I love stories about everyday people ripped out of their normal lives and forced to face the craziest situations head-on. I mean, can you even imagine? Could you find a way to survive and win? To face down life-threatening danger and evil people and rise from the ashes stronger and smarter? I’m pretty sure I’d kill if it meant protecting my children…but strand me in the wilderness and I’d likely perish from eating the wrong berries. I hate to be hungry, but I love to bring edgy romantic suspense and twisty psychological suspense to readers. Enjoy!
Savannah Kade always delivers smart, savvy heroines—it’s her thing! But you’ll also find an alpha hero who is equal parts protective, sexy, and sweet. Oh yeah—and he’s a firefighter, too! Hot, hot, hot! This heroine is fighting for her new beginning and confronting danger she didn’t see coming. Creepy twists in the serial killer plot are left as hooks to be resolved later in the series—but trust me, the ending will satisfy.
Sebastian Kane felt that visceral punch to the gut the first time Maggie Willis walked into his fire station. But his hesitation cost him dearly and new-in-town Maggie is already dating fellow firefighter, Rex. Even his loyalty to the brotherhood can’t keep Sebastian away when danger is on Maggie’s doorstep. Or maybe already inside her house…
Maggie fled to tiny Redemption hoping to leave behind a painful betrayal she’d rather keep hidden, but her hopes for a fresh start are quickly dying. None of the town’s residents are willing to trust a…
I'm the author of two police procedural mysteries, a series that features a father/daughter detective team. I write in the traditional mystery genre for the simple reason that I'm a passionate reader of this genre, and always have been. I enjoy the structure of a whodunnit—the pacing, red herrings, clues, plot twists, reveals—and love constructing a multi-layered mystery that is both engaging and suspenseful. I’m a big fan of the masters of this genre: Agatha Christie, PD James, Dick Francis, and Val McDermid. I’m also an avid watcher of police procedural television series, and I’m especially drawn to the darker investigative stories you find in programs like The Killing, Mare of Easttown, and The Wire.
Dead Wind is the third book in Tessa Wegert’s Shana Merchant series, and it’s where I made my entry into the series. It works as a standalone, but I have every intention of going back to books 1 and 2 to fill in the backstory. In this installment, Detective Merchant is getting her sea legs back after a harrowing experience with a serial killer, while trying to solve the murder of a local woman, and sorting out her romantic feelings with her partner. Her complicated life provides another layer to the suspense and makes her an extremely relatable and likable character. There’s a nice cat-and-mouse feel to this novel with a heart-racing denouement.
Senior Investigator Shana Merchant must dredge up dark secrets and old grudges if she's to solve the murder of a prominent local citizen in the Thousand Islands community she now calls home.
"Wegert nicely balances plot and characterization. Fans of Denise Mina's Alex Morrow will be pleased" - Publishers Weekly Starred Review
"Louise Penny meets Ruth Ware in this small town mystery that bubbles with secrets and intrigue" - Charlie Donlea, internationally bestselling author of Twenty Years Later
"An atmospheric, sophisticated thriller with layers upon layers of secrets" - Sarah Stewart Taylor, author of the Maggie D'arcy mysteries
I’ve been lucky enough to have a happy childhood and enjoy a fulfilling life. Nevertheless, I’ve always been drawn to the darkness… the macabre, the sinister, and the bizarre. My selection of books has, in one way or another, helped to shape me as a writer. I’m constantly fascinated by the process of creating truly disturbed, twisted, or hideous characters. I enjoy the process of working out what makes them tick; shedding my own moral compass and experiencing the world through their eyes… wherever that ends up taking me.
This one is in my top ten books because of its “wow” factor, and its influence on me as a writer. It’s the first in the late, great Mo Hayder’s series featuring D.I. Jack Caffrey. He’s a character who is haunted by grief and guilt but driven to find out what happened to his brother, who went missing as a child, and to track down a present-day killer known as ‘Birdman’. How this maniac gets his nickname still makes my stomach churn.
This dark and disturbingly compelling thriller from bestselling and prize-winning author Mo Hayder is not for the faint-hearted. Perfect for fans of Stephen King, Stuart MacBride and Karin Slaughter, it is one read you won't be able to forget easily...
'A first-class shocker . . . a frightening mix of forensics, thrills, analytical police work and poetic images.' -- Guardian 'Wickedly constructed . . . The detail, if you can stomach it, is fascinating.' -- Daily Telegraph 'Hayder's vibrant narrative and crunchy characterisation propel the book along to its denouement with fearsome velocity' -- The Times 'WOW! This is one…
My new book, I Saw Satan at the 7-Eleven, is among other things, a love letter to heavy metal. I am a lifelong music obsessive: a record collector, concertgoer, maker of mixtapes, sewer of patch jackets. When I’m not writing or reading I’m playing guitar with the amp turned all the way up. And I have the tinnitus to prove it. Some of the books on this list are about metal, others are simply imbued with its rebellious dionysian spirit. But every damn one of them goes to 11, I can assure you of that. Enjoy!
A poppy, pulpy page-turner in the grand tradition of his father. In which an ageing rockstar obsessed with the morbid—think Ozzy or Alice Cooper—stumbles onto a newfangled website called “eBay” where one can seemingly buy anything one desires… and what does he buy? A human soul. And guess what? That ain’t good juju, so all heck breaks loose.
He bought it, in the shape of the dead man's suit, delivered in a heart-shaped box, because he wanted it: because his fans ate up that kind of story. It was perfect for his collection: the genuine skulls and the bones, the real honest-to-God snuff movie, the occult books and all the rest of the paraphanalia that goes along with his kind of hard/goth rock.
But the rest of his collection doesn't make the house feel cold. The bones don't make the dogs bark; the movie doesn't make Jude feel…
My interest in serial killers began when I was a teen watching horror movies with my mom. I learned all I could about them—even became a horror special-effects makeup artist. Eventually, I had to quit due to my connective tissue disorder (Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome). It put me on a path of writing. I love digging into the darker side of humanity—murder or mental illness. The story of a serial killer who could challenge the reader to see disability in a new light came to me, and I had to write her story, if not just so I could dive into the psyche of another serial killer.
Scarlett Clark is a bi serial killer who kills bad men. Carly Schiller is a queer student who just escaped an abusive father. Their storylines are equally gripping, with moments of unexpected intensity in both lust and fear. Layne Fargo creates a world so grounded in reality that, as a woman, it was painful to read at times—micro-aggressions, normalized inappropriate touching. Fargo doesn’t exaggerate it, she just exposes it as part of the narrative. Better yet, she gives a glimmer of equalization in the form of Scarlett who focuses her urge to kill in a direction that’s easy to root for, to want to read. It was wanting a serial killer to go on with her work that made this book and Scarlett a standout.
From the author of the “raw, ingenious, and utterly fearless” (Wendy Walker, USA TODAY bestselling author) Temper comes a dynamic psychological thriller about two women who give bad men exactly what they deserve.
Scarlett Clark is an exceptional English professor. But she’s even better at getting away with murder.
Every year, she searches for the worst man at Gorman University and plots his well-deserved demise. Thanks to her meticulous planning, she’s avoided drawing attention to herself—but as she’s preparing for her biggest kill yet, the school starts probing into the growing body count on campus. Determined to keep her enemies…
It wasn’t until high school when I read Stephen King’s Night Shift that illuminated the genre for me—horror. My first short story was The Dark Shadow, and it fit me like a glove. My writing is inspired by the books I like to read, as I’m sure it is with all writers, and I write characters that I know and in settings I am familiar with for authenticity. The years of experience have honed my craft, and my books are a culmination of my favorite things—supernatural horror, suspense, heart, drama, westerns, and action.
When this book caused me to pull over, park, and listen to the last hour, making me late to my work appointment, I knew I was reading (listening) to the most intense, suspenseful, tightly written novel.
As much as I love horror and the supernatural, none of it thrills me unless it is accompanied by suspense, and no one cranks them out better than Koontz.
If you delight in the suspense of Stephen King and Harlan Coben, you'll love Intensity - a classic thriller by Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.
Edgler Vess is a sociopath intent on murder. He lives for one purpose only: to satisfy all appetites as they arise, seeking ever more outrageous experience. To live with intensity.
When he attacks her friend, Laura, Chyna Shepherd is saved by the instincts developed during a dark and turbulent childhood. Not knowing Laura is already dead, Chyna follows, hoping to save her friend, as Vess carries her body to his…
I’m a lifelong New Jerseyan married to a man whose family comes from Georgia. It gave me an opportunity to observe the white, Southern, upper-class weltanschauung, up close. To hear them talk, you’d think the Civil War had ended just a few days earlier, and if the Yankees had only respected states’ rights, none of that mess would have happened. My book is about a dysfunctional Georgia family who has far too much money than is good for them. Hijinks ensue.
When I worked for a daily newspaper, I covered the trial of serial killer Richard Biegenwald. Unlike a lot of serial killers, who tend to be loners, Biegenwald was married. He seemed fairly normal, except for his habit of occasionally killing people and burying them in his mother’s backyard. Serial killers, people who don’t kill in self-defense, or to protect someone from harm, but just because they like killing, have always fascinated me. Sitting in court, twenty feet from a real, live serial killer, was intensely interesting and not a little creepy.
Having covered the trial of a serial killer, I was intrigued by what would make someone do that. The serial killer in Child of God is a loner who’s lost his home and who constantly tries, and fails, to connect with other people. His struggles are as poignant as his deeds are gruesome.
In this taut, chilling novel from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Road, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape—haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail.
While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance.
"Like the novelists he admires-Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner-Cormac McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." —Washington Post
Look for Cormac McCarthy's new novel, The Passenger.
I am a pediatric emergency physician turned author, and I am passionate about sharing an insider’s view of the emergency room, as well as addressing larger health issues that should be more visible to the general public. The emergency room is a world unlike any other, filled with humor, drama, emotions, and energy twenty-four hours a day, and I like to bring that energy to my stories. I’ve worked in many different medical settings, and every day, I find a new story that is worth sharing.
It takes talent to make a forensic pathologist a hero, but Temperance Brennan is equal to the task.
This is the thirteenth book in the series and my favorite because of the complexity of the plot and investigation. Literature needs more smart female heroes, and Dr. Brennan leads the way. This is a top-notch science-nerd action-thriller at its best.
___________________________________ A gripping Temperance Brennan novel from world-class forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs, the international no. 1 bestselling crime thriller writer and the inspiration behind the hit TV series Bones.
Dr Temperance Brennan spends her life working amongst the decomposed and the skeletal. So the newly-dead body she is called to examine holds little to surprise her. Until she discovers it is the body of an ex-soldier apparently killed in Vietnam in 1968. So who is buried in his grave?
The case takes Tempe to the heart of the American military, where she must examine the remains of anyone with a…
Before I was published, I played Dungeons and Dragons for years. I grew up on games involving fantasy, and though my career took me into government, it stayed my passion. I’m well on my way to publishing the last two books in my four-part saga as well as venturing into Kindle Vella, and I can’t wait to see what is next for me in the realm of fantasy. When writing in the genre, it’s easy to fall into the same old tropes and utilize the same creatures. These five books are atypical in this age of overdone plots and monsters. I hope you find your next read among them.
I have always been interested in the Jack the Ripper lore. If you feel the same,Stalking Jack the Ripperdoes not disappoint. The book follows Audrey Rose Wadsworth in Victorian-era England as she hunts Jack the Ripper. Audrey is not the typical Victorian lady. She has a passion for forensic medicine and doesn’t mind the sight of corpses. Maniscalco does a fantastic job of presenting the widely known case details while putting her own spin on it and even adding a few details.
A deliciously creepy horror novel with a story line inspired by the Ripper murders and an unexpected, blood-chilling conclusion...
Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.
This #1 New York Times bestseller and deliciously creepy horror novel has a storyline inspired by the Ripper murders and an unexpected, blood-chilling conclusion.
Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord's daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between…
My novel choices were part of the Afterschool Literacy & Building Modules for an organization called LitShop. It encourages growth in literacy, making, building, and leadership in girls ages 10-15 in St. Louis, Missouri. I’m honored to lead the writing classes. All of the LitShop books feature strong girls who believe they can make and build their way to a better world, and I aim to include similar characters in my stories. Stories can provide us with motivation, inspiration, and companionship, and all of these books have done just that… for the girls of LitShop as well as myself.
A misfit loner is chosen to save the world. I know, it’s been done before. But this story is special. Firstly, it is set against the backdrop of Nigerian culture and lore. And secondly, Sunny. The main character is memorable for more than just her “differences.” She is determined and fierce, making her a hero you want to see bring home a “w” over and over again.
Affectionately dubbed "the Nigerian Harry Potter," Akata Witch weaves together a heart-pounding tale of magic, mystery, and finding one's place in the world.
Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing-she is a "free agent" with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be…
