fiction / suspense

"One game. Six students. Five survivors. It was only ever meant to be a game played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University; a game of consequences, silly forfeits, and childish dares. But then the game changed: the stakes grew higher and the dares more personal and more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results. Now, fourteen years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round. Who knows better than your best friends what would break you? A gripping psychological thriller partly inspired by the author's own time at Oxford University, this is perfect for fans of The Secret History and The Bellwether Revivals. The author's background in puzzle writing and setting can clearly be seen in the plotting of this clever, tricky book that will keep readers guessing to the very end"--.

"From the acclaimed author of The Troop--which Stephen King raved "scared the hell out of me and I couldn't put it down....old-school horror at its best"--comes this utterly terrifying novel where The Abyss meets The Shining. A strange plague called the 'Gets is decimating humanity on a global scale. It causes people to forget--small things at first, like where they left their keys...then the not-so-small things like how to drive, or the letters of the alphabet. Then their bodies forget how to function involuntarily...and there is no cure. But now, far below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, deep in the Marianas Trench, an heretofore unknown substance hailed as "ambrosia" has been discovered--a universal healer, from initial reports. It may just be the key to a universal cure. In order to study this phenomenon, a special research lab, the Trieste, has been built eight miles under the sea's surface. But now the station is incommunicado, and it's up to a brave few to descend through the lightless fathoms in hopes of unraveling the mysteries lurking at those crushing depths...and perhaps to encounter an evil blacker than anything one could possibly imagine. Part horror, part psychological nightmare, The Deep is a novel that fans of Stephen King and Clive Barker won't want to miss--especially if you're afraid of the dark"--.

"New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder delivers his next breakneck stand-alone thriller, following 2014's bestseller Suspicion. When Rick Hoffman loses his job and apartment, his only option is to move back into--and renovate--the home of his miserable youth, now empty and in decay since his father's stroke. But when he starts to pull it apart, he makes an electrifying discovery that will put his life in peril--and change everything he thought he knew about his father. "--.

""That's how it is for us servants. No one pays you much heed; mostly you're invisible as furniture. Yet you overhear a conversation here, and add a little gossip there. Then you find something, something you should not have found." Irrepressible Biddy Leigh, under-cook at the foreboding Mawton Hall, only wants to marry her childhood sweetheart and set up her own tavern. But when her elderly master marries the young Lady Carinna, Biddy is unwittingly swept up in a world of scheming, secrets, and lies. Forced to accompany her new mistress to Italy, she documents her adventures and culinary discoveries in an old household book of recipes, The Cook's Jewel. Biddy grows intrigued by her fellow travelers, but her secretive and unconventional mistress is the most intriguing of all. In London Biddy finds herself attracted to her mistress's younger brother. In France she discovers her mistress's dark secret. At last in Italy, Biddy becomes embroiled in a murderous conspiracy, knowing the secrets she holds could be a key to a better life, or her downfall. Inspired by eighteenth-century household books of recipes and set at the time of the invention of the first restaurants, An Appetite for Violets is a literary feast for lovers of historical fiction. Like Jo Baker's Longbourn, it opens a window into the fascinating lives of servants, while also delivering a suspenseful tale of obsession and betrayal"--.

"John Wayne Cleaver hunts demons: they've killed his neighbors, his family, and the girl he loves, but in the end he's always won. Now he works for a secret government kill team, using his gift to hunt and kill as many monsters as he can. but the monsters have noticed, and the quiet game of cat and mouse is about to erupt into a full scale supernatural war. John doesn't want the life he's stuck with. He doesn't want the FBI bossing him around, he doesn't want his only friend imprisoned in a mental ward, and he doesn't want to face the terrifying cannibal who calls himself The Hunter. John doesn't want to kill people. But as the song says, you can't always get what you want. John has learned that the hard way; his clothes have the stains to prove it. When John again faces evil, he'll know what he has to do. The Devil's Only Friend is the first book in a brand-new John Wayne Cleaver trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Dan Wells"--.

A heart-wrenching but redemptive story of psychological suspense told from the point of view of the father of a boy who is unaccounted for during a school shooting, in the vein of Reconstructing Amelia and Defending Jacob.

"In a small New England town over half a century ago, a boy is playing with his new toy soldiers in the dirt in front of his house when a shadow falls over him. He looks up to see a striking man, the new minister, Jamie learns later, who with his beautiful wife, will transform the church and the town. The men and boys are a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls, with the Reverend Jacobs--including Jamie's sisters and mother. Then tragedy strikes, and this charismatic preacher curses God, and is banished from the shocked town. Jamie has demons of his own. Wed to his guitar from age 13, he plays in bands across the country, running from his own family tragedies, losing one job after another when his addictions get the better of him. Decades later, sober and living a decent life, he and Reverend Charles Jacobs meet again in a pact beyond even the Devil's devising, and the many terrifying meanings of Revival are revealed. King imbues this spectacularly rich and dark novel with everything he knows about music, addiction, and religious fanaticism, and every nightmare we ever had about death. This is a masterpiece from King, in the great American tradition of Frank Norris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Edgar Allan Poe"--.

Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled his native Berlin, Germany, before World War II, but when McCarthyism threatens his new life in America in 1948, Alex makes a desperate bargain with the CIA: he will go back to Berlin and act as their agent in the political hotspot as a way of earning his way back to his new home and family. But almost immediately, things start to go wrong, and Alex finds himself a wanted man. Even worse, he discovers that his real mission is to spy on the woman he left behind, the only woman he has ever really loved.

Grace and Ted Chapman, literary power couple, are good at hiding the secret of Ted's rages and moodswings and Grace's dark past until Ted's longtime assistant leaves, and they find their marriage threatened when they hire new assistant Beth.

"Tommie McCloud's life is alread in turmoil. Her mother has dementia and her father has just died, leaving Tommie a multi-million dollar energy business in Texas. When a letter arrives from Adriana Marchetti, it explodes a bomb in Tommie's life that she never could have anticipated. The letter claims that Adriana Marchetti's baby was kidnapped thirty-one years earlier, and that this baby grew up to become Tommie McCloud. The investigation starts when Tommie discovers that her social security number doesn't add up--it claims that she was born in Chicago. It deepens when Tommie is approached by a man who claims to be a reporter but is actually an FBI agent, and when Tommie discovers that he is there to protect her from the man whom the letter claims is her father--violent mobster Anthony Marchetti--imprisoned for thirty years and now up for parole. She cannot trust anyone. Seeking her identity will take Tommie to the edge of reason and into the murky past of the people she's called family her entire life. Getting to the bottom of her identity will uncover explosive secrets and the darkest of crimes, and Tommie's biggest challenge may be not only to discover who she really is, but to survive"--.