Middle Thriller

The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul-de-sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again. Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night.

Widow and empty nester Ava Harper never dreamed of turning 40 without the love of her life. Nor did she know she would bury her favorite aunt, who raised her after the death of her mother, a few years later. Then again, she doesn't have the power of foresight. No, her powers are much darker. With her only son off to college and her life savings depleted, Ava returns home to Shipton Harbor, Maine. When an old friend of the family turns up dead, Ava must delve deep into the powers she's repressed all her adult life to find the killer. Now she must open up to her own wells of dark magic.

Contains three complete, novel-length books in the Middle Falls Time Travel series: The Final Life of Nathaniel Moon, The Emancipation of Veronica McAllister, and The Changing Lives of Joe Hart.

Nora Best is the envy of her friends. She's just turned 50 and has traded in her home with The Perfect-Ass Husband for an Airstream trailer and an adventure of a lifetime across the US. But during their leaving party, Nora finds her husband in a compromising position with a friend. Storming out of the party, she jumps into her truck with no idea how to tow the Airstream or where she's going. Nora ends up in a campground in the mountains of Wyoming, drowning her sorrows with its managers, Brad and Miranda.

Evan Sanderson seems to be living a charmed life. He is a successful doctor, much respected in the community, and has a beautiful wife. Evan accomplished what he had because he had a burning ambition to achieve, to be the best. At the end of his life, he wonders if he did enough. He has a terrible feeling he has not. Evan lives in Middle Falls, where second—and third—chances abound, so perhaps he will be able to get to where he longs to be after all. Or will his ambition turn in new directions?

In the fair autumn of Our Lord's grace 1431, the nuns of England's St. Frideswide's prepare for the simply ceremonies in which the saintly novice Thomasine will take her holy vows. But their quiet lives of beauty and prayer are thrown into chaos by the merciless arrival of Lady Ermentrude Fenner and her retinue of lusty men, sinful women, and baying hounds. The hard-drinking dowager even keeps a pet monkey for her amusement. She demands wine, a feast.... And her niece, the angelic Thomasine.

The Christmas season brings strange guests to the medieval nunnery of St. Frideswide's. They bear with them the badly mangled body of a villager, swearing they found the drunken fool lying in a ditch. But Meg, the victim's wife and a scullery maid of the cloister, thinks there are far fouler deeds afoot. As the players rehearse for the nativity, ancient scandals lick at their heels and dark desperation haunts Meg's steps as she finds cruel feudal laws threatening to strip away the lands that would support both her and her sons in the wake of her husband's death.

In the idyllic town of Middle Falls, Oregon, a peculiar phenomenon unfolds—those who die but are not prepared to move on open their eyes again at a pivotal juncture in their past lives, all memories of their first life intact. That includes Hattie Kildare. After dying in 2008, Hattie awakens as a teenager in 1943, back in a world gripped by the chaos of World War II. Amidst the echoes of conflict and the specter of loss, she is reunited with Jimmy, her beloved first boyfriend lost to the war in her first life.

After a disastrous sixth grade, Jake Herndon is anxiously awaiting his Big Do-Over, starting with his new school's notorious seventh-grade sleepover. Awkward team-building games and forced fun quickly become the least of his problems, however, when a dangerous organization invades and the night takes a shocking turn. Jake and two new classmates, Lucy and TJ, barely escape, only to find themselves in a fight for survival on the streets of Chicago. Over the next 48 hours, they unravel a mystery dating back to the Civil War and an incredible secret about Jake s family.

Three full-length time travel books and a short story from the magical Middle Falls universe: The Stubborn Lives of Hart Tanner, The Alternative Lives of Aiden Anderson, The Heartfelt Life of Max Hartfield, and The Encore Lives of Effie Edenson.

At a Hallowe'en party, Joyce - a hostile thirteen-year-old - boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That night, Hercule Poirot is called in to find the "evil presence". But first he must establish whether he is looking for a murderer or a double murderer.

Mahmoud’s passion for his wife, Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world implodes when their country is engulfed in war and the Taliban rises to power. Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister’s family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness.

Shane Collins, a world-weary CIA spy, is ready to come in from the cold. Stationed in Bahrain off the coast of Saudi Arabia for his final tour, he has little use for his mission—uncovering Iranian support for the insurgency against the monarchy. Then Collins meets Almaisa, a beautiful and enigmatic artist, and his eyes are opened to a side of Bahrain most expats never experience, to questions he never thought to ask.

Now, he knows it is too late to change things. He can barely walk and manages to hurt himself badly while sleeping. With those limitations, how can he fix the lamentable situation he's made of his life? But this is Middle Falls, where everyone gets a second chance. The Regretful Life of Richard Bell is the sixteenth book in the Middle Falls Time Travel Series. Like all Middle Falls stories, it can be read as a standalone novel, or as part of the series.

Edwin Miller is uncertain. Not about any one thing, but about every thing. He's smart, capable, and completely unable to move forward in his life because of his own anxiety. Luckily for Edwin, he lives in Middle Falls, Oregon, where the apparent end is often just a new beginning.

The Emperor Henry of the Holy Roman Empire is dying, and his wife, the Empress Matilda, is in danger from those who would use her to gain the title and the power. King Henry of England sends Alfraed of Norton to rescue her and avoid a war. With enemies from France, Flanders and the empire, as well as Norman traitors, the handful of Northern Knights have to fight across Europe and back. A fast-moving novel that moves from Germany to the Scottish borders in the turbulent times of the early 12th century, when friends could become foes overnight.

Middle school is hard. Solving cases for the FBI is even harder. Doing both at the same time - well that's just crazy. But that doesn't stop Florian Bates! After helping the FBI solve an art theft at the National Gallery and uncovering a DC spy ring, Florian's finding life at Alice Deal Middle School a little boring. But that's all about to change! His FBI handler, Marcus, has a job for him! Is it a bank robbery? Counterfeit ring? International espionage? Actually it's middle school pranks...

Between revenants, old witches, and an insidious threat inside the reaper council, Izzy Sage has her hands full. Entertainment is the name of the game in the reaper world. It’s also survival of the fittest. Come along for the ride.

Ripped from today's headlines, Brian Haig's new novel finds Army lawyer Sean Drummond caught between duty to Washington's elite and the soldiers in Iraq. Dispatched to investigate the suicide of one of D.C.'s most influential defense officials, an ardent, early supporter of the war in Iraq, Drummond and his female partner find themselves in the middle of a tug-of-war between Washington's most influential power brokers and his own personal allegiance to the soldiers dying overseas.

Forty-nine and sweating through the hottest summer on record, Beatrice Billings is rudderless: her marriage is stale, her son communicates solely through cryptic text messages, her mother has dementia, and she conducts endless arguments with her older sister in her head. Toronto feels like an inadequately air-conditioned museum of its former self, and the same could be said of her life. She dreams of the past, but everything changes when she googles "escape" and discovers the world of amateur lock-picking.