Showing results by narrator "Christina Traister" in All Categories

Lillian Smith leads an unexceptional life, writing obituaries and killing time with her inattentive husband and disconnected son. Then she meets David, a handsome stranger, in a coffee shop. Lured into an affair, she invents a new persona, one without strings, deadlines, or brooding husbands. Lillian has never felt so reckless, unpredictable, or wanted. But as her affair with David intensifies, she withdraws from everything that’s real, even her closest friend.

Cady Maddix survived a brutal upbringing - emotionally scarred but hardened - with a will for self-preservation. Hunting fugitives has given her life purpose and control. But when the Deputy US Marshal returns home to care for her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother, a new case stirs old memories. Child killer Samuel Aldeen has broken out of a nearby facility for the criminally insane, and the authorities believe he was aided by accomplices, both inside and out.

When a digital marketer is found murdered in his backyard—hands bound and face smothered by plastic wrap—Sheriff Bree Taggert and criminal investigator Matt Flynn respond to the call. Their investigation focuses on the man’s dating-app profile and the word liar carved into his forehead. One day later, the killer strikes again. Both victims are players in the internet dating scene. In their wake, they leave a trail of hurt—and angry—women. But Bree and Matt aren’t convinced the motive is as simple as it appears.

Twenty-seven years ago, Sheriff Bree Taggert’s father killed her mother, then himself. Now Bree and her younger brother, Adam, find human bones on the grounds of their abandoned family farm. The remains are those of a man and a woman, both murdered in the same horrible way. When the investigation determines the murders occurred thirty years ago, Bree’s dead father becomes a suspect, forcing Bree to revisit the brutal night she’s spent most of her life trying to forget.

New sheriff Bree Taggert is called to a shooting in a campground shuttered for the winter. But she arrives to find a perplexing crime. There is no shooter, no victim, and no blood. No one but Bree believes the sole witness, Alyssa, a homeless teenager who insists she saw her friend shot. Bree calls in former deputy Matt Flynn and his K-9 to track the killer and search for Alyssa’s friend. They discover the battered corpse of a missing university student under the ice in Grey Lake - but it’s not the victim they were looking for.

Onetime lieutenant of the evil Emperor Jagang, known as 'Death's Mistress' and the 'Slave Queen', the deadly Nicci captured Richard Rahl in order to convince him that the Imperial Order stood for the greater good. But it was Richard who converted Nicci instead, and for years thereafter she served Richard and Kahlan as one of their most lethal defenders. Now Nicci has set out on her own for new adventures. Her first job being to keep the unworldly prophet Nathan out of trouble....

Called to an isolated farm to check on an elderly widow, Sheriff Bree Taggert finds a brutal double homicide. One of the victims is Eugene Oscar, the bitter and corrupt former deputy she recently forced out of the department. Working with criminal investigator Matt Flynn, Bree discovers that she isn’t the only one who had a troubling history with Eugene. But someone doesn’t want Bree digging up the past. She becomes the target of a stranger’s sick and devious campaign calculated to destroy her reputation, career, family, and new relationship with Matt.

When Sheriff Bree Taggert discovers the body of a young woman floating near the bank of the Scarlet River, a note in her abandoned car suggests suicide. The autopsy reveals a different story. Holly Thorpe was dead long before she dropped off the bridge and hit the water. As Bree and her investigator Matt Flynn delve into the case, secrets in Holly’s personal life complicate their efforts to solve the murder.

After Sheriff Bree Taggert’s takedown of cold-blooded murderer Travis Ekin, his family vows revenge. Travis’s mother and brothers are every bit as violent, and Bree is in their crosshairs. To complicate matters, Bree’s best friend, Dana Romano, walks into her date’s home and finds him shot in the chest. Dana tangles with an unidentified intruder, but he escapes through the back door. The crime scene is in another police department’s jurisdiction, and the lead investigator focuses on Dana as the prime suspect.

Roz is young, penniless and pregnant. All she wants is to be the perfect mother to her child, but the more she thinks about her own chaotic upbringing, the more certain she is that the best life for her baby is as far away as possible from her hometown in Ireland. Determined to do the right thing, Roz joins an elite adoption service and can’t believe her luck. Within days she is jetting to New York to meet a celebrity power couple desperate for a child of their own.

My twin brother is the person I’m closest to. But now he frightens me. We both have the same white-blond hair and clear blue eyes. All our lives people have stared at us. So we had to be there for each other. Bryce tried to protect me from our dad. But when he died, I thought I was finally safe. After the funeral, Bryce takes me aside: “Since Dad’s passing . . . well, it’s been going on for a few years now. I’ve been keeping a huge secret from you.”

A sociopath cuts a path of destruction across the rural Midwest. In pursuit: a vigilante detective and a prosecutor, one bent on revenge, the other on virtue. And in the wrong place at the wrong time: a doctor in a life-and-death moral struggle. Barreling toward justice, their fates converge in these four interlocking short stories of cunning misdirection by internationally bestselling author Jeffery Deaver.

A pair of hikers find a tarp-wrapped body in a clearing in the woods. When a search in the surrounding area yields two more, Sheriff Bree Taggert knows they’ve stumbled onto a serial killer’s dumping ground. With the help of investigator Matt Flynn, Bree works the case. They go to interview Jana, the best friend of one of the victims. But when they arrive at her apartment, it’s been ransacked and set on fire. And Jana is missing.

For more than twenty-five years, Philadelphia homicide detective Bree Taggert has tucked away the nightmarish childhood memories of her parents’ murder-suicide…. Until her younger sister, Erin, is killed in a crime that echoes that tragic night: innocent witnesses and a stormy marriage that ended in gunfire. There’s just one chilling difference. Erin’s husband, Justin, has vanished.

The first time single father Spence Kimball set eyes on Natasha Stanislaski, he was floored by her exotic beauty. But the former ballet dancer turned toy shop owner had a fiery temperament that kept men safely at bay. Sensing a hidden wound, Spence and his little girl joined forces to find a way into her closely guarded heart. For Spence realized he'd do anything to tame Natasha's fears...and show her how to love.

Harmony Black is much more than your average FBI special agent. In addition to being a practicing witch, she's also an operative for Vigilant Lock, an off-the-books program created to battle occult threats - by any means necessary. Despite her dedication to fighting the monsters threatening society, Harmony has become deeply conflicted about her job. Her last investigation resulted in a pile of dead bodies, and she suspects the wrong people are being punished for it.

During a vicious heat wave, a county maintenance worker stumbles upon two suspicious suitcases abandoned by the side of the road. Sheriff Bree Taggert responds to find two bodies stuffed inside the luggage. The press demands action. The community is on edge. Suddenly, Bree is at the center of a media firestorm. In Oregon, a senator’s daughter goes missing. FBI Special Agent Mercy Kilpatrick agrees to keep the politically sensitive case on the down-low.

At the grisly murder scene of a teen prostitute, Virginia state trooper Riley Tatum's past roars back to haunt her. When she was a teenage runaway, she was kidnapped, drugged, and left unconscious on the streets. She has no memories of what happened, only strange recurring dreams of two men playing cards. Former FBI agent Clay Bowman, Riley's old flame, is Shield Security's newest member. He's plagued by the unsolved case of a serial killer nicknamed the Shark who murdered girls as part of a sadistic poker game.

One is Paul Offenbach, a sadistic crime boss with a life-threatening bullet wound. The other is his hostage, Dr. Stuart Collier, now faced with a harrowing ethical quandary. Mile by mile, as a calculated battle of wills and wits plays out, the killer plots his next move. So does the doctor, sworn to do no harm but desperate to escape.

Gather round as today’s most diabolically clever authors twist simple moments into otherworldly horrors. An empty baby stroller. A scratching underneath the bed. A farmhouse in the moonlight. With an unnerving sense of the macabre, these stories transform our greatest fears into bone-chilling realities.