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It happens quietly one August morning. As dawn's shimmering light drenches the humid Iowa air, two families awaken to find their little girls have gone missing in the night. Seven-year-old Calli Clark is sweet, gentle, a dreamer who suffers from selective mutism brought on by a tragedy that pulled her deep into silence as a toddler. Calli's mother, Antonia, tried to be the best mother she could within the confines of marriage to a mostly absent, often angry husband. Now, though she denies that her husband could be involved in the possible abductions, she fears her decision to stay in her marriage has cost her more than her daughter's voice. Petra Gregory is Calli's best friend, her soul mate and her voice. But neither Petra nor Calli has been heard from since their disappearance was discovered. Desperate to find his child, Martin Gregory is forced to confront a side of himself he did not know existed beneath his intellectual, professorial demeanor. Now these families are tied by the question of what happened to their children. And the answer is trapped in the silence of unspoken family secrets.
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#2 in the Will Trent Series
Ansley Park is one of Atlanta's most upscale neighborhoods—but in one gleaming mansion, in a teenager's lavish bedroom, a girl has been savagely murdered. And in the hallway, her mother stands amid shattered glass, having killed her daughter's attacker with her bare hands. Detective Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is one of the first on the scene. Trent soon sees something that the Atlanta cops are missing, something in the trail of blood, in a matrix of forensic evidence, and in the eyes of the stunned mother. When another teenage girl goes missing, Trent knows that this case, which started in the best of homes, is about to cut quick and deep through the ruins of perfect lives broken wide-open: where human demons emerge with a vengeance.
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Since the death of her husband, Anne Dunne and her three children have struggled in every way. In a last-ditch effort to save her family, Anne plans an elaborate sailing vacation to bring everyone together once again. But only an hour out of port, their summer getaway is already turning into the trip from hell. Anne's teenage daughter, Carrie, is planning to drown herself. Her teenage son, Mark, is high on pot, and ten-year-old Ernie is nearly catatonic. Somehow, Anne manages to pull things together, but just as they begin feeling like a family again, disaster strikes. But this catastrophe is just a tiny taste of the true danger lurking ahead — somewhere out there, someone wants to make sure the Dunne family never leaves paradise alive.
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#1 in the DI Jack Delaney Series
Jackie Malone has been murdered. Her body lies in a pool of blood in the north London flat where she worked as a prostitute. Deep knife wounds have been gouged into her corpse and her hands and feet are tied with coat hanger wire. For Detective Inspector Jack Delaney this is no ordinary case. He was a friend of Jackie's and she left desperate messages on his answer phone just hours before she was killed. Despite no immediate leads and no obvious suspects, the fear in her voice tells him that this was not a random act of violence. Just as Delaney begins his investigation, a young girl is reported missing, feared abducted, and he is immediately tasked with finding her. Delaney knows he must act quickly if there is any chance of finding her alive, but he is also determined to track down Jackie's killer before the trail goes cold. However, his tough and uncompromising attitude has made him some powerful enemies on the force, and Delaney soon finds that this case may provide the perfect opportunity for them to dispose of him, once and for all.
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#1 in the Zailer & Waterhouse Mysteries Series
The first time she goes out after their daughter is born, Alice leaves the two-week-old infant at home with her husband, David. When she returns two hours later, she insists that the baby in the crib is not her child. Despite her apparent distress, David is adamant that she is wrong. The police are called to the scene. Detective Constable Simon Waterhouse is sympathetic, but he doubts Alice's story. His superior, Sergeant Charlie Zailer, thinks Alice must be suffering from some sort of delusion brought on by postpartum depression. With an increasingly hostile and menacing David swearing she must either be mad or lying, how can Alice make the police believe her before it's too late?
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#1 in the Dublin Murder Squad Series
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers, and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours. Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox—his partner and closest friend—find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.
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#6 in the Women's Murder Club Series
Lindsay Boxer and her new partner in the San Francisco police department are racing to stop a series of kidnappings that has electrified the city. Children and their nannies are being plucked off the streets, but the kidnappers aren't demanding a ransom. Amid uncertainty and rising panic, Lindsay juggles the possibility of a new love with an unsolvable investigation, and the knowledge that one member of the club could be on the brink of death. And just when everything appears momentarily under control, the case takes a terrifying turn, putting an entire city in lethal danger. Lindsay must make a choice she never dreamed she'd face—with no certainty that either outcome has more than a prayer of success.
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#3 in the Dr. Anya Crichton Series
Homicide detective Kate Farrer took a four-month leave from the force when the stress of the job threatened to crush her. Now she's back, at a crime scene as brutal as any she's ever witnessed. The charred corpse of a young woman, burned beyond recognition, smolders on a bed near a bag full of baby items. An autopsy reveals that the victim had recently given birth. Yet no child has been found. Teaming up with a new partner, Oliver Parke, Kate struggles to hold her own demons at bay—while also pursuing leads in the seemingly unrelated affair of a missing teenager who was keeping secrets that may have cost her her life. But as disturbing clues begin linking their two investigations—and another unspeakably cruel murder secures the knot—Kate and Oliver realize with horror that a desperate killer's next victim might be the most innocent one of all.
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Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.
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#1 in the Lincoln Perry Series
Weston's father insists that private investigators Lincoln Perry and Joe Pritchard take the case to exonerate his son and find his granddaughter and daughter-in-law. As they begin to work, they discover there is much more to the situation than has been described in the prevalent media reports. There are rumors of gambling debts and extortion, and a group of Russians with ties to organized crime who don't appreciate being investigated--a point they make clear with baseball bats. With some assistance from newspaper reporter Amy Ambrose, Perry and Pritchard believe they are making swift progress. But then they are warned off the investigation by a millionaire real estate tycoon and the FBI. Just when they feel they are closing in on a possible source of answers, another murder forces them to change direction in the case. Perry travels to a resort town in South Carolina and there he finds more than one game being played, and all of them are deadly. The stakes quickly become very personal for Perry, and it's clear that there will be no walking away from this case.
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#3 in the Women's Murder Club Series
Detective Lindsay Boxer is jogging along a beautiful San Francisco street when a fiery explosion rips through the neighborhood. When Lindsay searches for survivors, she finds three people dead. A lost infant and a mysterious message at the scene leaves Lindsay and the San Francisco Police Department completely baffled. Then a prominent businessman is found murdered under bizarre circumstances, with another mysterious message left behind by the killer. Lindsay asks her friends Claire Washburn of the medical examiner's office, Assistant D.A. Jill Bernhardt, and Chronicle reporter Cindy Thomas to help her figure out who is committing these murders—and why they are intent on killing someone every three days. Even more terrifying, the killer has targeted a member of the Women's Murder Club. Which one will it be?
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Nearly 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War, the fate of those airmen listed as Missing In Action have remained a mystery... until now. In "Betrayed," award-winning mystery and thriller author Brendan DuBois writes a harrowing tale of "what if" that begins with a knock on the door. Late at night, small-town newspaper editor Jason Harper answers the door, revealing a dirty, bearded and disheveled stranger on his doorstep. This stranger has an amazing tale: its his brother, Roy Harper, a B-52 pilot shot down in North Vietnam in 1972, who has been held captive for decades, and who has recently escaped, with armed gunmen on his trail... The two brothers then begin a harrowing journey, trying to survive and outwit their armed pursuers, and more importantly, trying to make public Roy Harper's incredible story of survival, and the location of scores of other MIAs, who are still alive, and who are still awaiting rescue after all these years...
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#5 in the Kay Scarpetta Series
Little Emily Steiner left a church meeting late one afternoon and strolled toward home along a lakeside path; a week later, her nude body was discovered, bound in blaze-orange duct tape. Called by the North Carolina authorities, forensic pathologist Kay Scarpetta recognizes similarities to the gruesome work of a serial killer who has long eluded the FBI But as she tries to make sense of the evidence, she is left with questions that lead her to the Body Farm, a little known research facility in Tennessee where, with the help of some grisly experiments, she might discover the answer. It is Scarpetta alone who can interpret the forensic hieroglyphics that eventually reveal a solution to the case as staggering as it is horrifying. But she must also endeavor to help her niece, Lucy, who is embroiled in controversy at Quantico. And Scarpetta, too, is vulnerable, as she opens herself to the first physical and emotional bond she has felt in far too long a time.
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In Portland, Oregon, the wives of several prominent businessmen have disappeared without a trace, leaving behind only a black rose and a note with a simple message: "Gone, But Not Forgotten." An identical series of disappearances occurred in Hunter's Point, New York, ten years ago—but the killer was caught, the case was closed and the special "rose killer" task force was disbanded. Betsy Tannenbaum, a Portland wife and mother who has gained national recognition as a feminist defense attorney, is retained by multimillionaire Portland developer Martin Darius—for no apparent reason. Nancy Gordon, a homicide detective for the Hunter's Point Police Department and an original member of the "rose killer" task force, hasn't slept a full night in ten years, haunted by nightmares of a sadistic killer who, she swears, is still out there. . . Alan Page, the Portland district attorney, trying to make sense of the sudden series of disappearances, opens his front door one evening to find Nancy Gordon on his doorstep—determined to tell him a story he won't soon forget. Across the country, in Washington, D.C., the President of the United States has just selected United States Senator Raymond Colby to be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. In a private meeting, Colby assures the President there are no skeletons in his closet.
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#4 in the Kay Scarpetta Series
Dr. Kay Scarpetta isn't used to planning autopsies on men who are still alive, but that's exactly what she's tasked with when serial killer Ronnie Joe Waddell is set for execution. His last words? "Killing me won't kill the beast." Enigmatic as they are, they soon prove prophetic: days after his execution, another body is found—with Waddell's fingerprints at the crime scene. How did a dead man commit a murder? Did Scarpetta autopsy the wrong man? And why can't she shake the feeling that she might be next?
