Thomas and Viv Adler are the envy of their neighbors: attractive, successful, with well-mannered children and a beautifully restored home.
Until one morning, when they wake up to find their porch has been pelted with eggs. It’s a prank, Thomas insists; the work of a few out-of-control kids. But when a smoke bomb is tossed on their front lawn, and their car’s tires are punctured, the family begins to worry. Surveillance cameras show nothing but grainy images of shadowy figures in hoodies. And the police dismiss the attacks, insisting they’re just the work of bored teenagers. Unable to identify the perpetrators, the Adlers are helpless as the assaults escalate into violence, and worse. And each new violation brings with it a growing fear. Because everyone in the Adler family is keeping a secret—not just from the outside world, but from each other. And secrets can be very dangerous….
Someone on this quiet, unassuming cul-de-sac will be shot dead in the middle of a sultry July night.
Will it be Maggie, the perfectionist wife, or Craig, the husband who can’t quite live up to her expectations? They’ve packed up their two children and fled their life in California, hoping for a fresh start in Florida, only to find the demons of the past hovering on their doorstep.
Maybe it will be Nick, a highly respected oncologist, or his wife, Dani, a successful dentist, both with well-kept secrets of their own.
Or perhaps the victim will be Julia, an elderly widow, whose troubled grandson has recently moved in with her, introducing unsavory habits and even more unsavory acquaintances into her formerly quiet existence.
Then there’s Olivia and her husband, Sean. Having lost his job at a prestigious advertising agency, Sean is depressed, resentful of his working wife, and drinking heavily. He is also prone to increasingly violent fantasies.
And what of the newlyweds, Aiden and Heidi, whose marriage is already on the rocks, due to Aiden’s reluctance to stand up to his intrusive mother? Matters aren’t helped when Heidi befriends Julia’s grandson, setting the stage for a major blowup.
A diverse group of neighbors, to be sure. Yet all harbor secrets. All bear scars. And all have access to guns.
Not all will survive the night.
The opulent furnishings and period theming of Hotel 1911 invite guests to experience the charm of the early 20th century. But for hotel clerk Ivy Nichols, the mansion also harbors secrets about her past and the family she never knew. When the Pittsburgh chapter of the Association for Gravestone Studies checks in for their national conference, Ivy is intrigued to learn that one of them has connections to her family.
The group plans to kick off their event by touring the historic graves thought to be on the hotel grounds. But they didn’t plan to find one of their fellow members strangled to death afterwards. The police point the finger at the hotel’s loyal manager, Mr. Fig, since no one else could have reached the victim’s room. Ivy has other ideas. She believes Mr. Fig is innocent, and desperately wants to prove it. The inexplicable appearance of strange drawings, an old book, and a wig lead Ivy to a bizarre connection between the grave-obsessed guests and the murder. And when Mr. Fig confesses a long-held secret, Ivy fears she has put herself in the sights of not only the murderer but another dangerous criminal too. Who else had the opportunity to commit the crime? And is Mr. Fig all he seems to be?
Amidst a growing list of suspects with secrets of their own, and an unraveling riddle from her past, Ivy is in a race to catch a killer–and decipher a truth more earth-shattering than she could have imagined.
The House on the Water’s Edge:
Sometimes the past is best left buried
Since the birth of baby Joe five weeks ago, Ali Baker has been struggling to cope. Starved of sleep and haunted by painful memories from the past, she’s a million miles away from the polished, professional barrister she has worked so hard to become.
Then her mother tragically and unexpectedly dies, leaving Ali an orphan. Haunted by her loss, Ali can’t forget her mother’s last words to her: There is something I really need to tell you…
Heading back to the Norfolk Broads to sort her mother’s things, Ali is plunged into memories of her family’s picture-perfect summers on the river.
But as she starts to uncover secrets hidden within the isolated house, Ali is drawn into a dark web that threatens to destroy everything she believed about her childhood – and her very sanity.
Ali may finally discover her mother’s secrets… but at what cost?
REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “This book is every suspense lover’s dream and it kept me up way too late turning pages. . . . A novel with crazy twists and turns that will have you ditching your Friday night plans for more chapters.”—Reese Witherspoon
A backpacking trip has deadly consequences in this “eerie psychological thriller . . . with alluring locales, Hitchcockian tension, and possibly the best pair of female leads since Thelma and Louise” (BookPage), from the bestselling author of The Lost Night and The Herd.
A Marie Claire Book Club Pick • Named One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year by Oprah Daily, BuzzFeed, Reader’s Digest, Men’s Journal, and CrimeReads
Emily is having the time of her life—she’s in the mountains of Chile with her best friend, Kristen, on their annual reunion trip, and the women are feeling closer than ever. But on the last night of the trip, Emily enters their hotel suite to find blood and broken glass on the floor. Kristen says the cute backpacker she brought back to their room attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him in self-defense. Even more shocking: The scene is horrifyingly similar to last year’s trip, when another backpacker wound up dead. Emily can’t believe it’s happened again—can lightning really strike twice?
Back home in Wisconsin, Emily struggles to bury her trauma, diving headfirst into a new relationship and throwing herself into work. But when Kristen shows up for a surprise visit, Emily is forced to confront their violent past. The more Kristen tries to keep Emily close, the more Emily questions her motives. As Emily feels the walls closing in on their cover-ups, she must reckon with the truth about her closest friend. Can Emily outrun the secrets she shares with Kristen, or will they destroy her relationship, her freedom—even her life?
#1 New York Times bestselling Catherine Coulter returns with a brilliant new novel in her FBI thriller series, in which agents Sherlock and Savich find themselves dealing with very powerful figures from the past who could wreak havoc in the present.
Seven years ago, Mia Briscoe was at a college frat rave with her best friend, Serena, when a fire broke out. Everyone was accounted for except Serena, who was never seen nor heard from again. Now an investigative journalist covering the political scene in New York City, Mia discovers old photos taken the night of Serena’s disappearance and begins to uncover a sinister string of events going all the way back to that disastrous party. Working with Sherlock, the secrets begin to unravel. But some very powerful—and very dangerous—people will do anything to keep them from learning the truth.
CIA Operative Olivia Hildebrandt is a team leader on a mission in Iran to exfiltrate a betrayed undercover operative. She’s nearly killed by an exploding grenade and saved by a team member. But by the time Olivia is released from Walter Reed Hospital, that team member and a critical flash drive he was carrying have disappeared. When Olivia is attacked on her first night home, Savich suspects that the strike is a direct result of the compromised mission and the missing team member and flash drive. But what intelligence was at stake and who betrayed them?
The Inn at Holiday Bay: Portent in the Pages:
A heartwarming cozy mystery series about losing everything, taking a chance, and starting again. After suffering a personal tragedy Abby Sullivan buys a huge old seaside mansion she has never even seen, packs up her life in San Francisco, and moves to Holiday Bay Maine, where she is adopted, quite against her will, by a huge Maine Coon Cat named Rufus, a drifter with her own tragic past named Georgia, and a giant dog with an inferiority complex named Ramos. What Abby thought she needed was alone time to heal. What she ended up with was, an inn she never knew she wanted, a cat she couldn’t seem to convince to leave, and a new family she’d never be able to live without.
In book 16 in the series, Abby is offered the chance to participate in an author event being held at Firehouse Books with one of her own favorite authors. When the guest author turns up dead, Abby realizes that clues to the author’s death could be found in the new novel the woman had yet to release. Using her own sleuthing skills, Abby jumps into the investigation after it becomes clear that it just might take an author to find the meaning in the pages.
Meanwhile it is weeks before Halloween and the inn is filled with guests looking for a spooky weekend retreat. Join Abby, Georgia, Jeremy, Nikki, and Mylie as they host a series of events designed to provide thrills and chills to all who dare to venture within.
Ice and Stone (A Sharon McCone Mystery Book 35):
Private Investigator Sharon McCone goes undercover to investigate the murders of two Indigenous women in remote Northern California in this gripping, atmospheric mystery in the New York Times bestselling series.
When the bodies of two Indigenous women are found in the wilderness of northern California, it is only the latest horrific development in a string of similar crimes in the area. Despite all evidence to the contrary, officials rule the deaths isolated incidents, which soon join the ranks of countless other unsolved cases quickly dismissed by law enforcement.
In a town where too many injustices are tolerated or brushed under the rug, only a few people remain who refuse to let a killer walk free. But Private Investigator Sharon McCone is one of those few. She is hired by an organization called Crimes against Indigenous Sisters to go undercover in Meruk County—a community rife with secrets, lies, and corruption—to expose the truth.
In an isolated cabin in the freezing, treacherous woods, McCone must work quickly to unravel a mystery that is rooted in profound evil—before she becomes the killer’s next target.
Mosquito Bite Murder (Merry Wrath Mysteries Book 19):
From USA Today bestselling author Leslie Langtry comes a killer summer camping trip!
In her career as a spy, Merry Wrath had her share of camping trips—from glamping in a yurt at Oktoberfest with drug lord Carlos the Armadillo to an awkward team building campout in the backyard of a Yakuza mob boss who thought “trust falls” should have lethal consequences. So when the former CIA turned Girl Scout troop leader has the opportunity to take six girls from her troop into a vast, private nature preserve in search of an abandoned scout camp, she jumps at it. The fact that she can secretly use this as a chance to meet up with another spy who has asked for her help just seems to be an added bonus.
Of course she doesn’t expect to find a guy named Chad in a shallow grave. He’s still alive, at least for the moment, and he insists on accompanying them further into the woods. Merry’s contact is a no-show, but another, more dangerous colleague surprises them on the trail. And just when she thinks she might be able to handle things, the group find themselves confronted by a hostile group of senior citizen hermits.
From the strange noises in the night, to vampire ticks, and the constant fear of being invaded by Communists, everything in Merry’s world appears to be dangerously off kilter. When she’s accosted by a 200lb snapping turtle named Old Eisenhower, Merry realizes that not everything is what it appears to be. Can Merry figure it out who is behind the stranger occurrences before the camping trip ends up with a body count?
A Scone of Contention: A Key West Food Critic Mystery:
A murderer’s out to spoil Hayley’s honeymoon in national bestselling author Lucy Burdette’s eleventh Key West Food Critic Mystery.
Key Zest food critic Hayley Snow and her groom, police detective Nathan Bransford, chose Scotland for their long-delayed honeymoon, hoping to sightsee and enjoy some prize-winning scones. But their romantic duo swells to a crowd when they’re joined by Nathan’s family as well as octogenarian Miss Gloria.
Nathan’s sister Vera takes the women on a whirlwind tour of some of Scotland’s iconic mystic places as research for a looming book project. But the trip takes a deadly tartan turn when a dinner party guest falls ill and claims she was poisoned. And then the group watches in horror as a mysterious tourist tumbles to his death from the famous Falkirk Wheel, high above the Forth & Clyde canal.
Vera and her friends deny knowing the dead man, but after observing their reactions to the fall, Hayley is not convinced. With one person dead, a second possibly poisoned, and the tension among Vera’s friends as thick as farmhouse cheese, Hayley fears her long-awaited honeymoon might end with another murder.
Far away from home, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, eccentric characters, and a forbiddingly gorgeous setting, Hayley must call on all her savvy to keep a killer from striking again and then escaping Scot free.
Cajun Kiss of Death: A Cajun Country Mystery:
The next shot from Cupid’s bow may be fatal in USA Today bestselling, Agatha Award-winning author Ellen Byron’s hearty and delightful seventh Cajun Country mystery.
In Pelican, Louisiana, Valentine’s Day has a way of warming the heart, despite the February chill. But the air at Crozat Plantation B&B turns decidedly frigid when celebrity chef Phillippe Chanson checks in. And when the arrogant Phillippe–in town to open his newest Cajun-themed restaurant–perishes in a fiery boat crash, Maggie Crozat’s dear friend JJ lands in very cold water.
Did JJ, proprietor of Junie’s Oyster Bar and Dance Hall, murder Phillippe because he feared the competition? Might Maggie’s mother, Ninette, have bumped off the chef for stealing one of her cherished recipes? Or was the culprit a local seafood vendor, miffed because Phillippe was somehow able to sell oysters for a remarkably reasonable price, despite an oyster shortage?
Maggie had planned to devote her February to art lessons in New Orleans, a present from her sweetheart, Bo. But now she has to focus on helping her friend and her mother cross a murder charge off the menu. Meanwhile, Maggie receives a series of anonymous gifts that begin as charming but grow increasingly disturbing. Does Maggie have an admirer–or a stalker? And are these mysterious gifts somehow related to Phillippe’s murder?
Blood may be thicker than water, but this case is thicker than gumbo. And solving it will determine whether Maggie gets hearts and roses–or hearse and lilies–this Valentine’s Day.
Gone for Good: (Detective Annalisa Vega Book 1):
The Lovelorn Killer murdered seven women, ritually binding them and leaving them for dead before penning them gruesome love letters in the local papers. Then he disappeared, and after twenty years with no trace of him, many believe that he’s gone for good.
Not Grace Harper. A grocery store manager by day, at night Grace uses her snooping skills as part of an amateur sleuth group. She believes the Lovelorn Killer is still living in the same neighborhoods that he hunted in, and if she can figure out how he selected his victims, she will have the key to his identity.
Detective Annalisa Vega lost someone she loved to the killer. Now she’s at a murder scene with the worst kind of déjà vu: Grace Harper lies bound and dead on the floor, surrounded by clues to the biggest murder case that Chicago homicide never solved. Annalisa has the chance to make it right and to heal her family, but first, she has to figure out what Grace knew—how to see a killer who may be standing right in front of you. This means tracing his steps back to her childhood, peering into dark corners she hadn’t acknowledged before, and learning that despite everything the killer took, she has still so much more to lose.
Two lives. The one you wanted. The one that wanted you.
Her birthday should be like any other night.
One minute Kelly’s a free-spirited artist in Chicago going to her best friend’s art show. The next, she opens a door and mysteriously emerges in her Michigan hometown. Suddenly her life is unrecognizable: She’s got twelve years of the wrong memories in her head and she’s married to Eric, a man she barely knew in high school.
Racing to get back to her old life, Kelly’s search leads only to more questions. In this life, she loves Eric and wants to trust him, but everything she discovers about him—including a connection to a mysterious tech startup—tells her she shouldn’t. And strange things keep happening. The tattoos she had when she was an artist briefly reappear on her skin, she remembers fights with Eric that he says never happened, and her relationships with loved ones both new and familiar seem to change without warning.
But the closer Kelly gets to putting the pieces together, the more her reality seems to shift. And if she can’t figure out what happened on her birthday, the next change could cost her everything…
A new psychological thriller from suspense powerhouse S.F. Kosa featuring a decades-old secret, a mysterious cult fire, and a woman looking to outrun the ashes of her past…until they come roaring back once more.
Dora is always aware of the line between fact and fiction. As a fact checker at an online magazine, her job depends on it. And as a woman outrunning her secrets, so does her life. But when a colleague decides to pursue a story about a murder in her hometown, one linked to a deadly fire at a cult compound twenty years prior, suddenly all of Dora’s carefully spun deceptions are at risk.
And if she can’t stop the story, her entire life is on the line.
As Dora works with her colleague, altering facts to hide her past along the way, she’s thrown back into a world she tried desperately to leave behind. One of ritual and belonging, of danger and darkness. A world where two girls promised to help each other through…until it all went up in flames.
As her lies pile up, so do the murders. Until Dora realizes she won’t be lucky enough to escape twice.
From the USA Today bestselling author of Little Deadly Secrets comes a gripping story about the frailty of family and a battle of wills between a wife and a sister-in-law, bent on revenge.
She stole my husband. So I’d steal her life.
The Wife
Lane won Candace’s heart over chocolate martinis and karaoke. But weeks into their whirlwind marriage, Candace realized Lane came with burdensome baggage in the form of his possessive live-in sister and her eerily watchful six-year-old son. Lane had a secret that seemed to hold him hostage, and Candace would do anything to uncover it.
The Sister-in-Law
Harper was the kind of woman who cooked homemade meals and dusted under the furniture. It was the least she could do for her brother after her husband’s mysterious death, and Lane took her and her kids in. Then Candace showed up like a tornado passing through, threatening and destructive. But Harper had other plans for her new “sister,” plans Lane could never find out about.
The Husband
All Lane had ever wanted was a white-picket-fence life. The wife. The two-point-five kids. The happy little family. Everything seemed to be falling into place with Candace … until Harper’s jealous streak got in the way, again. But choosing between his sister and wife would be costly … and knowing Harper, the price would be blood.
Betrayal was just the beginning…
Melanie Hale is a devoted mother to her two children, a diligent caregiver to her ailing mother-in-law and a trusted neighbor in their wealthy Louisiana community. Above all, she’s a loving partner to her wonderful husband, Collin.
Then there are the parts of herself that Mel keeps hidden. She’s exhausted, worried and unfulfilled. So much so that one night, after a writers’ group meeting, Mel begins an affair with a successful local author named Luke. Suddenly she’s transformed into a role she doesn’t recognize—a woman who deceives with unseemly ease. A woman who might be capable of just about anything.
When Mel finds Luke’s dead body in his lavish rented house, she realizes just how high the stakes have become. Not only does she have to keep her affair a secret in order to preserve her marriage, but she desperately needs to avoid being implicated in Luke’s death. But who would want to kill him? Who else in her life is keeping secrets? And most terrifying of all, how far will they—and she—go to keep those secrets hidden?
Perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty and Joshilyn Jackson, Sarah Warburton’s chilling thriller, inspired by the Moors Murders, explores the twisted side of suburbia.
Framed for embezzlement by her best friend Aimee, museum curator Kacy Tremain and her husband Michael move from New Jersey to a charming Texas suburb to escape their past. Kacy quickly makes new friends–preppy, inscrutable Elizabeth, chatty yet evasive Rahmia, and red-headed, unapologetic Lena. But good friends aren’t always what they seem.
As she navigates the unexpectedly cutthroat social scene of her new town, Kacy begins to receive taunting postcards–and worse, discovers cameras hidden in the wall of her home. Lena and her husband, Brady, reassure her that the cameras are just relics of the paranoid previous homeowner . Once the cameras are removed and Kacy’s fears are quelled, Kacy and Michael make the happy discovery that they are going to be new parents.
Months after the birth of their daughter, Michael accidentally makes a shocking discovery about Brady’s past. And when Lena suddenly goes missing, Kacy and Michael begin to uncover the truth about their neighbors–and it’s more terrible than anyone could have imagined.
Interlaced with transcripts of a chilling “true crime” podcast that follow the tangled threads of the drama, You Can Never Tell is a taut and complex psychological thriller that never lets up until its breathless conclusion.
Calvert Green literally believes he’s dead–but that won’t stop him from diving deep into the secrets that threaten to bury him.
The car accident took his wife and nearly killed him too, but Calvert Green’s problems are just beginning. He was a respected Russian literature scholar in Chicago, but due to severe head trauma, he’s now suffering from Cotard’s Disease–a rare physiological condition that makes him believe he’s dead. He has also lost much of his memory, including the academic knowledge that defined his life.
Calvert knows few details about the accident but believes there’s more going on than he’s been told, so he leaves the care facility determined to find the truth behind his “death.” His search lands him in the middle of a city being terrorized by a murder spree, and young homicide detective Whistler Diaz has a prime suspect. But Whistler’s cousin Moe, a crusading journalist, zeroes in on Calvert, determined to prove he’s not all he seems.
Intuition and improvisation were never Calvert’s strong suits, but now he has to draw on his hidden inner resources to clear his name. On a harrowing journey into the city’s underbelly–and deep into his psyche–Calvert begins to uncover the shocking truth of who he once was.
Calvert might be on the verge of finding a new definition of sanity–but a malevolent force lurks in the shadows bent on total madness.
If Books Could Kill 