Showing results by author "L. T. Vargus" in All Categories

Love and danger. Sex and violence. The heart wants what the heart wants. When a couple on a crime spree slashes down the east coast into Florida, the perfect vacation goes horribly wrong. Armed robbery. Kidnapping. Murder. Innocent travelers get swept up in the violent wave. Desire runs from light to dark. Loving thoughts turn to dark fantasies. Ellie is a college student on spring break. After years living under the shadows of controlling parents, this wallflower is finally free — or trying to be. This vacation will be an inflection point in her life, she knows.

This audiobook includes the first four thrillers in the Violet Darger series: Dead End Girl, Image in a Cracked Mirror, Killing Season, and The Last Victim. A pause-resisting thriller series packed with heart-stopping suspense. Fans of John Sandford, Michael Connelly, Karin Slaughter, and Lisa Gardner should get to know Violet Darger.

New crimes lead FBI profiler Victor Loshak to revisit former scenes and witnesses in the Las Vegas area. The evidence suggests the return of a notorious and brutal serial killer from years ago - the one who got away. Loshak conceals his work from his partner, Violet Darger, and tries desperately to stay one step ahead of both her and the murderer. Leonard Stump is back. Maybe. And things are about to get so much worse.

When Gloria Carmichael’s body is found broken and bleeding on the sidewalk just days after knocking on Detective Charlie Winters’ door begging for help to locate her father’s will, Charlie’s instinct is confirmed: Her latest case is about more than just a simple family feud. The Carmichaels are famous in Salem Island for their large family and charitable work, but, moments before she died, beautiful, trustworthy eldest daughter Gloria called Charlie to say she had uncovered a terrible secret that would break the mystery of her father’s death wide open.

Two days. Fourteen dead. The next victim could be you. The first bullet punches through the windshield of an SUV. A head shot. The driver's death is instantaneous. And it's only the beginning. A sniper along I-20 kills eight and causes a 36 car pileup. Brutal. Efficient. The next morning, the same individual stalks through a grocery store parking lot with a handgun. He takes out six innocent shoppers along with the store's front window before fleeing without a trace.

Will Violet Darger agree to a face-to-face meeting with the man who shot her? Still awaiting trial, the infamous serial killer Leonard Stump has hinted at the locations of additional bodies - more desert graves waiting to be uncovered. He wants to talk, but he has one condition. Violet Darger must be present at the interview. Now, the pressure is on. Should Darger head to Vegas and sit down with Stump? Everyone else seems to think so.

Her body seems to hover above the forest floor. Arms and legs torn away from the trunk. A bloody stump mounted upright on a skewer. Not just a corpse. A warning. The most recent body was discovered in the woods just beyond a logging cabin. Dismembered. Put on display. Ghostly pale skin stark against the forest's green.

When a search party trawling Salem Island find a girl’s body curled on the damp earth, the hunt for missing waitress Emma Jacobis grinds to a devastating halt. The day before, Emma had come to Detective Charlie Winters convinced someone was watching her. In her trembling hand, she held a sketch of herself sleeping peacefully with the stuffed rabbit she’d had since she was a child. On the back, scrawled in black ink: You will be mine.

When three bodies turn up in a landfill outside of Philadelphia, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Pennsylvania to investigate. Right away there's a major complication. The emaciated corpses appear to have been starved to death. Darger arrives in time for the autopsies. As she watches the withered bodies laid out on the stainless steel slabs of the morgue, their faces crusted with sandy soil, skin pulled taut around knobby cheekbones, she thinks: what kind of a person could carry out such harsh acts?

When multiple murders terrorize a small town college campus, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to rural Michigan to investigate. As soon as she arrives, a grim history begins to emerge. The crimes have progressed steadily over a period of 18 months. Indecent exposure to stalking. Stalking to rape. Rape to murder. The UNSUB's emphasis on power and control rapidly verges toward full blown sadism. He grows ever bolder, ever more vicious.

When a homemade explosive device detonates on the set of a network sitcom, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Hollywood to investigate. Her gut tells her this is only the first of what will be multiple attacks. Her gut is right. Darger enters the strange world of the studio lot. Elaborate sets surround her. Actors and crew members stream past in all directions. The excitement vibrates in the air—the passion necessary to capture the collective dreams of a culture within the lens of a camera.

Special Agent Violet Darger must make sense of this savagery - figure out how brutality like this could happen in rural Michigan. The victim had been living the American dream. A small-business owner who built a construction empire. Started a family. Coached youth hockey. He seemed to have it all. But his surface life didn’t tell the full story. He carried dark secrets to the grave. Left clues which offer more questions than answers, clues that seem to lead Darger to Detroit.

Her body floats. A bloated thing half atop the river. Naked. Pale. Mouth and eyes open wide. When two fishermen discover a corpse floating in the Clackamas river, profiler Violet Darger heads to rural Oregon to hunt another serial killer. What she discovers in the woods might change the course of her life. What secrets does the water conceal? The girl in the water marks the third such case in the area - all drowned with superficial stab wounds and discovered in a body of water - and Darger feels certain she won't be the last. The corpses are badly decomposed.

When a second body turns up in a truck stop parking lot, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to rural North Carolina to investigate. These crimes are quickly connected to more. And more. And more. The scope of the crisis balloons. Soon, a task force is formed to work a serial murder case spanning a 1,500 mile stretch of the interstate.

The first blast takes out an actor from a string of famous coffee commercials. A plain cardboard box in the mail blows when he opens it—pumps hot nails through his face. So begins the series of mail bombs that beckons FBI profiler Violet Darger to New York. The bomber's plan is meticulous—an ever-growing spectacle of gruesome violence meant to spread his cryptic message piece by piece. And the clock is ticking. Starting at midnight tonight, a bomb will go off roughly every eight hours, and a target will be neutralized.

Down the beach, she can just make out the rusting hulk of the Ferris wheel through the dawn mist. The hairs prickle on her neck as she drags her focus back to the chestnut hair fanned out in the shallow water at her feet, to the grains of sand decorating the beautiful girl’s white cheeks like freckles.

When a serial arsonist terrorizes Los Angeles county, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads over to California to investigate. The fires keep coming faster. The body count rises, and the threat hangs over the city as thick as the smog. The case file is brutal - stuffed with photographs of charred bodies, human faces melted beyond recognition. And when Darger gets up close to the crimes - the real thing - that sense of savagery only intensifies.

Thousands of girls go missing every year in Las Vegas. Taken. Bought and sold. Or worse. These lost girls summon FBI Profiler Violet Darger to Sin City. There are fresh dead to sort through - two bodies burned beyond recognition in the trunk of a sedan - and there’s reason to believe there are missing girls waiting to be saved. Rumors swirl that a legendary killer is responsible for these crimes: an escaped prisoner with a personal grudge against Darger. One who disappeared for 20 years. If Darger finds the killer in time, the girls will live. If not...

A family has been massacred in their home, a display of violence both brutal and bizarre. The details prove curious - not only are the bodies savaged way beyond anything found at a normal murder scene, every mirror in the house has been shattered. The spectacle shocks a peaceful island community, and when local police turn to the FBI for assistance, Agent Violet Darger finds herself working another harrowing crime scene. She stares, once more, into the abyss, and mankind's warped reflection stares back.

A serial killer stalks women in rural Ohio. He is deranged but brilliant, known only by the grotesque nickname the media has given him - The Doll Parts Killer. The name is apt. He dismembers his victims and leaves them in garbage bags in public places. A residential neighborhood. Next to a roller rink. Behind a Burger King. The investigation is a disaster. No physical evidence. Unreliable witnesses. To make matters worse, the FBI has lost contact with the star profiler working the case.