Psychological Twists

It started the night journalist Briar Thorne’s mother died in their rambling old mansion on Chicago’s South Side. The nightmares of a woman in white pleading to come home, music switched on in locked rooms, and the panicked fear of being swallowed by the dark…Bri has almost convinced herself that these stirrings of dread are simply manifestations of grief and not the beyond-world of ghostly impossibilities her mother believed in. And more tangible terrors still lurk outside the decaying Victorian greystone.

I am cooking spaghetti, his favourite, while he plays in the garden. But when I look up, he’s gone. I call the police, my hands shaking so much that I hit the wrong digits twice. "My son is missing." When the police turn up, I’m trapped in the web of my lies. I have hidden the truth from eight-year-old Riley, my little boy who loves climbing trees and always has scraped knees. I have hidden my secret from everyone.

One hot summer night, 15-year-old Olivia comes home late from a party she was strictly forbidden from going to, and she and her mother, Hannah, start arguing. Soon Olivia speaks the words that every parent has heard from their teenage child.

Following a whirlwind four-month romance, lawyer Claire and hotel entrepreneur Angus are engaged to be married. Happy and successful, and ready to start their new life together, Claire and Angus find what they believe to be the perfect home. But when Claire meets Mark, the man selling them the house, he looks eerily familiar. He looks exactly like the man she loved five years ago, the man she couldn’t bear to lose.

After a betrayal that sent their marriage into freefall, Hannah and Sam are desperate for a fresh start with their eight-year-old daughter Lily—and where better than picture-perfect Owl Cottage in beautiful Cornwall. But something about the holiday home stirs dark memories for Hannah… When she finds dead creatures on the doorstep and hears mysterious knocks at the door, Hannah can’t help wondering whether someone is messing with her—or whether the past she’s been running from has finally claimed her sanity.

When I left my parents’ home in Kentucky, I never thought I’d see my sister again. For years, we kept a terrible secret, and eventually it tore us apart. But when I get the call to say that my sister has been killed and my teenage niece Hannah is coming to live with us, I leave the past behind. Hannah is family, and I need to keep her safe. I know what could happen to her if I don’t. When my niece arrives, she bonds with my daughter Cassie instantly. But then I hear a scream from the girls’ bedroom. And in the garden, someone has lit a fire. It’s a warning.

A year ago, after the devastating loss of their unborn child, Viola and Alex Watson leave Denver and start over in a tranquil town in Tennessee. Viola is pregnant again, but her new life is about to collapse around her. Alex is arrested for the murder of an Aston High schoolgirl who went missing three months ago. Viola refuses to believe her husband is a murderer.

It’s 5 November, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in – she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this? Rewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own deadly secret – and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors.

Home alone on a Friday night, Katherine is anticipating a peaceful evening. But that all changes when she receives a shocking note through her letterbox. The note tells her that she only has one hour left to live, but with no other information, Katherine has no idea who just threatened her or why. But things quickly go from bad to worse when she suspects her tormentor is already in her home and suddenly, her fight for survival begins.

Afton Teachout has been an outcast in her small town for twenty years—ever since she was accused of murdering her mother’s lover in a blackout fit of rage. That is, if one believes the malicious lies. Living with her grandmother, working a hotel night shift, and relying on pills to get a day’s sleep, Afton is due a little luck. It comes in the form of an unexpected financial windfall. With her newfound wealth, Afton sets a secret plan in motion to help her only friend, Sydney, flee a toxic husband. But the best intentions soon spin out of control.

When Karen Finch's 17-year-old daughter, Sophie, arrives home after a night out drunk and accompanied by police officers, no one is smiling the morning after. But Sophie remembers nothing about how she got into such a state. Twelve hours later Sophie's friend Amy has still not returned home. Then the body of a young woman is found. Karen is sure that Sophie knows more than she is letting on. But Karen has her own demons to fight. She struggles to go beyond her own door without a panic attack.

Some people think I’m jealous of my sister, but it isn’t true. I love her confidence; her free spirit. She’s the reckless one in the family, always wearing skimpy clothes and posting her life on social media. I prefer reading, walking my rescue dog and early nights in my New York apartment. It’s not that I meant to keep her a secret from my boyfriend, Bradley, but she just didn’t come up in conversation.

It’s their daughter’s graduation and Rachel and Ed Hartley are expecting it to be one of their family’s happiest days. But when she stumbles and falls on stage during the ceremony, a beautiful moment turns to chaos: Gemma has been shot, and just like that, she’s fighting for her life. PI Matthew Hill is one of the first on the scene. A cryptic message Gemma received earlier in the day suggests someone close to her was about to be exposed. But who?

I stand in the mortuary and take a deep breath before identifying the body of the man I’ve been married to for 26 years. Victor and I built Serenity Falls, a successful couples’ retreat, together. Honesty and trust were the bedrocks of our marriage, and we helped other couples repair their relationships too.

It’s been six months since I woke up next to the body of the man I’d chatted to in a bar the night before. I still remember the metallic scent of his blood, the stillness of the room, and the panic that rose in my throat when I realized he was dead. I remember him buying cocktails. We talked. We went up to my room. And then...nothing. But I know I didn’t kill him.

They say she’s guilty. She says she’s not. Who do you believe? "Help me! Help me, please!" When Jenna hears the cry in the park one night, she feels she has no choice but to run and help. Cradling the injured woman in her arms, the attacker nowhere to be seen, all Jenna wants is to keep her alive until the ambulance arrives and for the ordeal to be over. But the nightmare begins when the victim wakes up...Jenna’s relief turns to horror when the finger is pointed at her. There must be some mistake: She’s never seen the woman before in her life, and Jenna tried to save her life.

On a winding cliff edge on the wild Irish coast, two cars collide. In one is Maura Claffey’s niece, Finn, and her baby daughter. In the other, Kathryn with her own newborn—and her own secrets. Both women survive, but one of the girls does not. In the aftermath, bruised and heavily medicated, both women struggle to come to terms with what happened that day.

All I ever wanted was to keep my son safe. I married the perfect husband, built the perfect home. I’ve tried to give Finn the life I never had. Everything was going so well. Until now. It’s just small things at first - a punctured tyre, an open gate that I'm sure I locked. But then I see the photograph of two young girls, and a night I’ve tried to forget. I know I have to stop pretending that nothing is happening. I can’t escape the truth. Someone knows my secret. But what do they want from me?

The phone rings. What Eva doesn’t realize is that the call will signal the end of what she knows to be true. The end of trusting her family. And the end of everything keeping her safe. The phone call is from a hospital hundreds of miles away. A woman has been admitted with a serious head injury, saying she’s Eva’s older sister. A sister Eva never knew she had. Whose name - Nancy - has never once been mentioned by her parents. It seems impossible. Could the two people who brought Eva up have lied to her for her whole life?

On her way to a speaking engagement, bestselling novelist Eli Grey gets into a cab and accepts a drink from the driver, trusting that everything is fine. She wakes up chained in the stranger’s basement. With no close family or friends expecting her to check in, Eli knows she needs to save herself. She soon realizes that her abduction wasn’t random, and though she thinks she might recognize her captor, she can’t figure out what he wants. Her only clues are that he’s very familiar with her books and deeply invested in the fantastical world she creates.