Family Suspense

You’d never know what secrets the house on Hogarth Street holds - what’s happening, right this second, behind closed doors. An emerald-green front lawn. Perfectly trimmed hedging. An ivy-covered front gate and the scent of honeysuckle in the air. In the yard, two scooters lie on the grass. One blue, one pink, belonging to five-year-old twins.

Colin Hancock is giving his second chance his best shot. At 28, he's focused only on walking a straight line - getting his teaching degree, working out at the gym religiously, and avoiding all the places and people that proved so destructive in his earlier life. The last thing he's looking for is a serious relationship. But when Maria Sanchez crosses paths with him on a rainswept night in North Carolina, his plans are upended in a way that will rattle the foundations of his carefully structured life.

I have something for you. When Quinn Cruz receives that cryptic text message from her older sister Nora, she doesn't think much of it. They haven't seen each other in nearly a year. But when a haunted Nora shows up at the lake near Quinn's house just hours later, a chain reaction is set into motion that will change both of their lives forever. Nora's "something" is more shocking than Quinn could have ever imagined: a little girl, cowering, wide-eyed, and tight-lipped. Nora hands her over to Quinn with instructions to keep her safe, and then Nora disappears.

Donald J. Sobol’s pint-sized amateur detective has been a hit with young readers for over three decades. For 25 cents a day—plus expenses—Encyclopedia Brown will solve any case, big or small for the kids in his neighborhood. He also secretly works with his police chief father to crack the toughest investigations and keep the streets of Idaville safe. Here are 10 more beguiling mysteries that will have listeners scratching their heads.

Everyone thought Jessie Benedict's impending marriage to Sam Hatchard was a great arrangement - everyone, that is, but Jessie herself. Was she the only one who could see that Hatchard, her powerful father's protege, had a scheming ulterior motive in marrying her? He was more than just a chip off the old workaholic's block - he was positively lusting after Jessie's inheritance to build his own business empire!

City girl Calla Fletcher attempts to reconnect with her estranged father, and unwittingly finds herself torn between her desire to return to the bustle of Toronto and a budding relationship with a rugged Alaskan pilot in this masterful new romance from acclaimed author K.A. Tucker.

After her grandmother Arlette's death, Betty is finally ready to begin her life. She had forfeited university, parties, boyfriends, summer jobs in order to care for Arlette. Now she's ready for whatever life throws at her, and, since the will included a beneficiary unknown to her who lives in the city, she heads there to find the mysterious woman. In 1920s London, Arlette is starting her new life in a time of postwar change. Beautiful and charismatic, she's drawn into a hedonistic world, but then tragedy strikes, and she flees back to her childhood home....

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare, but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place.

Kenzi Brannon's life was turned upside down when she moved into her family's abandoned home to raise her niece. Problems compound when her aging mother starts to remember things. And clues the police find regarding the knife don't match anything Kenzi knows about her family. Things go from bad to worse when she and her niece discover something horrifying in their house. But not even that compares to the strange ways her mom is acting.

Nine people gather at a remote health resort. Some are here to lose weight, some are here to get a reboot on life, some are here for reasons they can’t even admit to themselves. Amidst all of the luxury and pampering, the mindfulness and meditation, they know these ten days might involve some real work. But none of them could imagine just how challenging the next ten days are going to be.

Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it's served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don't knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing what's buried in the Morrows' backyard. But 19-year-old Michael Morrow isn't like the rest of his family. He doesn't take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees.

Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people's houses. You've known your neighbors for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe. But are they really? On a midsummer night, as a festive neighborhood party is taking place, preteen Pip discovers her 13-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden. What really happened to her?

Now in a convenient bundle, here are the second three novels in Jill Ramsower’s captivating Five Families Series. Three sisters. Three incomparable men. Three full-length novels about love in a dangerous mafia world of lies, schemes, and betrayal.

Having garnered both Young Readers’ Choice and Special Edgar Awards, Donald J. Sobol’s Encyclopedia Brown stories have been children’s classics for decades. In this installment, the 10-year-old detective uses his vast knowledge and probing questions to expose a muscle-bound scam, a crooked protection racket, a circus frame-up, and other baffling mysteries.

Gemma Ballantine is getting ready for work one morning when her eldest child comes running down the stairs saying the words every mother dreads. The front door is open. And her six-year-old daughter has disappeared. Frantic with fear, Gemma starts a nail-biting search for her little girl. After what feels like forever, her mother-in-law, Diane, finds Katie wandering lost a few streets away. Relieved to have her youngest child back in her arms, breathing in the sweet scent of her hair, Gemma thinks the nightmare is over. But then her perfect family starts to fall apart....

The site of the old campus bungalow where two girls were brutally slain is now a flower patch covered with chrysanthemums. It's been 50 years since the Immaculate Conception Murders. Three more students and a teacher were killed in a sickening spree that many have forgotten. But there is one person who knows every twisted detail... Hannah O'Rourke and her volatile half-sister, Eden, have little in common except a parent. Yet they've ended up at the same small college outside Chicago, sharing a bungalow with another girl.

Jackie does not like surprises. Chaos is the enemy! The best way to get her successful, busy parents to notice her is to be perfect. The perfect look, the perfect grades—the perfect daughter. And then Jackie's family dies in a freak car accident and she has to move cross-country to live with the Walters—her new guardians. Now Jackie must trade in her Type A personality and New York City apartment for a Colorado ranch and all the wild Walter boys who come with it. How can she fit in and move on when she needs to keep her parents' memory alive by living up to the promise of perfect?

It’s the new normal at the Garber household in Connecticut: Glen, a contractor, has seen his business shaken by the housing crisis, and now his wife, Sheila, is taking a business course at night to increase her chances of landing a good-paying job. But she should have been home by now. Waiting for Sheila’s return, with their eight-year-old daughter sleeping soundly, Glen soon finds his worst fears confirmed: Sheila and two others have been killed in a car accident. Adding to the tragedy, the police claim Sheila was responsible. Glen knows it’s impossible.

A "wild west" tale of two brothers who battle both the state and a mafia empire in 1920s Italy, from famed Italian author Andrea Camilleri. Raffadali, province of Agrigento, 1920s. The Sacco brothers are free men with strong ideas about socialism and the state. Their lives change radically one morning when their father, Luigi Sacco, receives an anonymous letter from the local Mafia demanding protection money and is the victim of a robbery attempt. Luigi tells the police of the extortion letters he received, but the police don't know what to do.

A professor shows a colleague a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer - but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of stories that trace ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration.