Suspense Mystery Twist

New York Times best-selling author Mary Jo Putney weaves a romantic tale into a courtroom thriller, prompting Booklist to hail, “Move over John Grisham.” High-powered corporate attorney Val Covington knows she should avoid mysterious guys like Rob Smith. But when Rob helps her in a frantic race against the clock to save a man wrongfully sent to death row, Val unearths long-buried secrets - and discovers an unexpected passion.

Afton Teachout has been an outcast in her small town for twenty years—ever since she was accused of murdering her mother’s lover in a blackout fit of rage. That is, if one believes the malicious lies. Living with her grandmother, working a hotel night shift, and relying on pills to get a day’s sleep, Afton is due a little luck. It comes in the form of an unexpected financial windfall. With her newfound wealth, Afton sets a secret plan in motion to help her only friend, Sydney, flee a toxic husband. But the best intentions soon spin out of control.

No great surprise, her eccentric great aunt's teaching methods are just as unorthodox as the lady herself. Certainly not approved by the International Criminal Witch Police. Which is a problem, since Lina's neck deep in another murder investigation. Lina has to juggle her great aunt's idea of witch training as she helps the ICWP solve a rather unusual murder…one that's been linked to Lina's magic.

TJ Devlin is the charming disappointment in the prominent Devlin family, all of whom are lawyers at their highly successful firm—except him. After a stint in prison and rehab for alcoholism, TJ can’t get hired anywhere except at the firm, in a make-work job with the title of investigator. But one night, TJ’s world turns upside down after his older brother John confesses that he murdered one of their clients, an accountant he’d confronted with proof of embezzlement. It seems impossible coming from John, the firstborn son and Most Valuable Devlin.

Ava grew up in a haunted mansion, envied by all her friends. But when her mother died mysteriously there, the thrills of Blackworth Mansion became nightmares. Ava never accepted that her mother perished from natural causes, but no one would believe her. Seventeen years later, Ava returns home to unravel the truth of her mother’s death—and her own demons quickly follow. Her estranged and vindictive father may be stalking her. Her secretive new sister-in-law lands on her doorstep with troubles of her own. And then there’s the strange girl who may or may not be haunting the grounds.

A lost wartime message. A billionaire haunted by legacy. A rookie PI with everything to prove. Struggling investigator Jadene Bowman is handed the case of a lifetime—a cryptic World War II telegram sent from Kraków in 1945 that could upend a tech dynasty and reveal what history tried to erase. The job sounds simple: decode the message, find the truth—and keep it quiet. But Jadene uncovers something far darker: in the war’s final days, a military transport vanished in the fog of chaos. As she follows a trail long erased by silence, ruthless forces close in, willing to kill for what ...

True crime writer Dougal Lachlan swore he'd never set foot in Twisted Cedars again. Not even for his sister's upcoming wedding. But an email promising the story of a lifetime pulls him back to his hometown against his better judgement. Thirty years ago, five librarians were murdered across quiet coastal towns in Oregon, leaving a trail of unsolved mysteries. All signs point to a serial killer. As Dougal plunges into the investigation, he enlists the help of local librarian Charlotte Hammond.

Private detective Olivia Welles hasn’t been to her hometown since childhood, not since the night she died. She has no memory of the world before the car crash, or of coming back to life in the morgue. But now, years later, when fellow survivor Bonnie Ray calls from a Kansas jail begging for help, Olivia feels the tug of a dark and unremembered past. Bonnie looks guilty of murdering her young son—the third child to die under suspicious circumstances. Intrigued and seeking closure, Olivia agrees to investigate.

Her husband kept the diary of his dead ex. What she reads in it will change everything. Emily lives with her successful film producer husband, Henry, in their lavish Silver Lake home in Los Angeles. Everything in her life is perfect, until she uncovers a journal stashed away in the attic. It begins, "I am Casey Simpson, and these are my secrets." From there, it unravels as a lurid memoir of sex and crime in real time, all involving her husband. She tries to ignore it, but the allure of the journal pulls her into its story and soon she can't think of anything else. She has to verify Casey's ...

With the August heat strong enough to melt solid chocolate into syrup, Jake and Ellie crave a break from the bakery ovens, despite tourist season promising a sweet payday. But they never envisioned spending the last weeks of summer drifting around Passamaquoddy Bay searching for pirate’s treasure—and a dead body. Sally Coates believes her husband was murdered off the coast, and begs Ellie, a trusted childhood friend, to locate his remains. It’s unusual that a skilled fisherman would vanish along with the gold doubloon he inherited from his grandfather.

Someone killed Marcia, Beautiful but difficult Marcia. But is she the only one in danger? Ted Frazer has finally built a peaceful life since divorcing his manipulative ex-wife, even if he can't quite escape her emotional pull. Years of carefully maintaining distance from Marcia's chaos are shattered when a phone call delivers impossible news—she's been found dead in the waters near the remote New Zealand beach house he built, a prize she won in the divorce. Ted is the divorced ex. Ted lost the precious beach house he built in the divorce. Ted drives his distraught daughter back to the ...

Now twenty-four, Hanna is living an outwardly normal life of domestic content. Married to real estate agent Jacob, she’s also stepmother to his teenage daughter Joelle. They live in a beautiful home, and Hanna loves her career as a phlebotomist—a job perfectly suited to her occasional need to hurt people. But when Joelle begins to change in ways that don’t suit Hanna’s purposes, her carefully planned existence threatens to come apart.

A Hollywood starlet found floating in the bay. St. Mo's pier is still destined for the scrap heap. Can Twiz unbend the mystery, and weather the storm that is brewing? Twiz’s simple Sunday morning of reading on the pier is interrupted with the discovery of the starlet's body. Several of the actor’s enemies are right here in St. Maurice. They all have a motive, but who actually shot the movie star in the back?

When Patrol Officer Lauren Starkly finds an unconscious teenage girl posed as a corpse, she learns that the offense mirrors two other recent assaults. The attack is intensely personal to Lauren—the girl is her daughter’s close friend. Lauren feels compelled to do some off-duty investigation. The perpetrator is intelligent and methodical, and essentially invisible. But Lauren has uncanny detection skills, and routinely finds evidence missed by the detectives. She earns official trouble for her effort, but the warnings from her superiors don’t keep her from tugging at elusive clues. As ...

Cops drink coffee. They don't belong in Ellen Rosings's Victorian tearoom. But when her opening day thank-you tea ends in the murder of the president of the Santa Fe Preservation Trust, the police invade her haven. Enter Detective Tony Aragon: attractive and unsympathetic, with a chip on his shoulder that goes beyond the murder investigation, and Ellen's delicate bone china cup is full. Is the murderer one of her honored guests, or the ghost rumored to haunt the building? Will Ellen solve the mystery, or will the Wisteria Tearoom's premiere turn out to be its - and Ellen's - finale?

In the elite world of luxury real estate, it is often kill or be killed, something agent Andi Hart knows all too well—and after recent events, she’s ready to set her own rules. So when her boss challenges the team to find a buyer for a glitzy Malibu beach house, with a prize commission of a cool $1 million, she knows it’s her ticket to a new life. But she’s not the only one who not only wants but needs the money. Each of her four colleagues has secrets they’re eager to hide—secrets $1 million would go a long way in concealing.

At an elite private school nestled in the Colorado mountains, Natalie, an office assistant, dreams of having a life like the school moms she deals with every day. Women like Brooke—a gorgeous heiress, ferociously loving mother and serial cheater—and Asha, an overprotective mom who suspects her husband of having an affair. Their fates are bound by the handsome assistant athletic director Nicholas, whom Natalie loves, Brooke wants and Asha needs.

Four hikers enter the mountains. Only two return. But is it tragedy? Or treachery?

It was supposed to be the happiest time of their lives. But for newlywed Stella, the dream honeymoon has turned into a nightmare overnight. Her perfect husband, Austin, has vanished without a trace. Alone in Venice, Stella frantically searches for him. But as fear turns into confusion, she finds herself questioning everything she knows about the man she married. Has Austin really abandoned her, or has someone from his past finally caught up with him—the business partner he threatened to sue? The obsessive ex-girlfriend who refuses to let go?

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?