Showing titles in Psychological

Dylan Meserve and Michaela Brand, young lovers and fellow acting students, vanish on the way home from a rehearsal. Three days later, they are found in the remote mountains of Malibu, battered and terrified. They've had a harrowing ordeal: held at gunpoint by a sadistic abductor who subjected them to a horrific regime of confinement, starvation, and assault. But doubts arise about their story and, as forensic details unfold, the abduction is exposed as a hoax.

In six intense, haunting short novels, Don Winslow returns to the themes that are the hallmarks of his acclaimed body of work – crime, corruption, vengeance, justice, loss, betrayal, guilt, and redemption - to explore the savagery and nobility that drive and define the human condition. In Broken, Winslow creates a world of high-level thieves and low-life crooks, obsessed cops and jaded private detectives, dope dealers and government agents, bounty hunters and fugitives.

Michael Henchard, drunk at a country fair, sells his wife and baby daughter for five guineas. The following day, in despair and remorse, he forswears alcohol and sets out to redeem himself. In time, he becomes a respected merchant and eventually the mayor of the town. But Fate is not to be so easily appeased, and Henchard finds his past actions resonate through and destroy his plans for the future.

After 30 years at St Oswald's Grammar in North Yorkshire, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go. Each class has its clowns, its rebels, its underdogs, its 'Brodie' boys who, whilst of course he doesn't have favourites, hold a special place in an old teacher's heart. But every so often there's a boy who doesn't fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy with hidden shadows inside.

What would you sacrifice for a new life? Ambitious businesswoman Mae Yu runs Golden Oaks - a luxury retreat transforming the fertility industry - where women get the very best of everything, so long as they play by the rules. Jane is a young immigrant in search of a better future. Stuck living in a cramped dorm with her baby daughter and her shrewd aunt Ate, she sees an unmissable chance to change her life. But at what cost?

In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a young Australian woman arrives to take up the antiquated role of ‘matron’. Within this landscape of immense privilege, in which the girls can sense the slightest weakness in those around them, she finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body. That is until she meets Mrs S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite: assured, sophisticated, a paragon of femininity.

Harley Mason, you may love her or hate her, but never underestimate her. As the Masons settle down to a more normal life following the death of three family members, a shocking discovery of a schoolgirl found dead in nearby woods starts the finger pointing once again. Lewis Sanders, the detective on the case, struggles to believe that a teenage girl is capable of such a horrific crime. Yet the discovery of a second body could put Harley Mason in the frame.

Are we more like a coffee bean, a carrot or an egg? What happens to us when we are boiled in the trials and tribulations of life? Jessica Miller is fascinated by the somewhat perplexing tendency of humans to end their own lives, but she secretly believes such acts may not be that bad after all. Jessica is coming to terms with her own relationships, and reflecting on what it means to be queer, when a single event throws everything she once believed into doubt. Can she still defend the act?

The next instalment in the dramatic new Ravenscar series from the international best-selling author of Woman of Substance. As Edward Deravenel stands alone on the rocky Ravenscar beach he counts his blessings. The war to end all wars is over; he and his brothers have survived. Now he can build Deravenels, the family business empire, into all he has dreamed of. Yet there is a thorn in his side – his reckless younger brother, George.

After several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2 - Richard Powers - returns to the US as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, a cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.

Alison is a marriage mender. Her job is to help couples who fear they have reached the end of the road. So when her husband's ex, Lydia, arrives on the doorstep demanding to see her son, Alison thinks she can handle it. But what Alison doesn't realise is that Lydia is the one person who has the ability to destroy their happy family. And sometimes the cracks run too deep to ever be repaired.

When Rosie's best friend has an affair with her husband, the consequences reverberate through the lives of two families. Relationships are torn apart, friendships shattered and childish innocence destroyed. Her daughter Daisy's fragile hold on reality begins to unravel when a letter arrives that opens old wounds. Rosie's son, Max, blames himself for everything that happened. And her ex-husband, Nick, has his own version of events.

Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence. Initially, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. But as the days start to blur together, Penny starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world.

You see the people you work with every day, but what can't you see? Amira, Sarah, Paula, Ewan and Charlie have worked together for years - they know how each other likes their coffee, whose love life is a mess, whose children keep them up at night. But their comfortable routine life is suddenly shattered when an aggressive new boss walks in.... Now there's something chilling in the air. Who secretly hates everyone? Who is tortured by their past? Who is capable of murder?

When Ellie tells me she has a new boyfriend, I am absolutely thrilled and can’t wait to meet him. She finally seems so happy and in love. But there’s a catch. Ellie has never met him in person. In fact, he doesn’t even live in the same country. Our home is in England, but Daryl is in Los Angeles.

When Will wakes up after a car accident, he’s lost three years of memory. All he wants is his girlfriend and childhood sweetheart, Gem, beside him. Instead, nothing is as he remembers. Gem has finally moved on from hers and Will’s breakup. With a new life and boyfriend, the last thing she expects is a call to say Will needs her – the man who nearly destroyed her. As Will recovers, he is determined to prove to Gem that he is the man he once was. But by unlocking the secrets of his past, will he be able to piece together what caused him to change so dramatically?

Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would rather forget - his wife's recent death and the horrific murder, in Iraq, of his granddaughter's boyfriend, Titus. Brill, a retired book critic, imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself.

Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn't spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It's not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When a neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life she's determined to find evil and punish it.

Sara Goldfarb is devastated by the death of her husband. She spends her days watching game shows and obsessing over appearing on television as a contestant—and her prescription diet pills only accelerate her mania. Her son, Harry, is living in the streets with his friend Tyrone and girlfriend Marion, where they spend their days selling drugs and dreaming of escape. When their heroin supply dries up, all three descend into an abyss of dependence and despair, their lives, like Sara’s, doomed by the destructive power of drugs.

For his whole life, the boy has lived underground, in a basement with his parents, grandmother, sister, and brother. Before he was born, his family was disfigured by a fire. His sister wears a white mask to cover her burns. He spends his hours with his cactus, reading his book on insects, or touching the one ray of sunlight that filters in through a crack in the ceiling. Ever since his sister had a baby, everyone's been acting very strangely.