The Wrong Choices

      Jonathan Austen
     The Wrong Choices

Would you kill an innocent person if it meant saving your life? Find out what Jackson does in this short story inspired by actual events.Jackson has made a series of wrong choices throughout his life, leading him to a back alley in a Boston neighborhood where nobody cares if a kid is murdered. Now, with no one to turn to for help and the life of a stranger in his hands, he must make one more choice. Will Jackson do the right thing for once?A short story inspired by actual events.

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    Bloodstream

      Tess Gerritsen
     Bloodstream

With her acclaimed novels Harvest and Life Support, Tess Gerritsen has injected a powerful dose of adrenaline into the medical thriller. Now, in a new blockbuster, Gerritsen melds page-turning suspense with chilling realism as a small-town doctor races to unravel the roots of a violent outbreak -- before it destroys everything she loves. Lapped by he gentle waters of Locust Lake, the small resort town of Tranquility, Maine, seems like the perfect spot for Dr. Claire Elliot to shelter her adolescent son, Noah, from the distractions of the big city and the lingering memory of his father's death. But with the first snap of winter comes shocking news that puts her practise on the line: a teenage boy under her care has committed an appalling act of violence. And as Claire and all of Tranquility soon discover, it is just the start of a chain of lethal outbursts among the town's teenagers. As the rash of disturbing behavior grows, Claire uncovers a horrifying secret: this is not the first time it has happened. Twice a century,the children of Tranquility lash out with deadly violence. Claire suspects that there is a biological cause for the epidemic, and she fears that the placid Locust Lake may conceal an insidious danger. As she races to save Tranquility -- and her son -- from harm, Claire discovers an even greater threat: a shocking conspiracy to manipulate nature, and turn innocents to slaughter.

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    Blackwater

      Conn Iggulden
     Blackwater

A dark, chilling psychological thriller from the number one bestselling author of the Emperor series. Blackwater was published as part of the Quick Reads initiative on World Book Day 2006. How do you know when you're in too deep?Davey has always lived in the shadow of his older brother, a smiling sociopath who will stop at nothing to protect himself and his family. But when the shadowy figure of Denis Tanter comes into Davey's life, how far will the bond of brotherhood reach?

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    Salvation of a Saint

      Keigo Higashino
     Salvation of a Saint

When a man is discovered dead by poisoning in his empty home his beautiful wife, Ayane, immediately falls under suspicion. All clues point to Ayane being the logical suspect, but how could she have committed the crime when she was hundreds of miles away? While Tokyo police detective Kusanagi tries to unpick a seemingly unrelated sequence of events he finds himself falling for Ayane. As his judgement becomes dangerously clouded his assistant must call on an old friend for help; it will take a genius to unravel the most spectacular web of deceit they have ever faced...

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    The Waking Dark

      Robin Wasserman
     The Waking Dark

THEY CALLED IT THE KILLING DAY. Twelve people dead, in the space of a few hours. Five murderers: neighbors, relatives, friends. All of them so normal. All of them seemingly harmless. All of them now dead by their own hand . . . except one. And that one has no answers to offer the shattered town. She doesn't even know why she killed—or whether she'll do it again. Something is waking in the sleepy town of Oleander, Kansas—something dark and hungry that lives in the flat earth and the open sky, in the vengeful hearts of upstanding citizens. As the town begins its descent into blood and madness, five survivors of the killing day are the only ones who can stop Oleander from destroying itself. Jule, the outsider at war with the world. West, the golden boy at war with himself. Daniel, desperate for a different life. Cass, who's not sure she deserves a life at all. Ellie, who believes in sacrifice, who believes in fate, who believes in evil. Ellie, who always goes too far. They have nothing in common. They have nothing left to lose. And they have no way out. Which means that they have no choice but to stand and fight, to face the darkness in their town—and in themselves. 

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    Toys In The Attic

      S.A. Meyer
     Toys In The Attic

Everyone has secrets. Even the kind old man down the street. Especially the kind old man down the street.The cool sand in the Dunes is comforting to a young girl as she seeks to find her goddess and finds a Sun God instead. A walk barefoot reveals cool secrets and a lakeshore ramble results in a myriad of butterflies. Inspirational.

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    The Pistol Poets

      Victor Gischler
     The Pistol Poets

Mixing poetry with drugs, sex, and murder would not be the first thing to come to mind if you were thinking about writing crime fiction. And unless you're Victor Gischler, the results of such an abominable coupling would likely be a bad as it sounds. But if Gischler isn't the most talented new crime writer to hit the pages in the last few years, he is certainly the most bizarre. Of his three novels - five stars everyone - "The Pistol Poets" is the most blackly humorous - think a more evil Carl Hiaasen - certainly the most imaginative, and probably the best of the bunch. . .

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    American Dream - Book 1

      Z.M. Kage
     American Dream - Book 1

Part love story and part war story, American Dream (Book 1) follows Marine Sergeant Jon Cole from Michigan to Iraq and back again on an adventure that both breaks him and makes him whole… while showing just how far a son will go to make his father proud.Twenty-seven year old Marine Sergeant Jon Cole loves his job as an Infantry Squad Leader. His Marines respect him. And seven thousand miles away, his loving fiancé waits patiently for his safe return.Jon’s Combat Tour is a breeze... until a gut punch shows up in the mail and forces him into the heroic situation that will ultimately end his military career - and everything he lives for.Desperate and drowning in despair, Jon's inner voice drives him back to his dangerous drinking habits. But when a familiar stranger silences that voice, he just might put the bottle down - for good.Part love story and part war story, American Dream (Book 1) follows Jon Cole from Michigan to Iraq and back again on an adventure that both breaks him and makes him whole… while showing just how far a son will go to make his father proud.

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    Like a Charm

      Karin Slaughter
     Like a Charm

Desire leaves a man destroyed – a young girl's curiosity reveals secrets better left hidden – an accidental encounter on a train ends violently – ambition leads to a curious exchange – an uncanny likeness changes two lives forever. A novel in sixteen chilling parts, linked by a glittering charm bracelet which brings misfortune to everyone who handles it. In Like A Charm, the cream of British and American crime writers combine for a must-have collection. From nineteenth-century Georgia, where the bracelet is forged in fire, to wartime Leeds, a steam train across Europe, the violent backstreets of 1980s Scotland, present-day London, a Manhattan taxi, the Mojave desert and back to Georgia, each writer weaves a gripping story of murder, betrayal and intrigue.

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    The Blue Nowhere

      Jeffery Deaver
     The Blue Nowhere

His code name is Phate -- a sadistic computer hacker who infiltrates people's computers, invades their lives, and with chilling precision lures them to their deaths. To stop him, the authorities free imprisoned former hacker Wyatt Gillette to aid the investigation. Teamed with old-school homicide detective Frank Bishop, Gillette must combine their disparate talents to catch a brilliant and merciless killer.

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    Sanity's Only Skin Deep

      Adam Aust
     Sanity's Only Skin Deep

When a startling discovery reveals that Sarah's self-cutting problem is much worse than imagined, things unravel quickly in this chilling novelette.After years of therapy, promising New York City attorney Sarah Evans thought she had everything under control. But when a startling discovery reveals that her self-cutting problem is much worse than imagined, things unravel quickly as she struggles to reconcile her past with something even more fundamental—her grip on reality.

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    Dawn of Betrayal

      Max Grant
     Dawn of Betrayal

On an open-ended assignment for one of Hollywood’s mainline studios Raymond James, private investigator, and his partner Miss Suzuki develop an understanding of the communist conspiracy plaguing America. Her experiences lead Miss Suzuki to predict the future capture of our country through promotion of a cult-of-personality figurehead fronting for a shadowy cabal of entrenched domestic enemies.It’s 1947 in America. Enemies foreign and domestic working under explicit orders in service to the Soviet Union have infiltrated virtually every institution. In these times free Americans have not yet succumbed to the doctrines and deceits of political correctness. Engrained with common sense and rational thought, they could never foresee that so many would someday yield to such blatant manipulation after only a few decades of indoctrination and conditioning.Yet one among them does.Newly returned from the Pacific War and Japanese occupation, private detective Raymond James hangs out his shingle in Hollywood, hires on Miss Yuki Suzuki, ex-internee of Manzanar, and works his way onto the studio lots. Neither expects that an unusual assignment will plunge them deep into the heart of darkness of the American communist conspiracy. What starts as a simple case of mistaken identity grows into a cross-country odyssey of treason, murder, duty, honor, and courage before just one communist plot is discovered and run to ground.Join Ray as his adventures take him from the docks of Los Angeles Harbor through the studios of Hollywood and the defense industries of New Mexico to a nest of vipers hidden deep in the high society of Tampa-St. Petersburg. Obtain glimpses of the moral dangers inherent in an alien, inhuman system that brooks no dissent and relentlessly enforces its tenets by any means necessary. Share the vision of Ray’s partner Yuki who understands better than any what the future holds.

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    Jack of Spades

      Joyce Carol Oates
     Jack of Spades

From Joyce Carol Oates, an exquisite, psychologically complex thriller about opposing forces within the mind of one ambitious writer and the delicate line between genius and madness. Andrew J. Rush has achieved the kind of critical and commercial success most authors only dream about: He has a top agent and publisher in New York, and his twenty-eight mystery novels have sold millions of copies. Only Stephen King, one of the few mystery writers whose fame exceeds his own, is capable of inspiring a twinge of envy in Rush. But Rush is hiding a dark secret. Under the pseudonym "Jack of Spades," he pens another string of novels—noir thrillers that are violent, lurid, masochistic. These are novels that the upstanding Rush wouldn't be caught reading, let alone writing. When his daughter comes across a Jack of Spades novel he has carelessly left out, she picks it up and begins to ask questions. Meanwhile, Rush receives a court summons in the mail explaining that a local woman has accused him of plagiarizing her own self-published fiction. Before long, Rush's reputation, career, and family life all come under threat—and in his mind he begins to hear the taunting voice of the Jack of Spades.

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    Bad Girl: Prequel to Serial

      Blake Crouch
     Bad Girl: Prequel to Serial

Before the events of Blake Crouch’s horror novels DESERT PLACES and LOCKED DOORS... Before the events of Jack Kilborn's and Blake Crouch's #1 Amazon Kindle bestseller SERIAL... The year is 1995, and a young girl with psychopathic tendencies named Lucy (the sweetheart from SERIAL) has run away from home to a mystery convention to see her favorite author in the world: Andrew Z. Thomas. But Lucy has problems, and not just the psychopathic kind…to start with, the hotel won’t rent a room to a 15-year-old girl. So she does a bad, bad thing, which only gets worse when a couple of horrifying killers, Orson Thomas, and his protégé, Luther Kite, catch her trying to cover up a nasty mess. BAD GIRL is a thriller novella that brings all of Crouch’s most terrifying villains to the same hotel. A prequel to SERIAL, which has been downloaded more than 200,000 times, BAD GIRL is not for the faint of heart. Let the reader beware. BAD GIRL also contains a bonus interview with Blake, plus excerpts from all four of his novels. *Note: BAD GIRL is fully contained in SERIAL UNCUT. BAD GIRL + TRUCK STOP + SERIAL = SERIAL UNCUT. About the Author: BLAKE CROUCH was born near the piedmont town of Statesville, North Carolina in 1978. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated in 2000 with degrees in English and Creative Writing. Blake is the author of four novels and numerous short stories. He lives with his family in southwest Colorado, where he is at work on a new book. Praise for Blake Crouch’s ABANDON: ABANDON would make an excellent movie, switching back and forth between the plain-but-sturdy homes, saloon and church in 1893 and the same structures rotting to dust in 2009...a clever dual story. CHARLOTTE OBSERVER ABANDON [is] two separate works of past and present seamlessly melded together into a single novel that demands to be read in one sitting, so you can better appreciate the beauty of Crouch’s storytelling…[O]ne of those books that almost instantly puts you in the mind of a classic. BOOKREPORTER Haunting, fast-paced, and thoroughly engrossing... ABANDON is one of the most original tales of ghosts, greed and gold I've come across. Crouch aligns both eras so perfectly, it's as if the characters are occupying the same breath within the space/time continuum. ABANDON will be one of the most talked-about books of the summer. THE MADISON COUNTY HERALD Ambitious…the palpable suspense just keeps building, and many thriller fans—especially those who like a touch of horror—will lose sleep to find out how it all ends. BOOKLIST ABANDON is terrific…a great storyteller hitting his stride. LEE CHILD

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    Natchez Burning

      Greg Iles
     Natchez Burning

1 New York Times bestselling author Greg Iles returns with his most eagerly anticipated novel yet—Natchez Burning—the first installment in an epic trilogy that interweaves crimes, lies, and secrets past and present in a mesmerizing thriller featuring Southern lawyer and former prosecutor Penn Cage Growing up in the rural Southern hamlet of Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned everything he knows about honor and duty from his father, Tom Cage. But now the beloved family doctor is accused of murdering Viola Turner, the beautiful nurse with whom he worked in the early 1960s. A fighter who has always stood for justice, Penn is determined to save his father. The quest for answers sends Penn deep into the past—into the heart of a conspiracy of greed and murder involving the Double Eagles, a vicious KKK crew headed by one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the state. Now Penn must follow a bloody trail that stretches back forty years, to one undeniable fact: no one—black or white, young or old, brave or not—is ever truly safe.

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