suspense fiction

"When Nora takes the train from London to visit her sister in the countryside, she expects to find her waiting at the station, or at home cooking dinner. But when she walks into Rachel's familiar house, what she finds is entirely different: her sister has been the victim of a brutal murder. Stunned and adrift, Nora finds she can't return to her former life. An unsolved assault in the past has shaken her faith in the police, and she can't trust them to find her sister's killer. Haunted by the murder and the secrets that surround it, Nora is under the harrow: distressed and in danger. As Nora's fear turns to obsession, she becomes as unrecognizable as the sister her investigation uncovers"--.

"Detective Manon Bradshaw is 39, single, and miserable as sin. She has endured some of the worst dates in internet history. But she loves her job and performs it brilliantly; all she needs to rise up in the ranks is a big break. Edith Hind is a gorgeous, intrepid graduate student at Cambridge University who seems to have it all: a doting boyfriend, a devoted friend named Helena, a loving mother and a father who is a surgeon to the Royal Family. When Edith turns up missing from her apartment one evening, leaving only a single streak of blood along the front foyer wall, the case becomes a national media sensation. In the first frenzied 72 hours of being assigned to the case, Bradshaw will make a number of alarming discoveries: Edith's behavior had been erratic in the run-up to her disappearance, and her close friend Helena, the last person to see her, is clearly hiding something. A known sex offender appears in CCTV footage of Edith taken a short while before she goes missing. Then a body is discovered floating in a nearby river. Is Edith Hind alive or dead? Was her "complex love life" at the heart of her disappearance, as the tabloids are suggesting? Why is there reluctance, in the senior ranks, to press too hard on some elements of the story? Detective Bradshaw must use all her skill and resources to bring closure to the case for Edith's family, as she finds herself becoming ever more personally, and dangerously, invested"--.

"Defense lawyer Andy Carpenter spends as much time as he can working on his true passion, the Tara Foundation, the dog rescue organization he runs. Lately, Andy has been especially involved in a county prison program where inmates help train dogs the Tara Foundation has rescued to make them more adoptable, benefiting both the dogs and the prisoners. One of the prisoners Andy has been working with is Brian Atkins, who has 18 months left on a 5-year term for fraud. Brian has been helping to train Boomer, an adorable fox terrier the Tara Foundation rescued from a neglectful owner. Brian and Boomer are clearly a terrific match. In fact, Andy hopes that Brian will adopt Boomer himself, once his sentence is up. But one day, Andy arrives at the prison to discover that Brian has used Boomer to make an ingenious escape, and man and dog are both in the wind. The next day, the man on whose testimony Brian was convicted is found murdered. Brian is caught and arrested for the crime, though he forcefully protests his innocence. Suddenly, Andy finds himself with a new client in Brian and a new dog in Boomer. And as he starts to dig deeper into the murder and the events leading up to it, Andy realizes he might be putting them all in far more danger than anyone had realized"--.

Depressed screenplay writer Ethan's life begins to fall apart when he and his secretive wife, Susan, move in next to a seductive serial killer.

"New Jersey state police officer Doug Brock has been after infamous criminal Nicholas Bennett for years. When Bennett kills someone close to Doug, however, Doug's investigation--and his life--start spiraling out of control.

"The Chinese dragon is flexing its muscles. As its military begins to prey on neighbors in the South China Sea, attacking fishing vessels and scheming to seize natural resources, the US goes on high alert. But a far more ominous danger lurks closer to home: a Chinese sleeper cell has planted a nuclear weapon in the harbor at Norfolk, Virginia, the biggest naval base on the planet. The target: a secret rendezvous of the Atlantic Fleet aircraft carriers and their battle groups. When the CIA director is assassinated and Jake Grafton is appointed to take his place, he gets wind of the conspiracy, but has no idea when or where the attack will occur. In the meantime, a series of assassinations, including an attempt on the life of the President, shake the country and deliberately mask a far more sinister objective. Can Jake Grafton and his right hand man, Tommy Carmellini, stop the plot to destroy the US Navy?"--.

On an expedition around the world by sea, the reader chooses between alternatives throughout the book. Only one series of choices will lead safely around the world.

While investigating the murders of nineteen people, including her grandparents, in a small village in Sweden, Judge Birgitta Roslin learns of others of the same family in Nevada who were also murdered and a connection between China and the slave trade of the nineteenth century.