Gripping Thriller

I wrap my arms around the tree trunk, pressing my cheek against it until the bark digs in and the missing poster is finally secured. I try not to look at the photograph on it. At the features so similar to mine. Perhaps this will be the year someone comes forward. Were crucial mistakes made by detectives from the very beginning? Could the pressure of living two lives have led my sister to run away - or even end it? Or did someone in her tight circle of friends and family have reason to want her gone? Someone out there must know something.

When firefighters discover the body of a teenage girl at an abandoned house, Detective Amanda Steele hurries to the scene. Dumfries, Virginia, is a small town, yet no one seems to have any idea who the dead girl is, until Amanda finds a dragonfly pin with the name Crystal engraved on it. Working tirelessly, Amanda traces the pin to Crystal Foster, a 13-year-old who disappeared three years ago from her wealthy parents’ home. Breaking the news to the distraught parents won’t be easy, but the loss of her own daughter still haunts Amanda, and she knows this will bring them closure.

The rain had been falling for weeks when Black Rock Falls Sheriff Jenna Alton receives a panicked phone call from a local forest ranger. The lifeless body of a woman has washed up on the banks of a swollen river. Rushing to the scene, Jenna and her deputy, David Kane, find the young girl laying face up in the dirt, her long brown hair spilling out around her, her perfect pale skin showing no signs of struggle. Leaning in for a closer look, she finds a jack of hearts playing card tucked into the girl’s underwear. This was no accident—someone killed this innocent soul.

Fact: During the night of February 1, 1959, in the remote reaches of Siberia, nine Russian hikers slash open their tent from the inside and flee into a blizzard in subpolar temperatures. Fact: By morning all are dead, several having suffered gruesome, violent deaths. What happened to them has baffled investigators and researchers to this day.

When Jem knocked on the door of an isolated cottage overlooking the beautiful Neptune Cove, she was hoping for help fixing a birthday cake baking disaster. She was not expecting to find the tenant dead on the tiled floor, specks of blood on the collar of his navy and red satin pajamas. The victim is Arthur Ajax, a handsome and wealthy American businessman who arrived in the Isles of Scilly as a tourist 10 months ago and never left.

I’m Lucy, and I have a secret I have a beautiful home that I’m desperate to escape. But that’s not my secret. I tell my friends I’ve never wanted children when I always have. But that’s not my secret. My husband is a celebrated surgeon who tries to control me. But that’s not my secret. Adele knows. Once upon a time, I knew everything about her and she knew everything about me. Best friends forever. But now our secret is beginning to surface. I can trust her more than anyone. We made a pact. And she’s never do anything to hurt me. Would she?

A terrorist attack in the news leaves Nameless reeling from a disturbing vision. But it’s not a glimpse of the future. It’s a recovered memory that’s opening a window into his mysterious past. Uncharacteristically forthcoming—and unexpectedly personal—Nameless’s handlers have no choice but to emerge from the shadows. The indoctrinating factions of his visions are growing in number. What’s more, their chilling symbol of totalitarian control is now linked to the highest powers in the country.

There’s a killer in your house. The Hangman waits in the darkness. He knows your darkest secrets. He’ll make you pay for all the crimes you have tried desperately to forget. And he is closer than you think. DCI Matilda Darke is running out of time. Fear is spreading throughout the city. As the body count rises, Matilda is targeted and her most trusted colleagues fall under suspicion. But can she keep those closest to her from harm? Or is it already too late?

Evie and her daughter, Asteria, are fleeing an abusive cult when they meet a stranger in an abandoned Arizona shopping mall. Fate hasn’t set Nameless on their trail. It’s a premonition, and a chance to make reparations for a failure from his past he can’t even remember. This time, Nameless must do everything in his power not to fail those who trust him with their lives.

As day breaks over the fairground, Detective Katie Scott forces herself to take in another disturbing scene in front of her. A woman, the same age as her, found slumped in the carriage of the Ferris wheel, red lipstick dragged across her lips, her throat cut. Katie doesn’t want to believe that the serial killer picking off women across the state has found their way to the small town of Pine Valley, California, but when her team finds a gold engagement ring hanging nearby, it’s a terrifying, but undeniable fact.

Spring 1925. Abigail Dixon arrives in Somerset to report on the high-society wedding of an American car tycoon’s son and an English aristocrat’s daughter. But when a man is murdered on a trout-fishing expedition, and the quaint village abuzz with gossip of a local woman discovered dead in London, Abigail quickly finds herself entangled in a web of murder and scandal. As she investigates, Abigail unearths some dark secrets lurking within Darrington Manor and clues linking the two murders.

On a winding mountain road into the town of Denton, Pennsylvania, Detective Josie Quinn finds the body of a local teenage girl, Dina Hale. The sight of plum-colored bruises gathering around the girl’s neck pierces Josie’s heart, but the discovery of a second girl’s empty purse in the dirt nearby gives her a flicker of hope that one person, at least, made a lucky escape. Dina’s parents are grief-stricken as the town rallies together in a desperate search for the second girl, who waitressed with Dina. The two best friends were on their way to a shift when they were attacked.

Lindisfarne, AD 793. There had been portents - famine, whirlwinds, lightning from clear skies, serpents seen flying through the air. But when the raiders came, no one was prepared. They came from the North, their dragon-prowed longships gliding out of the dawn mist as they descended on the kingdom's most sacred site. It is 8th June AD 793, and with the pillage of the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Viking Age has begun. While his fellow monks flee before the Norse onslaught, one young novice stands his ground.

In this game it’s kill or be killed. A stranger has you cornered. They call themselves The Host. You are forced to play their game. In it one person can live and the other must die. You are the next player. You have a choice to make. This is a game where nobody wins....

I’d heard of the Baby Caroline case, of course. When a baby is snatched from her mother’s arms, the whole country knows about it. I knew about the parents left lying by the swimming pool, the open window in the nursery. But I never dreamed it had anything to do with me. Today, my beautiful daughter turned one. We were unwrapping gifts and blowing out candles when the knock came at the door, and they took my mother away. The police say she’s not really my mother. That she stole me, 30 years ago.

When the body of a man is found in the dense forest surrounding Black Rock Falls, Sheriff Jenna Alton immediately sees disturbing similarities with a past case - the same murder weapon, the remote beauty spot, and the way the victim is perched against a tree with no sign of a struggle. But the killer in that case was jailed for life.

Charley Willis was 13 years old when her parents were killed in their family home and she was found hiding in a cupboard upstairs. Fifteen years later, Charley is marrying Seth Chambers. It should be the happiest day of their lives, a chance for Charley to put her past behind her, but just hours after the ceremony, she is missing. No one saw her leave. No one knows where she is. One thing is for certain…Seth is about to discover he doesn’t really know the woman he just married. And his nightmare is only just beginning.

DCI Warren Jones has a bad feeling when the body of a young woman turns up in Beaconsfield Woods. She’s been raped and strangled but the murderer has been careful to leave no DNA evidence. There are, of course, suspects - boyfriend, father - to check out but, worryingly, it looks more and more like a stranger murder. Warren’s worst fears are confirmed when another young woman is killed in the same way. The MO fits that of Richard Cameron who served 12 years for rape. But Cameron never killed his victims and he has a cast-iron alibi.

When Bear and Mandy Logan’s travels take them to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, they expect to settle in for a quiet winter on the barrier island. But when a mysterious man shows up harassing their elderly neighbors, Bear can’t stop himself from getting involved. His search for answers soon leads him to more shocking discoveries, as he realizes the small town where he spent summers as a kid holds more secrets than he could have imagined.

Jon Reznick is not a man to cross. A brutally effective black-ops veteran, Reznick has a history of taking the law into his own hands. So when a group of masked men murders his closest friend, he swears to exact vengeance. The now-deceased Bill Eastland had been Reznick’s last living tie to his father, leaving him devastated…and furious. Whether or not the FBI approves, he swears to hunt down whoever issued the hit on his friend.