Female Lead

Showing 551–575 of 681
  1. Cold Grave

    3.83

    #6 in the Dr. Anya Crichton Series

    It feels like the safest place on earth, a family-friendly, floating palace. But, as Anya Crichton soon discovers, cruise ships aren't all that they seem. Statistics tell us that a woman is twice as likely to be sexually assaulted on a cruise ship than on dry land. Customers aren't screened, so the ships are a haven for sex offenders and paedophiles. With no policing, and floating in international waters, sexual assaults and passenger "disappearances" are uncommonly frequent. So when a teenage girl is discovered, dead on the deck of the ship that she is on, Anya feels compelled to get involved. There's no apparent cause of death, but Anya's forensics expertise uncovers more than the ship's doctors can—or want to. With the killer still on board, and subsequently a crew-member found shot, it becomes clear that the safe haven of the cruise-ship is actually anything but. And, as Anya comes under increasing pressure to abandon her investigations, will she continue? Or do whatever it takes to keep her own family safe?

  2. Heartbroken

    3.92

    Long after anyone expected Kate to do anything with her life, she did. Using the journals left behind by her aunt and grandmother, she wrote a novel based on a very real generation-old love story that ended in tragedy. On the other side of town, Emily is about to set fire to her life. She's in a dead-end job and is involved with the wrong man; she can feel herself being drawn into darkness, with horrific consequences. With nowhere to go, she finds herself on the run. Without knowing each other, and with lives that couldn't be more different, Kate and Emily head to the same point on the map: Heart Island, an idyllic place in the middle of a lake in the Adirondacks, owned for generations by Birdie Burke's family. The harsh and unyielding Birdie is at one with this island, which has a terrifying history all its own. She, too, has consequences to face.

  3. #6 in the Zailer & Waterhouse Mysteries Series

    It's past midnight, but Connie Bowskill can't sleep. To pass the time, she logs on to a real estate website in search of a particular house, one she is obsessed with for reasons she's too scared to even admit to herself. As she clicks through the virtual tour, she comes across a scene from a nightmare: a woman lying facedown on the living room floor in a pool of blood. But when she returns to show her husband, there is no body, no blood—just a perfectly ordinary room, with a perfectly clean beige carpet.

  4. One Breath Away

    4.14

    In the midst of a sudden spring snowstorm, a man armed with a gun walks into a school. Officer Meg Barrett holds the responsibility of the children of Broken Branch in her hands. Will Thwaite stands by helplessly and wonders if he has failed his child again. Trapped in her classroom, Evelyn Oliver watches for an opportunity to rescue the children in her care. And thirteen-year-old Augie Baker will risk her own safety to protect her little brother. As tension mounts with each passing minute, and as the people of Broken Branch race to uncover the identity of the stranger, small acts of fear and courage reveal hidden truths that will alter the town forever.

  5. 11th Hour

    4.30

    #11 in the Women's Murder Club Series

    Lindsay Boxer is pregnant at last! But her work doesn't slow for a second. When millionaire Chaz Smith is mercilessly gunned down, she discovers that the murder weapon is linked to the deaths of four of San Francisco's most untouchable criminals. And it was taken from her own department's evidence locker. Anyone could be the killer—even her closest friends. Facing a series of vicious articles about her personal life and a brutal crime scene in a famous actor's garden, Lindsay realizes that the ground beneath her feet holds hundreds of secrets. But this time she has no one to turn to—especially not her husband Joe.

  6. #1 in the Dr. Samantha Owens Series

    As a medical examiner, Samantha Owens knows her job is to make sense of death. But since the day the Tennessee floods took her husband and children, she has been pulled into a suffocating grief no amount of workaholic ardor can penetrate—until she receives a peculiar call from Washington, D.C. On the other end of the line is an old boyfriend's mother, asking Sam to do a second autopsy on her son. Eddie Donovan is officially the victim of a vicious carjacking, but under Sam's sharp eye the forensics tell a darker story. The ex-Ranger was murdered, though not for his car. Forced to confront the burning memories and feelings about yet another loved one killed brutally, Sam loses herself in the mystery contained within Donovan's old notes. The tale told between the lines makes it clear that nobody's hands are clean, and that making sense of murder sometimes means putting yourself in the crosshairs of death.

  7. Come Home

    3.85

    Jill Farrow is a typical suburban mom who has finally gotten her and her daughter's lives back on track after a divorce. She is about to remarry, her job as a pediatrician fulfills her---though it is stressful---and her daughter, Megan, is a happily over-scheduled thirteen-year-old juggling homework and the swim team. But Jill's life is turned upside down when her ex-stepdaughter, Abby, shows up on her doorstep late one night and delivers shocking news: Jill's ex-husband is dead. Abby insists that he was murdered and pleads with Jill to help find his killer. Jill reluctantly agrees to make a few inquiries and discovers that things don't add up. As she digs deeper, her actions threaten to rip apart her new family, destroy their hard-earned happiness, and even endanger her own life. Yet Jill can't turn her back on a child she loves and once called her own.

  8. Capitol Murder

    4.05

    #3 in the Dana Cutler Series

    Readers were first introduced to Brad and Dana in Executive Privilege, where they unmasked the President's involvement in serial murders. In Supreme Justice, Brad and Dana were able to save the life of a Supreme Court Justice while foiling a plot by rogue members of the CIA to fix a case headed for the Court. Now, in CAPITOL MURDER, Brad and Dana are reunited by wicked threats old and new. Convicted serial killer Clarence Little has escaped from death row in Oregon, and Brad receives threatening messages in DC, where he is working for Senator Jack Carson, a high-ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. A dead body, murdered according to Littl'es MO, is found in the senator's Georgetown home, and Carson has disappeared. While Dana is in Oregon digging into Carson's shady background, a terrorist cell is poised to destory a packed professional football stadium in one of the biggest attacks on American soil. As the senator's personal life begins to dovetail with the cell's eviil plan, Brad and Dana will risk it all again to uncover the truth and save their country.

  9. Guilty Wives

    4.10

    Only minutes after Abbie Elliot and her three best friends step off of a private helicopter, they enter the most luxurious, sumptuous, sensually pampering hotel they have ever been to. Their presidential suite overlooks Monte Carlo, and they surrender: to the sun and pool, to the sashimi and sake, to the Bruno Paillard champagne. As the weekend moves into pulsating discos, high-stakes casinos, and beyond, Abbie is transported to the greatest pleasure and release she has ever known. In the morning's harsh light, Abbie awakens on a yacht, surrounded by police. Something awful has happened: something impossible, unthinkable. Abbie, Winnie, Serena, and Bryah are arrested and accused of the foulest crime imaginable. And now the vacation of a lifetime becomes the fight of a lifetime—a fight for survival.

  10. #2 in the Pike Logan Series

    A shadowy trail leads the Taskforce to Egypt—where an attack leaves one member dead and another barely alive. Veteran warrior Pike Logan and his young partner, Jennifer Cahill, are forced to helm the increasingly convoluted and dangerous mission: a mission that tests both Jennifer's ability to justify her actions, and Pike's tenuous ability to stay in control. Sifting their way through the opposing plots of two terrorist organizations will turn out to be the least of their problems when a weapon of unthinkable power touches American soil—the only country in which Taskforce members are forbidden to operate, and the only country that Pike Logan may be unable to save....

  11. Red Mist

    4.07

    #19 in the Kay Scarpetta Series

    On her quest to find out exactly what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months before, Dr. Kay Scarpetta drives to the Georgia Prison for Women to meet a convicted sex offender and the mother of a vicious and diabolically brilliant killer. Against the advice of her FBI criminal agent husband, Benton Wesley, Scarpetta is determined to hear this woman out. The quest is personal, but also professional. As the director of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and with her connection to the Department of Defense, Scarpetta has urgent reasons to learn more about a string of grisly killings that she feels are somehow linked to Fielding's death. The murder of a Savannah family years earlier, a young woman on death row, and then other explicable deaths that begin to occur at a breathtaking pace—all of these are related, but who is behind them, and why? Driven by inner forces, Scarpetta discovers connections that compel her to conclude that what she thought ended with Fielding's death and an attempt on her own life is only the beginning of something far more destructive. . . . And she's the only one who can stop it.

  12. 10th Anniversary

    4.32

    #10 in the Women's Murder Club Series

    Detective Lindsay Boxer's long-awaited wedding celebration becomes a distant memory when she is called to investigate a horrendous crime: a badly injured teenage girl is left for dead, and her newborn baby has been kidnapped. As her marriage begins to suffer from the pressures of work and her new boss watches her every move, Lindsay discovers that the victim may be keeping secrets as well. At the same time, Assistant District Attorney Yuki Castellano is prosecuting the biggest case of her life—a woman who has been accused of murdering her husband in front of her children. Yuki's career rests on a guilty verdict, so when Lindsay finds evidence that could save the defendant, she is forced to choose. Should she trust her best friend or follow her instinct?

  13. #5 in the Zailer & Waterhouse Mysteries Series

    Television producer Fliss Benson is surprised to discover that her superstar boss, Laurie Nattrass, is stepping down from his post. She's even more surprised that he asks her to take over his documentary about crib-death mothers wrongly accused of murder. Thanks to Laurie's advocacy, three women are now free, while the doctor who testified against them is under investigation for misconduct. Then one of the mothers is found dead. In her pocket is a card with sixteen numbers on it, arranged in four rows of four- exactly like the anonymous card Fliss has just received in the mail.

  14. Creep

    4.07

    #1 in the Creep Series

    A popular psychology professor in Seattle, Sheila works hard to keep her secrets hidden. On the surface, she's an expert in human behavior and a well-liked educator, but nobody knows she's a recovering sex addict in therapy—and she needs it to stay that way, or she could lose everything. But Ethan Wolfe is impossible to resist. The graduate student is brilliant, charming, and seductive as hell. He's also Sheila's teaching assistant, and thirteen years her junior. Ignoring the risks, they begin an illicit affair that lasts three months until Sheila finally puts a stop to it. But Ethan can't move on so easily—after all, he didn't pursue his professor for as long as he did without plans of his own. When the body of one of Sheila's students is discovered floating in Puget Sound—a young woman Ethan was rumored to have dated—it's clear that the graduate student has secrets of his own. And he's not about to let Sheila get away.

  15. Now You See Her

    4.22

    A successful lawyer and loving mother, Nina Bloom would do anything to protect the life she's built in New York—including lying to everyone, even her daughter, about her past. But when an innocent man is framed for murder, she knows that she can't let him pay for the real killer's crimes. Nina's secret life began 18 years ago. She had looks to die for, a handsome police officer husband, and a carefree life in Key West. When she learned she was pregnant with their first child, her happiness was almost overwhelming. But Nina's world is shattered when she unearths a terrible secret that causes her to run for her life and change her identity. Now, years later, Nina risks everything she's earned to return to Florida and confront the murderous evil she fled.

  16. Fallen

    4.41

    #5 in the Will Trent Series

    There's no police training stronger than a cop's instinct. Faith Mitchell's mother isn't answering her phone. Her front door is open. There's a bloodstain above the knob. Her infant daughter is hidden in a shed behind the house. All that the Georgia Bureau of Investigations taught Faith Mitchell goes out the window when she charges into her mother's house, gun drawn. She sees a man dead in the laundry room. She sees a hostage situation in the bedroom. What she doesn't see is her mother. . . . Faith is left with too many questions and not enough answers. To find her mother, she'll need the help of her partner, Will Trent, and they'll both need the help of trauma doctor Sara Linton. But Faith isn't just a cop anymore—she's a witness. She's also a suspect. The thin blue line hides police corruption, bribery, even murder. Faith will have to go up against the people she respects the most in order to find her mother and bring the truth to light—or bury it forever.

  17. Private London

    4.02

    #2 in the Private Series

    Exclusive detective agency Private is on the hunt for London's most feared killer since Jack the Ripper. For Hannah Shapiro, a young American student, the nightmare began eight years ago in Los Angeles, when the owner of Private-the world's most exclusive detective agency-saved her from a horrific death. Now, after eight years, the terror follows her to London. The only man who can help is former Royal Military Police Sergeant Dan Carter, head of Private London. In London, young women are being abducted and their bodies found mutilated in a grotesque, mysterious way. Carter's ex-wife, DI Kirsty Webb, leads the investigation into these brutal murders, which may somehow be linked to Hannah Shapiro. Working together, the two investigators are caught in a desperate race against the odds. Private may be the most advanced detection agency in the world ... but can they catch a predator who rivals London's most elusive killer ever?

  18. The Ridge

    4.02

    In an isolated stretch of eastern Kentucky, on a hilltop known as Blade Ridge, stands a lighthouse that illuminates nothing but the surrounding woods. For years the lighthouse has been considered no more than an eccentric local landmark -- until its builder is found dead at the top of the light, and his belongings reveal a troubling local history. For deputy sheriff Kevin Kimble, the lighthouse-keeper's death is disturbing and personal. Years ago, Kimble was shot while on duty. Somehow the death suggests a connection between the lighthouse and the most terrifying moment of his life. Audrey Clark is in the midst of moving her large-cat sanctuary onto land adjacent to the lighthouse. Sixty-seven tigers, lions, leopards, and one legendary black panther are about to have a new home there. Her husband, the sanctuary's founder, died scouting the new property, and Audrey is determined to see his vision through. As strange occurrences multiply at the Ridge, the animals grow ever more restless, and Kimble and Audrey try to understand what evil forces are moving through this ancient landscape, just past the divide between dark and light.

  19. Save Me

    3.94

    Nobody could have foreseen what would happen the day that Rose McKenna volunteers as a lunch mom in the cafeteria of her daughter's elementary school. Rose does it to keep a discreet eye on her third-grader, Melly, a sweet, if shy, child who was born with a facial birthmark that has become her own personal bull's-eye. Melly has been targeted by the mean girl at their new school and gets bullied every day, placing Rose in a no-win position familiar to parents everywhere. Do we step in to protect our children when they need us, or does that make things worse? When the bully starts to tease Melly yet again. Rose is about to leap into action―but right then, the unthinkable happens. Rose finds herself in a nightmare, faced with an emergency decision that no mother should ever have to make. What she decides in that split second derails Rose's life and jeopardizes everyone she holds dear, until she takes matters into her own hands and lays her life on the line to save her child, her family, her marriage―and herself.

  20. Death Mask

    4.00

    #5 in the Dr. Anya Crichton Series

    When the victim of a violent gang rape accuses five premier sportsmen of the attack, she has no idea that her suffering has only just begun . . . It's a scandal that rocks a nation of sports fans. But, in spite of a huge amount of evidence, no one seems to believe her. So when Dr Anya Crichton, a forensic expert in sexual assault, is asked to become involved by the team managers, she simply can't say no. But as she investigates further, Anya realises that the scandals, violence and abuses run much deeper, and much further into the past than she could ever have imagined. And it's down to her to find out exactly who's responsible. Before it happens again.

  21. One Rough Man

    4.20

    #1 in the Pike Logan Series

    They call it the Taskforce. Commissioned at the highest level of the U.S. government. Protected from the prying eyes of Congress and the media. Designed to operate outside the bounds of U.S. law. Trained to exist on the ragged edge of human capability. Pike Logan was the most successful operator on the Taskforce, his instincts and talents unrivaled—until personal tragedy permanently altered his outlook on the world. Pike knows what the rest of the country might not want to admit: The real threat isn't from any nation, any government, any terrorist group. The real threat is one or two men, controlled by ideology, operating independently, in possession of a powerful weapon. Buried in a stack of intercepted chatter is evidence of two such men. The transcripts are scheduled for analysis in three months. The attack is mere days away. It is their bad luck that they're about to cross paths with Pike Logan. Because Pike Logan has nothing left to lose.

  22. #6 in the Taylor Jackson Series

    Across America, the country's most infamous murderers are killing again. The Boston Strangler has his hands on new victims. The Son of Sam's reign of terror seizes New York. The Zodiac's dreaded signature slashes across San Francisco. The crimes seem unrelated, until Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson realizes the chilling truth. Every killer is following the orders of a single mastermind. And Taylor knows him well. For years, the elusive murderer known as the Pretender has stalked her from the shadows. Now he's stepped into the light, unleashing an army of copycats while targeting the people she loves. As the investigation unfolds, Taylor discovers the killer has been hiding closer than she imagined. And her fiancé, FBI profiler John Baldwin, has been keeping secrets that threaten the trust they've always relied on. With time running out, Taylor must stop the Pretender for good—before his gruesome coup de grâce forces her to choose between justice and revenge.

  23. When teenager Allison Glenn is sent to prison for a heinous crime, she leaves behind her reputation as the town's golden girl forever. Her friends turn on her. Even her own parents have denied her existence. It's her sister, Brynn—shy, quiet Brynn—who carries the burden of what really happened that night. All she wants is to forget Allison and the past that haunts her. But then Allison is released to a halfway house and is more determined than ever to speak with her estranged sister. Now their silence is focused on one little boy. And if the truth is revealed, the consequences will be unimaginable for the adoptive mother who loves him, the girl who tried to protect him and the two sisters who hold the key to all that is hidden.

  24. #7 in the Taylor Jackson Series

    In her showdown with the murderous Pretender, a bullet taken at close range severed the connection between Taylor Jackson's thoughts and speech. Effectively mute, there's no telling if her voice will ever come back. Trapped in silence, she is surrounded by ghosts-of the past, of friendships and trusts lost...of a lost faith in herself and her motives that night. When Memphis Highsmythe offers Taylor his home in the Scottish Highlands to recuperate, her fiancé can't refuse her excitement, no matter his distrust of the man. At first, the drafty and singularly romantic castle seems the perfect place for healing. But shortly the house itself surrounds her like a menacing presence. As Taylor's sense of isolation and vulnerability grows, so, too, does her grip on reality. PTSD. Pills. Ghosts. Grudges.

  25. Keisha Ceylon is a psychic. At least, that's what she tells people. She watches the news for stories of missing people, then waits a few days and goes to see the family. She tells them she's had a vision and that she may know where their missing loved one is—for a price, of course. Keisha's latest mark is Wendell Garfield, whose wife disappeared a week ago. She's seen him on TV, pleading for his wife to come home, or for whoever took her to let her go. Keisha tells Wendell her vision of what might have happened. Unluckily for Keisha, her vision turns out to be alarmingly close to the truth. As she wades deeper into the mystery, Keisha inadvertently finds herself caught in a web of suspicion and violence that's much more complicated than she first thought—and which may end up with her own disappearance...