A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged. Left behind is a lonely fifteen-year-old girl. Parentless and friendless, she now finds herself in the care of her mother's sister, a fearful stranger who has...

When Kurt Wallander is called into the case of the disappearance of a retired naval officer, coincidentally his daughter's future father-in-law, he becomes embroiled in a story of Cold War espionage.

Four-year-old Marissa Fordham, brutally slashed and mutilated, witnessed the murder of her mother. To protect their fragile witness, the police call in Anne Leone, child advocate. But when one loose thread begins to unravel the shroud of lies behind the case, a truth more terrible than anyone could have imagined is revealed--a truth that will put Anne and Haley directly in the sights of a killer.

"On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist...

While on vacation, Warden Investigator Mike Bowditch receives a strange summons from Billy Cronk, one of his oldest friends and a man he had to reluctantly put behind bars for murder. Billy wants him to investigate a new female prison guard with a mysterious past, and Mike feels honor-bound to help his friend. But when the guard becomes the victim in a brutal attack at the prison, he realizes there may be a darker cover-up at play--and that Billy...

The two Minnesota towns couldn't be more different: in affluent Barron, a powerful and secretive scientific research corporation enriches its residents, while downriver in blue-collar St. Croix, victims of that company's carcinogenic waste struggle to survive. The bad blood between the communities escalates into open warfare when the beautiful Ashlynn, daughter of the corporation's president, is found shot dead--and a St. Croix girl, Olivia Hawk,...

"In the small, affluent town of Fairview, Connecticut, everything seems picture perfect. Until one night when young Jenny Kramer is attacked at a local party. In the hours immediately after, she is given a controversial drug to medically erase her memory of the violent assault. But, in the weeks and months that follow, as she heals from her physical wounds, and with no factual recall of the attack, Jenny struggles with her raging emotional memory....

For a price Libby Day will reconnect with the players that murdered her mother and two sisters in "The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas." Having testified that her brother Ben was the murderer on that fateful night twenty-five years ago, now she is not so sure as, piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started--on the run from a killer.

New York attorney Trevor Mann's world shatters when he receives a phone call telling him his girlfriend has been shot dead in a mugging. But the circumstances point to something more calculated than a random attack. Claire was a New York Times journalist and Trevor is convinced she had unearthed a secret so shocking that she was murdered to keep it from coming to light. Chasing Claire's leads, Trevor will risk everything to discover what exactly she...

In We'll Always Have Parrots, Meg Langslow travels with her fiance Michael to a fan convention for Porfiria, Queen of the Jungle—a cheesy cult TV show on which Michael has a minor role. Michael hopes the weekend will give him a chance to talk Miss Wynncliffe-Jones, the show's temperamental leading lady and executive producer out of enforcing a certain provision in Michael's contract.
Of course, Michael's not the only person whose

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