The human mind fascinates me. Perhaps that’s why I got a PhD in Psychology, and have spent decades in the counseling field. That, of course, brought me in touch with all kinds of minds. Why do people do the things they do, make the choices they live with? We learn patterns in childhood that keep us safe. What if those patterns no longer work in adulthood, or worse, were built on false beliefs? Do life’s events shape us or do they merely show who we were all along? In my psychological thrillers, I explore such things. Even the bad guys have their stories.
A sheltered mother. A medically fragile child. They can’t just disappear. Or can they?
A typical day of medical appointments and errands. Elizabeth can handle it, she tells herself. She’ll do it all until her husband returns on the weekend. But someone else has a plan—several someones—throwing Elizabeth’s orderly life into chaos and danger. Now, she’s on her own. Neither her parents nor her husband are there to protect her. No one knows where they are. If her son is to get out of this alive, it’s up to Elizabeth. Ordinary people, thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Read Gone, Book One of the psychological thriller series When Bad Things Happen.
You know those books that stick with you years after you read them? Well, this is one. Rich characters that feel so real. The anguish of losing a child and the hope that even fifteen years down the road, you might be reunited. Parents who act as I would. A situation so plausible, you are right there with them. Love it when I can’t put a book down.
Don’t you love it when you don’t know who is the victim and who is the villain? A cheating husband, caught by his distraught wife. Now she’s out for revenge. You could understand her initial reaction, couldn’t you? But wait, is there more to this? I loved the twists in this story.
They’ll do anything to get out. She’ll do anything to keep them in.
When happily married Grace comes home early one night and catches her husband, Dominic, with another woman in the cabin at the bottom of their garden, she is shocked, angry, and most of all, hell-bent on revenge. That’s why she acts quickly, locking the pair in the cabin while she decides what she wants to do to them.
While Dominic and his mistress desperately try to get free, Grace makes a plan on the outside, but it’s a plan that is formed based on her previous experiences.…
I love kids. Maybe that’s why a child in peril story pulls me in. I can feel the parents’ desperation and the urgency of the detectives. A book like this shows the terror, without any gore. Not only do we feel for the families, but the detective has her own story and personal demons. The story is full of twists, and you don’t truly know who the bad guy is until the end.
When twelve-year-old Sophie Williams went on a Girl Scout summer camp, she never returned home.
Three months later, her body is found inside her sleeping bag in the most frequented area of Cocoa Beach, and the town is outraged.
The girl isn't just any child. She's the town's most beloved surf idol, and it was believed that she could be the next Kelly Slater.
As another child, the son of a well-known senator is kidnapped, and the parents receive a disturbing video, FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas — who has just returned to her hometown, divorced and out of a…
What if you never really wanted to be a mother? Can you hide that from your child? As parents, most of us do the best we can at the time. Right? What if your best wasn’t good enough, what if the most unthinkable happened, caused by yourchild? Is it your fault? Could you have done differently, better? This novel explores the psychological dynamics of people thinking they’re living their best lives. But they’re not.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to…
Families. What can I say? They can be weird beasts, and none less so than the family of detective Eva Rae Thomas. A father who kidnapped her sister from a grocery store when they were children. A brother she didn’t know existed. Ignored by her family for decades, can she refuse their call for help? Many would, in a case where nothing is as it seems.
Former FBI-profiler Eva Rae Thomas is back and embedded in a true nightmare reaching deep into her own family.
What would you do if your brother was accused of a horrible crime, and you were certain he didn’t do it?
Life is not done throwing Eva Rae Thomas curveballs.
A phone call turns her life upside down – once again.
The call is from her father, the man she hasn’t seen in thirty-six years, not since he kidnapped her sister in a supermarket.
Now, he is back in Florida, and he needs her help.
Bright but unassuming Marilyn Jones has some grown-up decisions to make, especially after Mama goes to prison for drugs and larceny. With no one to take care of them, Marilyn and her younger, mentally challenged brother, Carol, get tossed into the foster care system. While shuffling from one home to another, Marilyn makes it her mission to find the Tan Man, a mysterious man from her babyhood she believes holds the key to her family’s happiness.
But Marilyn’s quest is halted when her daddy, an ex-con she has never met, is chosen by the courts as the new guardian. Caleb Jones wants something more than a father-daughter relationship. He sends Carol far away, where the boy won’t be a hindrance to his plans. Marilyn devises a plan of her own: to locate her little brother, kidnap him, and run away.
Independence, however, often comes at a high price.
As Marilyn weathers the unexpected and often brutal storms of her childhood and adolescence, hope becomes her ally as she winds through small southern towns, wrapping herself around an assortment of hearts along the way. With unexpected help from a caring social worker, a carnival of misfits, her first true love, and even the elusive Tan Man himself, Marilyn will discover that “family” isn’t always what we imagine it to be.
"A dazzling piece that delves deep into the themes of survival, the casualties of self-discovery, and the power of familial ties." ~ Prairies Book Review
Bright but unassuming Marilyn Jones has some grown-up decisions to make, especially after Mama goes to prison for drugs and larceny. With no one to take care of them, Marilyn and her younger, mentally challenged brother, Carol, get tossed into the foster care system. While shuffling from one home to another, Marilyn makes it her mission to find the Tan Man, a mysterious man from her babyhood she believes holds the key to her family's happiness.
But Marilyn's quest is halted when her daddy, an ex-con she has never met, is chosen by the courts as the new guardian. Caleb…
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