A prequel to the nationally best-selling Jeff Resnick Mysteries, this collection of short stories chronicles Jeff's (and his brother, Richard Albert's) backstory. What forces molded these men into the people they are today? Find out in these 11 thought-provoking tales that span from Jeff and Richard's first meeting until two years before the first book in the series, Murder on the Mind. These stories are not mysteries.

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the infamous case of January Jacobs, who was discovered in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist. But she’s always been haunted by the feeling that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.

In the summer of 2006, Emma Price watched helplessly as her six-year-old son's red coat was fished out of the River Ouse. It was the tragic story of the year - a little boy, Aiden, wandered away from school during a terrible flood, fell into the river, and drowned. His body was never recovered. Ten years later Emma has finally rediscovered the joy in life...until Aiden returns.

Se7en meets The Silence of the Lambs in this dark and twisting novel from the author Jeffery Deaver called "a talented writer with a delightfully devious mind". For over five years, the Four Monkey Killer has terrorized the residents of Chicago. When his body is found, the police quickly realize he was on his way to deliver one final message, one that proves he has taken another victim, who may still be alive.

Years ago, in the town of Saxon Falls, young Kelsey Willard disappeared and was presumed dead. The tragedy left her family with a fractured life - a mother out to numb the pain, a father losing a battle with his own private demons, and a sister desperate for closure. But now another teenage girl has gone missing. It's ripping open old wounds for the Willards, dragging them back into a painful past, and leaving them unprepared for where it will take them next.

No one is more familiar with Savannah's dark side than homicide detective and native resident Elise Sandburg. She's been haunted for years by her own mysterious past: She was abandoned as a baby in one of the city's ancient cemeteries, and it’s rumored that she is the illegitimate daughter of an infamous Savannah witch doctor. The local Gullah culture of voodoo and magic is one that few outsiders can understand, least of all Elise’s new partner.

"I should have tried harder." Those final words are scrawled across a note that’s been pinned to a man's remains. Pulled to a crime scene in the middle of the night, Detective Marx struggles to unravel the mystery behind a message written by the victim. A suicide note...or an admission of guilt? Before he can discover the truth, what seems to be a random act of violence becomes something far more dangerous. With very little evidence and even less time, Detective Marx searches for the common thread between the victims, but his efforts might put him directly in the killer’s path.

Detective Steven Paul has had the same nightmare for as long as he can remember, a strange symbol figuring prominently into his terror. He decided long ago that the recurring dreams are nothing more than an unfortunate side effect of his often traumatic profession. Until, that is, he's assigned to the case of Emily Lindsey, the beautiful, elusive, and controversial blogger found alone, holding a hunting knife, and covered in someone else's blood.

He slips into their homes at night and walks silently into bedrooms where women lie sleeping, unaware of the horrors they soon will endure. The precision of the killer's methods suggests he is a deranged man of medicine, propelling the Boston newspapers and the frightened public to name him "The Surgeon". The cops' only clue rests with another surgeon, the victim of a nearly identical crime. Two years ago, Dr. Catherine Cordell fought back and killed her attacker before he could complete his assault.

Twenty-three years ago, Anna North survived a living nightmare. A madman kidnapped her, cut off her pinkie, then vanished. Today Anna lives in New Orleans, writing dark thrillers under another name. She finally feels safe. Suddenly Anna’s quiet life takes a frightening turn. Letters start to arrive from a disturbed fan. Anna is followed, her apartment broken into. Then a close friend disappears. Anna turns to homicide detective Quentin Malone, but Malone’s more concerned with the recent murders of two women in the French Quarter.

Now available in one volume! The original Peyton Brooks mystery series box set! Get all eight of the popular Peyton Brooks' Mysteries in a single box set, including the prequel, Murder in the Painted Lady. The Peyton Brooks' Mystery series follows the career of San Francisco Homicide Detective Peyton Brooks and her partner Marco D'Angelo as they fight crime in the City by the Bay.

She's young. She's beautiful. And her corpse, laid out in the office of Boston medical examiner Cat Novak, betrays no secrets - except for a notebook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. When a second victim is discovered, Cat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the city streets: a shadowy madman without mercy or apparent motive. The police are sceptical. The mayor won't listen. And Cat's chief suspect is one of the city's most prominent citizens.

Jill Ellington's twin sister hasn't spoken a word since she allegedly murdered her husband, and her three-year-old son is missing. No one in the small, idyllic town of Paradise saw or heard a single thing. The chief of police already has Jill's twin convicted and her nephew dead and buried. Jill is going to need a miracle to uncover the truth.

In 1922 a farmer in Adamant, Arkansas, awakes to a noise on his roof and finds his snow-blanketed yard marked with thousands of cloven footprints. The prints vanish with the melting snow...only to reappear 70 years later near the gruesome killing of Rachel DeLaune. Years after her sister’s unsolved murder, New Orleans tattoo artist Sarah DeLaune is haunted by the mysteries of her past. Sarah has always believed that her sister was killed by a man named Ashe Cain. But no one else had ever seen Ashe. He had "appeared" to Sarah when she needed a friend the most, only to vanish on the night of her sister’s murder.

When Jed Allen wakes up at a desk in New York City, he has no idea who he is. The evidence around him shows he's a hotshot architect, and a photo in his wallet reveals he has a beautiful girlfriend named Cassie. But when he goes home to seek her help, Cassie is nowhere to be found. Self-penned notes remind Jed that he's been suffering bouts of amnesia since a car crash nine months ago. As he plays private detective with the facts of his own life, he discovers more and more about his character.

Twenty-three years ago, Anna North survived a living nightmare. A madman kidnapped her, cut off her pinkie, then vanished. Today Anna lives in New Orleans, writing dark thrillers under another name. She finally feels safe. Suddenly Anna’s quiet life takes a frightening turn. Letters start to arrive from a disturbed fan. Anna is followed, her apartment broken into. Then a close friend disappears. Anna turns to homicide detective Quentin Malone, but Malone’s more concerned with the recent murders of two women in the French Quarter.

Private Investigator Smokey Dalton works for Memphis, Tennessee’s black community. He has almost no interaction with the white hierarchy, even though they exist only blocks away. So he’s surprised the day a white woman walks into his Beale Street office. Laura Hathaway has sought him out because he’s a beneficiary in her mother’s will, and Laura wants to know why. So does Smokey. He’s never heard of the Hathaways, but his search will take him on a journey that will change everything he’s ever known.

In 1922 a farmer in Adamant, Arkansas, awakes to a noise on his roof and finds his snow-blanketed yard marked with thousands of cloven footprints. The prints vanish with the melting snow...only to reappear 70 years later near the gruesome killing of Rachel DeLaune. Years after her sister’s unsolved murder, New Orleans tattoo artist Sarah DeLaune is haunted by the mysteries of her past. Sarah has always believed that her sister was killed by a man named Ashe Cain. But no one else had ever seen Ashe. He had "appeared" to Sarah when she needed a friend the most, only to vanish on the night of her sister’s murder.

Detective Matthew Bennett doesn't believe in ghosts. So when the spirit of a murdered child leads him to her body, he's shaken to the core - and taken off the case. Unable to explain his vision, or to let go of the investigation, Matthew turns to renowned medium Kiernan Fitzpatrick. Though he has doubts about Kiernan's claims to communicate with the dead, Matt is nevertheless drawn to the handsome psychic, who awakens feelings he thought were long-buried.

The noises, faint, fleeting, whispered into her consciousness like wraiths passing in the night. Twelve-year-old Erin Willit opened her eyes to darkness lit only by the dim green nightlight near her closet door and the faint glow of a street lamp through her front window. She felt her forehead wrinkle, the fingers of one hand curl as she tried to discern what had awakened her. Something was not right.... Annie Kingston moves to Grove Landing for safety and quiet - and comes face to face with evil.

A woman's desperate search to find out what happened to the daughter who disappeared seven years ago leads her from a quaint collectibles shop in New Orleans into a murky Louisiana bayou and the shadowy ancestral home of an eccentric dollmaker whose "portrait" dolls resemble missing children. Set in the steamy, violent world of the Louisiana Gulf Coast, The Dollmaker is the story of obsession, redemption, and a love reborn from the ashes of despair.

At first, they struggle to escape. Then a torrent of blows rains down upon their bodies until their eyes cloud over in final agony. The killer shows no remorse - just a twisted need to witness each victim's last terrified moments. Public defender Rachel Wainwright is struggling to reopen a decades-old case, convinced that the wrong man is in prison. Homicide detective Deke Morgan doesn't want to agree. But if Rachel's hunch is correct, whoever fatally bludgeoned young, beautiful Annie Dawson 30 years ago could be the source of a new string of brutal slayings.

New Orleans Detective Quinn Conners is haunted by her father’s whiskey-soaked, last words—that he solved the Hudson murder and kidnapping. It wasn’t the first time he’d made that drunken claim, and she didn’t believe him. Twenty-four hours later she found him dead by his own hand.

Frieda Klein is a solitary, incisive psychotherapist who spends her sleepless nights walking along the ancient rivers that have been forced underground in modern London. She believes that the world is a messy, uncontrollable place. The abduction of five-year-old Matthew Farraday provokes a national outcry and a desperate police hunt. And when his face is splashed over the newspapers, Frieda cannot ignore the coincidence: one of her patients has been having dreams in which he has a hunger for just such a child.

Vicki Nelson, formerly of Toronto’s homicide unit and now a private detective, witnesses the first of many vicious attacks that begin plaguing the city of Toronto. As death follows unspeakable death, Vicki, in an attempt to stop these forces of dark magic, is forced to renew her relationship with her former partner, Mike Celluci - along with another, unexpected ally…. Henry Fitzroy, the illegitimate son of King Henry VIII, has learned over the course of his life how to blend with humans; how to deny the call for blood in his veins.

Every parent's nightmare becomes a reality for Kara Marshall when her daughter, Lindsay, vanishes from her bedroom during the night. The police suspect that the girl is just another moody teenage runaway, angry over leaving behind her school and friends because her family is moving. But Lindsay's recent eerie claim - that someone invaded her room when the house was opened to prospective buyers - drives Kara to fear the worst.

The facts are public knowledge: five people have been murdered. Each has died from a blow to the head. And the media-dubbed Prince Charming killer has left a “calling card” with each victim. A single thornless rose. But there’s another fact...one that the police haven’t made public. Something no one, except the killer and the police, should know. But Gabriel Donner does - and he can’t figure out why. All he knows is that he’s begun hearing voices, sleepwalking and dreaming vividly of the murders...as they happen.

Fegan has been a "hard man" - an IRA killer in Northern Ireland. Now that peace has come, he is being haunted day and night by 12 ghosts: a mother and infant, a schoolboy, a butcher, an RUC constable, and seven other of his innocent victims. In order to appease them, he's going to have to kill the men who gave him orders. As he's working his way down the list, he encounters a woman who may offer him redemption; she has borne a child to an RUC officer and is an outsider too.

From best-selling author Kay Hooper comes a thrilling tale with a paranormal bent and a touch of romance. Cassie Neill has a powerful but troubling gift. She can see inside the minds of serial killers as they are planning their crimes. Tormented by her ability, she takes refuge in a secluded North Carolina town. But there’s no escaping her visions, and when a body surfaces just where she predicted, Cassie is suddenly a suspect.

All ATF Agent Jack Donovan wants out of life is to do his job and work on his strained relationship with his daughter Jessie after a nasty divorce. But in a ruthless act of revenge by a charismatic madman, Jessie is kidnapped and buried alive, with barely enough oxygen to sustain her. Now the only man who can save her, the only man who knows where to find her, has just been shot dead - and the clock is ticking... So what's a father to do?