Psychological Suspense

Mags Barkworth still suffers the effects of a life-changing tragedy over a decade ago. She knows her husband loves her. She knows he would never do anything to hurt her, or their daughter. But what if the voice in her head, the one she's pushed away with therapy and anti-depressants, is telling the truth? What if it's all a lie? When Tam, their daughter, draws an uncannily detailed picture of a place she's never been, Mags's life starts to unravel. But even in her most paranoid moment, Mags could never have guessed the secret she is destined to uncover.

The legendary writer Patricia Highsmith is best remembered today for her chilling psychological thrillers The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. A critically acclaimed, best-selling author in Europe, Highsmith has for too long been underappreciated in the United States. Eleven is Highsmith's first collection of short stories, an arresting group of dark masterpieces of obsession and foreboding, violence and instability.

Destruction follows the ruthless serial killer, Jeremy Rose, the Bayou Butcher, as he heads north to evade capture for his horrific crimes. As he seeks safe harbor with a former friend, he remains focused on unfinished business with forensic pathologist Dr. Wren Muller, the only target who’s ever escaped him—twice. But not this time. He’s determined to make Wren suffer, and he’s promised to make her play by his own twisted rules.

Thirteen bibliomysteries by best-selling and award-winning authors are contained in this first of volume of a must-listen collection.

Writer Ben Mears has returned to his hometown of Jerusalem's Lot with the hope that moving into a delapidated mansion, long the subject of town lore, might help him get a handle on his life and provide inspiration for a new book. But when two young boys venture into the woods and only one comes out alive, Mears begins to realize that there may be something sinister at work.

Marlena Altizer Durst lives in her husband's shadow. He controls her every move - what she wears, the food she eats, and the friends she's allowed to make. If she disobeys, there are...consequences. And he has all the power. To outsiders, it seems that she leads a fairy-tale life. But nobody ever wonders if Cinderella was happy after she married the prince. Marlena has traded freedom and safety for luxurious imprisonment, and most days, that seems like a bad bargain. Death may be the only exit she's allowed. Just like his first wife. And his second. Unless she flips the script.

In the rugged Pacific Northwest lies the Olympic National Forest - nearly a million acres of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. From deep within this old growth forest, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she offers no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past.

To most people, suburbia is synonymous with good school districts, manicured lawns, and friendly neighbors. But you can never really tell what's hiding behind those white picket fences and smiling faces. I mean, we all have secrets. The kid down the street steals lawn gnomes. The woman on the corner is having an affair. And me? I'm a murderer. At least...that's what everyone thinks. Because that's the other thing about the suburbs. Rumors spread like wildfire. Handsome detectives start poking around. Houses explode. You know...the usual.

The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked. But Diana Brewer isn’t lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer. How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia.

Andrew Thale is not exactly thrilled when his overbearing father sends him on an errand to assess the property inherited from an eccentric aunt. Andrew is intrigued though, when he finds the house fully occupied. Its odd and interesting residents have a calming effect on him, especially the beautiful young woman named Tarragon. But his arrival seems to have set a series of mysterious events into motion. Narrator John McDonough’s engaging performance lets you share in the excitement and camaraderie.

Ray Garrett, a wealthy young American living in Europe, is grieving over the death of his wife. Ray is at a loss for why she would take her own life, but Peggy's father, Ed Coleman, has no such uncertainty - he blames Ray completely. Late one night in Rome, Coleman shoots Ray at point-blank range. He thinks he's had his revenge, but Ray survives and follows Coleman and his wealthy girlfriend to Venice.

I'm not supposed to leave the house. But what my husband doesn't know won't kill him. I break his rules every morning on my runs. It's always been best when I have a routine. So every day I wake up, run, clean the house, wish for a better life, repeat. Every day is exactly the same. Except Thursdays. I live and breathe for Thursdays. It's when he comes. I watch from a distance. I can't help myself. But I was never supposed to talk to him. I know what you're thinking. But you don't know my story. You don't know the kind of monster my husband is. And trust me, you have no idea who I am.

In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis' parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there's no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents - telekinesis and telepathy - who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and 10-year-old Avery Dixon.

In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting - a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic rage. But Stella's knowledge of Edgar's crime is no hindrance to the volcanic attraction that ensues -a passion that will consume Stella's sanity and destroy her and the lives of those around her.

Set in Tunisia in the mid-1960s, this is the story of Howard Ingham, an American writer who has gone abroad to gather material for a movie too sordid to be set in America. Ingham is cool toward the girlfriend he left behind in New York - but his feelings start to change when she doesn't answer his increasingly aggravated letters and the filmmaker who hired Ingham fails to show in Tunisia.

Ginny Young is on a plane en route to see her mother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for 35 years. She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she and her sister, Sharla, were young girls. Moving back and forth in time between the girl she once was and the woman she's become, Ginny at last confronts painful choices that occur in almost any woman's life and learns surprising truths about the people she thought she knew best.

On the eve of the global lockdown, Don Barlow opens the door of his old beachside cottage to find a pretty girl with pink-tipped hair, claiming to have nowhere to go. He allows her entry, and so begins a mystery set in unprecedented times: with the virus raging outside their home, the girl cannot be asked to leave, but what does he risk by having her stay?

Olivia Campbell has the life most women want. A respected husband, beautiful home, and the freedom that only financial security can provide. But not all is as it appears.... Olivia has secrets, and after discovering a hidden journal in her husband's study, she realizes she's not the only one. As her picture-perfect world starts to fall apart around her, Olivia wonders just how deep the secrets run as she finds herself immersed in the investigation of a young missing girl.

Gifted musician Clemency Thompson is playing for tourists on the streets of Southern France when she receives an urgent text message. Her childhood friend, Lucy, is demanding her immediate return to London. It’s happening, says the message. The baby is back. Libby Jones was only six months old when she became an orphan. Now 25, she’s astounded to learn of an inheritance that will change her life. A gorgeous, dilapidated townhouse in one of London’s poshest neighborhoods has been held in a trust for her all these years. Now, it’s hers.

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.