Mystery Girl

They were madly in love. The perfect couple. That was the story everyone in South River believed...until Gin Talcott and Adam Archer are found shot in their bed. Adam is dead at the scene. Gin is fighting for her life. Detectives Greta Jessup and Finn Pate are assigned to the case. Greta has a long history with Gin’s first husband, Eddie, and is determined to protect his 18-year-old twins. Piper discovered the bodies. Daniel is missing—and so is Adam’s gun.

Piper Sullivan was in a strange hiking accident last month and has been in a coma ever since. Her older sister, Savannah, can’t pretend to be optimistic about it; things look bad. Piper will likely never wake up, and Savannah will never get any answers about what exactly happened. But then Savannah finds a note in Piper’s locker, inviting Piper to a meeting of their school’s wilderness club—at the very place and on the very day that she fell. Which means there was a chance that Piper wasn’t alone.

When Sam Kornberg’s wife, Lala, walks out on him, he’s an unemployed used-book store clerk and failed experimental novelist with a broken heart. Desperate to win her back, he takes a job as assistant detective to the enigmatic Solar Lonsky, a private eye who might be an eccentric and morbid genius or just a morbidly obese madman. It’s a simple tail job, following a beautiful and mysterious lady around L.A., but Sam soon finds himself helplessly falling for his quarry and hopelessly entangled in a murder case involving Satanists, succubi, underground filmmakers, Hollywood bigshots, Mexican shootouts, video-store geekery, and sexy doppelgangers.

Her name is Renee Blackbear, but what most people call the 19-year-old Ojibwe woman is Cash. She lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota’s Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. She has one friend, the Sheriff Wheaton. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three. Since then, Cash navigated through foster homes and at 13 was working farms, driving trucks.

Rebekah Daniels is just your ordinary spunky nine-year-old girl living in the small town of Curtis Bay…EXCEPT she is determined NOT to be ordinary at all! Her small town is filled with mysteries and Rebekah is sure that she, along with her best friend Mouse, will be able to solve every last one of them.

Between intriguing new cases and troubling personal developments, Precious' hands are full. The four Miss Beauty and Integrity pageant finalists may have questionable moral fiber, and the brother of an important government worker has allegedly been poisoned. On top of all that, Precious' reliable fianci might be hiding something.

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge.

It’s 1998, and female students are going missing at Southern State University in North Carolina, but freshman Jessica Fadley, once a bright and responsible student, is going through her own struggles. Just as her life seems to be careening dangerously out of control, she suddenly disappears. Twenty-four years later, Jessica’s sister Lindsey is desperately searching for answers and uses the momentum of a new chart-topping true crime podcast that focuses on cold cases to guide her own investigation.

For as long as they can remember, Jessica, Norah, and Alicia have been told how lucky they are. As young girls they were rescued from family tragedies and raised by a loving foster mother, Miss Fairchild, on an idyllic farming estate and given an elusive second chance at a happy family life. But their childhood wasn’t the fairy tale everyone thinks it was. Miss Fairchild had rules. Miss Fairchild could be unpredictable. And Miss Fairchild was never, ever to be crossed. In a moment of desperation, the three broke away from Miss Fairchild and thought they were free.

Alex Mercer is no stranger to kidnappings. The emotional scars still run deep from his sister's disappearance years earlier. His daughter Ariana remains safe long after her adoption, and he cherishes the few times a year he gets to see her. The joy is palpable when he takes her on their first one-on-one outing. At least until he pauses to answer a text and Ariana disappears. Wracked with guilt and determined to find answers, Alex teams up with an unlikely ally at the police department.

Brighton, 1950. The body of a girl is found cut into three pieces. Detective Inspector Edgar Stephens is convinced the killer is mimicking a famous magic trick—the Zig Zag Girl. The inventor of the trick, Max Mephisto, is an old war friend of Edgar’s. They served together in a shadowy unit called the Magic Men, a special ops troop that used stage tricks to confound the enemy. Max is on the traveling show circuit, touring seaside towns with ventriloquists, sword-swallowers and dancing girls.

Pip is not a detective anymore. With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcast about the murder case they solved together last year. The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her. But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing. Jamie Reynolds has disappeared, on the very same night the town hosted a memorial for the sixth-year anniversary of the deaths of Andie Bell and Sal Singh.

Owen Pick’s life is falling apart. In his 30s and living in his aunt’s spare bedroom, he has just been suspended from his job as a teacher after accusations of sexual misconduct - accusations he strongly denies. Searching for professional advice online, he is inadvertently sucked into the dark world of incel forums, where he meets a charismatic and mysterious figure. Across the street from Owen lives the Fours family, headed by mom Cate, a physiotherapist, and dad Roan, a child psychologist. But the Fours family have a bad feeling about their neighbor Owen.

April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily—during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison.

Former New Jersey prosecutor Sandy Moss moved to a prestigious Los Angeles law firm to make a new start as a family lawyer. So it seems a little unfair that Seaton, Taylor have created a criminal law division specifically for her. Just because she's successfully defended two murder trials, it doesn't mean she likes them! But when abrasive Hollywood movie director Robert Reeves is accused of murdering a stuntman on set, Sandy finds she can't say no when he demands her help. Robert might be an egotistical liar, but something tells Sandy he's innocent—even if no one else can see it.

Ignorant of civilization and cautioned against its evils, nineteen-year-old Wren and her two sisters, Sage and Evie, were raised in off-the-grid isolation in a primitive cabin in upstate New York. When the youngest grows gravely ill, their mother leaves with the child to get help from a nearby town. And they never return. As months pass, hope vanishes. Supplies are low. Livestock are dying.

Three young women share a London flat. The first is a coolly efficient secretary. The second is an artist. The third interrupts Hercule Poirot's breakfast, confessing that she is a murderer - and then promptly disappears. Slowly, Poirot learns of the rumors surrounding the mysterious third girl, her family, and her disappearance. Yet hard evidence is needed before the great detective can pronounce her guilty, innocent, or insane.

Charlie Hudson, an autistic 17-year-old, is determined to leave Sawyer, PA, as soon as she graduates high school - in the meantime, she works as many hours as she can at a sandwich shop called The Triple S to save money for college. But when shop owner Clay Cooper - a man who is both respected and feared by many in this economically depressed community - is found dead, each member of his staff becomes a suspect in the perplexing case. Charlie must work to protect herself and her friends, and uncover the danger that may still be at large in their tightknit community.

Lizzy Moon never wanted Moon Girl Farm. Eight years ago, she left the land that nine generations of gifted healers had tended, determined to distance herself from the whispers about her family’s strange legacy. But when her beloved grandmother Althea dies, Lizzy must return and face the tragedy still hanging over the farm’s withered lavender fields: the unsolved murders of two young girls, and the cruel accusations that followed Althea to her grave.

Three complete stories in one collection! Includes The Mystery Girl, The Mystery Cruise, and The Disappearing Friend Mystery. In The Mystery Girl, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny are working in a general store to help out a friend of Aunt Jane’s. It seems to the children that the young girl who works in the store is behaving very strangely. She seems nervous and won’t answer any questions about her past. Then a strange man comes to the store asking about her. What secret is the mystery girl hiding?