Middle Thriller

At the center of Francine Prose's profoundly moving new novel is a young girl facing the consequences of sudden loss after the death of her sister. As her parents drift toward their own risky consolations, 13-year-old Nico is left alone to grope toward understanding and clarity, falling into a seductive, dangerous relationship with her sister's enigmatic boyfriend.

An urgent phone call from principal/friend Antonio Petrocelli sends retired music teacher Susan Wiles rushing through the doors of Westbrook Middle School, where she discovers a missing bookkeeper and a ransacked office. Eager to keep the break-in quiet, the principal enlists her help.

After twenty-one years of being overshadowed by her ex-husband, Winnie Hackleshack never had the opportunity to explore her adventurous side. But what does a forty-something divorced woman do to revitalize her spirit? She gets a rescue dog, buys a motorhome, and sets off for adventures unknown. Except the adventures include getting mixed up in a murder investigation.

A cross between Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and a bartender from Cheers, Sally Witherspoon, a fifty-something accountant turned biker-bar owner, loves solving puzzles. Up to now, she has focused on helping neighbors and friends find lost jewelry, lost pets, and lost loves. But when she finds her best friend and business partner, Bill Arnold, dead in a dumpster behind the bar, she needs all her wits and grit to find out who murdered him.

He thought he’d left the past behind. But the past isn’t done with him. After a chance encounter in a Dubai hotel lobby, John Hayes knows something isn’t right. But he doesn’t expect it to follow him across the border. Now relaxing in the rugged beauty of Oman with the woman he loves, John lets his guard down—until Adriana is snatched without warning by a brutal team of mercenaries. The message is clear: someone from John’s past hasn’t forgotten… or forgiven. With no time, no support, and only his instincts to rely on, John must navigate an unforgiving desert landscape to ...

A man named Manton killed his wife and his two children and managed to get away with it. Ten years later he returns to the house where the crime was committed. He is recognized by the locals and he is provoked into a duel which is to be held in the haunted house where Manton killed his family. The locals were aiming to scare Manton away. However, the day after the duel Manton was found dead.

In a high-stakes thriller of international proportions, a deadly chess game unfolds, where lives hang in the balance and destinies collide. At the heart of this explosive conflict, we find an international terrorist, a vengeful MI6 agent, a disillusioned female CIA operative, and a Saudi Arabia on the brink of collapse. The catalyst for this intense showdown is a terminally ill millionaire, whose audacious scheme is nothing short of catastrophic. He seeks to obliterate the Saudi Arabian Royal Family, plunging the kingdom into chaos. In this volatile setting, two men find themselves on ...

Missy Turner thinks of herself as the most ordinary woman in the world. She has a lot to be thankful for: a great kid, a loving husband, a job she enjoys and the security of living in the small town where she was born. Then one day everything gets turned upside down. She loses her job, catches her husband making out with the neighbor and is briefly taken hostage by a young man who robs the local café. With her world rapidly falling apart, Missy finds herself questioning the certainties she's lived with her whole life.

"McNabb’s attempt to portray a more complicated Middle East is important. Its potential impact on Western audiences shouldn’t be underestimated." Daoud Kuttab "The intensity of Paul and Aisha’s love story is the novel’s defining strength with their intimacy heating up to a feverish pitch as disasters escalate and put them at risk." The National When Paul Stokes runs out of choices, his only path is betrayal.The fragile peace is holding. Behind the scenes, the Israelis are competing for dwindling water resources as Jordan and Palestine face drought. Daoud Dajani has the solution to ...

In "Love in the House of War," Sarah Rajiv, a young Afghan girl yearning for freedom, believes her dreams will come true when American soldiers arrive in her war-torn land. Hoping for her long-awaited prince charming to whisk her away to paradise, she discovers the harsh reality of the ruthless Taliban, who seek to crush any notions of love and escape. Amidst the backdrop of a turbulent war, Staff Sergeant Ron Hawkins finds himself drawn to Sarah's captivating spirit and determination. As their forbidden love blooms, they embark on a perilous journey through the treacherous Hindu Kush ...

Don’t trust anyone, not even yourself…. You think you know someone pretty well, until you’re awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of unfamiliar voices and realize your sister’s being swept away by some supernatural creatures who climb in and out of windows and leap from two-story houses like it’s nothing. My parents tried to tell me everything was fine, but when Cadence finally did come back from wherever they’d taken her, I knew there was something unusual about my older sister. Now, her best friend is dead. Her ex-boyfriend is acting bizarre. And I’m afraid I might...

After a lifetime of service around the Middle East, retired diplomat Jason Hartmoor is dying of cancer. He embarks on a last journey back to Lebanon where he studied Arabic as a young man at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, the infamous ‘British spy school’ in the village of Shemlan far up in the hills overlooking Beirut. Jason wants to rediscover the love he lost when the civil war forced him to flee Lebanon. Instead his past catches up with him with such speed and violence, it threatens to kill him before the disease does. The only man who can keep him alive long enough to ...

A first-time author. A hotshot book editor. A whirlwind romance and a runaway bestseller nobody saw coming. The meteoric rise and sudden collapse of a cross-platform media empire. All of this - plus a basement full of undiscovered treasures left by former tenants - is thoughtfully unpacked and dusted off in this sideways collection of small, strange fictions. SITM is a light-hearted 44-story collection of mostly free-standing stories surrounding a framed narrative that explores how these tales were created.

Eleven-year-old Jillian hates surprises. Even fun ones make her feel all panicky inside. But, she's always dreamed of joining her space-explorer parents on a mission. It's Take Your Kid to Work Day, and Jillian finally has her chance to visit an alien world! The journey to Planet 80 UMa c is supposed to be just a fun camping trip. But then the local wildlife starts acting really dangerous. Only the onboard computer SABRINA sorta knows what's happening - at least when it's not goofing off or telling bad jokes.

When the mutilated body of midwife and healer Agatha Kyteler is discovered in a hedge one frozen wintry morning, it seems at first that a lack of clues will render the crime impossible to solve. Then a frightened local youth inexplicably flees his village, and a hue and cry is raised in his wake. Sir Baldwin Furnshill, once a Knight Templar, has doubts about the boy's guilt. He enlists his friend Simon Puttock, bailiff of Lydford Castle, in the hunt for a murderer.

Despite living in the same three-flat house in the suburbs of London, the residents are strangers to one another. The bottom floor is home to Tam, a recent ex-cop who spends his days drowning his sorrows in whisky. On the middle floor is Nick, a young man with Asperger's who likes to stick to his schedules and routines. The top floor belongs to Karen, a doctor and researcher who has spent her life trying to understand the rising rates of autism. They have lived their lives separately until now, when an unsolved murder and the man on the middle floor connect them all together.

The terrorist group, OBL-911, attacks New York City killing and wounding several hundred people, but they suffer major losses from the Joint Terrorist Task Force forcing them to go into hiding. JTTF member Harry Cassidy gets promoted to sergeant and returns to regular patrol duties now that the threat is over. With the help and love of his fiancée, Sergeant Rita Becker, Harry seeks to advance his career in the police department and re-establish ties with his daughters. After many years OBL-911 re-groups for one final assault on New York planning to kill millions using deadly poisons, nerve...

A natural contender for trading stardom, 28-year-old Peter Neil buys into the game of wealth-creation with such unbridled enthusiasm that he nearly gets sucked into the patent amorality of one of the world's most successful hedge funds. He's well on the way to becoming a Wall Street legend, but he has more obstacles than he's bargained for - a simmering romance, a persistent SEC agent, a long-buried secret, and a deep-rooted conscience.

There’s a whole other world that exists and humans have no idea. That other world is known as Darkness. The Earth that humans know is separated from Darkness by a Veil. The beings that live in Darkness are the ones that humans have nightmares about. Supernatural creatures. Fallen angels, demons, vampires, the creatures that mythology is based on. The Veil Witches are hunters and protectors of the veil, their enchantments keep the creatures on the other side of the veil from escaping Darkness and wreaking havoc on humans. Aniesa, who just turned eighteen is a Veil Witch. She’s been ...

Dubai is feted internationally as a beacon of modernity: glittering skyscrapers, a cultural melting pot, even a new player in the space race. The city's ruled by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, an all-powerful multi-billionaire who counts the Queen and Donald Trump as friends. His kingdom's progressive propaganda defies a medieval underbelly. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the Sheikh's own palace, where numerous women have now risked their lives by sounding the alarm about what's really going on in the United Arab Emirates.