Thriller / suspense

The Institute

Deep in the woods of Maine, there is a dark state facility where kids, abducted from across the United States, are incarcerated. In the Institute they are subjected to a series of tests and procedures meant to combine their exceptional gifts - telepathy, telekinesis - for concentrated effect. Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He's just a regular 12-year-old, except he's not just smart, he's super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use... Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local Sherriff. He's basically just walking the beat. But he's about to take on the biggest case of his career. Back in the Institute's downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise 'just another day in paradise', Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape. But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments - even the infamous Mrs Sigsby - suspect. Thrilling, suspenseful, heartbreaking, THE INSTITUTE is a stunning novel of childhood betrayed and hope regained.

The Institute

Deep in the woods of Maine, there is a dark state facility where kids, abducted from across the United States, are incarcerated. In the Institute they are subjected to a series of tests and procedures meant to combine their exceptional gifts - telepathy, telekinesis - for concentrated effect. Luke Ellis is the latest recruit. He's just a regular 12-year-old, except he's not just smart, he's super-smart. And he has another gift which the Institute wants to use... Far away in a small town in South Carolina, former cop Tim Jamieson has taken a job working for the local Sherriff. He's basically just walking the beat. But he's about to take on the biggest case of his career. Back in the Institute's downtrodden playground and corridors where posters advertise 'just another day in paradise', Luke, his friend Kalisha and the other kids are in no doubt that they are prisoners, not guests. And there is no hope of escape. But great events can turn on small hinges and Luke is about to team up with a new, even younger recruit, Avery Dixon, whose ability to read minds is off the scale. While the Institute may want to harness their powers for covert ends, the combined intelligence of Luke and Avery is beyond anything that even those who run the experiments - even the infamous Mrs Sigsby - suspect. Thrilling, suspenseful, heartbreaking, THE INSTITUTE is a stunning novel of childhood betrayed and hope regained.

What She Never Said

Missing Person The unputdownable new thriller from the author of The Three

'The finest thriller I've read in years . . . completely unputdownable' - Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah Pinborough on The Three Missing-linc.com comprises a group of misfit sleuths scattered across the States. Their macabre passion is giving names to the unidentified dead. When Ellie Caine starts investigating the corpse known as the Boy in the Dress, the Boy's killer decides to join the group. The closer they get to the truth, the closer he will get to them. The Boy was Teddy Ryan. He was meant to have been killed in a car crash in the west of Ireland in 1989. Only he wasn't. There is no grave in Galway and Teddy was writing letters from New York a year after he supposedly died. But one night he met a man in a Minnesota bar and vanished off the face of the earth. Teddy's nephew, Shaun, is no hero, but he is determined to solve the thirty-year-old mystery. He joins forces with the disparate members of Missing-linc to hunt down the killer. The only problem: the killer will be with them every step of the way . . . ************* Further praise for Sarah Lotz 'Hard to put down and vastly entertaining' - Stephen King on The Three 'A roller-coaster ride with intriguing psychological depth' - Crime Fiction Lover 'Lotz excels at making you feel like you're there' - Publishers Weekly

The Stranger Game

Are you ready to play? `An enigmatic novel . . . a metaphysical thriller' Edmund White `Like the best of Highsmith and Hitchcock rolled into one' Marisa Silver Rebecca's on-again, off-again boyfriend, Ezra, has gone missing, but when she notifies the police, they seem surprisingly unconcerned. They suspect he has been playing the `stranger game,' a viral hit in which players start following others in real life, as they might otherwise do on social media. But as the game spreads, the rules begin to change, and disappearances are reported across the country. Curious about this popular new obsession, and hoping that she might track down Ezra, Rebecca tries the game for herself. She also meets Carey, who is willing to take the game further than she imagined possible. In playing the stranger game, what leads Rachel closer to finding Ezra will take her further and further from the life she once lived . . . A compulsive, inventive thriller for fans of The Girl Before, Little Deaths and The Book of Mirrors

I Thought I Knew You

For fans of He Said/She Said and Anatomy of a Scandal, Penny Hancock's I Thought I Knew You is about secrets and lies - and whose side you take when it really matters. Who do you know better? Your oldest friend? Or your child? And who should you believe when one accuses the other of an abhorrent crime? Jules and Holly have been best friends since university. They tell each other everything, trading revelations and confessions, and sharing both the big moments and the small details of their lives: Holly is the only person who knows about Jules's affair; Jules was there for Holly when her husband died. And their two children - just four years apart - have grown up together. So when Jules's daughter Saffie makes a rape allegation against Holly's son Saul, neither woman is prepared for the devastating impact this will have on their friendship or their families. Especially as Holly, in spite of her principles, refuses to believe her son is guilty.

Driving Force Driving Force / Cornered at Christmas (Rushing Creek Crime Spree)

Driving Force by Elle James She must trust as stranger in order to survive Former Marine, Gus Walsh's instincts tell him the unknown woman shadowing him is dangerous in more ways than one. Yet when he discovers that she has no memory of who she is or why someone is hunting her, the pair must team up to find answers. But there's no guarantee they will survive the truth once the dust settles... Cornered at Christmas by Barb Han He'll do whatever it takes to keep his family safe. Mitch Kent is shocked to see his wife, Kimberly, just before the anniversary of her death! Having faked her own death to protect her family, she is still in danger and desperate for her husband's help. Mitch will need a miracle to reunite his family...if Kimberly's dark past doesn't kill him first.

Missing Person The unputdownable new thriller from the author of The Three

'The finest thriller I've read in years . . . completely unputdownable' - Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah Pinborough on The Three Missing-linc.com comprises a group of misfit sleuths scattered across the States. Their macabre passion is giving names to the unidentified dead. When Ellie Caine starts investigating the corpse known as the Boy in the Dress, the Boy's killer decides to join the group. The closer they get to the truth, the closer he will get to them. The Boy was Teddy Ryan. He was meant to have been killed in a car crash in the west of Ireland in 1989. Only he wasn't. There is no grave in Galway and Teddy was writing letters from New York a year after he supposedly died. But one night he met a man in a Minnesota bar and vanished off the face of the earth. Teddy's nephew, Shaun, is no hero, but he is determined to solve the thirty-year-old mystery. He joins forces with the disparate members of Missing-linc to hunt down the killer. The only problem: the killer will be with them every step of the way . . . ************* Further praise for Sarah Lotz 'Hard to put down and vastly entertaining' - Stephen King on The Three 'A roller-coaster ride with intriguing psychological depth' - Crime Fiction Lover 'Lotz excels at making you feel like you're there' - Publishers Weekly

Crucible A Thriller

[Rollins] is what you might end up with if you tossed Michael Crichton and Dan Brown into a particle accelerator together. -New York Times Book Review Arriving home on Christmas Eve, Commander Gray Pierce discovers his house ransacked, his pregnant lover missing, and his best friend's wife, Kat, unconscious on the kitchen floor. With no shred of evidence to follow, his one hope to find the woman he loves and his unborn child is Kat, the only witness to what happened. But the injured woman is in a semi-comatose state and cannot speak-until a brilliant neurologist offers a radical approach to unlock her mind long enough to ask a few questions. What Pierce learns from Kat sets Sigma Force on a frantic quest for answers that are connected to mysteries reaching back to the Spanish Inquisition and to one of the most reviled and blood-soaked books in human history-a Medieval text known as the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches. What they uncover hidden deep in the past will reveal a frightening truth in the present and a future on the brink of annihilation, and force them to confront the ultimate question: What does it mean to have a soul? When it comes to the blending of action, adventure, history, and science, there is no other author who does it better than Rollins. -Booklist

The Bad Place

The newspapers called it The Bad Place. A remote farm out on the Thames estuary, where six children were held captive for two weeks. Five of them got out alive. That was twenty years ago. Now adults, they meet up annually to hold a candlelit vigil for their friend who died. The only rule is that no-one can talk about what happened the night they escaped. But at this year's event, one of them witnesses a kidnapping. A young girl, Sammi, is bundled into a van in front of their eyes. Is history repeating itself? Is one of them responsible? Or is someone sending them a twisted message? DI Sasha Dawson, of Essex Police, is certain that the key to finding Sammi lies in finding out the truth about The Bad Place. But she also knows that with every second she spends trying to unlock the past, the clock ticks down for the missing girl...

The Favourite Sister

From the author of the bestselling Luckiest Girl Alive comes Jessica Knoll's thriller, The Favourite Sister, featuring a pair of competitive and uber-successful sisters whose secrets and lies result in murder. Perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty's Nine Perfect Strangers and Caroline Kepnes' You. Brett and Kelly Courtney are the shining jewels in a New York-based reality TV show called Goal Diggers. One of the most popular shows on American national television, its fiercely competitive cast of five self-made women are defined by their success, beauty and ruthless drive to reach the top by whatever means necessary. The Courtney sisters' rivalry goes skin deep despite the blossoming business they have built together that helps disadvantaged women in Morocco. Harbouring bitter jealousies and dark secrets about their manufactured screen lives they're joined by three other hyper-competitive women who all have their own agendas. And the latest season promises sparks to fly in the quest for even higher ratings. Vicious backstabbing, scathing social media attacks and finely-tuned scripting draw in the viewing public every week, all orchestrated by the show's omnipotent producers. But even they don't know that season 4 will end in murder . . .

The Night You Left

IT ONLY TAKES A MOMENT TO UNRAVEL A PERFECT LIFE . . . When Grace's fiance vanishes without a trace the night after proposing, her life is turned upside down. But has Nick walked out on her, or is he in danger? As Grace desperately searches for answers, it soon becomes clear that Nick wasn't the uncomplicated man she thought she knew. And when she uncovers a hidden tragedy from his childhood, she realises an awful truth: that you can run from your past - but your secrets will always catch up with you . . . Praise for Emma Curtis: `Gripping, tense and twisty.' Claire Douglas `A tense and utterly engrossing story.' Tammy Cohen `Absorbing. Mesmerizing. Thought-provoking.' Amanda Robson