True Thrillers

Modern technology has given rise to electronic medical records, remote monitoring systems, and satellite-enabled real-time examinations in which patient and physician might be separated by thousands of miles. Yet, when it comes to diagnosing difficult cases, the clinician's strongest asset might just be one of the oldest tools of the medical profession - careful listening.

The late William X. Kienzle is best known for his Father Koesler mysteries, starring priest/detective Father Robert Koesler. Here, we go back to Father Koesler's past, to a time when young Catholic men and women were encouraged, even expected to become priests and nuns. Kienzle follows a group of young men and women through the paths of their religious life, as they test their commitment, their faith, and their vocation against the high standards of the Catholic Church.

The girls yammer all the way to Colorado and Baer's ready for a change. Stinky Joe concurs. But a random Rocky Mountain storm combines with a slippy transmission to force Baer to the side of the road to be rescued by an unwitting cop with a secret. Sometimes good men contemplate evil out of love. Sometimes they need an accomplice with backwood skills...and a reputation that precedes him. Sometimes they're a day late.

This book is for listeners of true crime podcasts and audiences of both fiction and true-crime nonfiction. It's the true story of first-generation Irish-American nurse Jane Toppan, born as Honora Kelley. Jane Toppan was absolutely a monster, but she did not start out that way. When Jane was a young child, her father abandoned her and her sister to the Boston Female Asylum. From there, Jane was indentured to a wealthy family who changed her name, never adopted her, and wrote her out of the will.

Lana Granger lives a life of lies. She has told so many lies about where she comes from and who she is that the truth is like a cloudy nightmare she can’t quite recall. About to graduate from college and with her trust fund almost tapped out, she takes a job babysitting a troubled boy named Luke. Expelled from schools all over the country, the manipulative young Luke is accustomed to controlling the people in his life. But, in Lana, he may have met his match. Or has Lana met hers?

A fugitive brought them together. Fate gave them a second chance... Fiery US Marshal Blake Parsons is on the hunt for a dangerous fugitive. Time is running out, and the locals in the small Tennessee town aren't much help at all. Just when she's almost given up hope, fate strikes in the form of deja vu and a rendezvous with stunning local doctor Naomi Preston. As sparks fly, Naomi agrees to make inroads with the residents and help Blake find the killer. When a massive flood strikes the town, the search begins to heat up.

Something sleeps within her. Starting over in your hometown is like getting a tattoo removed. There’s a cost, there’s pain, and there’s a scar. Who knew moving forward after your mother’s murder would mean rewriting your past? Tru Parker traded one kind of crazy for another. Werewolves and vampires? Real. No kidding. But no magic and no virus like in the movies. And they have different names - Usemi and Akharu. It’s almost too much, but she can’t stick her head in the sand any more because she’s changing into something else. Not sure what yet.

Mario DeLuca, a respected New Orleans detective for over 20 years, has put many criminals behind bars, and there is not a one that wouldn’t want to see him dead. Felipe Cruz, in court, promised he would get even with Mario - one day. He still controls the streets of New Orleans from a prison cell and makes good on his promise.

It’s easy to accuse, it’s harder to prove. FBI Agent Hawk Maddux is fighting time and the government to discover why several people have turned up dead and money is flowing from the Treasury.

When Harriet Peters came to Boston in 1882, the Robinson family took her in as one of their own, and Harriet became closer to Lizzie Robinson than her own siblings. Now, four years later, Lizzie is deathly sick, failing quickly just like several others in her family have done over the past few years. How can so many in one family die from the same mysterious illness? Harriet doesn’t have answers, but she is determined to help the family, bringing in a new-to-the-neighborhood doctor, Michael Wheaton.

Verity is telling lies. And that's why she's about to be arrested for attempted murder. Serena has been lying for years. And that may have driven her daughter, Verity, to do something unthinkable. Poppy's lies have come back to haunt her. So will her quest for the truth hurt everyone she loves? Everyone lies. But whose lies are going to end in tragedy?

“Sharks are as timid as rabbits,” says a superintendent of the Coast Guard, dismissing the possibility that a shark could be the culprit in an unprecedented fatal attack at the Jersey Shore. It’s July, and swimming in the sea is a popular new pastime, but people up and down the East Coast are shocked and mystified by the swimmer’s death. A prominent surgeon at the shore, Dr. Edwin Halsey is the one who examines the victim, and the only one who believes the perpetrator was a shark—and that it will strike again.

Investigating how a severed hand ends up on the third green of a Cumbrian golf course is not how Detective Inspector Avison Fluke has planned to spend his Saturday. So when a secret protection unit from London swoops in quoting national security, he's secretly pleased. But trouble is never far away. A young woman arrives at his lakeside cabin with a cryptic message: a code known to only a handful of people, and it forces Fluke back into the investigation he's only just been barred from.

All eyes are on those closest to the dearly departed: her mischievous sister, Diana, now the family's only hope for redemption; New York's most notorious cad, Henry Schoon-maker, the flame Elizabeth never extinguished; the seductive Penelope Hayes, poised to claim all that her best friend left behind including Henry; even Elizabeth's scheming former maid, Lina Broud, who discovers that while money matters and breeding counts, gossip is the new currency.<

Amanda Pruitt needs redemption. She is the one, after all, who turned her sister in for murder and anonymously broadcasted her trial to millions on TikTok. And she was wrong. Her sister is innocent, making Amanda the villain—not the hero—all along. So when her childhood best friend's mom is arrested for murdering an eccentric billionaire and refuses to give a statement, Amanda decides to help solve the crime. This could be her second chance. If she can use her TikTok to get the public on her friend's side, the police will have to reopen the investigation.

Strange things are happening in Prosper Woods, California. Ever since moving here a few months ago, my life has turned upside down. Some things have been amazing, like falling head over heels for Vincent Lasco, a gorgeous 700-year-old vampire. Other things have been weirder than I could ever imagine.

Bertha Mellish, “the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl” at Mount Holyoke College, is missing. One cold November morning the junior is spotted walking through the Massachusetts woods; then, she vanishes. As a search team dredges the pond where she might have drowned, Bertha’s panicked father and sister arrive at the campus desperate to find some clue as to her fate or state of mind. Bertha’s best friend, Agnes, a scholarly loner studying medicine, might know the truth, but she is being unhelpfully tightlipped.

"The one rule is, don’t mess with the past". But he did, and now ex-detective Rembrandt Stone is reaping the devastation of ignoring those words when he traveled back in time to solve the one case that had haunted his dreams. Yes, he solved the crime. Yes, he saved lives. But Rembrandt returns to find the unthinkable has happened and his life has shattered. There’s only one answer: Break the rule again. Go back in time once more, fix what went wrong, save what went right, and yeah, in his spare time solve another brutal crime.

March 19, 1945: The war in the Pacific approaches its apocalyptic climax. The largest wartime armada ever assembled, Task Force 58, is closing in on Okinawa; once taken, it will finally put American B-29 bombers in range of the home islands of Japan - and victory. Trial by Fire is the gripping novelization of how, against all odds, the sailors of the Franklin were able to save their ship, after three agonizing days of battling the flames that ultimately claimed the lives of 832 men and injured 300 more.

Struggling artist Skyler Moore is flabbergasted when she receives a suspicious phone call from a lawyer she’s never met regarding a “private matter.” As soon as she arrives at the law firm’s office, she learns she’s the recipient of a large inheritance, a life-changing sum that will allow her to realize her long-held dream of becoming a mother. But who was her benefactor, Christopher Whaley? The late man’s name means nothing to Skyler, and she has no idea why he would leave her such an enormous bequest.