Suspense Mystery Twist

For Lord Everett Stanley, escaping his fate seemed impossible. As the second son, he’s destined for ordination and the life of a Reverend, but he’s hiding a dangerous secret. The laws punishing homosexuality by hanging may have been repealed but he and others of his kind are far from safe. Given no other choice, they take solace in the underground molly houses of London. Now that fragile world is threatened when the East End is rocked by a series of gruesome murders.

When Diya Burman's best friend, Angie, dies unexpectedly, it feels like her own life is falling apart. Grief costs her friends, family and even her job. But that's ok, because now she's got a new job: working at Slough & Sons, a family firm that deals in cleaning up after the recently deceased. Old love letters. Porcelain dolls. Hoarded trinkets. Clearing away the remnants of other people's lives, Diya begins to see things. Horrible things. Things that get harder and harder to write off as merely her grieving imagination.

When private investigator Matthew Hill picks up the call from his wife, Sally, his world comes crashing down. Their eight-year-old daughter, Amelie, is missing. One second, she was there, the next, she was gone. It’s the very nightmare they’ve been dreading. Long ago, Matthew left the force after a woman blamed him for her son’s death, promising that he too would one day feel her pain. It’s a threat that’s hung over his family ever since, and now it’s Amelie’s picture on the news.

When eight-year-old Kathy Stone turns up on the side of the road a year after her abduction, the world awaits her harrowing story. But Kathy doesn’t say a word. Traumatized by her ordeal, she doesn’t speak at all, not even to her own parents. Child therapist Robin Hart is the only one who’s had success connecting with the girl. Robin has been using play therapy to help Kathy process her memories. But as their work continues, Kathy’s playtime takes a grim turn: a doll stabs another doll, a tiny figurine is chained to a plastic toy couch.

Sabrina Adams thought her luck had finally turned around when she was hired as a librarian for the wealthy Dorsey family. But as soon as she arrives at their elegant estate, she senses something is off. They have cameras everywhere. She’s banned from the third floor, and she spotted someone watching the house from the nearby woods. And why does the housekeeper, Mrs Manning, insist on so many rules?

The expected never happens... a man calls unexpectedly on his mistress and sees another man leaving her flat. Accusing her of being unfaithful, he quarrels with her, strikes her. She dies. Leaving unseen, he tips off the police so that the other man is arrested and charged... Has he achieved "The Perfect Murder"? A tantalising opening to "A Twist in the Tale", a fantastic collection of short stories from bestselling author Jeffrey Archer.

Combining stories from ebook story collections Short Shockers One and Short Shockers Two, and with never-before-seen new material, this is a story collection you won't forget. From a woman intent on revenge, to a restaurant critic with a fear of the number thirteen, and from a story of ghostly terror to the first ever case of his best-loved Detective, Roy Grace, James exposes the Achilles heels of each of his characters, and makes us question how well we can trust ourselves, and each other.

Charley Willis was 13 years old when her parents were killed in their family home and she was found hiding in a cupboard upstairs. Fifteen years later, Charley is marrying Seth Chambers. It should be the happiest day of their lives, a chance for Charley to put her past behind her, but just hours after the ceremony, she is missing. No one saw her leave. No one knows where she is. One thing is for certain…Seth is about to discover he doesn’t really know the woman he just married. And his nightmare is only just beginning.

I nearly threw the letter about the inheritance away with the recycling. Late for work, worrying about how I would afford new school shoes for Kate, I just assumed it was a mistake. But perhaps moving to a new home in a quiet seaside town would be the fresh start we both need. Away from the school bullies making Kate’s life a misery, and out of the clutches of my dangerous ex.

You’d never know what secrets the house on Hogarth Street holds - what’s happening, right this second, behind closed doors. An emerald-green front lawn. Perfectly trimmed hedging. An ivy-covered front gate and the scent of honeysuckle in the air. In the yard, two scooters lie on the grass. One blue, one pink, belonging to five-year-old twins.

Late Christmas Eve, the Harper family’s car crashed on a desolate stretch outside Black Lake. Sixteen-year-old Alice was found injured by the side of the road—alone. It was as if her parents and younger sister, Ella, had simply disappeared. One year later, Alice is still dealing with nightmares and unanswered questions when she and her friends find Ella’s bloodstained backpack in the basement of an abandoned home.

This is not the happy family you think. The fire crackles, my son smiles, the man jokes whilst I pour drinks. But my husband has disappeared. The man is a stranger. My skin crawls every time he brushes my hand. He says if I don’t play along, he has photos that will destroy my family. What happened the night before my husband disappeared - the night I don’t remember?

Stephen Berry is about to jump off a bridge until a suicide prevention counsellor stops him. A week later, Stephen is dead. Found at the bottom of a cliff, DI Luc Callanach and DCI Ava Turner are drafted in to investigate whether he jumped or whether he was pushed.... As they dig deeper, more would-be suicides roll in: a woman found dead in a bath; a man violently electrocuted. But these are carefully curated deaths – nothing like the impulsive suicide attempts they’ve been made out to be.

Murder, jealousy, and deceit underscore three interlocking mysteries as Holmes and Watson take on a high-profile case at Windsor Castle, a boy drowned in the Serpentine, and a crusading women’s rights activist who suspects a traitor in her organisation. The cases send them into danger into locales as varied as the palace itself, a dockland cannery, an arts and crafts atelier, and a gypsy encampment. But is there peril underfoot as well – right at 221B Baker Street?

Tia never harmed anyone. So why does someone want to destroy her? Tia is walking home with her children, along the lakeside of their quiet, safe town, when she realizes something is wrong with her five-year-old daughter, Rosie. She seems troubled, not at all her usual happy self. But when Tia finally coaxes Rosie to open up, she wishes she hadn’t. Because her sweet daughter asks a question Tia never thought she’d hear. "Mummy, why did you kill someone?"

In a town full of liars, who can you trust? When Detective Finnegan Beck is demoted from his high-powered job in Dublin and relocated in disgrace to the small Irish town of Cross Beg, he predicts boredom will be his biggest threat. But then a beautiful local teenage girl is found strangled in the cold, dark woods a mile from town. The prime suspect is the seemingly gentle drifter who found Tanya’s body. Beck seems to be the only person who can’t escape the feeling that Tanya wasn’t killed at random.

Seventeen-year-old Theodora Briggs left home in the dead of night, after a brutal crime shattered her life. Thirteen years later, she’s made a name for herself as Gemma: beautician, wife, and mother. But the trauma still lingers… And then one day, it’s more than just a phantom pain. Gemma is suddenly accosted by stranger after stranger, all of whom seem to know the truth about her. They confront her with her real name and ominous allusions to the tragedy that drove her out of town. When her family begins to have their own strange episodes, Gemma is rattled.

My baby is due in two weeks. Hand on my bump, I swear to my little girl, I won't be anything like my mother. I'm walking home after the perfect baby shower, enjoying the cool summer evening breeze. I can't wait to rest my aching feet. I'm almost at my door when the world goes black.

In seven days, Maggie’s son, Max, turns three. But she’s not planning a party or buying presents or updating his baby book. She’s dreading it. Because in her world, third birthdays are the days on which the unthinkable happens...she loses her child. For the last 12 years Maggie has been imprisoned in a basement. Abducted aged 15, she gave birth to two sons before Max, and on their third birthdays her captor came and took them from her. She cannot let it happen again. But she has no idea how to stop it. And the clock is ticking....

A Twist of Fortune is the fourth book in the Sgt. Windflower Mystery Series, and it continues the adventures of Sgt. Windflower, as he tries to solve crime and experience the joy and the sadness of life in a small maritime community. Follow along as he feels the sometimes bitter taste of an east coast winter and the unique culinary delights of this part of the world.