"From Danielle Girard, the USA TODAY bestselling author who 'effortlessly ratchets up the tension' (J.T. Ellison, New York Times bestselling author), comes a pulse-pounding thriller about a young woman whose surrogate disappears just days before the baby's due date, leading to a frantic search that uncovers dark truths and the power of a mother's love.
Lexi thought she knew everything about Mara Vannatta. Best friends since middle school, they drifted apart after a tragedy derailed their senior year. But when Mara shows up on Lexi's doorstep sixteen years later fleeing an abusive husband, Lexi takes her in without question. Lexi's own marriage has been strained by her desire to have a baby, and when Mara offers to become her surrogate, their friendship feels stronger than ever.
But four days before the due date, Mara disappears.
Lexi is shocked but certain there must be something wrong--Mara would never willingly leave with her unborn child. Or would she? As she embarks on a perilous cross-country hunt for the truth, Lexi is forced to reconsider a friendship she thought she knew--and what really happened that terrible night their senior year. How many secrets lie in their shared past, waiting to be uncovered? And just how far will Lexi go to bring her child safely home?"
"It’s every parent’s worst nightmare.
In only a few months, the small town of Hagen has lost two high school seniors, both under strange circumstances. When a third senior, the mayor’s son, drives through the plate glass window of the town’s diner and ends up in a coma, the deaths no longer seem unrelated accidents. The town is paralyzed with fear. The police can find no good explanation. Other students deny any knowledge of what’s happening, but Detective Kylie Milliard is certain at least some are lying.
Hagen’s sole investigator, Kylie Milliard fears that something sinister is at play, but she can’t convince the town’s powers that be to take her concerns seriously. Mounting discord between herself and Hagen’s sheriff have her thinking that it may be time to leave Hagen for a bigger city and a new job, but she’s not going anywhere until she determines the connection between the self-destructive act of the mayor’s son and the two untimely deaths.
Whoever is behind the dangerous stunts doesn’t want to be discovered. To keep their secret, they’re willing to take out anyone who gets too close. With time running out before the next stunt, Kylie is in a race to solve the puzzle. She is all too clear that, until she does, no one—not the students, nor the town—is safe from danger.
“Danielle Girard is a phenomenal writer. In Up Close, her insightful and compulsively readable new novel, she creates a vivid portrait of a tight-knit small town grappling with a series of teenage deaths. Accidents or murder? Girard keeps you guessing until the final, breathtaking twist.”
—Jillian Medoff, author of When We Were Bright and Beautiful"
"From the USA Today bestselling author of White Out comes a story of two heroines with shattered pasts and a town with blood on its hands.
When a North Dakota couple is shot down in their home in cold blood, the sleepy town of Hagen wakes with a jolt. After all, it’s usually such a peaceful place. But Detective Kylie Milliard knows better.
Despite not handling a homicide investigation in years, Kylie is on the case. A drop of blood found at the scene at first blush promises to be her best evidence. But it ultimately only proves that someone else witnessed the murder—and the results are shocking: the DNA reveals a familial match to a crime involving local nurse Lily Baker from over a decade ago. This unveiling stirs new nightmares for Lily as she’s forced to reckon with the most traumatic time in her life.
Haunted by their pasts and hunting the killer, Kylie and Lily uncover hellish secrets and impossible truths, finding answers that put both their lives in jeopardy."
"From the bestselling author of the Annabelle Schwartzman series comes a chilling story of a woman with a forgotten past and a town with dark secrets.
After surviving a car accident on an icy road in Hagen, North Dakota, Lily Baker regains consciousness with no idea where or who she is. Scattered Bible verses and the image of a man lying in a pool of blood haunt her memory.
The same night of the accident, a young woman is murdered and tossed in a dumpster. Kylie Milliard, Hagen’s only detective, doesn’t immediately recognize the victim, but Kylie soon discovers that Lily and the dead woman share a dark past…if only Lily could remember what it was.
Lily and Kylie both want answers. But Kylie has to play by the book. Lily has to play it safe. And the more Lily learns about her identity, the more she fears the truth."
"Ex-FBI agent Cody O'Brien lives a quiet life in Northern California. Self-sufficient and content, she provides a good home for herself and her eight-year-old son, Ryan. But all of that is shattered when Ryan is kidnapped is broad daylight . . .
Cody's greatest fear is knowing the true motive behind the abduction. For her entire life is a lie—one so easily exposed, and so very dangerous. A woman of hard-earned courage, she escaped the killers responsible for her husband's murder—and learned to start over. Failed by the Witness Protection Program, she trusts only herself to save her son. Now she's on the run again—and heading blindly toward a past that wants only one thing from her: cold-blooded revenge."
"The wet sheet slipped slowly from her face and she began to count. There were eleven, in all. She was last in line, but he was getting closer. He'd be to her soon . . .
As though stumbling out of a nightmare, rookie cop Alex Kincaid awakens in her car, dazed and confused. Parked on an unfamiliar street, she's outside an unfamiliar home with no recollection of how she got there, and no memory of the night before.
Then her nightmare becomes reality.
Alex's first call of the day takes her to the same street, to the same house, where a man has been brutally killed. Alex thinks the man is a perfect stranger—until she finds herself the main suspect in his murder.
And now, as she races to clear her name, she's haunted by memories of a horrific thirty-year-old crime—a crime that links her to the dead man . . . and marks her as the killer's next target."
"Alone, held captive, and left in the dark, a woman’s worst fears come true in this gripping thriller by the award-winning author of Expose.
San Francisco medical examiner Annabelle Schwartzman has spent eight years looking over her shoulder. Stalked by her vengeful ex-husband, Spencer, she’s always known they’d meet again. Has her nightmare come true? Abducted, blindfolded, yoked, and tethered, she’s being held prisoner in an isolated cabin in Idaho. But it’s the unknown that terrifies Annabelle now. Because the man’s voice in the dark, though eerily familiar, is not Spencer’s.
Annabelle’s partner and lover, Inspector Hal Harris, knows in his gut that Annabelle’s disappearance is tied to the past. Except Spencer is fifteen hundred miles away. To save Annabelle, Hal is tracking every move Spencer makes. But is it drawing him closer to finding Annabelle? Or is it luring him farther from her desperate cries for help?
As a cruel game of retribution begins, Annabelle must rely on her wits, her will to survive, and a plan of escape. But time is running out. And her captor’s three chilling words make her fear that the worst is yet to come: sweet dreams, Bella."
"Death was his art. She would be his masterpiece.
They called him Leonardo—a master skilled in the art of murder. One year ago, Cincinnati was his canvas. A scalpel was his tool. And women were his works-in-progress. FBI profiler Casey McKinley was one of them, a victim of Leonardo's twisted genius. She has the scars—and the nightmares—to prove it.
For Casey, a new city means a life far from the one she left behind in Cincinnati. In San Francisco she finally feels safe. Until a series of eerily familiar slayings plunges her back into Leonardo's game. Now she must catch this clever killer before he can unveil his ultimate masterpiece. Only this time she'll play by a different set of rules—hers."
"The most dangerous place to hide is in the dark . . .
A tough special-agent with the Department of Justice, and a dedicated single mother to her orphaned nephews, Samantha Chase is unbreakable.
Until two women, both from the shadows of Sam's past, are discovered strangled. For Sam, the most unnerving detail is the eucalyptus branch tucked behind the victims' ears—the signature of a notorious serial murderer already convicted and executed for his crimes.
To detective Nick Thomas, the only link to the copycat killings is Sam herself. And when she becomes the target of threats—each one more menacing than the last—his feelings for her just might jeopardize the case.
But to understand the killer's twisted motive is to explore Sam's past—and a crime she's spent a lifetime trying to bury . . ."
"Examining the dead will help her solve present crimes and uncover past secrets in this page-turner thriller for fans of Patricia Cornwell and Rizzoli and Isles.
With her vindictive ex-husband out of prison, San Francisco medical examiner Annabelle Schwartzman is trying harder than ever to move on with her life—by focusing on her job to speak for the victims who can’t. Summoned to a homicide in Golden Gate Park, she realizes that she’d seen the victim just hours before, alive and well in a parked Jeep with a small boy. Now, the woman has been stabbed to death and stripped of her burka, and the child is nowhere to be found.
When an African American student is found dead, bearing knife wounds identical to those of the woman in the park, the press jumps on them as hate crimes. If only they were so easy to explain. There is a connection—but Schwartzman believes it’s something even worse. Her fears are confirmed with the discovery of the next victim.
Now, to stop a vicious killer whose work has only just begun, Schwartzman and Detective Hal Harris must untangle the twisted thread that links it all to the missing boy and a crime buried in the past."
"When the daughter of San Francisco socialites is brutally assaulted, Jamie Vail makes it her mission to find the attacker. A seasoned Sex Crimes Inspector with the SFPD, work is what Jamie does best. She isn't distracted by the fact that her adopted son and the victim go to the same school.
Jamie can almost set aside the fact that the man caught on tape with the victim is someone she's been wary of for years—her son's biological father. At home, her son is performing poorly in school, becoming more reclusive, and nothing she does can draw him out.
More frightening is the fact that every piece of evidence brings her closer to home . . .
As her case escalates into a homicide investigation, Jamie teams up with old allies and rookie club members from across the department.
Loyalties are tested and the stakes raise as the case becomes frontpage news and the spotlight lands on her.
With his future on the line, Jamie must find Charlotte's attacker to prove her son's innocence before he lands behind bars, or worse . . ."
"Seventy-two guns are stolen from a San Francisco police storage facility, causing murders in the city to spike. The shooters appear unrelated—their only connection is that each uses a gun stolen from police storage. The police have no leads.
Mei Ling, recently brought in as head of the SFPD's Computer Forensics Team, recognizes a device installed in the same storage facility—one used for hacking. She's convinced this could be a new connection to help crack the case. But how?
When the bullets start flying through the window of her own home, Mei knows she's on to something. Now it's a race against time to identify the hacker.
Before she becomes the next victim."
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