Family Life Thriller

Joan Didion's electrifying first novel is a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them is a tragic epilogue to the pioneer experience, a story of murder and betrayal that only Didion could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense.

Five-year-old Sloane McBride couldn’t sleep that night. Her parents were arguing again, their harsh words heating the cool autumn air. Then there was that other sound - the ominous thump before all went quiet. In the morning, her mother was gone. The official story was that she left. Her loving, devoted mother! That hadn’t sat any better at the time than it did when Sloane moved out at 18, anxious to leave her Texas hometown in search of anywhere else. But not even a fresh start working as a model in New York could keep the nightmares at bay. Or her fears that her father is deadly.

In a world where magic is illegal, Cassel Sharpe has the most deadly ability of all: With one touch, he can transform any object - including a person - into something else entirely. And that makes him a wanted man. The Feds are willing to forgive all his past crimes if he’ll only leave his con-artist family behind and go straight. But why does going straight feel so crooked? For one thing, it means being on the opposite side of the law from Lila, the girl he loves.

The Lindsay family has come west hoping to help the father, John, recover from an illness. When they arrive, they are induced to purchase Spanish Peaks Ranch, an abandoned United States military post surrounded by mountains. It seems like a perfect place to settle into their new life as ranchers. As they soon find out, though, this deserted fort is equally suited for both protection and imprisonment.

Laura Brandon's promise to her dying father was simple: to visit an elderly woman she'd never heard of before. A woman who remembers nothing-except the distant past. Visiting Sarah Tolley seemed a small enough sacrifice to make. But Laura's promise results in another death: her husband's. And after their five-year-old daughter, Emma, witnesses her father's suicide, Emma refuses to talk about it - to talk at all.Frantic and guilt ridden, Laura contacts the only person who may be able to help.

Best-selling author Ann B. Ross cooks up a batch of fun in this latest novel in her popular series. With a crisp bite in the air, Miss Julia is enjoying a well-earned respite by her new fireplace. But autumn leaves aren’t the only things falling: James, Hazel Marie’s housekeeper, has had a nasty tumble down some stairs. How can Hazel Marie feed and take care of him - not to mention a husband and two babies - when she barely knows how to boil water?

In a windswept British seaside town, single mum Alice Lake finds a man sitting on the beach outside her house. He has no name and no idea how he got there. Against her better judgment, she invites him inside. Meanwhile, in a suburb of London, 21-year-old Lily Monrose has only been married for three weeks. When her husband fails to come home from work one night, she is left alone in a place where she knows no one and with the police telling her that her husband never existed.

When Tara Peary’s twin sister Sophie goes missing, Tara dives into New York’s underbelly to find her. Sophie is the one person who’s ever truly understood her, and Tara knows her sister isn’t the only one who needs help. Tara is also on the run emotionally from her complicated childhood. Her memories are threatening to derail the hunt for Sophie. A psychotherapist keeps her afloat, but then Tara begins dating her therapist’s young tech-millionaire neighbor. The more she uncovers about her the dark side of the rich elite, the less certain of the truth she becomes.

New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award winning author Lisa Scottoline is loved by millions of readers and listeners for her suspenseful novels about family and justice. Scottoline delivers once again with Keep Quiet, an emotionally gripping and complex story about one man's split-second decision to protect his son—and the devastating consequences that follow. Jake Buckman's relationship with his sixteen-year-old son Ryan is not an easy one, so at the urging of his loving wife, Pam, Jake goes alone to pick up Ryan at their suburban movie theater.

It’s been twenty years since Cara’s boyfriend died in a horrible accident and her sister, Anna, went to prison. The tragedy has become a local legend, but Cara has moved past her grief to have a successful career and a happy family. Pity about Anna. Recently released from incarceration, she’s struggling with addiction, guilt, and shame - a shattered life. Cara’s forgiveness seems to be the only thing that helps her pick up the pieces. But as Anna pulls herself together, her memories of that night on the bridge start to come into focus. And few of them match her sister’s.

Meet Hickey, an American school teacher in his late 30s, an American school teacher who burns his bridges with the school board and goes to Africa as an aid worker. Working for an agency in Nairobi, one of his jobs is to drive food and medical supplies to Southern Sudan to an aid station run by Ruth, a middle-aged woman, who acts as nurse, doctor, hospice worker, feeder of starving children, and witness. Ruth is gruff but efficient, and Hickey, who is usually drawn to youth and beauty, is struck by her devotion. Returning to Nairobi, he can’t forget what he has seen.

Now that Pauline Esmeralda Simone-Thierry von Cant has been rescued from Castle Cant by her half-sister and former maidservant, Lucy, the real adventure begins. For there are forces that want to tear Pauline and Lucy apart. In their land, a war rages over chewing gum.

When the Valiant weighs anchor, the Irish that are crammed into her hold break into song, and with the hymn, say good-bye to the island of their birth. Famine, nationalism, and sectarian strife have crippled the Emerald Isle, and those who can afford it crowd aboard leaky ships, risking death for the possibility of a better life.

In his three novellas, In Short Measures, Strong Conspirators, and Sally Forth, Michael Ruhlman delves deeply into the nuanced complexity of romantic and sexual love - and the inevitable evolution of the heart over the span of years and decades. Each novella asks questions about the nature of love in terms of loyalty and fidelity - what are one's obligations toward one's spouse, one's family, and one's heart?

Big secrets run deep. Former FBI agent Jack McBride took the job as chief of police for Stillwater, Texas, to start a new life with his teenage son, Ethan, away from the suspicions that surrounded his wife's disappearance a year earlier. With a low crime rate and a five-man police force, he expected it to be a nice, easy gig; hot checks, traffic violations, some drugs, occasional domestic disturbances, and petty theft. Instead, within a week he is investigating a staged murder-suicide.

In the beginning was the Oak, its hungry roots reaching deep into the earth, its gnarled limbs searching the distant heavens. Two hundred years ago, Obediah Magrute worshipped the Oak and died violently beneath it, feeding it with his blood and bone, shouting his chilling curse to the skies. Now, Laura and Mark Avery have come to the bustling little Vermont village.

James Culdee, a career US Navy noncom who has served his country with distinction for 20 years, is suddenly and unfairly forced into a disgraceful retirement. Devastated, Culdee retreats into alcoholism until he is rescued by his daughter, Miranda, a charter boat skipper whose sloop, the Seamark, has been stolen. When Miranda learns that the Seamark has been sighted in the dangerous and primitive Flyaway Islands of the Philippines, father and daughter sail off in pursuit, on a voyage that will carry them across the Pacific.

It is 1929. At home, economic depression and dust storms ravage America, and abroad the goose step of Nazism is intensifying. Widespread fear of the "other" has reached a fever pitch. Against this tumultuous backdrop, two families share the spotlight in this sweeping saga: the Himelbaums of Poland and the Browns of Iowa. All Harry Himelbaum wants is to live somewhere happy and to send for the wife and child he must deny having.

A horrific car crash in Belize has devastated Helen Pengilly’s family, leaving her daughter in a coma and her husband Michael missing. Alone and terrified, Helen’s memory is dragged back to that day 22 years ago. To protect their family, Helen and Michael both said they would forget what happened. But now it seems that there is someone who will stop at nothing to make them remember....

When a group of neighborhood women gathers, wine in hand, around a fire pit where their backyards meet one Saturday night, most of them are just ecstatic to have discovered that their baby monitors reach that far. It's a rare kid-free night, and they're giddy with it. They drink too much, and the conversation turns personal. By Monday morning, one of them is gone. Everyone knows something about everyone else in the quirky small Ohio town of Yellow Springs, but no one can make sense of the disappearance.