Small Town Thriller

Cozy mystery with a side of chocolate. Exhausted from dealing with the annual Sun Bringer Festival, Gemma Channing and her ex, Lando Bonner, are hanging out at the beach, trying to recover from the three-day event when her longtime nemesis is found dead on the sand dunes. As rumors grow about Mallory's demise, many in Coyote Wells feel like Gemma is responsible. Determined to find out who did it, Gemma goes into overdrive to find the real killer. With the help of Lando and her friends, they dig deeper into Mallory’s past, hoping to uncover all of her secrets. But they get more than they ...

Colette “Coco” Weber has relocated to her Catalina Island home, where, twenty years before, she was the sole survivor of a deadly home invasion. All Coco wants is to see her aunt Gwen, get as far away from her ex as possible, and get back to her craft—writing obituaries. Thankfully, her college best friend, Maddy, owns the local paper and has a job sure to keep Coco busy, considering the number of elderly folks who are dying on the island. But as Coco learns more about these deaths, she quickly realizes that the circumstances surrounding them are remarkably similar....

Haven’s Rock is a well-hidden town surrounded by forest. And it’s supposed to be, being that it’s a refuge for those who need to disappear. Detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton already feel at home in their new town, which reminds them of where they first met in Rockton. And while they know how to navigate the woods and its various dangers, other residents don’t. Which is why people aren't allowed to wander off alone.

With his acknowledged individual storytelling expertise, D. M. Mitchell pens yet another taut psychological thriller with a difference that twists and turns to its deliciously devious and unexpected conclusion. Discover for yourself why D. M. Mitchell is being hailed as one of the most exciting new writers of thriller and supernatural tales in the UK. From reviews of Max: "Downloaded to take on holiday and was glad I did. Different to any other mystery thriller which I've read before which was really interesting and refreshing!" "Max! A Brilliant Book. Words can't describe how good this ...

In 1980s Appalachia, sisters Sheila and Angie couldn’t be more different. While their mother works long shifts at the nearby asylum, Sheila cares for their home and keeps to herself, even when enduring relentless bullying. Her fearless younger sister, Angie, is more focused on fighting imaginary zombies and creating tarot-like cards that seem to have minds of their own. When the brutal murder of two female hikers on the nearby Appalachian Trail stuns their small community, the sisters find themselves tangled in a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

In the seaside town of Kinlough, on Ireland’s west coast, three old friends are thrown together for the first time in years. They—Helen, Joe, and Mush—were part of an original group of six inseparable teenagers in the summer of 2003, with motherless, reckless Kala Lanann as their group’s white-hot center. Soon after that summer’s peak, Kala disappeared without a trace. Now it’s fifteen years later.

Great magicians are masters of illusion. The truly dangerous ones don’t bother with tricks. On Augie Doyle’s seventeenth birthday, a strange carnival rolls into Hollowbrook. It’s all gears and steam, brass and bone—a dazzling steampunk spectacle of rides, wonders, and performers. But beneath the laughter and cotton candy, Augie senses something dark. Something wrong. Then the magician takes the stage. He doesn’t just perform tricks—he defies reality. In his most chilling act, he assembles a man piece by piece, as if stitching together a living puzzle. The crowd cheers. Augie’s...

After a personal tragedy and professional scandal forces homicide detective Vanessa Castro out of Seattle, she takes a new job in Seaside, Washington, determined to make a fresh start. The small beach town, best known for its popular amusement park, Wonderland, seems like the perfect place to raise her young son and teenage daughter. But it's not that easy starting over, especially as the town's new Deputy Chief of Police. When a dead body turns up at the park her first day on the job, and then a teenage Wonder Worker goes missing, Vanessa's investigation is met with resistance.

Seeing ghosts can be a curse, or it can help solve a murder He posed her on display for me to find. Our small lake town used to feel safe and normal, well except for my dad’s ghost in my old Chevy Nova. The safety is shattered when this killer begins hunting. The sheriff wants me to work closely with the detectives to tell the behind the scenes story of catching this sick killer. He hires me to report the case on my podcast. That would be great if the detective wasn’t my identical twin sister. The sister that rather I move back to Indianapolis that work with her. When someone close to ...

Jo Peters, a former LA County district attorney, once thought that big-city life and glamor were her future. But after a brush with death and a truckload of murder and mayhem in LA, Jo decides that home, Mirasol, CA, doesn't look so bad after all. She is content to be the new city attorney for her home town. No more grisly murder scenes, just boring administrative law. A small-town pace, reconnecting with old friends. Life is good. When the body of one of those old friends is found, Jo finds herself drawn to the investigation.

Have you ever wished someone dead? Because Scarlett Scott really wouldn’t recommend it… Moving to a small town in the Scottish Highlands isn’t quite what journalist Scarlett expected it to be. And when local influencer Ava Valentine goes missing, things start to get even more complicated; especially when the dour new village policeman gets involved and instantly becomes Scarlett’s arch nemesis. For Scarlett and Dylan, it’s hate at first sight. But can they work together to find Ada? And can enemies ever really become friends…

In the quiet, close-knit town of Benning, North Dakota, single mother Susan Groves is living a simple life—until her son Gus disappears from school without a trace. As rumors swirl and unsettling secrets about the townspeople come to light, Susan turns to her best friend, Ryan, a local detective, for help. Together, they uncover eerie clues pointing to a mysterious woman who has been watching Gus. In a town where everyone knows everyone, Susan must unravel the dark secrets hidden in plain sight before it's too late.

Casey Duncan is a homicide detective with a secret: When she was in college, she killed a man. She was never caught, but he was the grandson of a mobster, and she knows that someday this crime will catch up to her. Casey's best friend, Diana, is on the run from a violent, abusive ex-husband. When Diana's husband finds her, and Casey herself is attacked shortly after, Casey knows it's time for the two of them to disappear again. Diana has heard of a town made for people like her, a town that takes in people on the run who want to shed their old lives.

At birth, Violet and Rose Flowers were identical, save for a tiny bluish-purple mark gracing Violet’s slender neck. By nineteen, their temperaments distinguish them, as different as the flowers their mother named them for—Violet, wild and outgoing, and Rose, solitary and reserved. Still, they are each other’s world. Then, on a sweltering, terrible August night in 1928, an explosion rocks Lamb’s Dance Hall in Possum Flats, Missouri, engulfing it in flames, leaving one twin among the dozens dead, and her sister’s life forever changed.

Paranormal Women’s Fiction from #1 Amazon bestseller, J.R. Rain, and New York Times bestseller, H.P. Mallory! It’s two days until Halloween in Haven Hollow and Astrid is feeling the holiday blues. After being kicked out of her coven, the young witch is missing the holiday festivities she’s grown up with, and she’s also upset about a boy. Not to mention she’s perplexed over the subject of what she should gift to Wanda for the most important night of the witching calendar (known as ‘Samhain’). When Astrid’s ne’er-do-well brother, Maverick, reaches out, Astrid is over the ...

When true-crime writer Olivia Cruz disappears with no signs of foul play, her new boyfriend, Lincoln Sharp, suspects the worst. He knows she didn’t leave willingly and turns to attorney Morgan Dane and PI Lance Kruger to find her before it’s too late. As they dig through Olivia’s life, they are shocked to discover a connection between her current book research on two cold murder cases and the suicide of one of Morgan’s prospective clients.

After losing her young son in an accident, Rachel Kennan throws herself into her career as police chief of a small Virginia town to avoid focusing on her grief. Meanwhile, her husband, Finn, a washed-up writer whose alcoholism led to the devastating tragedy that changed everything, struggles to redeem himself before his family completely falls apart. Their two daughters are the only things keeping Rachel and Finn together, but the girls have demons of their own. At the same time, a disturbing crime rocks their tightknit religious community.

History says it was suicide... Carly was thrilled to inherit her ex-husband's Victorian after he died. Of course, that was before she knew she was also inheriting his ghost, a 100-year-old curse, and the kind of strong mediumship skills that has every spirit in town begging for her to solve their mysteries. And Bessilyn Hind is first in line. According to history, in 1906 suffragist and local women's rights leader, Bessilyn Hind, committed suicide at her thirty-fifth birthday party after her fiancé broke up with her. Only one problem: her ghost doesn't remember it that way. And, she ...

When the body of a barista is found in the once-pristine Alaskan snow, Anchorage homicide detective DeHavilland Beans is gutted to recognize the young woman, Jolene. He’d bought coffee from her every morning and knew her as a bright college student working her way through school. Devastated by the murder and by the life cut short, Beans vows to find the killer. Since scavengers damaged the body, obtaining any usable evidence is impossible, even with the assistance of wildlife expert Raisa Ingalls, Beans’s ex. When the body of another woman is found, a serial killer is suspected.

After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now, more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead.