will help Charlie and the children she sees, if only she can make sense of them.After a little boy in a boat appears in Charlie’s dreams asking for her help, Charlie finds herself entangled in a thirty-year-old missing-child case that has never ceased to haunt Louisiana’s prestigious Deveau family. Armed with an invitation to Evangeline, the family’s sprawling estate, Charlie heads south, where new friendships and an unlikely romance bring healing. But as she uncovers long-buried secrets of love, money, betrayal, and murder, the facts begin to implicate those she most wants to trust—and her visions reveal an evil closer than she could’ve imagined.A Southern Gothic mystery debut that combines literary suspense and romance with a mystical twist, The Gates of Evangeline is a story that readers of Gillian Flynn, Kate Atkinson, and Alice Sebold won't be able to put down.

The Vanishing


Wendy Webb - 2014
    So when a stranger appears on her doorstep with a job offer, she finds herself accepting the mysterious yet unique position: caretaker to his mother, Amaris Sinclair, the famous and rather eccentric horror novelist whom Julia has always admired…and who the world believes is dead.When she arrives at the Sinclairs' enormous estate on Lake Superior, Julia begins to suspect that there may be sinister undercurrents to her "too-good-to-be-true" position. As Julia delves into the reasons of why Amaris chose to abandon her successful writing career and withdraw from the public eye, her search leads to unsettling connections to her own family tree, making her wonder why she really was invited to Havenwood in the first place, and what monstrous secrets are still held prisoner within its walls.

Devil May Care


Elizabeth Peters - 1977
    These are the carefree days before marriage and new responsibility, and anything goes -- including house-sitting at eccentric Aunt Kate's palatial estate in Burton, Virginia. Ellie feels right at home here with the nearly invisible housekeepers and the plethora of pets, but she soon realizes that there are disturbing secrets about the local aristocracy buried in a dusty old book she has carried into the mansion. And her sudden interest in the past is attracting a slew of unwelcome guests -- some of them living and some, perhaps not. And the terrible vegeance that Ellie and her friends seem to have aroused -- now aimed at them -- surely cannot be...satanic.

Rage of Angels


Sidney Sheldon - 1980
    A worldwide bestseller first published in 1980, this novel tells the story of Jennifer Parker, a successful lawyer who is loved by two men, one a politician, the other, a mafia don.

Envy


Sandra Brown - 2001
    Maris is intrigued enough to search for him.Her trip to Georgia to meet the mysterious author takes her to an eerie, ruined cotton plantation, where Maris finds Parker Evans, a man confined to a wheelchair who carefully hides his past. Coaxing his novel from him chaper by chapter, Maris becomes caught up in his tale of two friends who rent a boat with a young woman for a night of sex and drinking. Only one person will return from that trip.Disturbed about her sexual attraction to Parker and worried about her marriage to author and her co-publisher Noah Reed, Maris returns to New York, where the delivery of Parker's newest chapters convince her they are more than fiction. She wonders how well she knows her husband and begins a harrowing search for a truth that ties back to a terrifying crime and a man who will use her, or anyone, to get his revenge.©2001 Sandra Brown Management, Ltd; (P)2001 Simon & Schuster Inc.; AUDIOWORKS Is an Imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster Inc.

Sleep No More


Greg Iles - 2002
    One that now plunges him into the darkest side of love and passion..."This novel should come with a red wrapper marked DANGER: HIGH EXPLOSIVES."--Stephen King

Lightning


Dean Koontz - 1988
    But even more mysterious was the blond-haired stranger who appeared out of nowhere – the man who saved Laura from a fatal delivery. Years later – another bolt of lightning – and the stranger returned, again to save Laura from tragedy. Was he the guardian angel he seemed? The devil in disguise? Or the master of a haunting destiny beyond time and space?

Under the Lake


Stuart Woods - 1986
    This placid body of water has brought prosperity to an isolated community, and with it, two strangers who intermingle with the insular local folk, strangers probing into crimes against nature from generations past that cannot remain submerged beneath the waters’ surface.Under the Lake marks the eagerly awaited return to the South of Stuart's Edgar Award winning novel, Chiefs. John Howell, once a top investigative journalist, comes to this backcountry town on the run from a once promising personal and professional life that has somehow gone sour. What he finds is a mystery so deep, so complex, so bizarre, that he cannot concentrate on the book he has come here to write.The story begins with his entanglement in a subtle, but relentless battle waged by the autocratic town father and the local sheriff against an outcast family, ravaged by its origins. Howell is further drawn in by his involvement with two women – an ambitious young reporter on the prowl for corruption, and a shy backwoods beauty, forsaken by the world because of her family’s ill kept secret. Then, without warning, visits from an otherworldly young girl haunt Howell as his rustic cabin becomes a spectral theater offering strange and frightening images of a hideous event of long ago.

The Blood Gospel


James Rollins - 2013
    A trio of investigators—Sergeant Jordan Stone, a military forensic expert; Father Rhun Korza, a Vatican priest; and Dr. Erin Granger, a brilliant but disillusioned archaeologist—are sent to explore the macabre discovery, a subterranean temple holding the crucified body of a mummified girl.But a brutal attack at the site sets the three on the run, thrusting them into a race to recover what was once preserved in the tomb’s sarcophagus: a book rumored to have been written by Christ’s own hand, a tome that is said to hold the secrets to His divinity. But the enemy who hounds them is like no other, a force of ancient evil directed by a leader of impossible ambitions and incalculable cunning.From crumbling tombs to splendorous churches, Erin and her two companions must confront a past that traces back thousands of years, to a time when ungodly beasts hunted the dark spaces of the world, to a moment in history when Christ made a miraculous offer, a pact of salvation for those who were damned for eternity.Here is a novel that is explosive in its revelation of a secret history. Why do Catholic priests wear pectoral crosses? Why are they sworn to celibacy? Why do the monks hide their countenances under hoods? And why does Catholicism insist that the consecration of wine during Mass results in its transformation to Christ’s own blood? The answers to all go back to a secret sect within the Vatican, one whispered as rumor but whose very existence was painted for all to see by Rembrandt himself, a shadowy order known simply as the Sanguines.In the end, be warned: some books should never be found, never opened—until now.

Cemetery Girl


David Bell - 2011
    When the teen refuses to testify against the man connected to her disappearance, Tom decides to investigate the traumatizing case on his own. Nothing can prepare him for what he is about to discover.

Close to Home


Lisa Jackson - 2014
    . .Vowing to make a fresh start, Sarah McAdams has come home to renovate the old Victorian mansion where she grew up. Her daughters, Jade and Gracie, aren't impressed by the rundown property on the shores of Oregon's wild Columbia River. As soon as they pull up the isolated drive, Sarah too is beset by uneasy memories--of her cold, distant mother, of the half-sister who vanished without a trace, and of a long-ago night when Sarah was found on the widow's walk, feverish and delirious. Ever since the original mistress of the house plunged to her death almost a century ago, there have been rumors that the place is haunted. As a girl, Sarah sensed a presence there, and soon Gracie claims to see a lady in white running up the stairs. Still, Sarah has little time to dwell on ghost stories, between overseeing construction and dealing with the return of a man from her past. But there's a new, more urgent menace in the small town. One by one, teenage girls are disappearing. Frantic for her daughters' safety, Sarah feels her veneer cracking and the house's walls closing in on her again. Somewhere deep in her memory is the key to a very real and terrifying danger. And only by confronting her worst fears can she stop the nightmare roaring back to life once more. . .