Turn to Stone takes place in the days immediately preceding the events of The Cold Nowhere, the sixth book in Freeman’s thrilling Jonathan Stride series. On his way back to Duluth, Stride stops to visit the grave of his mother in a small Wisconsin town. After a shocking occurrence in the cemetery, Stride becomes enmeshed in a gruesome and suspenseful search for a killer who knows things no one else alive should know.
This novella from master of suspense Brian Freeman, winner of the International Thriller Writers Award, is not to be missed.
Harrowing loss, psychological trauma, and a deadly mystery test the human will to survive in this electrifying novel from award-winning author Brian Freeman.
Lisa Power is a tortured ghost of her former self. The author of a bestselling thriller called Thief River Falls, named after her rural Minnesota hometown, Lisa is secluded in her remote house as she struggles with the loss of her entire family: a series of tragedies she calls the “Dark Star.”
Then a nameless runaway boy shows up at her door with a terrifying story: he’s just escaped death after witnessing a brutal murder—a crime the police want to cover up. Obsessed with the boy’s safety, Lisa resolves to expose this crime, but powerful men in Thief River Falls are desperate to get the boy back, and now they want her too.
Lisa and her young visitor have nowhere to go as the trap closes around them. Still under the strange, unforgiving threat of the Dark Star, Lisa must find a way to save them both, or they’ll become the victims of another shocking tragedy she can’t foresee.
Four years after serial killer Rudy Cutter was sent away for life, San Francisco homicide inspector Frost Easton uncovers a terrible lie: his closest friend planted false evidence to put Cutter behind bars. When he's forced to reveal the truth, his sister's killer is back on the streets.
Desperate to take Cutter down again, the detective finds a new ally in Eden Shay. She wrote a book about Cutter and knows more about him than anyone. And she's terrified. Because for four years, Cutter has been nursing revenge day after stolen day.
Staying ahead of the game of a killer who's determined to strike again is not going to be easy. Not when Frost is battling his own demons. Not when the game is becoming so personal. And not when the killer's next move is unlike anything Frost expected.
Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn't like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco-as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks-Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie's controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories...and all the victims were her patients. As Frost and Frankie carry out their own investigations, the case becomes increasingly personal-and dangerous. Long-submerged secrets surface as someone called the Night Bird taunts the pair with cryptic messages pertaining to the deaths. Soon Frankie is forced to confront strange gaps in her own memory, and Frost faces a killer who knows the detective's worst fears. As the body count rises and the Night Bird circles ever closer, a dedicated cop and a brilliant doctor race to solve the puzzle before a cunning killer claims another victim.
The hunt for a killer in San Francisco becomes a dizzying game of cat and mouse in a thrilling novel of psychological suspense.
“Lombard is your Moriarty, Frost. Taking him down will be the most dangerous thing you’ve ever done.”
San Francisco homicide detective Frost Easton hadn’t seen his estranged friend Denny in years. Not until he dies in Frost’s arms uttering a final inexplicable word: Lombard. Denny appears to be the latest victim in a string of murders linked by a distinctive clue: the painting of a spiraled snake near the crime scenes. Is it the work of a serial killer? Or is Denny’s death more twisted and personal?
To find the answer, Frost reaches into a nest of vipers—San Francisco’s shady elite—where the whispered name of Lombard is just one secret. Now, drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with an enemy who knows his every move, Frost finds there is no one he can trust. And somewhere down the crooked streets of the city, Frost’s cunning adversary is coiled and ready to strike again.
Ten years ago, six-year-old Catalina Mateo hid under the porch of her family home while a knife butchered her mother and a bullet killed her father. Now a rough-sleeping orphan, Cat arrives at the house of Detective Jonathan Stride, pleading for protection. Drenched in the icy waters of Lake Superior, she claims to have narrowly escaped a cold-blooded killer.
Stride’s raw instinct is to protect Cat, whose late parents’ case—and his personal guilt associated with it—still sends a shiver down his spine. As a result, he takes the troubled teenager under his wing.
But Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is not convinced. She doubts the sincerity of this beautiful young streetwalker who has so easily won Stride’s trust, and now sleeps in his house with a butcher’s knife under her pillow.
As Stride continues to care for Cat, Maggie’s suspicions solidify, and a single question occupies the void between them: Should Stride be afraid for, or of, this terribly damaged girl?
“A masterpiece of psychological suspense.”—Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is quietly recovering from injuries sustained on his latest case when a rich doctor's baby is kidnapped and his peace is shattered. As suspicion builds that the doctor may have staged the baby’s disappearance, the relationship between the doctor and his wife and neighbors begins to disintegrate. Stride and his lover, Serena, a former Las Vegas detective, find themselves on opposite sides of the case, with Stride pursuing evidence that incriminates the doctor and Serena trying to prove that the baby really was abducted. Meanwhile, Stride’s partner, Maggie, and a headstrong young cop are tracking a man responsible for a violent crime wave in the rural areas of Duluth. There seems to be no connection between the cases—until a victim with ties to the doctor’s case turns up murdered in the signature style of the Duluth killer.
“Brian Freeman is, quite simply, a first-rate storyteller.”—Nelson DeMille
Hilary and Mark Bradley are trapped in a web of suspicion. Last year, accusations of a torrid affair with a student cost Mark his teaching job and made the young couple into outcasts in their remote island town off the Lake Michigan coast. Now another teenage girl is found dead on a deserted beach. . . and once again, Mark faces a hostile town convinced of his guilt.
Hilary Bradley is determined to prove that Mark is innocent, but she's on a lonely, dangerous quest. Even when she discovers that the murdered girl was witness to a horrific crime years earlier, the police are certain she's throwing up a smoke screen to protect her husband. Only a quirky detective named Cab Bolton seems willing to believe Hilary's story.
Hilary and Cab soon find that people in this community are willing to kill to keep their secrets hidden-and to make sure Mark doesn't get away with murder. And with each shocking revelation, even Hilary begins to wonder whether her husband is truly innocent. Freeman's first stand-alone thriller since his Stride novels is a knockout.
Praise for Brian Freeman: "Brian Freeman is, quite simply, a first-rate storyteller."-Nelson DeMille, New York Times bestselling author
Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial are both investigating high-profile murders in Las Vegas. A celebrity is assassinated during a fling with a prostitute, and a young boy is killed in a brutal hit-and-run incident. When the cases converge, Jonathan and Serena find themselves racing the clock against a determined serial killer and searching for a connection to the unsolved murder of a showgirl years earlier.
Freeman's vivid cast of characters exposes all of Las Vegas's dirty secrets, past and present, and in a rooftop showdown amid the ruins of a 1960s-era casino, the chase comes to a stunning climax.
Like Immoral, Stripped pushes the emotional and sexual limits of its heroes and keeps the listener riveted until the last shocking plot twist.
"Barrett deftly handles the rapid-fire dialogue, believable plot shifts, and wide variety of voices and accents. In dusky, appealing tones, Barrett turns Freeman's deliciously decadent diversion into compelling listening."-AudioFile
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride knows his partner, Maggie Bei, is in trouble when she reports a deadly crime on a bitter winter night. She’s obviously hiding a terrible secret, and her silence only feeds suspicion. But Maggie isn’t the only one keeping secrets in Duluth. A seductive young woman has disappeared, leaving behind a stash of lurid fantasies and a cryptic message: “I know who it is.”
Following a twisted trail, Stride uncovers a sordid web of violence and voyeurism that someone is willing to kill for in order to keep hidden. His lover, Serena Dial, a homicide cop turned private investigator, is chasing a blackmailer who knows all the city’s dirty secrets, even Maggie’s. But as Stride and Serena hunt for a killer, a predator is hunting them, with a terrifying plan for revenge.
“Brian Freeman is, quite simply, a first-rate storyteller. Stalked is scary, fast-paced, and refreshingly well written. The characters are so sharply drawn and interesting, we can’t wait to meet the next one in the story. Freeman has another winner.”—Nelson DeMille
A taut thriller about two rural Minnesota towns locked in a deadly feud-and a teenage girl caught in the crossfire.
Linked by the Spirit River, the two 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, is accused of the crime. Reluctantly, Olivia's mother summons her estranged husband Christopher, a Minneapolis lawyer, to come defend his daughter. As Christopher struggles to unravel the mystery of Ashlynn's murder and save his own daughter, he uncovers some ugly truths that endanger the residents of both towns. And looming over everything are the chilling, apocalyptic threats from a murderous psychopath known only as "Aquarius."
"Brian Freeman is, quite simply, a first-rate storyteller."-Nelson DeMille, New York Times bestselling author
