Category: suspense

THE DEAD GIRLS CLUB by DAMIEN ANGELICA WALTERS

The Dead Girls Club

 

Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face…

It’s 1991 and Heather, her best friend Becca and their two other friends are obsessed with serial killers, and all things macabre.
Becca is the storyteller of the group and comes up with some seriously scary tales. But the one keeps coming back. The Red Lady. Once a witch murdered by her own town while not one of her friends speaks up for her. Revenge quickly follows with the entire town dying.

Becca believes the story and even makes a believer out of Rachel and Gia, the other girls in the Dead Girls Club. But Heather is sure there is no such thing. Until something happens and she begins to doubt herself and Becca.

With Becca believing all she needs is her best friends help her to prove the Red Lady is real, Heather swears to help her. And then Becca is dead and Heather will never be the same.

Fast forward 30 years and strange things are happening. Heather is sure she is being followed. When half of a BFF necklace shows up in the mail, Heather is sure of one thing. Someone knows what she did. Someone knows she killed her best friend and now they are coming for her.

This was a ghost story in the best way! A group of young girls, obsessed with Stephen King and Ted Bundy equally, mess with magic and a long-dead witch when the real horror is much closer and alive than they know.

I love a good ghost tale! And this one I read in 3 hours even eating dinner while reading. I had to know what was real and what wasn’t. And I never saw that ending coming at all! I suspected everyone and all for good reasons, but wow, that ending!

NetGalley/December 10th, 2019 by Crooked Lane Books

 

 

 

TRAP LANE by STELLA CAMERON

Trap Lane (Alex Duggins Mystery, #6)

An Alex Duggins Mystery #6

Alex and her friends are back! Alex owns the popular pub, The Black Dog, with her mysterious but reliable manager, Hugh Rhys. Alex trusts Hugh completely.

But when Neve Rhys, as well as Sonia Quillam, arrives, Alex is seeing a side of Hugh she hasn’t seen before. Secretive, angry and even more closed-lip than usual.

Hugh has asked Sam, the locksmith, to change all the locks at Green Friday, after the last debacle and when Sam returns to tell Hugh and Alex that the door was open and there are blood and glass everywhere, they head over to investigate.

Are they looking for a missing injured person or is this a murder with no body?

After the police find Mr. Quillam dead in a pond on Hugh’s property, all eyes are on him.

Alex is torn between keeping Hugh safe and out of jail and being properly honest with the local police.

So many mysteries in this one! Bodies keep popping up and people keep disappearing and then popping up again. Everyone is keeping secrets and that is not helping Alex.

She is determined to find out what is going on and who is a killer!

This is a favorite series of mine. I was with them up until the end. Which was abrupt and confusing. I even asked a friend to read the last chapter and he kept trying to turn the Kindle page too. What was that all about?

NetGalley/Severn House October 1st, 2019 by Creme de La Crime

 

 

THE LIES WE TELL BY DEBRA WEBB

The Lies We Tell (The Undertaker's Daughter #2)

THE UNDERTAKER’S DAUGHTER #2  Sometimes the truth will get you killed.

The first book in this series is a novella titled ” The Undertaker’s Daughter”, followed by ” The Secrets We Bury”. Both books are important to the third.

Dr. Rowan Dupont knows death. Living above her family funeral home she shared her home with it. She knew how to embalm a body before most of us had kissed a boy.

Her story begins as she is working with the Nashville police as a psychiatric consultant. She has a nose for killers and in return, they are very interested in her. But when she fails to recognize that someone very close to her is one, she runs home to Winchester, Tennessee. She is still haunted by dreams of her twin sister’s death, her mother’s suicide and the serial killer who followed her home.

Along with her life long pal Chief Billy, who I love, she is trying her best to stay out of the crosshairs of Julian Addington, a prolific serial killer who wants her more than anything. But why? When a body comes into the funeral home with a tattoo of her mother’s name on his back, Rowan knows this means something, she just isn’t sure what. Then the body disappears and the Feds are back to following her around.

This is the main story. Rowan’s fight to find the truth about her sister’s death and her mother’s suicide. Her mothers’ journals are cryptic and full of death. Was she obsessed with serial killers or was she one herself?  As the bodies continue to stack up, nothing makes any sense. And of course, it doesn’t because there is another story inside of the main one.

I would suggest you read the first two books first. Just so you know who all of the players are.  I absolutely love this series and Rowan and Billy need to quit dancing around each other and get together. IMHO.

Very Well Done!

NetGalley/Expected publication: September 17th, 2019 by MIRA

Lisa Ungers The Stranger Inside

The Stranger Inside

“Justice is not for this plane. Punishment, yes. Consequences, yes.”

Three 12-year-olds go into the woods. Only one comes out. And she will never be the same.

Rain, Tess, and Hank were best friends. Cutting through the woods was what they did. Until the day they weren’t alone and lives would be forever changed.

The points of view were alternated. And I thought they all had valid viewpoints. Remember Dexter? We watched as Rain lived her seemingly normal life. Having put her past trauma in a box with no key. But when another man is killed after being acquitted of his wife’s’ murder, alarm bells go off. Is there someone out there delivering a bit of karmic justice?

Finding the truth will put her in more danger, which she knows, but she can’ t stop. She has to know. And when the memories come back will she be able to handle it?

This was the best kind of thriller. You know just enough to think you have it and then Wham, you know nothing! And it made me think for a long time. What is justice? What is Karma? Do some people simply not deserve to live?

Well Done Ms. Unger, as usual!

NetGalley/ September 17th, 2019 by Park Row

 

 

 

 

 

29 SECONDS by T.M.Logan

 

29 Seconds

Give me one name. One person. And I will make them disappear . . . 

Dr. Sarah Haywood has a lot on her plate. A teaching job concentrating on Christoper Marlowe, 2 young children, a husband who has shacked up with another woman, and a boss who can’t seem to keep his hands to himself. Professor Hawthorne is a nightmare of a boss. Always one step ahead of any accusations of impropriety and not afraid to blackmail his female staff into sex for your job scenario.

Sarah is at a loss to figure out a way to keep her job and not have to sleep with her boss. Which is getting more difficult as he is sabotaging her work and reputation. Sarah is at her wit’s end.

A seemingly unrelated incident happens to her early on. She is witness to an attempted kidnapping of a little girl. She never thought that the little girl belonged to a very powerful man who is very grateful to Sarah. In a very secretive meeting, Sarah meets a man with a lot of money and a lot of power, who doesn’t like to owe people. In his mind, Sarah has saved his daughter and now he is in her debt. So he offers her a one time deal.

Will she take it? Would you? One name. Gone Forever. Would you? No chance of blowback. No chance of anyone finding out. Would you?

This was definitely a thriller!  At first, I was a bit upset with Sarah. She was rather all over the place, but I looked at what she was. An educated woman being jerked around by not one but two men. While holding down a full-time job and with 2 children under 10. Being passed over for promotion for not trading sex for favors.

Very Well Done!

NetGalley/ September 10th, 2019 by St. Martin’s Press

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE SIXTH WICKED CHILD by J.D.Barker

The Sixth Wicked Child (4MK Thriller, #3)

A 4MK Thriller

In this last of the 4MK thriller trilogy, Barker ramps up the suspense and twists better than Houdini!

If you haven’t read the first two books, I would suggest you read them. Reading Barker is like trying to solve a Rubick’s Cube blindfolded.

Poor Sam is coming undone. He’s having lapses in his memory. He’s obsessed with the man who killed his wife. Only now Bishop is turning himself in and telling an elaborate tale putting the blame squarely on Sam. It looks convincing to everyone, including his bosses.

With a hospital full of people with a mystery illness that Bishop says is SARS, with Sam and Bishop, accounted for people are still dying. There is no way Bishop is running this alone.

As the FBI and local Metro team up, you really can’t believe a single person in this book. Everyone has dirty little secrets and someone is out to even the score for the awful things that happened in childhood.

This has been one of my favorite horror reads. Gory, full of morally bankrupt adults and torture, I did not do anything until I was finished. And that ending was perfect for the trilogy. I loved every twisty, gory moment!

Job well done!  What’s Next???

NetGalley/August 27th, 2019 by Hampton Creek Press

 

 

 

RIVAL’S BREAK by CARLA NEGGERS

Rival's Break (Sharpe & Donovan #9)

SHARPE and DONOVAN #9

The ninth in this series by Carla Neggars.

FBI agents and newlyweds, Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan, have just gotten back together after Colin was undercover for a bit. But before they can even enjoy some romance, there’s a yacht full of people sick from food poisoning, a stolen painting, and a lot of agents from across the pond in their backyard acting very sketchy!

Neggars is a genius at what she does. I’ve read all of the other books in this series. This one was not my favorite. I kept waiting for some suspense and I just did not feel it. Maybe there were just too many characters and too much background. And when the reveal came, it was pretty anti-climactic.

By this time I’m invested in these wonderful characters and I can’t wait to see what is in store for all of them next.

NetGalley/August 27th, 2019 by MIRA