Family Thriller

How did an Egyptian city planner, a Yemeni religious fanatic, a boy from the United Arab Emirates who worshipped sex (not Allah), and a young student of aircraft design who went to a Christian school in Lebanon - four very different men with very different ideas - get involved in flying the 9/11 planes? How did the plot develop, and who developed it? Marwan, by Aram Schefrin, puts the reported facts together and fictionally fills in the details.

It's the phone call every parent dreads: in the middle of the night, Sandy Cline learns that her twenty-year-old son, Jordan, has been in a car accident. Her nephew, Travis, was also in the car, along with Travis's girlfriend. All three are alive - but barely. The car was smashed against a tree along a remote and winding road, beautiful but deadly, in their rural Texas Hill Country town.

The Sunday morning starts like any other. But on this particular Sunday morning, she's surprised to see that her husband, Ian, is not home. As the hours pass, Dani fills her day with small things. But still, Ian does not return. And then, like a relentless blackness, the terrible realization hits Dani: He's gone. As the days pass, Dani will plumb the depths of her conscience, turning over and revealing the darkest of her secrets in order to discover the hard truth - about herself, her husband, and their lives together.

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.

When Kristin Chapman agrees to let her husband, Richard, host his brother's bachelor party, she expects a certain amount of debauchery. She brings their young daughter to Manhattan for the evening, leaving her Westchester home to the men and their hired entertainment. What she does not expect is this: bacchanalian drunkenness, her husband sharing a dangerously intimate moment in the guest room, and two women stabbing and killing their Russian bodyguards before driving off into the night.

Three years ago, 15-year-old Ellen Vicksburg went missing in the quiet town of River Remez, New Mexico. Ellen was kind, studious, and universally liked. Her younger brother, Ben, could imagine nothing worse than never knowing what happened to her - until, on the first anniversary of her death, he found her body in a shallow grave by the river's edge. Ben, now 17, is relentlessly driven to find answers to Ellen's homicide. Police believe she was the victim of a psychopath known as the Demon.

Who is Jenna Fox? Seventeen-year-old Jenna has been told that is her name. She has just awoken from a coma, they tell her, and she is still recovering from a terrible accident in which she was involved a year ago. But what happened before that? Jenna doesn't remember her life. Or does she? And are the memories really hers?

Georgia Thackery is feeling pretty good about her summer job teaching at prestigious Overfeld College, and she’s renting a rustic cabin right by a lake for herself, her daughter, Madison, and her best friend, Sid the Skeleton. Together again, the trio are enjoying the quiet when a teenager named Jen shows up looking for her friend. Georgia doesn’t recognize the name, but she learns that the person Jen was looking for is actually Sid.

Georgia Thackery, adjunct English professor, has a new job teaching at Falstone College of Art and Design, known as FAD to its students and faculty. Living in a borrowed bungalow during winter in the snowiest part of Massachusetts, Georgia feels her isolation weighing as heavily as the weather. Then she receives a package containing her best friend, Sid, a walking, talking skeleton who has lived with the Thackery family since Georgia was six. With Georgia working out of town, Sid was lonely too.

When Alexis and her husband Sam buy a neglected Cape Cod house in an exclusive DC suburb, they are ecstatic. Sam is on the cusp of making partner at his law firm, Alexis is pregnant with their second child, and their glamorous neighbors welcome the couple with open arms. Things are looking up, and Alexis believes she can finally leave her troubled past behind.

A girl who’s always been in the shadows finds herself pursued by the unbelievably attractive new boy at school, who may or may not be the death of her. Another girl grows up mute because of a curse placed on her by a vindictive spirit, and later must decide whether to utter her first words to the boy she loves and risk killing everyone who hears her if the curse is real.

The quiet scandal surrounding the death of her parents has always haunted Beryl Tavistock. Now she’s asking dangerous questions, and the answers are proving that the past does not die easily. Pulled into a world of espionage, Beryl quickly discovers that she needs help, and former CIA agent Richard Wolf is her only hope. But in a world where trust is a double-edged sword, friends become enemies and enemies are killers.

Kate loves her life. At 44 she's happily married to her kind husband, Ron, blessed with two wonderful children, and has a beautiful home in San Francisco. Everything changes, however, when she and Ron attend a dinner party and meet another couple, Peter and Jill. Kate and Peter exchange only a few pleasant words, but that night, in bed with her husband, Kate is suddenly overcome with a burning desire for Peter. What begins as an innocent crush soon develops into a dangerous obsession.

Felled by a cowardly shot to the back, Stanton Youngblood has just enough time before he dies to leave a single clue to his killer's identity: the word Wayne, scrawled in his own blood. That word means everything to his widow. Leigh Youngblood was once Leigh Wayne, but she left her wealthy family behind thirty years ago when she fell in love with Stanton, a betrayal the Waynes have never forgiven. Now she publicly vows to discover which of her siblings thinks money and power are enough to cover up a murder.

Trouble always comes to those who court it. Rose Gardner's ability to see glimpses of the future has gotten her into hot water time and again, but so have her curiosity and her sense of daring. Those very qualities helped her defeat the most powerful man in Arkansas - a man so adept at hiding his crimes there was no way to defeat him inside of the law - but her success came at a steep personal price. Now she's throwing herself into her landscaping business, trying to live a life that's as orderly as one of her gardens.

A paranoid single mom is forced to confront the unthinkable act she committed as a desperate teenager in this addictive thriller with a social media twist. Maria Weston wants to be friends. But Maria Weston is dead. Isn't she? 1989. When Louise first notices the new girl who has mysteriously transferred late into their senior year, Maria seems to be everything the girls Louise hangs out with aren't. Authentic. Funny. Brash. Within just a few days, Maria and Louise are on their way to becoming fast friends.

Ben is now certain his sister was the victim of a sadistic serial killer and refuses to let any distractions get in his way of bringing this monster to justice: not his rocky relationship with Ro, his rekindled friendship with J. D., or Detective Sam Shanks' constant warnings to butt out and let the police handle the investigation. But the ominous winds of Santa Fe are kicking up and there's nowhere left to hide. Find out what happens as Ben, Ro, and Detective Sam Shanks come head to head with the killer in the conclusion of Killing Season.

When a hometown girl is brutally murdered, detective Scott Aylward vows to bring a killer to justice. His focus on the case further damages his failing marriage and reinforces the knowledge that he always fails those who matter most - his parents, his boss, his wife, but most of all the victims who expect him to bring them justice. His search for the killer takes him back to his roots and crosses his path with the missing piece of the puzzle. When the truth is finally revealed, he finds himself unarmed and face-to-face with the killer. This time, failing might cost him his life.

In the end, all that's left is an Echo. Before, Violet's morbid ability to sense the dead led her to uncover dark murders and long-buried secrets in her small town. Now that she's workingwith a special investigative team, Violet hopes she can help even more people - whether by saving a life or catching a killer. Although she's relieved to finally be honest about what she can do, her instant connection with her mysterious partner, Rafe, is both confusing and unsettling, and their unique bond creates tension with her boyfriend, Jay. When she discovers the body of a college student murdered by "the collector," Violet refuses to give upon the case.

It’s midnight in the hospital when Jude’s phone rings, interrupting her precious 15-minute break. When she sees it’s her 70-year-old mother, Margaret, she braces herself for the usual complaints. But her blood runs cold at four words that will change everything...‘something terrible has happened.’ Margaret has been accused of an unspeakable crime committed 20 years ago. She insists she’s not guilty, and begs Jude to help her prove it. But as Jude is drawn into the dark secrets of her family’s past, she starts to question whether her mother is really as innocent as she claims to be.