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Nina Morgan's bloodstained car was found a decade ago on a lonely Florida road. Forensic evidence suggested she'd been murdered, although her body was never found. Her disappearance left her infant children to the care of their father. Once a pilot, mother, wife, and witness to a gruesome crime, Nina had to flee her old life to save her family. She reinvented herself as Leah Trenton, a guide in the Allagash Wilderness in northern Maine. She never expected to see her children again, but now tragedy has returned them to her—only they have no idea that she's their mother—and delivered all of them back into danger. "Aunt Leah" will need some help, and an old ally has a suggestion: an enigmatic young hitman named Dax Blackwell.
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Tech millionaire Miles Cookson has more money than he can ever spend, and everything he could dream of—except time. He has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and there is a fifty percent chance that it can be passed on to the next generation. For Miles, this means taking a long hard look at his past . . . Two decades ago, a young, struggling Miles was a sperm donor. Somewhere out there, he has kids—nine of them. And they might be about to inherit both the good and the bad from him—maybe his fortune, or maybe something much worse. As Miles begins to search for the children he's never known, aspiring film documentarian Chloe Swanson embarks on a quest to find her biological father, armed with the knowledge that twenty-two years ago, her mother used a New York sperm bank to become pregnant. When Miles and Chloe eventually connect, their excitement at finding each other is overshadowed by a series of mysterious and terrifying events. One by one, Miles's other potential heirs are vanishing—every trace of them wiped, like they never existed at all. Who is the vicious killer—another heir methodically erasing rivals? Or is something even more sinister going on? It's a deadly race against time . . .
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Everyone has secrets. YouTube baking sensation April Masterson knows the secret to the perfect gooey brownies. Or how to make key lime squares that will melt in your mouth. But if you keep watching her offline, you may find out some other secrets about April. Secrets she'd rather you didn't know. Like where did her son go when he snuck out of the house? What was she doing with the local soccer coach behind fogged windows? And what's buried in her backyard? Everyone has secrets. Some are worse than others. April's secrets are enough to destroy her. I'll make sure of that.
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Fern Castle works in her local library. She has dinner with her twin sister Rose three nights a week. And she avoids crowds, bright lights and loud noises as much as possible. Fern has a carefully structured life and disrupting her routine can be...dangerous. When Rose discovers that she cannot get pregnant, Fern sees her chance to pay her sister back for everything Rose has done for her. Fern can have a baby for Rose. She just needs to find a father. Simple. Fern's mission will shake the foundations of the life she has carefully built for herself and stir up dark secrets from the past, in this quirky, rich and shocking story of what families keep hidden.
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Selena Murphy is commuting home on the train when she strikes up a conversation with a beautiful stranger in the next seat. The woman introduces herself as Martha and soon confesses that she's been stuck in an affair with her boss. Selena, in turn, confesses that she suspects her husband is sleeping with the nanny. When the train arrives at Selena's station, the two women part ways, presumably never to meet again. Then the nanny disappears. As Selena is pulled into the mystery of what happened, and as the fractures in her marriage grow deeper, she begins to wonder, who was Martha really? But she is hardly prepared for what she'll discover...
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Best friends Lindsey, Kendra, and Dani endure every parent's nightmare when a tragic accident befalls their teenage boys, leaving one dead, another in a coma, and a third too traumatized to speak. Reeling from the worst night of their lives, the three mothers plunge into a desperate investigation of the bizarre incident. How could something so horrible happen in their wealthy Southern California suburb? They soon discover that the accident was just the beginning, and troubling discoveries lead to chilling questions: Do they really know their children? Do they even know each other? As more secrets surface, a fog of doubt and suspicion threatens to poison their families, their friendships, and the whole community. With the illusion of happiness and safety long gone, these women must now confront the hazards of heartbreak, the consequences of jealousy, and the dangers of living double lives.
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At loose ends after the devastating death of her mother, Una Richardson responds to an advertisement for a ladies' companion, a position that leads her into the wealthy, secluded world of Mrs. Elspeth McKenzie. But Elspeth's home isn't the comforting haven it seems. Kathryn, her cold and bitter daughter, resents Una's presence. More disturbing is evidence suggesting two girls lived here before her. What happened to the young women? Why won't the McKenzies talk about them? What are they hiding? As the walls begin to close in around her, Una fears she'll end up just like the other girls . . .
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Stephanie and Patrick are adjusting to life with their colicky twin girls. The babies are a handful, but even as Stephanie struggles with the disorientation of sleep deprivation, there's one thing she's sure of: she has all she ever wanted. Then Erica, a woman from Patrick's past, appears and makes a disturbing accusation. Patrick had always said his first wife's death was an accident, but now Erica claims it was murder. Patrick insists he's innocent, that this is nothing but a blackmail attempt. Still, Erica knows things about Patrick--things that make Stephanie begin to question her husband. Stephanie isn't sure what, or who, to believe. As Stephanie's trust in Patrick begins to falter, Patrick stands to lose everything. Is Patrick telling the truth--is Erica the persuasive liar Patrick says she is? Or has Stephanie made a terrible mistake?
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Beth, Portia, and Eddie Morgan haven't all been together in years. And for very good reasons—we'll get to those later. But when their wealthy grandfather dies and leaves a cryptic final message in his wake, the siblings and their respective partners must come together for a cross-country road trip to fulfill his final wish and—more importantly—secure their inheritance. But time with your family can be tough. It is for everyone. It's even harder when you're all keeping secrets and trying to forget a memory, a missing person, an act of revenge, the man in the black truck who won't stop following your car—and especially when at least one of you is a killer and there's a body in the trunk. Just to name a few reasons. But money is a powerful motivator. It is for everyone.
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Lauren's daughter Zara witnessed a terrible crime. But speaking up comes with a price, and when Zara's identity is revealed online, it puts a target on her back. The only choice is to disappear. To keep Zara safe, Lauren will give up everything and everyone she loves, even her husband. There will be no goodbyes. Their pasts will be rewritten. New names, new home, new lives. The rules are strict for a reason. They are being hunted. One mistake - a text, an Instagram like - could bring their old lives crashing into the new. They can never assume someone isn't watching, waiting.
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What was it like? Living in that house. Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism. Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father's book. But she also doesn't believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don't exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father's death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren't thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie's father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father's book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.
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It's Livia's 40th birthday, and her husband Adam is throwing her the party of a lifetime to make up for the wedding they never had. Everyone she loves will be there, except her daughter Marnie, who's studying abroad. But Livia is secretly glad Marnie won't be there. Livia has recently uncovered a secret about their daughter which, if revealed, will shake the foundation of their family to its core. She needs to tell Adam, but she's waiting until the party is over so they can have this last happy time together. Adam, meanwhile, has his own surprise for Livia: he's arranged for Marnie to secretly fly back for the party. But before Marnie arrives, Adam hears some terrible news. Now he too is faced with a dilemma: Does he share what he's learned with his wife? Is hiding the truth the same as telling a lie? And how far are Adam and Livia willing to go to protect the ones they love—and give each other a last few hours of happiness?
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They say every house has its secrets, and the house that Maggie and Nina have shared for so long is no different. Except that these secrets are not buried in the past. Every other night, Maggie and Nina have dinner together. When they are finished, Nina helps Maggie back to her room in the attic, and into the heavy chain that keeps her there. Because Maggie has done things to Nina that can't ever be forgiven, and now she is paying the price. But there are many things about the past that Nina doesn't know, and Maggie is going to keep it that way—even if it kills her. Because in this house, the truth is more dangerous than lies.
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On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather for a remote wedding to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It's a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed in this gripping whodunit. But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride's oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast.
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I step forward, breathing fast. Movement. I force myself to take another step. I think about all of it, all of the deaths and all of the accidents and all of the pain. And I know what I need to do. It's March 2018, and the country is covered in snow. Roads are impassable, shops are running out of food, and official advice is to stay indoors. Marianne lives on her own and works from home, so this isn't a problem. Until she wakes one morning in her house in the middle of nowhere and finds footprints trailing all across her garden. Half-asleep, she is at first curious. Then she realises the footprints stop at her bedroom window, and curiosity gives way to unease. Who was looking in at her, while she was asleep? As the big freeze worsens and the stalker begins to leave disturbing mementoes, Marianne's thoughts go back two decades to the schoolyard outburst that tore her childhood apart. Old feuds resurface, and the mystery of her mother's death is pulled back into focus. Marianne begins to see patterns – is there a link between her stalker and the true crime story she's been obsessively researching, or does the answer lie closer to home? In the end, 24 days is all it takes for everything to come crashing down.
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All Beth has to do is drive her son to his soccer game, watch him play, and then return home. Just because she knows her ex-best friend lives near the field, that doesn't mean she has to drive past her house and try to catch a glimpse of her. Why would Beth do that and risk dredging up painful memories? She hasn't seen Flora for twelve years. She doesn't want to see her today—or ever again. But she can't resist. She parks outside the open gates of Newnham House, watches from across the road as Flora arrives and calls to her children Thomas and Emily to get out of the car. Except . . . There's something terribly wrong. Flora looks the same, only older. Twelve years ago, Thomas and Emily were five and three years old. Today, they look precisely as they did then. They are Thomas and Emily without a doubt, but they haven't changed at all. They are no taller, no older. Why haven't they grown? How is it possible that they haven't grown up?
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Erika Cass has a perfect family and a perfect life. Until the evening when two detectives show up at her front door. A high school girl has vanished from Erika's quiet suburban neighborhood. The police suspect the worst--murder. And Erika's teenage son, Liam, was the last person to see the girl alive. Erika has always sensed something dark and disturbed in her seemingly perfect older child. She wants to believe he's innocent, but as the evidence mounts, she can't deny the truth--Liam may have done the unthinkable. Now she must ask herself: How far will she go to protect her son?
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Kate Bennett vanished from a parking lot eleven years ago, leaving behind her husband and young daughter. When she shows up at a Montana gas station, clutching an infant and screaming for help, investigators believe she may have been abducted by a cult. Kate's return flips her family's world upside down—her husband is remarried, and her daughter barely remembers her. Kate herself doesn't look or act like she did before. While the family tries to help Kate reintegrate into society, they discover truths they've been hiding from each other about their own relationships. But they aren't the only ones with secrets. As the family unravels what happened to Kate, a series of shocking revelations shows that Kate's return is more sinister than any of them could have imagined.
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#1 in The Family Upstairs Series
Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she's been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am. She soon learns not only the identity of her birth parents, but also that she is the sole inheritor of their abandoned mansion on the banks of the Thames in London's fashionable Chelsea neighborhood, worth millions. Everything in Libby's life is about to change. But what she can't possibly know is that others have been waiting for this day as well—and she is on a collision course to meet them. Twenty-five years ago, police were called to 16 Cheyne Walk with reports of a baby crying. When they arrived, they found a healthy ten-month-old happily cooing in her crib in the bedroom. Downstairs in the kitchen lay three dead bodies, all dressed in black, next to a hastily scrawled note. And the four other children reported to live at Cheyne Walk were gone.
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"This is a very difficult letter to write. I hope you will not hate us too much. . . My son broke into your home recently while you were out." In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses--and into the owners' computers as well--learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too. Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets? In this neighborhood, it's not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide . . .
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On a summer's night in 1994, sixteen-year-old Flora Powell vanished from her sleepy seaside town without a trace. Their hearts shattered, Flora's mother, her sister Heather, and Heather's best friend Jess had to somehow carry on not knowing what happened. Twenty-five years later, tragedy strikes again when Heather walks into a stranger's house and allegedly kills two people in cold blood. Why would this loving wife and doting new mother commit such a heinous crime? Jess, now a reporter, returns to the hometown she left behind to cover the case and dig for answers. But this isn't like any other story. Jess was like a sister to the Powell girls, until the summer that tore them all apart. What happened to the girl she used to know? The question haunts Jess and propels her to find the key that may unlock the mysteries involving both sisters. But the search may reveal more . . . a darker side to this idyllic place she thought she knew.
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Meet Aimee Sinclair: the actress everyone thinks they know but can't remember where from. Except one person. Someone knows Aimee very well. They know who she is and they know what she did. When Aimee comes home and discovers her husband is missing, she doesn't seem to know what to do or how to act. The police think she's hiding something and they're right, she is—but perhaps not what they thought. Aimee has a secret she's never shared, and yet, she suspects that someone knows. As she struggles to keep her career and sanity intact, her past comes back to haunt her in ways more dangerous than she could have ever imagined.
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It's the day Izzy's father will be released from jail. She has every reason to feel conflicted - he's the man who gave her a childhood filled with happy memories. But he has also just served seventeen years for the murder of her mother. Now, Izzy's father sends her a letter. He wants to talk, to defend himself against each piece of evidence from his trial. But should she give him the benefit of the doubt? Or is her father guilty as charged, and luring her into a trap?
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#1 in the Hannah Bauer Series
Christopher and Hannah are a happily married surgeon and nurse with picture-perfect lives. All that's missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own. But Janie is no ordinary child, and her damaged psyche proves to be more than her new parents were expecting. Janie is fiercely devoted to Christopher, but she acts out in increasingly disturbing ways, directing all her rage at Hannah. Unable to bond with Janie, Hannah is drowning under the pressure, and Christopher refuses to see Janie's true nature. Hannah knows that Janie is manipulating Christopher and isolating him from her, despite Hannah's attempts to bring them all together. But as Janie's behavior threatens to tear Christopher and Hannah apart, the truth behind Janie's past may be enough to push them all over the edge.
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After surviving an infamous family tragedy, sixteen-year-old Kennedy Jones has made it her mission to keep her brother's search through the cosmos alive. But then something disturbs the frequency on his radio telescope--a pattern registering where no signal should transmit. In a neighboring county, seventeen-year-old Nolan Chandler is determined to find out what really happened to his brother, who disappeared the day after Nolan had an eerie premonition. There hasn't been a single lead for two years, until Nolan picks up an odd signal--a pattern coming from his brother's bedroom. Drawn together by these strange signals--and their family tragedies--Kennedy and Nolan search for the origin of the mysterious frequency. But the more they uncover, the more they believe that everything's connected--even their pasts--as it appears the signal is meant for them alone, sharing a message that only they can understand. Is something coming for them? Or is the frequency warning them about something that's already here?
