Family Suspense Thrillers

Perhaps best known for his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, #1 New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith delights fans around the world with his warmhearted 44 Scotland Street novels. In the series’ sixth entry, the residents of 44 Scotland Street grapple with problems both trivial and severe, but none so great as when six-year-old Bertie Pollock - who longs to be seven - mislays his mum and learns a valuable lesson about wish fulfillment.

1999: At the end of the millennium, the Kim family is struggling to move on after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children than ever before. One evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John finds the body of an unhoused stranger in the backyard with a letter to Sunny, leaving the family with more questions than ever. 1977: Newly married, Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her hardworking and often-absent husband.

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.

Six years ago, Lucy Kincaid was attacked and nearly killed by an online predator. She survived. Her attacker did not. Now Lucy’s goal is to join the FBI and fight cyber-crime, but in the meantime, she’s volunteering with a victim’s rights group, surfing the Web undercover to lure sex offenders into the hands of the law. But when the predators she hunts start turning up as murder victims, the FBI takes a whole new interest in Lucy.

Left on a train platform in an unfamiliar village, Saffron Faith Anders is certain her father will return shortly, like he promised. She holds out hope even as the hours pass and the station grows dark. When a strange old woman with a large umbrella approaches and inquires about her situation, Saffron doesn’t immediately trust the imposing do-gooder, but with the chances of her father returning growing ever slimmer, she agrees to rest at the old woman’s house. Her stay was supposed to be for a few minutes, but Saffron soon realizes she has been confined to a house of dark secrets.

Reluctant debutante Sawyer Taft joined Southern high society for one reason and one reason alone: to identify and locate her biological father. But the answers Sawyer found during her debutante year only left her with more questions and one potentially life-ruining secret. When her cousin Lily ropes her into pledging a mysterious, elite all-female secret society called the White Gloves, Sawyer soon discovers that someone in the group's ranks may have the answers she's looking for. No one is quite who they seem to be in this sequel to Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ Little White Lies.

Nessa Garvey’s sister Deena vanished without a trace in Philadelphia in 2004. In all that time, Nessa has never once doubted what her instincts told her: her sister’s ex-husband has gotten away with an unspeakable crime. Nessa’s niece, Ruby, is raised by her father, the man Nessa suspects, in rural Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain. Ruby learns how to hunt, how the plants and trees grow, how to avoid making her father angry. The one question she longs to ask is the one she knows she cannot voice: What really happened to her mother?

I wish I could say that the tragedy of little Jack disappearing brought me and Nate closer together. But my husband is more distant from me now than he’s ever been. Perhaps that’s why I don’t ask him exactly where he’s going when he sets off on another business trip. Or perhaps I was too distracted by the woman moving in across the street with bouncing blonde hair and a cherubic toddler boy. He reminds me so much of the child I lost. But his mother doesn’t seem to properly watch him. And I can’t be sure, but I think Nate and this woman share a look of recognition before he leaves.

Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men - employees at the resort - are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives.

The hamlet of Hillside has one factory, three churches, and more bored teenagers than it knows what to do with. Georgie Rocco is more lost than any of his classmates, and decides one night to take control. When an attempted robbery at the factory turns into murder, Georgie discovers an empowering new talent for exploiting other people's vulnerabilities, including those of his lovely sister, Jo.

Germany, 1945. The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to 18-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal; her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else—her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja—they went left.

After Maeve finds a pack of tarot cards while cleaning out a closet during her in-school suspension, she quickly becomes the most sought-after diviner at St. Bernadette’s Catholic school. But when Maeve’s ex-best friend, Lily, draws an unsettling card called The Housekeeper that Maeve has never seen before, the session devolves into a heated argument that ends with Maeve wishing aloud that Lily would disappear. When Lily isn’t at school the next Monday, Maeve learns her ex-friend has vanished without a trace.

Brother detectives Frank and Joe search a hidden castle for clues to help them find a missing comic book in the 19th book in the thrilling Hardy Boys Adventures series.

She’s always had a special connection to the place, even before she was old enough to attend. The camp is the lifeline of Roxwood, the small town she lives in. Alpine Lake provides jobs, money and prestige to the region. Few Roxwood locals, though, get to reap the rewards of living so close to the glam summer that camp, with its five-figure tuition and rich kids who have been dumped there for eight weeks by their powerful parents. Goldie's one of them.

Filmmaker Tessa Shepherd helped free a man she believed was wrongly imprisoned for murder. When he kills again, Tessa’s life is upended. She’s reeling with guilt, her reputation destroyed. Worse, Tessa’s mother has unexpectedly passed away, and her sister, Margot, turns on her after tensions from their past escalate. Hounded by a bullying press, Tessa needs an escape. That’s when she learns of a strange inheritance bequeathed by her mother: a derelict and isolated estate known as Fallbrook. It seems like the perfect refuge.

In Catherine Lowell's smart and original debut novel, the only remaining descendant of the Brontë family embarks on a modern-day literary scavenger hunt to find the family's long-rumored secret estate, using only the clues her eccentric father left behind and the Brontës' own novels. Samantha Whipple is used to stirring up speculation wherever she goes. Since her father's untimely death, she is the presumed heir to a long-rumored trove of diaries, paintings, letters, and early novel drafts.

Ali Cross just solved his first real case. Alex Cross knows it's only a matter of time before his son finds his way into more trouble. Neither of them expected Ali to get caught up in another case so quickly. Ali and his friends were just hanging out in Anacostia Park...then they became witnesses to a crime. Alex wants Ali to stay far away from the investigation. But Ali isn't going anywhere, not when his new friend Zoe is in trouble. It's up to Ali to figure out why she's lying to the police - and who she's protecting.

Dara Tailor has had to grow up fast. With a mother addicted to cocaine, Dara must look after her seven younger siblings, until social services split them up for ever. Grace Perry has led a sheltered life. Until her widowed mother is attacked and left for dead and Grace is taken into care. At Holly Brookes Children's Home, the two girls unite in the face of horrific abuse and form an unbreakable bond of loyalty. But when their loyalty is tested can they rely on each other to do the right thing? Friendship - it's all about trust.

There is a stranger outside Caroline's house. Her husband is lying to her, so when the stranger, Aiden, shows up as a bartender at the same party where Caroline and her husband have a very public fight, it doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary. As her marriage collapses around her and the lavish lifestyle she's built for herself starts to crumble, Caroline turns to Aiden for comfort...and revenge. After a brief and desperate fling that means nothing to Caroline and everything to him, Aiden's obsession with Caroline, her family, and her house grows more and more disturbing.

Precocious six-year-old Bertie joins the scouts to escape his mother, Matthew learns to handle the challenges of marriage, and Domenica deals with loneliness. Even four-legged Cyril gets in on the action, finding himself a bit of canine romance.