Small Town Thriller

This is no meet cute. It's meet brute. My day starts perfectly. I'm offered my dream job – manager at the largest independent bookstore in the country. Lame? Not to a bookworm like me. But then my perfect day turns into a nightmare. I’m kidnapped by Russian gangsters. Turns out my family has a debt, and I'm the collateral. I'm trapped, bound and blindfolded, scared senseless and wondering if I'll make it out alive. Then I get kidnapped again. Only this time my kidnapper is the bodyguard I never knew I had. A six-foot-four mountain of muscle and danger named Hammer. He's an ex-Marine, a ...

Nobody likes the I.R.S.... But that is Jesse’s job... Could he survive the nightmare coming his way? It wasn’t the life he imagined growing up. He had a wife, but his marriage was in trouble; a career, but it was eating him alive; and enemies? Yes, he had them, too... and they were powerful. Jesse thought if he worked hard and kept his head down, the troubles from his past wouldn’t find him. He was wrong. Los Osos, California, was idyllic in many ways. Jesse and Amber’s love seemed to be taken from the pages of a small-town romance novel, but that was before MacElveign set his ...

Leland Gaunt opens a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little "deed", usually a seemingly innocent prank played on someone else from town. These practical jokes cascade out of control, and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sheriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population's increasingly violent behavior.

In drought-stricken Warragulla, where record-breaking heat has pushed the landscape and its people to breaking point, Sydney detective Maya Thorne returns when local mechanic Frank Miller is found dead in his workshop during the worst heatwave in decades. What begins as a suspected heat-related accident soon reveals something far darker lurking beneath the surface of this isolated community. When evidence shows Frank's cooling system was deliberately sabotaged, Maya must navigate both the oppressive heat and the closed ranks of locals harbouring generations of secrets. As temperatures soar ...

Ah, the 70’s. Disco, Star Wars. And a heist that baffled the police every decade since. Lilly Livingston is celebrating her year mark as owner of Magnolia Manor—but things aren’t going exactly as expected. As an FBI unit descends on Drifter's Cove to tackle cold cases from a bygone era, a local billionaire, the elderly Baron Carrington, nears the end with his estate and heirs in question. Meanwhile, more tourists and riff-raff pour into once-sleepy Drifter’s Cove, frustrating Chief Crowder as she struggles to run a tight ship. As tempers flare, one probationer protests his sentence,...

The bodies of three teenage girls are found in central Minnesota—each with her mouth fixed in a ghoulish grin, smiling at a deadly joke no one can hear. But authorities eventually close and forget the curious case, dubbed the Laughing Dead. Decades later, cold case agent Evangeline “Van” Reed is called to the scene of a crime where the victim wears that same horror-movie smile. But this time someone seems to be sending a message: Van’s police ID has turned up at the scene, making her the prime suspect.

How could things have gone so wrong between Syl Jameson and Viola Harrison? Syl and Viola are like sisters growing up in the small, stifling town of Love Hill. Though they are as different as light and dark, they connect. And for Syl, Viola’s family is a warm refuge away from the unaffectionate place that Syl calls home. But the reality is Syl can get a little needy and jealous. Viola can get a little toxic. And, like everyone in Love Hill, they have secrets. Eventually their friendship is bound to snap.

When Dean receives a distraught phone call from his ex-girlfriend. He rushes to her home to find a horrific and dreadful scene... A ransacked house and her bloodied body lying on the floor. As the police and her husband arrive at the scene, Dean learns that his ex's son is also missing. While Dean searches for answers behind her death, a bombing kills a friend from his days in the military. At the memorial service, Dean has to confront people he hasn't seen in years while facing memories of a tragic event that left them all scarred. The situation takes a darker turn as mysterious classified...

Cozy mystery with a side of chocolate. It's the middle of summer and Gemma Channing is dealing with a host of issues that’s driving her straight up the wall. Small town politics. Wedding jitters. A crazy competitor from out of town. And now a serial killer. Chief of Police Lando Bonner has his hands full with a crime wave. A string of burglaries and petty thefts are keeping him hopping. A decades-old, unsolved murder is now stalled, and he can't seem to identify the young teenage victim. On top of all that, someone wants them dead. No matter how hard Gemma tries, chocolate won’t fix ...

Tragedy has stalked Blake Larsen her entire life. After the violent death of her parents leaves her orphaned, her Green Beret brother Caleb is all she has left. He was there the day she graduated high school and the first person she called after she became a federal agent. Then the cops find him swinging from the rafters. The horrific discovery pushes Blake to the edge of despair. Then one of Caleb's closest friends is violently murdered outside her front door—and the killer snatches a folder from his dying fingers. It's clear Kyle was silenced moments before coming clean

Allison Hawbaker has spent the past year putting back the pieces of her shattered life. Recovering from both family crisis and personal tragedy, Allie throws herself into building a business with her childhood best friend while trying to put the past behind her.Part of Allie’s past is British thespian Mason Armitage, the man she fell for and rebuffed a year ago. Now Mason’s back, and Allie’s in danger of losing her heart again. When she and Mason stumble across a grave robbery in progress, it causes a chain reaction that puts Allie in the crosshairs of criminal conspirators. Because ...

The Heritage Hall book fair was my chance to showcase my bookbinding techniques. Instead, I become the main suspect in a murder. Paper flowers and leather bindings filled my Heritage Hall book fair booth. This was my chance to showcase traditional bookbinding techniques. Instead, I found a dead authenticator in my space. Mark Henderson, known for exposing forgeries, lay sprawled among tools stolen from my exhibit. Making me the prime suspect. Book preservation is my passion - being a murder suspect, not so much. I teamed up with Fitzgerald, my Maine Coon cat and journalist Jennifer Walsh to...

Matt Evans is in deep trouble. After taking a loan he should never have taken, his debt to local thug, Jeff Holden, has spiraled out of control. Just when it seems that time has run out, Jeff offers an alternative deal. Matt is to assist a scientist with his secret experiments to clear the debt. Despite his attempts to see the deal through, Matt soon realizes he’s trapped in a nightmare. The scientist has a dark agenda and a twisted mind that become more apparent with every visit to the underground lab. With his sanity on the line and possibly his life, Matt must escape at any cost, but ...

A body is found on a quiet lane in Exmoor, victim of a hit and run. He has no ID, no wallet, no phone, and - after being dragged along the road - no recognisable face. Meanwhile, fresh from his last case, DCI Craig Gillard is unexpectedly called away to Devon on family business. Gillard is soon embroiled when the car in question is traced to his aunt. As he delves deeper, a dark mystery reveals itself, haunted by family secrets, with repercussions Gillard could never have imagined. The past has never been deadlier.

Stranger Things meets The Conjuring in this haunting thriller about a family that moves into a new home that is filled with secrets that have stalked their home and their town for generations. Welcome to Ducket… A small town that is haunted by its past. The Webb family is looking for a fresh start after surviving a tragedy. Their new home seems like the perfect fit for them until they discover it has a rich history of horrors and secrets that lay dormant within its walls. Is it supernatural or have their imaginations simply gotten carried away? Shane has lived his entire life in Ducket ...

Trust holds a small town together. When times are tough, you know you can lean on your neighbor for help. But when a political movement splits the town of Barta, North Dakota in half, and a young girl goes missing, the trust is broken. Who took Kaley Hayes?The body count in Baltimore is rising, and the weight of those lives rest on Homicide Detective Adila Cooper's shoulders. It's only a matter of time before the killer strikes again, and the sands of the hour glass have already started sifting away.

She’s my enemy. A betrayer. And the only woman I’ve ever loved. As patched member of the Steel Reapers MC, the club is my only family. My loyalty to my brothers is absolute, But then I meet her. Then everything changes. Amelia’s my opposite – highly educated, law-abiding, kind. And the most dangerous woman I've ever met. With curvy hips and chestnut curls, she burns her name on my heart From our first fiery night, she belongs to me. Until she betrays me. Then it's war – with her and my heart. But then Amelia uncovers a dark secret. A secret that makes her the target of a somone ...

From the Author: Don’t read this if you can’t handle finishing a book in one sitting, horrific crime scenes, or questions that mess with your morals. BUT The Izard County Incubus is a rural mystery thriller packed with fast-paced action, brutally vivid crime scenes, and psychological mayhem dripping with vigilante justice. Beta Readers Say: “It’s not as weird as you think!” and “How do you come up with this stuff?” Synopsis: Detective Dakota Diaz and Hilrey Higgins are back to investigate a twisted crime wave in the Arkansas Ozarks. A family is butchered, and one girl survives...

She married for money. She plotted for more. But the insurance policy had other ideas... Chantel Fletcher’s specialty is husbands. Her problem is cash. When her third husband turns out to be worth $2.5 million dead, she makes the leap from trophy wife to cold-blooded conspirator. With a mountain of debt and a dangerous past catching up to her, Chantel enlists her teenage daughter and a dim-witted ex-con to help pull the trigger on the perfect murder. But this is St. Isidore—a town that chews up second chances and spits out twisted endings. And when the cops come knocking, Chantel ...

When construction workers uncover preserved human remains at Kingfisher Station—a luxury resort development in rural Australia—Detective Maya Thorne is called back to the hometown she fled as a teenager. The discovery is eerily similar to a case she solved months earlier, but this time it's personal: the development borders her childhood home, which she abandoned. The victim is identified as Elaine Mercer, an environmental consultant who disappeared eight years ago while investigating water rights during the region's worst drought in decades. Maya quickly discovers that Elaine had ...