English Authors Psychological Thrillers

In this gothic, virtuoso debut collection, Mike McCormack dispenses nightmares both stylish and macabre. "A Is for Ax" offers alphabetized look at the killing of a parent, while the title story tracks a chilling sibling rivalry. Other works here offer multiple-quiz on the road to Calvary, a door-to-door saleswoman trafficking in strange and menacing feats, and a self-mutilating artist pushing himself to the limit. These sly and dangerous stories show us a young writer who was already a master of wicked formal play, and whose sly takes on life and death remain profoundly unsettling.

Rooker Lindström is a reluctant consultant for the Minnesota PD. He can provide a window into evil. His horrifying past gives him the edge. When the body of a woman—missing for eight years—is pulled from the lake, evil comes knocking again. This time with a note meant just for Rooker: Won’t you come out and play?

Cat panics when she sees a photofit of a murder suspect flash up on the news. It looks exactly like her, and to make matters worse, the victim is her childhood best friend, Charlie. The following day, the police arrive at her doorstep to question her. She hadn't seen or spoken to Charlie in years, but could the secrets of their past finally be coming back to haunt her? Desperate to find out who gave the police her description and to protect her five-year-old son, Cat investigates. She knows she is innocent and will stop at nothing to prove it. But some secrets are best left buried....

Upon the death of her lover, Paula finds herself at the mercy of both the courts and the vigilantes as she puts forward her claim of not guilty by reason of self-defense. Trying to rebuild her tattered life and salvage her sore self-esteem she finally finds someone who she thinks she could love again…. Although there’s the sick thoughts and wants of the sinister stalker to consider, too. The man that stares up at Paula’s window every evening and seems to be in her eyeline no matter where she goes.

Meeks is a young man born with a silver spoon jammed down his throat, a fact his domineering mother has never let him forget. Although he has nearly everything he could ever want - friends, money, a good education - Brendan's life falls apart during graduate school when he begins to show signs of schizophrenia. Forced to drop out of school, he watches most of his friends disappear and his parents distance themselves further and further.

In a suburban LA neighborhood, neighbors keep wary distance and at times collide, propelled by desire, fury, and mischief. Precocious Korean-American sisters Mira and Rosemary find their world rocked by a suicide; a charismatic and creepy drama teacher grooms his students; an aging gay horror novelist fights loneliness; and a white mother and her adopted Vietnamese daughter deal with lifelong anger issues.

From the best-selling author of The Dogs of Babel comes a dazzling literary mystery about the lengths to which some people will go to rewrite their past. Best-selling novelist Octavia Frost has just completed her latest book - a revolutionary novel in which she has rewritten the last chapters of all her previous books, removing clues about her personal life concealed within, especially a horrific tragedy that befell her family years ago.

Award-winning crime novelist Rob Riley takes a sharp turn into dark, psychological territory with his new short story, The Do-Over. Bill Simons, a man who needs to change his life and location, moves to New York City to begin again - in many ways. A professional and a gentleman, he is off to a fine start, when he meets and begins a relationship with a beautiful woman. The past oozes into and pollutes the present, and the changes he is forced to make bring a do-over of the nightmare from which he had escaped.

Brooklyn Sloane has left her job as a consultant for the FBI to take on her first cold case in the private sector. Doing so allows her the freedom to work the one case she's never professionally been allowed to touch-a ruthless serial killer, who just so happens to be her own brother. Privately, she's hunting her only sibling, but alongside her team, she's seeking justice for those without a voice. But there is always the anomaly . . .

Brooklyn Sloane works as a special consultant to the FBI as one of the most adept profilers in the agency's history. She had been recruited at a relatively young age from her career in academics, but her colleagues have no idea the disturbing motive for her success.

Hester Thursby has given up using her research skills to trace people who don't want to be found. A traumatic case a few months ago unearthed a string of violent crimes, and left Hester riddled with self-doubt and guilt. Caring for a four-year-old is responsibility enough in a world filled with terrors Hester never could have imagined before. Finisterre Island, off the coast of Maine, is ruggedly beautiful and remote - the kind of place tourists love to visit, though rarely for long. But not everyone who comes to the island is welcome.

Crime writer Julia Gooden has just completed the most important story of her life - a book about her beloved brother's childhood abduction and how she found his killer after 30 years. But that hasn't taken her focus off her day job - especially with what looks to be a serial killer terrorizing the city. Female runners are being snatched off jogging trails, then slaughtered in abandoned churches. As Julia begins investigating, with help from Detective Raymond Navarro, she realizes just how personal this case has become.

Donna Weaver has put everything she has into restoring The Breakers, an old bed and breakfast on a remote stretch of beach in Galloway. Now it sits waiting - freshly painted, richly furnished, filled with flowers - for the first guests to arrive. But Donna's guests, a contentious group of estranged cousins, soon realize that they've been here before, years ago. Decades have passed, but that night still haunts them: a 16th birthday party that started with peach schnapps and ended with a girl walking into the sea.

When the lightning illuminated the night, I saw their bloodied faces. They were no longer the boys from next door. As quick as the storm rolled over the neighborhood, a crime of passion was committed, Lucas and Mason Carter dangerously altering the course of all our lives. Ten years later, on my 26th birthday, when detectives come digging for information on a cold case, I find myself once again unwillingly tangled in the spider's web. I hold information on a heinous crime. I have become the number-one target. More specificly, I have become Mason Carter's obsession.

Milly has barely spoken to her sister Judith in years. They hardly exchanged a word at their mother's funeral. They could not be further apart. So when Milly gets an invitation to go on a hiking trip, she hopes it will be an opportunity for reconciliation. Inviting her school-friend Harper along with her for support, the small party head off together into the bush. What awaits Milly is far from just a bracing hike in the wilderness, but an unexpected encounter with the past. The form it takes is revenge. But who is enacting it against Milly, and why?

A homeland security agent is found dead. Shocking evidence reveals the cause of death is the simultaneous collapse of the man's blood vessels. When a second body sharing the same gruesome symptoms is found, the hunt is on for a frightening new kind of killer. A vicious assault on his leading genetics researcher puts Dr. Ronni Saar, the CEO of Double N, and his friend Gadi, a former military police investigator, on the trail of a sophisticated killer. The deeper Gadi digs, and the more he learns, the more dangerous the terrain becomes.

This story tells of a twenty-year-old girl who is house-sitting for six months in a seemingly calm and pleasant neighborhood where nothing peculiar seems to happen. That is, until Mandy hears screaming in the night, hears wailing and moaning during a heavy thunderstorm, feels an earth tremor beneath her feet and feels a man breathing over her in the night. And she has no one to confide in. She may be hypersensitive but does she catastrophize events or are they really happening and not very far below the surface?

After killing the first of five on his list, Finn Miles is on the trail of his next victim. After changing his name, identity, and appearance, he arrives in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, where his second victim resides. Indiana Thomas was one of the members of the Fab 5, a group that tortured Finn in high school and led to some horrific, life-changing events. Now, though, he's determined to make all five pay—and it's Indiana's turn. As he works to blend in and carry out his sinister plan, however, it becomes apparent that someone else is lurking nearby with dark intentions.

Hope Ross isn't crazy, but she knows crazy. Crazy is: A father telling his daughter to pretend her twin sister doesn't exist. A sister never leaving the house. A disturbed woman hidden away in the attic. No, Hope's not crazy, and she's through playing games. As soon as she gets out of this mental facility, she's going to prove it.

Anna Graves' whole life has recently been turned upside down. A new mother, she's just gone back to her job as a radio presenter and is busy navigating a new schedule of late-night feeding and early morning wake ups while also dealing with her newly separated husband. Then the worst happens. While Anna is walking on the beach with her daughter, she's attacked by a crazed teenager. Terrified, Anna reacts instinctively to protect her baby.