Psychological Suspense

In the near future, when America has become a police state, 100 boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. Among them is 16-year-old Ray Garraty, and he knows the rules - keep a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings and you're out - permanently.

In the title story, a young boy becomes obsessed with his cousin's doll after she tragically passes away from leukemia. As he grows older, he begins to collect "found dolls" from the surrounding neighborhoods and stores his treasures in the abandoned carriage house on his family's estate. But just what kind of dolls are they?In The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror, Joyce Carol Oates evokes the “fascination of the abomination” that is at the core of the most profound, the most unsettling, and the most memorable of dark mystery fiction.

Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can't move. She can't speak. She can't open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn't remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from 20 years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas". As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived, and famously testified that her 15-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who've long forgotten her.

Meet Noah - an A-honor-roll student, award-winning swimmer, and small-town star destined for greatness. There weren't any signs that something was wrong until the day he confesses to molesting little girls during swim-team practice. He's sentenced to 18 months in a juvenile sexual-rehabilitation center. His mother, Adrianne, refuses to turn her back on him despite his horrific crimes, but her husband won't allow Noah back into their home.

Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They're admired in their community and are a loving family—until their world falls apart the day their son, Sebastian, is taken. A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. She hires a PI to pick up where the police left off, but instead of finding Sebastian, she learns that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman.

Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Bristol, England. It’s the sort of place where doctors and lawyers and old-money academics live. It’s not the sort of place where people get stabbed in the back 30 times with a kitchen knife in their own homes. Someone must have seen something. Newlywed Joey Mullen, for example, recently returned from four years of working in Ibiza. She and her husband, Alfie, are eager to find a place of their own in her hometown. But Joey finds herself distracted by the man next door, Tom Fitzwilliam.

Amber Patterson Parrish has come a long way from being an invisible wallflower. Her hard work and immaculate planning have paid off now that she’s a prominent socialite, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been bumps along the way. Less than a year since her husband Jackson’s tax-evasion scandal, Amber is still at the top of the Bishops Harbor community pecking order, free to do as she wishes while Jackson sits in prison. But that freedom is quickly coming to an end. With Jackson getting released from prison, Amber’s time—and money—is vanishing.

During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of 30-something friends from Oxford meets to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students 10 years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands - the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves. They arrive on December 30, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world. Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.

In the remote Aspromonte Mountains in southern Calabria, Italy, three best friends embark on a life of crime in order to raise themselves up out of the poverty of their childhoods and the suffering of their parents. Black Souls draws on centuries of brigand lore, peasant rebellion history, mountain mythology, and colonial suffering to offer a gripping morality tale about how violence begets violence.

When British lieutenant Charles Acland returns home from Iraq, his serious head injuries are the outward manifestation of a profound inner change. He may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or it may be, as his psychiatrist suggests, "the prolonged destruction of a personality".

On a flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife, Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start - he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit - a contrast that once inflamed their passion but has now become a cliché. But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda....

Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all—a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night, when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately lands on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough - who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one 40 years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on.

They never considered how his wife might react, or that by the end of the summer a man would be dead. But Blakely always got her way, and the others followed her lead—even when they knew it was dead wrong. The girls had been friends from day one at Camp Pendleton, a haven for gifted children. But their senior summer was different. When Mr. Crosby, the handsome tennis coach, wound up murdered after a reckless lie, Blakely, Grace, Meg, and Thera swore themselves to secrecy. And never spoke to each other again.

Raised in the wilderness by her late great-uncle, Vida is a young woman with an almost preternatural affinity for nature, especially for the wolves that also call the forested mountains home. Formed by hard experience, by love and loss, and by the prophecies of a fortune teller, Vida just wants peace. If only nearby Kettleton County didn’t cast such a dark shadow.

On an ordinary Monday morning, Ariel Cafferty's phone buzzes with a disturbing text message. Something’s happened. I need to see you. Meet me under the candelabra tree ASAP. The words would be jarring from anyone, but the sender is the only man she ever loved. And it's been several years since she learned he died. Seeing Drew’s name pop up is heart-stopping. Ariel’s gut says it can’t be real. But she goes to the tree anyway. She has to. Nobody shows.

An unpopular teenage girl, whose mother is a religious fanatic, is tormented and teased to the breaking point by her more popular schoolmates. She uses her hidden telekinetic powers to inflict a terrifying revenge.

Quinn and Graham’s perfect love is threatened by their imperfect marriage. The memories, mistakes, and secrets that they have built up over the years are now tearing them apart. The one thing that could save them might also be the very thing that pushes their marriage beyond the point of repair.

After years of questioning her sanity, Kat Delancey reluctantly returns to the old family manor as its legal owner, hoping desperately to silence the doubts in her mind and leave the home's tragic past behind her once and for all. But it turns out to be harder than she expected, and not just because of the estranged step-family waiting for her - because maybe Kat's mind was never playing tricks on her after all, and maybe the manor harbors a far more malevolent presence than she ever dreamed...