Showing results by publisher "Hodder & Stoughton" in Psychological

In the sweltering summer of 1997, straight-laced, straight-A student Karen met Biba - a bohemian and impossibly glamorous aspiring actress. A few months later, two people were dead and another had been sent to prison. Having stood by Rex as he served his sentence, Karen is now married to him with a daughter, Alice, who runs a vintage clothing company in London. They're a normal family, as long as they don't talk about the past, never mention the name Biba, and ignore Alice's flashes of dark, dangerous fury.

Emma is house-sitting on the rainy Washington coast with only her golden retriever for company. She likes the isolation, the peace and quiet, and the opportunity to read. But her latest pick, a poorly written and gruesome horror novel, is disappointing and Emma leaves a one-star review. A message dings back - the author, H.G. Kane, has replied and he's furious. Emma brushes it off, until disturbing incidents start to occur. Scratches in the night. A figure crawling around in the shadows.

With supply in the Scottish cities drying up, Aida is forced back home to live with her mum at their rural farm. For now, they are safe with just enough to get by. Yet at the border, tensions are close to breaking point as more and more southerners chase the delusion that Scotland is an eternal spring - while fewer and fewer are allowed through. The service station where Aida works grows emptier with every day. Then, when suspicious strangers arrive at the farm asking for help, Aida and her family face a terrible decision. How much water can they afford to share?

It starts with a lie. The kind we've all told - to a former acquaintance we can't quite place but still, for some reason, feel the need to impress. The story of our life, embellished for the benefit of the happily married lawyer with the kids and the lovely home. And the next thing you know, you're having dinner at their house and accepting an invitation to join them on holiday - swept up in their perfect life, the kind you always dreamed of.... Which turns out to be less than perfect.

While on a walking holiday through the beautiful, deserted hills of Crete, Nicola Ferris stumbles across a critically injured Englishman, guarded by a fierce Greek. Nicola cannot abandon them and so sets off on a perilous search for their lost companion - all the while being pursued by someone who wants to make sure none of them leave the island....

July, 1997. Matilda is killed in a tragic accident on the Dorset rocks, leaving her best friend Sophie alone, wracked with guilt. Decades later, Sophie is back for the first time since that terrible summer, to sell her family's old beach hut and bury the memories forever. But on clearing out the hut, she finds evidence that Matilda's death was no accident. What really happened the night she died? As Sophie edges closer to the truth, the past starts to close in on the present.

Fern Castle works in her local library. She has dinner with her twin sister Rose three nights a week. And she avoids crowds, bright lights and loud noises as much as possible. Fern has a carefully structured life and disrupting her routine can be...dangerous. When Rose discovers that she cannot fall pregnant, Fern sees her chance to pay her sister back for everything Rose has done for her. Fern can have a baby for Rose. She just needs to find a father. Simple.

A chilling note predicting the deaths of six people is found in a school's time capsule, 10 years after it was buried. But surely, if a 13-year-old wrote it, it can't be a real threat.... Detective Huldar suspects he's been given the investigation simply to keep him away from real police work. He turns to psychologist Freyja to help understand the child who hid the message. Soon, however, they find themselves at the heart of another shocking case.

On a cold winter evening in a secluded fjord in Iceland, a neighbour visits the house of a family that has not been seen in a week. No one comes to the door when he knocks. After breaking down the back door, his worst fears are realised. Their home is now a horrific crime scene. Policeman Týr and forensic pathologist Iðunn are called to the house to investigate. As the case advances, harrowing secrets about the family are revealed.

Newlyweds Sam Statler and Annie Potter are ready to begin their lives together in a small town in upstate New York. Whilst Annie spends most of her time alone, Sam, her therapist husband, works long hours in his home office, tending to the egos of his mostly female clientele. Little does Sam know that through a vent in the ceiling, every word of his sessions can be heard from the room upstairs. The pharmacist's wife, contemplating a divorce. The well-known painter whose boyfriend doesn't satisfy her in bed. Who could resist eavesdropping?

This is a fact: Ryan Summers walked into Three Rivers College and killed 13 women, then himself. But no one can say why. The question is one that cries out to be answered - by Ryan's mother, Moira; by Ishbel, the mother of Abigail, the first victim; and by DI Helen Birch, put in charge of the case on her first day at her new job. But as the tabloids and the media swarm, as the families' secrets come out, as the world searches for someone to blame...the truth seems to vanish.

Amelie has always been a survivor, from losing her parents as a child in Paris to making it on her own in London. Then she meets Carolyn and is soon swept up in a glamorous London lifestyle. Until it starts to go wrong.

Helena is beautiful, successful and living in married bliss in Exeter. But she's hiding a secret that could tear her perfect life apart. When the notes begin to arrive, she realises someone else must know. But what might her husband and his overbearing family do if they find out the truth? Thea is reeling from her best friend Helena's death. But when she starts digging into the circumstances, she receives a threatening note warning her to stop. She knows her friend's death wasn't an accident. This was murder. And she is determined to get revenge.

A&E doctor Kate North has been knocked out of her orbit by a personal tragedy. So when she's offered the chance to be an emergency replacement at the UN research station in Antarctica, she jumps at the chance. The previous doctor, Jean-Luc, died in a tragic accident while out on the ice. The move seems an ideal solution for Kate: no one knows about her past; no one is checking up on her. But as total darkness descends for the winter, she begins to suspect that Jean-Luc's death wasn't accidental at all. And the more questions she asks, the more dangerous it becomes for them all.

Grace McGill is an insular, friendless woman, living in Glasgow in her 30s. She has her beloved cat, and she has her own business - deep cleaning the houses of Undiscovereds. People who die alone and stay that way until they are found weeks, sometimes months, later. While working in the home of a man named Tommy Agnew, her suspicions are aroused by a hidden photograph and a stack of newspapers, all from the same date over many, many years.

It was meant to be a quiet family fishing trip, a chance for mother and daughter to talk. But it changes the course of their lives forever. They catch nothing except a broken doll that gets tangled in the net. After years in the ocean, the doll a terrifying sight and the mother's first instinct is to throw it back, but she relents when her daughter pleads to keep it. This simple act of kindness proves fatal. That evening, the mother posts a picture of the doll on social media. By the morning, she is dead and the doll has disappeared.

From the moment Lucy met her husband's mother, Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana was exquisitely polite and perfectly friendly, but Lucy knew that she was not what Diana envisioned. Even so, Lucy wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law. That was five years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, a suicide note near her body. Diana claims that she no longer wanted to live because of a battle with cancer. But the autopsy finds no cancer.

When Ali has the chance to stay at a beautiful house in the south of France, she jumps at it. But not everything is as it seems. Surrounded by a group of wealthy friends, Ali blends expertly into the background. She's watching them all. And she isn't the only one interested. The heat rises. The pool shimmers. Secrets are exposed. And Ali must face up to the biggest lie of all: herself.

The only leads in a broad-daylight kidnapping are the account of an eight-year-old girl, some nearly invisible trace evidence and the calling card: a miniature noose left lying on the street. A crime scene this puzzling demands forensic expertise of the highest order. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs are called in to investigate. Then the case takes a stranger turn: a recording surfaces of the victim being slowly hanged, his desperate gasps the backdrop to an eerie piece of music.

Back in the summer of 1988, a young Richard Chizmar was catapulted into the centre of a living nightmare as the serial killer Joshua Gallagher - dubbed by the media as 'The Boogeyman' - stalked his tranquil Maryland town. These days, Chizmar enjoys a certain level of notoriety himself as he is the only person to whom Josh Gallagher will talk, on or off the record. Chizmar likes to visit Gallagher in prison but when a masked figure leaves a horrifying calling card in the front of his home, Chizmar finds there is a price for dancing with the devil.