When a private plane whisks CDC epidemiologist Madeline Hamilton to Washington, DC, for an urgent medical symposium, she knows something significant is underway - but she doesn’t expect to face the most disturbing medical mystery of her career. A debilitating neurological toxin has stricken the children of several political families, and one of them is the son of US President Anna Moreland.

In Los Angeles, FBI counterterrorism agent Quinn Traynor receives an urgent call from CDC agent Madeline Hamilton. She’s discovered the first victim of a lethal, unfamiliar virus. Their joint investigation uncovers an imminent bio-terror attack, and their only hope is to identify the terrorists carrying the disease. With just two days remaining before it’s too late, the FBI and the CDC race to prevent a pandemic. The ensuing nightmare will hit closer to home than they ever anticipated, and one of them will pay an unimaginable price for protecting the country.

After John disappeared while hunting—presumed dead from a bear attack—Cameron found the crime photos. His role in the recent Seattle serial murders was discovered. The media destroyed her reputation. She lost her dental practice, is on the brink of losing her home. Everyone has a secret. But if her husband could hide the unimaginable from her, who’s to say he’s truly dead?

When Detective Madison Harper arrives at a remote summer camp in Shadow Falls, Northern California, her heart breaks for Jenny, the sweet little girl last seen splashing in the lake with her friends before she vanished. Peering into the silent cabins filled with rows of neatly made beds, Madison knows this idyllic place is hiding a terrible secret.

It’s been five years since Detective Amanda Steele’s life was derailed by the tragic death of her young daughter. The small community of Dumfries, Virginia, may have moved on, but Amanda cannot. When the man who killed Lindsey is found murdered, she can’t keep away from the case.

The beautiful young woman is perfectly still, curled up in the trunk of the car, her long dark hair hiding her face. Her cotton blouse has ridden up a little, revealing two small dots an inch apart on her back. Just like the others. Guilt has kept FBI Agent Tori Hunter away from her home in Manchester Bay, Minnesota for 20 years, ever since her twin sister disappeared on the Fourth of July, when the girls should have been together. But when she receives an anonymous newspaper clipping about another missing girl, Genevieve, Tori is dragged back to the past.

In the remote forests of Stillwater, Minnesota, you can scream for days and no one will hear you. So when the bodies of two 15-year-old girls are discovered frozen in the snow, Special Agent Nikki Hunt is sure the killer is local: Someone knew where to hide the girls and thought they would never be found. Though Nikki hasn’t been home in 20 years, she knows she must take over the case.

When Penny Matthews, a seven-year-old girl with blonde curls and a gap-toothed smile, goes missing in the Appalachian mountains, Detective Ellie Reeves is called straight to the scene. According to Penny’s parents, their daughter vanished after a picnic by the creek. All that’s left behind is a pink friendship bracelet etched with “Penny”.

When a man is shot in the head, Bree Taggert and her new partner, veteran detective Dana Romano, respond to the call. They break the news to the victim’s ex-wife and learn the estranged couple’s five-year-old daughter was supposed to have been with him. What starts as a murder investigation quickly morphs into a desperate search for a missing child. The case stirs memories of Bree’s own traumatizing childhood. To find the little girl, Bree will have to relive her own terrifying past.

In the darkness of a cold December morning, Detective Kim Stone steps through the doors of Halesowen Police Station. She’s about to meet her team for the first time. When the body of a young man is found beheaded and staked to the ground in a secluded area of the Clent Hills, Kim and her new squad rush to the crime scene. This audio edition includes exclusive bonus content.

When secretary Annie Parkes is snatched from the street outside of her workplace, David Kane is tasked with finding her. Strong, highly skilled, and secretive, he’s a loner and an outsider; the only man the military trust to find Annie before her kidnappers make good on their promise to kill her. But as Kane pulls Annie from a derelict building, gunshots ringing through the deserted streets around them, he realizes rescuing her is just the beginning. He needs to keep her close to find out who is behind her capture, and to keep her safe.

It’s been a decade since Trumanell Branson disappeared, leaving only a bloody handprint behind. Her pretty face still hangs like a watchful queen on the posters on the walls of the town’s Baptist church, the police station, and in the high school. They all promise the same thing: We will find you. Meanwhile, Tru's brother, Wyatt, lives as a pariah in the desolation of the old family house, cleared of wrongdoing by the police but tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion and in a new documentary about the crime.

When Detective Casey White discovers the body of a beautiful teenage girl in a white nightgown near the shoreline in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a familiar fear floods through her. Could this be Hannah, her sweet, blue-eyed daughter snatched from home 14 years ago? But it only takes one look to confirm that the girl with dark bruising around her throat is another family’s tragedy. Putting her own grief aside, Casey digs into unsolved missing child cases in the area. The victim is Cheryl Parry, one of two little girls taken during a family beach vacation nine years ago.

Blake Wilder is plagued with nightmares from her dark and twisted past. Fourteen years ago, her entire family was taken from her. Her parents murdered and her sister taken. At the age of 22, Blake joined the FBI in hopes of one day discovering the truth behind the mysteries of her own past.

As though stumbling out of a nightmare, rookie cop Alex Kincaid awakens in her car, dazed and confused. Parked on an unfamiliar street, she's outside an unfamiliar home with no recollection of how she got there, and no memory of the night before. Then, her nightmare becomes reality. Alex's first call of the day takes her to the same street, to the same house, where a man has been brutally killed. Alex thinks the man is a perfect stranger - until she finds herself the main suspect in his murder.

When a woman is found brutally murdered on Austin’s lakeside hike-and-bike trail, investigative reporter Bailey Rhoads turns up on the scene demanding access and answers. She tries to pry information out of the lead Detective Jacob Merritt, but this case is unlike any he’s ever seen, and nothing adds up. With the pressure building, Jacob knows the last thing he needs is a romantic entanglement, but he can’t convince himself to stay away from Bailey.

There are people in Edgewater, Oregon, who think that twenty years ago, Rachel Gaston got away with murder. But Rachel still has no idea how a foolish teenaged game turned deadly - or who replaced her soft pellet air gun with a real weapon. When a figure jumped out at her from the darkness, she fired without thinking. By the time she recognized her half-brother, Luke, it was too late.

When a local girl falls prey to a sadistic serial killer, Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson and her lover, FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin, find themselves in a joint investigation pursuing a vicious murderer. The Southern Strangler is slaughtering his way through the Southeast, leaving a gruesome memento at each crime scene – the prior victim’s severed hand.

Twenty years ago, ex-beauty queen Didi Storm worked the Vegas strip as a celebrity impersonator. Now, in death, she’s finally getting the publicity she always craved. To the police, it looks like suicide, or a stunt gone wrong. Her estranged daughter, Remmi, knows the answer isn’t so simple. Though dressed in Didi’s clothes and wig, the broken body on the sidewalk isn’t Didi...

Ellery Hathaway knows a thing or two about serial killers, but not through her police training. She's an officer in sleepy Woodbury, Massachusetts, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers. No one there knows she was once victim number 17 in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only victim who lived. When three people disappear from her town in three years, all around her birthday - the day she was kidnapped so long ago - Ellery fears someone knows her secret. Someone very dangerous.

As raging floodwaters engulf her Louisiana hometown, Nola Landry is stranded on high ground, the unwitting witness to the brutal murder of three fellow survivors. Finally rescued in the aftermath of the storm, no one is willing to believe a story as horrific as hers - until three FBI agents arrive on the scene...one of whom Nola knows very well. Tate Benton has been tracking the so-called Stormchaser serial killer for months, never expecting the trail might lead him home, or to the woman he cannot forget.

Nobody knows what happened to Sarah Cook. The beautiful blonde teenager disappeared 15 years ago, the same night her parents were brutally murdered in their suburban Ohio home. Her boyfriend, Brad Stockton - black and from the wrong side of the tracks - was convicted of the murders and is now on death row. Though he's maintained his innocence all along, the clock is running out. His execution is only weeks away when his devoted sister insists she spied Sarah at an area gas station.

Secrets and lies can’t stay buried forever in Cedar Valley. In the summer, hikers and campers pack the small Colorado town’s meadows and fields. And in the winter, skiers and snowboarders take over the mountains. Season by season, year after year, time passes, and the lies, like the aspens and evergreens that surround the town, take root and spread deep. Now, someone has uncovered the lies, and it is his murder that continues a chain of events that began almost 40 years ago.

It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.

Lyla Moody loves her sleepy little town of Sweet Mountain, Georgia. She likes her job as a receptionist for her uncle's private investigative firm, her fellow true-crime obsessed Jane Doe members are the friends she's always wanted, and her parents just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. But recently, with her best friend Melanie on vacation and her ex-boyfriend and horrible cousin becoming an item and moving in next door to her, her idyllic life is on the fritz. The cherry on top of it all is finding Carol, a member of the club, dead and shoved into a suitcase.

As an employee of MacBain Securities and Solutions, Claire Kelly can certainly hold her own. Armed with an impressive set of covert skills, she’s more than prepared to tackle any job that comes her way...except one involving Cooper Lockman. Cooper and Claire used to work together before his feelings for her sent him packing to Europe for six long years. But now he’s back and determined to ignore the still-smoldering heat that lingers between them. Their current mission: go undercover together at a California high school to root out the mastermind behind a prostitution ring.

Officer Luz is lucky she still has a job after tasering a male colleague where it counts the most. Sure, he had it coming - which is why the police chief is giving Megan a second chance. The catch? Her new partner can't carry a gun, can't drive a cruiser, and can't recite the Miranda Rights. Because her new partner is a big furry police dog. So that's what the chief meant when he called Megan's partner a real bitch...With Brigit out on the beat, Megan is writing up enough tickets to wallpaper the whole station.

Sam Acquillo is at the end of the line: he's a middle-aged corporate dropout living in a ramshackle cottage in Southampton's North Sea. But then the old lady next door ends up floating dead in her bathtub, and it seems that Sam is the only one who wonders why.

When a vibrant young woman is found in bed by her hotshot businessman husband, carved from belly to throat with a very sharp knife, the elite Robbery-Homicide Division of the LAPD responds in full force. Best-case scenario for lead Detective Lena Gamble: Nikki Brant's husband killed her, case closed, and on to the next crime scene before the ravenous Hollywood media can get their lurid tabloid machinery up and running.

Abby Cooper is a P.I., psychic intuitive. But her insight failed her when she didn't foresee the death of one of her clients - or that the lead investigator for the case is the gorgeous blind date she just met. Now, with the police suspicious of her abilities and a killer on the loose, Abby's future looks more uncertain than ever.

Brooklyn Sloane works as a special consultant to the FBI as one of the most adept profilers in the agency's history. She had been recruited at a relatively young age from her career in academics, but her colleagues have no idea the disturbing motive for her success.

When a private plane whisks CDC epidemiologist Madeline Hamilton to Washington, DC, for an urgent medical symposium, she knows something significant is underway - but she doesn’t expect to face the most disturbing medical mystery of her career. A debilitating neurological toxin has stricken the children of several political families, and one of them is the son of US President Anna Moreland.

Allison Smythe is barely clinging to sanity. After blaming and nearly killing an innocent man for her sister’s unsolved kidnapping, she’s ready to consider a fresh start. But just as she’s settled in a new city, she’s horrified to spot the villain who took her sibling residing peacefully on her street. Arguing with the police over the need for more evidence and with her therapist about her deteriorating mental health, Allison grits her teeth and attacks the dangerous problem alone. But the more she digs, the more questions she unearths…

Renowned criminal psychologist Bridget Bishop quit the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit after only two years on the job, exhausted and traumatized from facilitating the investigation and capture of one of the country’s most prolific serial killers.

Newlyweds Sam Statler and Annie Potter are head over heels, and excited to say good-bye to New York city and start a life together in Sam's sleepy hometown upstate. Or, it turns out, a life where Annie spends most of her time alone while Sam, her therapist husband, works long hours in his downstairs office, tending to the egos of his (mostly female) clientele. Little does Sam know that through a vent in his ceiling, every word of his sessions can be heard from the room upstairs.

It was Beth Katz’s serial killer father who made her like she is: a successful FBI agent and an unstoppable vigilante dedicated to hunting down murderers who have evaded capture. Beth will push herself to the limits to deliver justice. Even if it means killing those who deserve to die.

#1 Bestseller in Psychological Thrillers in Kindle Store!After years as a homicide investigator in a big city, Detective Sidney Becker accepts the position of police chief in her hometown—a peaceful mountain community in Oregon. Life is good. Beautiful scenery. Low crime. Close to family. Then a woman is found brutally murdered in the woods. The staging of the body resembles a victim found in the same area years earlier. The case went cold. Now the killer has come out of hiding. The only clue found at the crime scene is an origami butterfly with a handwritten verse inside. Sidney finds ...

Lieutenant Abby Mullen is no stranger to crisis. As the hostage negotiation instructor for the NYPD, she deals with worst-case scenarios every day. Nothing fazes her anymore. That all changes when she gets a call from Eden Fletcher, a fellow survivor of the infamous Wilcox cult. The two haven’t spoken since the night of a tragic, fiery massacre, when their paths diverged. But now Eden needs Abby’s help: someone has kidnapped her son and is demanding a $5 million ransom. As Abby throws herself into the case, she can’t help but wonder why the kidnapper has targeted Eden.

After she’s shot in the line of duty, Detective Carolina McKay returns to her hometown hoping to rebuild her life and conquer her demons. But before she can even unpack, a college student is found dead in a ditch. The crime scene looks familiar. Too familiar. Has the madman who terrorized Carolina’s childhood, reemerged? Or is a new killer copying those old murders?

On the run from their pasts, a man and a woman are forced together by the weather and by necessity. When a radio news broadcast reports that a body has been found further back along the road on which they are traveling, tensions rise and it's only so long before the truth must come out. But the truth is never quite what you imagine.