Showing results by narrator "Emily Sutton-Smith" in All Categories

Gina Royal is the definition of average—a shy Midwestern housewife with a happy marriage and two adorable children. But when a car accident reveals her husband’s secret life as a serial killer, she must remake herself as Gwen Proctor—the ultimate warrior mom. With her ex now in prison, Gwen has finally found refuge in a new home on remote Stillhouse Lake.

Gwen Proctor won the battle to save her kids from her ex-husband, serial killer Melvin Royal, and his league of psychotic accomplices. But the war isn’t over. Not since Melvin broke out of prison. Not since she received a chilling text... You’re not safe anywhere now. Her refuge at Stillhouse Lake has become a trap. Gwen leaves her children in the protective custody of a fortified, well-armed neighbor.

Filled with the power of love and the beauty of nature, Heidi is a lyrical tale about a little girl sent to live in the mountains of the Swiss Alps with her grandfather. A grumpy recluse, her grandfather has isolated himself from his fellow townspeople and his church. In very little time, Heidi warms his heart; and she quickly charms the whole town and makes new friends, including young Peter, the goatherd. But when Heidi is sent away again to care for a young girl her own age, she must grow wise beyond her years.

Tracy Crosswhite has spent 20 years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe that Edmund House - a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder - is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers.

Twelve years ago, Sarah Baker was abducted by the Watt Lake Killer and sexually assaulted for months before managing to escape. The killer was caught, but Sarah lost everything: her marriage, her child, and the life she loved.

Struggling with PTSD, Sarah changes her name to Olivia West and finds sanctuary working on Broken Bar Ranch. But as her scars finally begin to heal, a cop involved with her horrific case remains convinced the Watt Lake Killer is still out there.

When Garnet McGee returns to her small Vermont hometown for the holidays, she vows to solve the mystery of the murder which shattered her life 10 years ago. But then the unexpected happens - she dies in an accident and gets brought back to life by paramedics. Now she's hearing words, seeing visions, and experiencing strange sensations. Are these merely symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and an overactive imagination, or is she getting messages from a paranormal presence?

Lauren Riley is an accomplished detective who has always been on the opposite side of the courtroom from slick defense attorney Frank Violanti. But now he’s begging to hire her as a private investigator to help clear his client of murder. At first Lauren refuses, wanting nothing to do with the media circus surrounding the case - until she meets the 18-year-old suspect. To keep an innocent teen from life in prison, Lauren must unravel the conflicting evidence and changing stories to get at the buried facts. 

A man is savagely murdered outside Portland, and Detective Mason Callahan finds blood-spatter evidence that tells a troubling story. Files reveal the murder victim, Reuben Braswell, was a radical conspiracist. In his home, investigators find pages of diatribes against law enforcement as well as ties to Mason’s fiancée, FBI special agent Ava McLane. The victim was her informant - and had strong reasons to be paranoid.

In 1978, Laurie Strode survived an encounter with Michael Myers, a masked figure who killed her friends and terrorized the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night. Myers was later gunned down, apprehended, and committed to Smith's Grove State Hospital. For forty years, memories of that nightmarish ordeal have haunted Laurie and now Myers is back once again on Halloween, having escaped a routine transfer, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake.

Tekla, son of an ancient shaman, loses Ka Li when she is torn from his life by a brutal tribe of Denisovans in a Late Pleistocene kidnapping. Ka Li escapes but is unarmed and forced to flee across the Bering land bridge where she becomes hopelessly lost in the endless tracts of North America. Only Tekla cares enough to search for her over the years. As Ka Li survives fierce predators and scarce resources, she leaves behind a series of signal cairns to help Tekla find her.

The case is that of a missing girl, last seen getting into a truck with a stranger before disappearing. Gwen has a reputation for finding those who are lost, but this time something is wrong. Her instincts are off, and every clue she uncovers only raises more doubts, not just about the missing girl and the circumstances of her disappearance, but also about the fragile safety Gwen’s created for her family.

Lee Child selects the 20 best mystery short stories of the year, including tales by Stephen King, Sara Paretsky, and many more. Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international best seller Lee Child has selected the 20 most suspenseful, most confounding, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

A car submerged in a remote pond. The bodies of two girls strapped into their seats. The mystery of their mother, vanished without a trace, leads Gwen Proctor and Kezia Claremont into dangerous territory. On the surface, Gwen’s life is good - two children approaching adulthood, a committed partner, and a harrowing past dead and gone. That past is attracting the attention of someone invisible and unstoppable. Trouble’s just beginning. So is the body count in this backwoods Tennessee town. As threats mount and Gwen’s hunted by an enemy who pulls all the strings, Kezia has her back.

On a summer night in 1891, a Dutch widow left her home and went for a walk. It was the anniversary of the death of her brother-in-law, Vincent van Gogh, and she was at the beginning of an improbable decades-long journey that would transform the painter into one of the most beloved artists of all...

Josephine began to suspect something was wrong with the crumbling gothic monstrosity next door when its family fled in the middle of the night, the children screaming, the mother crying. They never came back. No family stays at Marwick House for long. No life lingers beyond its blackened windows. No voices drift from its ancient halls. Once, Josephine swore she saw a woman's silhouette pacing through the upstairs room… but that's impossible. No one had been there in a long, long time.

Months after discovering the mastermind behind her own kidnapping, Detective Jude Fontaine is dealing with the past the only way she knows how: by returning to every dark corner of it. But it’s a new, escalating series of mass slayings that has become her latest obsession at Homicide. At first, Jude and her partner, Detective Uriah Ashby, can see no pattern to the seemingly random methods, the crime scenes, or the victims - until they’re approached by a brilliantly compulsive math professor.

In spite of a harrowing past still haunting her, Gwen Proctor is trying to move forward. Until a new assignment gives her purpose: the cold-case disappearance of a young man in Tennessee. Three years missing, no clues. Just Ruth Landry, a tortured mother in limbo. Gwen understands what it’s like to worry about your children. Gwen’s investigation unearths new suspects…and victims. As she follows each sinister lead, the implications of the mystery grow more disturbing. Because the closer Gwen gets, the closer she is to a threat that looms back home.

While investigating the hit-and-run death of a young boy, Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite makes a startling discovery: the suspect is an active-duty serviceman at a local naval base. After a key piece of case evidence goes missing, he is cleared of charges in a military court. But Tracy knows she can't turn her back on this kind of injustice.

As a forensic nurse on a search and rescue team, Brynn Nealey braves a dangerous blizzard to find the survivors of a plane crash in the Cascade Mountains. Joining her is Alex Kinton, a former US Marshal with self-destructive tendencies. Alex lies his way onto Brynn’s team to find the man who killed his brother - and then return the favor. But once the team members reach the plane’s wreckage, they discover everyone aboard has perished...except for the man Alex is hunting.

Called in to consult after a young woman disappears, Tracy Crosswhite has the uneasy feeling that this is no ordinary missing-persons case. When the body turns up in an abandoned well, Tracy’s suspicions are confirmed. Estranged from her family, the victim had balked at an arranged marriage and had planned to attend graduate school. But someone cut her dreams short. Solving the mystery behind the murder isn’t Tracy’s only challenge. The detective is keeping a secret of her own: she’s pregnant.