The shadow of the apartment complex looms overhead as we make our approach to the one building in the world I despise more than any other. “Come on, Alice,” I say as we cross the wide city street, while the pedestrian light blinks at us to hurry. “We’re running late enough as it is.” We […]
I stop running. Everyone is shouting and my ears don’t like it. I want to go home. Mummy would say, ‘You poor bunny’, and make me a bed on the sofa. My body feels all hurty and hot. ‘Mrs Fey?’ I go and find her. ‘Can I take my jumper off, please?’ She does her […]
Something isn’t right. I know that as soon as I wake from a thick, muddy sleep. I know that even before I am aware of the throbbing at my temples. It’s not the stab of disappointment I get every morning when I realise I’m not in bed with Matt, that I’m no longer living, or […]
‘How did you find me?’ the woman asked. There was a tremor in her voice; her face was frightened. Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdóttir felt her interest quicken, though as an old hand at this game she had learned to expect a nervous reaction from those she interviewed, even when they had nothing to hide. Being […]
THOUGH ROBIN ELLACOTT’S TWENTY-FIVE YEARS of life had seen their moments of drama and incident, she had never before woken up in the certain knowledge that she would remember the coming day for as long as she lived. Shortly after midnight, her long-term boyfriend, Matthew, had proposed to her under the statue of Eros in […]
“Run and don’t look back.” Shots peppered the undergrowth, and splintered trees showered Paige Allen with bark. She strangled a scream and gaped at the crimson patch spreading across the front of her fiancé’s shirt. “I’m not leaving you.” She grabbed Dawson’s arm, willing him to move. “Go!” Dawson stared at her with unfocused eyes […]
At seven o’clock on that night in March, during a thunderless but heavy rain pounding as loud as an orchestra of kettledrums, Sara Holdsteck finally left the offices of Paradise Real Estate, carrying her briefcase in her left hand, open purse slung over her left shoulder, right hand free for a cross-body draw of the […]
ONE anne can feel the acid churning in her stomach and creeping up her throat; her head is swimming. She’s had too much to drink. Cynthia has been topping her up all night. Anne had meant to keep herself to a limit, but she’d let things slide—she didn’t know how else she was supposed to […]
A voice. It floats over the shoulder of the woman in front of me, words never intended for my ears. My brother’s girlfriend is speaking to my mother, the milk-soft nape of her neck exposed by the overhead lights as she leans in close. Her tone may be low and confidential but I’m standing just […]
Life had been difficult for Allison Cortland, particularly the past thirty-two years. She stepped, one by one, out of her shoes. The grass was cold even with the setting sun doing all within its power to extend a little lingering warmth and light as it dropped behind the trees on this late October day. The […]
May 31, 2004 I’M NOT SURPRISED IN THE slightest. Sure I went to bed last night hoping, and even dreamed about it, but just because I want something to happen doesn’t mean it will. Jack Dawson will not end up alive in the end. Yes I’m still bitter about that seven years later, and my […]
ONE Emma TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2012 My computer is winking at me knowingly when I sit down at my desk. I touch the keyboard, and a photo of Paul appears on my screen. It’s the one I took of him in Rome on our honeymoon, eyes full of love across a table in the Campo […]
oday’s errand had become routine for the woman who was currently calling herself Chris Taylor. She’d gotten up much earlier than she liked, then dismantled and stowed her usual nighttime precautions. It was a real pain to set everything up in the evening only to take it down first thing in the morning, but it […]
This house was made for someone without a soul. So I guess it makes sense that my mother wanted it so badly. I can imagine how her eyes lit up when she walked through the five-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath new construction. I’ll bet she thinks this house is the answer to what’s wrong with us. When Tom, […]
She’s sitting at the bus stop checking the likes on her Instagram feed and doesn’t even notice the man with the gun until he’s almost next to her. She could have dropped her school bag and run across the marshes. She’s a nimble thirteen-yearold and she knows all the swamps and quicksands of Plum Island. […]
IT WAS JANUARY IN CONNECTICUT, AND THE SNOW HADN’T stopped falling in what felt like forever. It gathered in the window wells, in the hollows between the bricks of the rebuilt sciences building. It hung from the boughs of trees, tucked itself up in the root systems below. I shook it from my wool cap […]
The techs tell him the girl on the other side of the glass hasn’t said a word since they brought her in. It doesn’t surprise him at first, not with the traumas she’s been through, but watching her now from behind the one-way mirror, he starts to question that assessment. She sits slumped in the […]
A young blond woman ran along a quiet tree-lined Bel-Air street at dusk. She kept her head up and her steps even and strong. The street was in the ɻat part of Bel-Air just north of Sunset, a neighborhood with big old houses built as mansions by movie and television people in the 1950s and […]
The sun vanished below the horizon as the girl crested the rise of Old Barrons Road. Night, and she still had three miles to go. The air here went blue at dusk, purplish and cold, a light that blurred details as if one were looking through smoke. Squinting, the girl cast a glance back at […]
“Are you still not sleeping?” Jessica Nobles shook her head numbly and lifted her gaze to Dr. Knox. “The dreams keep me up at night. Even with medication, I wake up terrified.” Her husband Owen reached for her hand, but she pulled away, her attention focused on the doctor. “With every dream I have, Jacob’s […]
You – Caroline Kepnes
Fifty-Fifty – Steve Cavanagh
We Hunt the Flame – Hafsah Faizal
One of Us is Next – Karen M. McManus
Only Ashes Remain – Rebecca Schaeffer
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder – Holly Jackson
A Tale of Magic… – Chris Colfer
Hero at the Fall – Alwyn Hamilton
Ember Queen – Laura Sebastian
The Rise of Kyoshi – F.C. Yee
The Lost Future of Pepperharrow – Natasha Pulley
Maurice Leblanc – The Confessions of Arsene Lupin
Lethal Agent – Kyle Mills, Vince Flynn
The Chain – Adrian McKinty
Lock Every Door – Riley Sager
Cliff’s Edge – Meg Tilly
Walk the Wire – David Baldacci
A Promise of Fire – Amanda Bouchet
The Lightning Thief – Rick Riordan