Amateur Sleuth

Showing 1–25 of 86
  1. Just outside Washington, DC, sits Eastbrook, Bethesda—a leafy suburb with top schools, pristine landscapes, and perfect neighbors. It's not the kind of place where nannies are killed during robberies gone wrong. And in this picture-perfect neighborhood, someone is desperate to plaster over the cracks in that façade. A year after the unsolved neighborhood murder, Caren, nearing fifty and staring down an empty nest, has one too many drinks at a graduation party and blacks out on her way home. At least, that's what everyone says happened. Caren suspects she was drugged by someone. But who? When Caren teams up with a new neighbor who is obsessed with figuring out who murdered his best friend, they start to uncover what Eastbrook has tried to forget. But in a place where appearances are everything, their search for the truth means not only shattering carefully curated perfection — but putting themselves squarely in the crosshairs of a killer.

  2. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and then - a scream and the sound of something falling upstairs - Jane senses she's in a bad place. She runs. Twenty five years later, Jane finds herself outside the same house, this time to return a small white dog who's been found near her home in the country; a dog whose owner has just been reported missing. A fleeting glimpse of a haunted looking woman through the window sends Jane on a mission to uncover the house's secrets - secrets more terrifying than she could have ever imagined, especially when she realises it could have been her. . .

  3. Such a Nice Girl

    4.08

    The morning after a glamorous, luxury wedding, best friends Siobhan and Grace go to wake their twenty-four-year-old daughters. Opening the door to their shared room, they find a smashed lamp, an abandoned phone and blood on the carpet. Over the next few days, the truth unravels, testing Siobhan and Grace's friendship to its limits. As secrets and lies begin to come to light, they realise that the girls were not best friends. In fact, they weren't really friends at all. And now, it looks like one of them is dead. And one of them is a killer. But whose daughter is guilty of murder?

  4. The Girls Before

    3.78

    There is a girl in a basement. The door has stopped opening. The light is gone. Stranger is trapped in the dark, with only her imagination and the scribbles on the wall left by long-dead girls to keep her company. Nearly out of food and water, she makes one last attempt to escape. But if the door opens at last, will it mean salvation, or only the beginning of her fight to survive? Audrey is a search and rescue expert who never stopped looking for her ex-best friend, Janie, who disappeared when they were teenagers. Janie used to love the local legend of a forest witch who saves girls from bad men, but Audrey knows now that for every one saved, there's always another one lost. When she stumbles upon evidence in the forest that a teenage runaway might have actually been kidnapped from land belonging to the town's most prominent family, she will have to dig through decades of secrets to reveal the biggest one of all: what happened to the girls before.

  5. When I Kill You

    3.72

    Nell Masters is certain someone is following her. The hairs on the back of her neck rise when she travels to and from work, there are silent calls to her office, and a huge bouquet of flowers arrives without a card. And Nell has a reason to be looking over her shoulder, because she has a secret that she's hiding from everyone in her life, including her new partner, Alex. But Alex also has secrets of his own. Fourteen years earlier, when Nell went by the name Elle Nugent, she witnessed a student, Bryony Sanders, getting into a stranger's car. When Bryony was found murdered, Elle became obsessed with finding the person responsible. She was convinced she knew who it was and her fixation with Brett Parker, the man she accused, led her down a dangerous path . . . Now, Nell tries to convince herself that this unnerving feeling of being watched is all in her mind. Has someone from her past discovered her new identity? Has the stalker become the stalked? Or is there something even more deadly at play?

  6. Prequel to the Ask for Andrea Series

    Across the country, notes taped to restroom stalls read, "On a date that isn't going well? Ask for Andrea at the bar. We'll make sure you get home safe." But Andrea—the girl behind the campaign—didn't make it home safe. She disappeared without a trace at seventeen. The police labeled her a runaway, and the case went cold. That is, until her mother, Sabina, starts digging for answers. But the closer she gets to the truth, the clearer it becomes that not everyone wants Andrea to be found. A predator is hiding in plain sight, keeping close tabs on the search. And he'll do whatever it takes to make sure his secrets stay buried. Forget You Saw Her is the standalone prequel to, Ask for Andrea.

  7. Forget Me Not

    3.93

    Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell's older sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed. In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist... until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew. With the entire summer now looming ahead—a summer spent with nothing to do in her childhood home, with her estranged mother—Claire decides on a whim to accept a seasonal job at Galloway Farm, a muscadine vineyard in coastal South Carolina less than an hour away from where she grew up. At first glance, Galloway is an idyllic escape for Claire. A scenic retreat full of slow-paced nostalgia, as well as a place where her sister seemed truly happy in that last summer before she vanished, it feels like the perfect plan to pass the time. However, as soon as Claire starts to settle in, she stumbles across an old diary written by one of the vineyard's owners, and what at first seems like a story of young rebellion and love turns into something much more sinister as it begins to describe details of various unsolved crimes. As the days stretch on, Claire finds herself becoming more and more secluded as she starts to obsess over the diary's contents... as well as the lingering feeling that her own sister's disappearance may be somehow tied to it all. Galloway was supposed to be a place to help her move forward, but instead, Claire quickly finds herself immersed in her own dark and dangerous past.

  8. In seven days Jet Mason will be dead. Jet is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont. Twenty-seven years old and back living with her parents, she's still waiting for her life to begin. I'll do it later, she always says. She has time. Until Halloween night, when she is violently attacked by an unseen intruder, suffering a catastrophic head injury. Doctors are certain that within a week, the injury will trigger a deadly aneurysm. Jet never thought of herself as having enemies. But now she looks at everyone in a new light: her family, her former best friend turned sister-in-law, her ex-boyfriend. She has at most seven days, and as her condition deteriorates, she has only her childhood friend Billy for help. But nevertheless, she's absolutely determined to finally finish something: Jet is going to solve her own murder.

  9. #2 in the Lo Blacklock Series

    When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it's like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago. The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo's ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus's hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She's greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus's mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy. What follows is a thrilling pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she's willing to sacrifice to save this woman...and if she can even trust her?

  10. Don't Let Him In

    3.93

    Nick Radcliffe is a man of substance and good taste. He's exactly what newly widowed Nina Swann needs in her life. But to Nina's adult daughter, Ash, Nick seems too slick, too polished, too good to be true. When Ash begins digging into his past, she finds a trail of unsettling coincidences. Martha lives in a neighboring town with her infant daughter and devoted husband Alistair. But lately, Alistair has been traveling more and more frequently for work, disappearing for days at a time, and Martha can't shake the feeling that something isn't right. Nina, Martha, and Ash have no idea they are on a collision course with a shocking truth. And all three are about to wish they had heeded the same warning: Don't let him in.

  11. All Eyes on Him

    3.97

    Natalie's best friend leaves the dance club with a handsome stranger and is found unconscious at a bus stop the next morning. What happened that night? Only Natalie's friend knows—except she's in the hospital, in a coma... When Natalie sees a handsome man on the cover of a financial magazine, she recognizes the "Man of the Year"—the stranger her friend left the club with. He is a millionaire. He is famous. He is untouchable. And—Natalie suspects—dangerous. Desperate for answers, she takes a job as a housekeeper at his mansion. Her plan is simple. Get close to him, watch his every move, gather evidence, and make him pay. Except something's not right about the mansion. Strange rules, hostile treatment from the staff, and an eerie feeling that she's being watched and followed home. And what exactly happened to the previous housekeeper who went missing? Natalie thought she was setting a trap. But the day she discovers the shocking truth about the "Man of the Year," she realizes she might have walked straight into his...

  12. A Killing Cold

    3.88

    When Theodora Scott met Connor—wealthy, charming, and a member of the powerful Dalton family—she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he's brought her to Idlewood, his family's isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives. Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can't ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood. Theo has almost no recollection of her earliest years, but now she begins to piece together the fragments of her memories. Someone here has a shocking secret that they will do anything to keep hidden, and Theo is in terrible danger. Because the Daltons do not lose, and discovering what happened at Idlewood may cost Theo everything.

  13. Love, Mom

    4.29

    Mackenzie Casper is a brilliant student. But she is best known for her mother, a best-selling author whose dark, twisted thrillers have a dedicated worldwide fanbase. When her mother dies in an accident, fans across the world are left grieving, and the investigators are asking: Was that really an accident? The day of the memorial service, Mackenzie gets the first mysterious envelope, signed, From #1 fan. XOXO. Inside are the pages of her mother's diary that start with the lines: Want to know a secret? Love, Mom. What Mackenzie reads leaves her in shock. Then comes the second letter. And the third... Mackenzie starts her own investigation and stumbles upon secrets that her family has lived with for years. Quickly, she realizes that her mother's path to stardom was etched with sinister lies that might have caught up with her. Sometimes fame is worth a murder. Or worse. Soon, Mackenzie will come to find out that there are worse things than murder...

  14. The teenagers get their kicks telling ghost stories in the old graveyard. The parents trust their kids will arrive home safe from school. Everyone knows everyone. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked. But Diana Brewer isn't lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer. How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia. Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.

  15. The Haters

    3.79

    Camryn Lane is living her dream. After years of rejection, her first novel has finally been published. Her editor is happy; her teenage daughter is proud; and her boyfriend and friends are all excited for her. She's on top of the world—until she receives a disturbing message from an unknown sender. Rattled by the accusations in the message, Camryn resolves to put the missive out of her mind. But when she checks her ratings on a popular book site, she finds a scathing one-star review. Soon, Camryn's book is flooded with bad reviews. Could the reviewer be the same person who sent the ugly email? And why do they want to ruin her? As the online harassment creeps into Camryn's personal life, she vows to find out who's behind it. Is it really a disgruntled reader? Or could it be someone she knows? The troll's actions are escalating, and when the abuse turns deadly, it will take everything Camryn has to unmask the enemy so intent on destroying her—and finally learn why she's being targeted.

  16. Long Time Gone

    4.33

    On the first day of an elite two-year fellowship, Sloan Hastings receives a research assignment in the emerging field of forensic genealogy. It's the exciting, rapidly evolving science behind the recent breaks in high-profile cold cases from the Golden State Killer to the Cameron Young murder, and Sloan enthusiastically begins by submitting her own DNA to an online genealogy site. Her goal is to better understand the treasure trove of genetic information contained on ancestry websites, but the results she receives are shocking. Raised by loving parents, Sloan has always known she was adopted. But her DNA profile suggests her true identity is that of Charlotte Margolis, aka "Baby Charlotte," who captured the nation's attention when she and her affluent parents mysteriously vanished in July 1995. Despite a large-scale investigation and months of broad media coverage, there were never any suspects, and the case has been cold for decades. Racing to stay ahead of the media and true crime junkies ravenous to know what really happened to Baby Charlotte, Sloan's search for answers leads her to small-town Cedar Creek, Nevada. There, the Margolis family's power and influence permeate every corner of the county, and while Sloan's birth relatives are initially welcoming, they're also mysterious and tight-lipped. Not everyone seems happy about Sloan's return, or the questions she's asking. The more she learns, the more apparent it becomes that the answers Sloan seeks are buried in a graveyard of Margolis family secrets. And someone will do anything to keep them hidden . . .

  17. Liam Noone was many things to many people. To the public, he was an exacting, self-made hotel magnate fleeing his past. To his three ex-wives, he was a loving albeit distant family man who kept his finances flush and his families carefully separated. To Nora, he was a father who often loved her from afar—notably, a cliffside cottage perched on the California coast where he fell to his death. The authorities rule the death accidental, but Nora and her estranged brother Sam have other ideas. As Nora and Sam form an uneasy alliance to unravel the mystery, they start putting together the pieces of their father's past and uncover a family secret that changes everything.

  18. Eighteen-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom's mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. Rachel is gone, long presumed dead, and Bel wishes everyone would just move on. But the case is dredged up from the past when the Price family agrees to a true crime documentary. Bel can't wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. And then the impossible happens. Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again. Rachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn't sure it's real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And—could she be dangerous? With the cameras still rolling, Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead . . .

  19. No One Can Know

    3.82

    Fourteen years ago, the Palmer sisters—Emma, Juliette, and Daphne—left their home in Arden Hills and never returned. But when Emma discovers she's pregnant and her husband loses his job, she has no option but to return to the house that she and her estranged sisters still own . . . and where their parents were murdered. Emma has never told anyone what she saw the night her parents died, even when she became the prime suspect. But her presence in the house threatens to uncover secrets that have stayed hidden for years, and the sisters are drawn together once again. As they face their memories of the past, rivalries restart, connections are forged, and, for the first time, Emma starts to ask questions about what really happened that night. The more Emma learns, the more riddles emerge. And Emma begins to wonder just what her siblings will do to keep the past buried, and whether she did the right thing staying quiet about what was whispered that night: "No one can know."

  20. Madeline Martin has built a life for herself as the young owner of a thriving business, The Next Chapter Bookshop, despite her tragic childhood and now needing to care for her infirm father. When Harley Granger, a failed novelist turned true crime podcaster, drifts into her shop in the days before Christmas, he seems intent on digging up events that Madeline would much rather forget. She's the only surviving victim of Evan Handy, the man who was convicted of murdering her best friend Steph, and is suspected in the disappearance of two sisters, also good friends of Madeline's, who have been missing for nearly a decade. It's an investigation that has obsessed her father Sheriff James Martin right up until his stroke took his faculties. Harley Granger has a gift for seeing things that others miss. He wasn't much of a novelist, but his work as a true crime author and podcaster has earned him fame and wealth—and some serious criticism for his various unethical practices. Still, visiting Little Valley to be closer to his dying father has caused him to look into a case that many people think is closed—and some want reopened. And he has a lot of questions about the night Stephanie Cramer was killed, Ainsley and Sam Wallace disappeared, and Madeline Martin was left for dead, bleeding out on a riverbank. Since Evan Handy went to jail, three other young women have gone missing, most recently a young college dropout named Lolly. Five young women missing in the same area in a decade. Are they connected? Was Evan Handy innocent after all? Or was there some else there that night? Someone who is still satisfying his dark appetites? As Christmas approaches and a blizzard bears down, Madeline and her childhood friend Badger return to a past they both hoped was dead—to find the missing Lolly and to answer questions that have haunted them both, discovering that the truth is more terrible and much closer to home than they think.

  21. Good Bad Girl

    3.84

    Twenty years after a baby is stolen from a stroller, a woman is murdered in a care home. The two crimes are somehow linked, and a good bad girl may be the key to discovering the truth. Edith may have been tricked into a nursing home, but at eighty-years-young, she's planning her escape. Patience works there, cleaning messes and bonding with Edith, a kindred spirit. But Patience is lying to Edith about almost everything. Edith's own daughter, Clio, won't speak to her. And someone new is about to knock on Clio's door...and their intentions aren't good. With every reason to distrust each other, the women must solve a mystery with three suspects, two murders, and one victim. If they do, they might just find out what happened to the baby who disappeared, the mother who lost her, and the connections that bind them.

  22. At seventeen, Lenora Hope Hung her sister with a rope Now reduced to a schoolyard chant, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast one bloody night in 1929. While most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial after the killings, she has never spoken publicly about that night, nor has she set foot outside Hope's End, the cliffside mansion where the massacre occurred. Stabbed her father with a knife Took her mother's happy life It's now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope's End to care for Lenora after her previous nurse fled in the middle of the night. In her seventies and confined to a wheelchair, Lenora was rendered mute by a series of strokes and can only communicate with Kit by tapping out sentences on an old typewriter. One night, Lenora uses it to make a tantalizing offer—I want to tell you everything. "It wasn't me," Lenora said But she's the only one not dead As Kit helps Lenora write about the events leading to the Hope family massacre, it becomes clear there's more to the tale than people know. But when new details about her predecessor's departure come to light, Kit starts to suspect Lenora might not be telling the complete truth—and that the seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.

  23. Zero Days

    3.87

    Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her despair, the police are closing in on their suspect—her. Suddenly on the run and quickly running out of options, Jack must decide who she can trust as she circles closer to the real killer.

  24. The Villa

    3.86

    As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable. But by their 30s, their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend. Villa Aestas in Orvieto is a high-end holiday home now, but in 1974, it was known as Villa Rosato, and rented for the summer by a notorious rock star, Noel Gordon. In an attempt to reignite his creative spark, Noel invites up-and-coming musician, Pierce Sheldon to join him, as well as Pierce's girlfriend, Mari, and her stepsister, Lara. But he also sets in motion a chain of events that leads to Mari writing one of the greatest horror novels of all time, Lara composing a platinum album—and ends in Pierce's brutal murder. As Emily digs into the villa's complicated history, she begins to think there might be more to the story of that fateful summer in 1974. That perhaps Pierce's murder wasn't just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but that something more sinister might have occurred—and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari and Lara left behind. Yet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge—and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends.

  25. Helen Vaughan doesn't know why she and her mother left their ancestral home at Harrowstone Hall, called Harrow, or why they haven't spoken to their extended family since. So when her grandfather dies, she's shocked to learn that he has left everything—the house, the grounds, and the money—to her. The inheritance comes with one condition: she must stay on the grounds of Harrow for one full year, or she'll be left with nothing. There is more at stake than money. For as long as she can remember, Harrow has haunted Helen's dreams—and now those dreams have become a waking nightmare. Helen knows that if she is going to survive the year, she needs to uncover the secrets of Harrow. Why is the house built like a labyrinth? What is digging the holes that appear in the woods each night?And why does the house itself seem to be making her sick? With each twisted revelation, Helen questions what she knows about Harrow, her family, and even herself. She no longer wonders if she wants to leave...but if she can.