Gemma Robinson comes into Elliot’s life like a whirlwind, and they marry and settle into his home. When she asks him if her parents can come to stay for a couple of weeks, he is keen to oblige - he just doesn’t quite know what he’s signing up for. The Robinsons arrive with Gemma’s sister, Chloe, a mysterious young woman who refuses to speak or leave her room.

When British twenty-somethings Ruth and Adam are offered the chance to spend the summer housesitting in New York, they can’t say no. Young, in love and on the cusp of professional success, they feel as if luck is finally on their side. So the moment that Eden turns up on the doorstep, drenched from a summer storm, it seems only right to share a bit of that good fortune. Beautiful and charismatic, Eden claims to be a friend of the homeowners, who told her she could stay whenever she was in New York. They know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers....

When Jamie and Kirsty move into their first home together, they are full of optimism. The future, in which they plan to get married and start a family, is bright. The other residents of their building seem friendly too, including the Newtons, a married couple who welcome them to the building with open arms. But then strange things start to happen. Dead rats are left on their doorstep. They hear disturbing noises, and much worse, in the night.

A darkly gripping domestic drama about secrets and lies. When you have everything, you have everything to lose.... Alexandra Inglis is a respected family doctor, trusted by her patients to keep their most intimate secrets. And if sometimes the boundaries between duty and desire blur...well, she's only human. But when Alex oversteps a line with Jonathan, one of her patients, she knows she's gone too far.

Years ago, in the town of Saxon Falls, young Kelsey Willard disappeared and was presumed dead. The tragedy left her family with a fractured life - a mother out to numb the pain, a father losing a battle with his own private demons, and a sister desperate for closure. But now another teenage girl has gone missing. It's ripping open old wounds for the Willards, dragging them back into a painful past, and leaving them unprepared for where it will take them next.

It’s the house of their dreams. Former marine Harry and his wife, Sasha, have packed up their life and their golden retriever, Dash, and fled the corporate rat race to live off the land in rural Idaho. Their breathtaking new home sits on more than forty acres of meadow, aspen trees, and pine forest in the Teton Valley. Even if their friends and family think it’s a strange choice for an up-and-coming pair of urban professionals, Harry and Sasha couldn’t be happier about the future they’re building, all by their lonesome.

One woman is trapped in the death-grip of the past - and every one of its dark secrets - in this riveting novel of psychological suspense from the award-winning author of The Sisters and Local Girl Missing. She can run… As much as Libby Hall needs a vacation, she’s never considered taking one until she sees the note for a house swap. Suffering a miscarriage was a personal turning point. Saving a child from a burning school was a public one. Just as the emotional fallout of both incidents takes its toll, along comes her lifesavers - the Heywoods.

When a woman's body is found in the grounds of a ruined priory, Detective Imogen Evans realises she is dealing with a serial killer - a killer whose victims appear to die in a state of bliss, eyes open, smiles forever frozen on their faces.

After twenty years apart, Matthew and Helena have rekindled their college romance and are away in Iceland on their first holiday together. Swept up in the romance on a mountain hike, one moment they are taking the perfect photo, the next Helena is hanging from the cliff edge…

At loose ends after the devastating death of her mother, Una Richardson responds to an advertisement for a ladies’ companion, a position that leads her into the wealthy, secluded world of Mrs. Elspeth McKenzie. But Elspeth's home isn’t the comforting haven it seems. Kathryn, her cold and bitter daughter, resents Una's presence. More disturbing is evidence suggesting two girls lived here before her.

It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime, a final adventure before settling down. But after a perfect start, an encounter with a young couple on a night train forces Daniel and Laura to cut their dream trip short and flee home. Back in London, Daniel and Laura vow never to talk about what happened that night.

When Andrew Sumner meets beautiful, edgy Charlie, he is certain his run of bad luck has finally come to an end. But as the two of them embark on an intense affair, Andrew wonders if his grasp on reality is slipping. Items go missing in his apartment. Somebody appears to be following him. And as misfortune and tragedy strike his friends and loved ones, Andrew is forced to confront the frightening truth.…

Two years ago, on a trip to Seattle to visit her brother Aidan, fifteen-year-old Scarlett vanished into thin air. After years of false leads and dead ends, Aidan has almost given up hope. But then a woman sees a girl running for her life across a forest clearing in Northern California. She is convinced the girl is the missing Scarlett. But could it really be her?

For four years Jessica has never doubted that her sister Isabel’s death was an accident. But when Jessica’s young daughter seems to know long-forgotten details about her aunt’s past, Jessica can’t shake the feeling that there’s a more sinister truth behind the tragedy. As Jessica unearths disturbing revelations about her sister, and about the people she loved and trusted most, it becomes clear Isabel’s life was less than perfect and that Jessica’s might also be at risk.

Special Agent Macy Crow is a survivor. After a vicious hit-and-run nearly kills her, she gets right back to work, and now she’s gunning for a spot on the FBI’s elite profiling team. As an audition, she offers to investigate the recently discovered bones of Tobi Turner, a high school girl who disappeared fifteen years ago. While investigating with local sheriff Mike Nevada, a former colleague and onetime lover, Macy discovers a link between Tobi’s case and several others that occurred around the same time as her disappearance.

Claudia Morgan-Brown finally has it all. Pregnant with a much-wanted first baby of her own, she has a happily established family of two small step-sons and a loving husband with a great career. But she is also committed to her full-time job as a social worker, and her husband travels often. So when Claudia hires Zoe to help her around the house in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, it seems like the answer to her prayers.

She’ll never forget...I’ll never forgive. People always notice my daughter, Isobel. How could they not? Incredibly beautiful...until she speaks. An unsettling little-girl voice, exactly like a child’s, but from the mouth of a full-grown woman. Izzie might look grown up, but inside she’s trapped. Caught in the day it happened...the day that broke her from within. Our family fell apart that day, and we never could pick up the pieces....

Six months ago, Charlotte almost lost everything. Now, she’s determined to keep her daughter, Elle, safe. So when local girls close to Elle in age and appearance begin to go missing, it’s her worst nightmare. Charlotte’s fears are confirmed when a frantic search becomes a shocking murder investigation. The girls’ bodies have been found - half-buried, and with traces of mud and wildflowers under their fingernails. As Charlotte’s obsession with keeping her daughter close pushes her marriage to the brink, local DI Madeleine Wood embarks on a gruelling search for the killer.

Dr Cat Lupo aches for another child despite the psychosis which marked her first pregnancy. So when Ruby Winter, a small girl in need of help, arrives in the middle of the night, it seems like fate. But as the events behind Ruby's arrival emerge - her mother's death, her connection to Cat - Cat questions whether her decision to help Ruby has put her own daughter at risk.

On a quiet summer morning, 17-year-old American exchange student Quinn Perkins stumbles out of the woods near the small French town of St. Roch. She is barefoot, bloodied, and unable to say what has happened to her; Quinn's appearance creates quite a stir, especially since the Blavettes - the French family with whom she's been staying - have mysteriously disappeared. Now the media, and everyone in the idyllic village, are wondering if the American girl had anything to do with her host family's disappearance.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect - and enjoy.

Margot Lewis is a teacher at an exclusive high school in the English university town of Cambridge. In her spare time, she writes an advice column, "Dear Amy", for the local newspaper. When one of Margot's students, 15-year-old Katie, disappears, the school and the town fear the worst. And then Margot gets a "Dear Amy" letter unlike any of the ones she's received before. It's a desperate plea for rescue from a girl who says she is being held captive and in terrible danger - a girl called Bethan Avery, who was abducted from the local area 20 years ago and never found.

Robin Ballantyne's life is finally coming together. After learning she was pregnant with twins and being abandoned by her irresponsible boyfriend, Adam, she's settling into life as a single mother. But one night, after putting the children to bed, she hears an argument and suddenly, a body falls past her window. Running outside, she finds the body of Paula Carmichael, a renowned activist.

Neve comes across a troubled woman called Isabelle on Waterloo Bridge late one night. Isabelle forces a parcel into Neve's hands and jumps to her death in the icy Thames below. Two weeks later, as Neve's wreck of a life in London collapses, an unexpected lifeline falls into her lap - a charming cottage in Cornwall left to her by Isabelle, the woman on the bridge. The solution to all her problems.

Twenty years ago, 16-year-old Tara Martin disappeared from a small town in the heart of England. Now, her sudden return and the mind-bending tale of where she’s been will challenge our very perception of the truth. For 20 years after Tara Martin disappeared, her parents and her brother, Peter, lived in denial of the grim fact that she was gone for good. Then suddenly on Christmas Day, the doorbell rings at her parents’ home, and there, dishevelled and slightly peculiar looking, Tara stands. It’s a miracle, but alarm bells are ringing for Peter. Tara’s story just does not add up.

Dear Carys, Zoe and Andrea. Come and join me for my 40th birthday adventure weekend, full of mysteries and surprises the like of which you can't imagine. When Joanne's friends reluctantly accept an invitation to her birthday party, it quickly becomes clear that there is more to this weekend than they are expecting. One of them is hiding a secret. And Joanne is planning to reveal it.... A weekend away in a cottage in the woods sounds like fun - until no one can hear your cries for help.

1943: the world is at war, and the villagers of Tyneham are being asked to make one more sacrifice: to give their homes over to the British army. But on the eve of their departure, a terrible act will cause three of them to disappear forever. 2018: Melissa had hoped a break on the coast of Dorset would rekindle her stagnant relationship, but despite the idyllic scenery, it’s pushing her and Liam to the brink.

Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.

Single mother Callie has come to rely heavily on her best friend Suzy. But Callie suspects Suzy's life isn't as simple as it seems. It's time she pulled away - going back to work is just the first step towards rediscovering her old confidence. So why does she keep putting off telling Suzy about her new job? And who will care for her rather frail daughter, Rae, while she is gone?

Lily Armitage never intended to return to Endgame House—the grand family home where her mother died twenty-one Christmases ago—until she receives a letter from her aunt, asking her to return to take part in an annual tradition: the Christmas Game. The challenge? Solve twelve clues to find twelve keys. The prize? The deeds to the manor house. Lily has no desire to win the house. But her aunt makes one more promise: The clues will also reveal who really killed Lily's mother all those years ago.

Gemma Robinson comes into Elliot’s life like a whirlwind, and they marry and settle into his home. When she asks him if her parents can come to stay for a couple of weeks, he is keen to oblige - he just doesn’t quite know what he’s signing up for. The Robinsons arrive with Gemma’s sister, Chloe, a mysterious young woman who refuses to speak or leave her room.

It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime, a final adventure before settling down. But after a perfect start, an encounter with a young couple on a night train forces Daniel and Laura to cut their dream trip short and flee home. Back in London, Daniel and Laura vow never to talk about what happened that night.

When Jamie and Kirsty move into their first home together, they are full of optimism. The future, in which they plan to get married and start a family, is bright. The other residents of their building seem friendly too, including the Newtons, a married couple who welcome them to the building with open arms. But then strange things start to happen. Dead rats are left on their doorstep. They hear disturbing noises, and much worse, in the night.

After twenty years apart, Matthew and Helena have rekindled their college romance and are away in Iceland on their first holiday together. Swept up in the romance on a mountain hike, one moment they are taking the perfect photo, the next Helena is hanging from the cliff edge…

When a woman's body is found in the grounds of a ruined priory, Detective Imogen Evans realises she is dealing with a serial killer - a killer whose victims appear to die in a state of bliss, eyes open, smiles forever frozen on their faces.

It's Christmas in Oxford, and firefighters have pulled two children from the smoking ruin of their home. The mystery deepens when it becomes clear that the parents are nowhere to be found. Why were the children left in the house alone? Why is neither parent answering their phone? Were they kidnapped? Murdered? From the start, DI Fawley—still reeling from his own personal tragedy—knows that this house fire is the scene of a crime, not an accident.

It was summer in the mountains when five small children vanished from their nursery school picnic. The heat was stifling that day, the tinkle of an ice-cream van in the air.... Three-and-a-half years later, in the dead of winter, the children are returned to their families...one by one. All except for Ivy - the granddaughter of Homicide Detective Kate Wakeland. The other four children say Ivy is dead.

Trauma victims are not new to medical examiner Faith McIntyre, but this one is different. The unconscious woman clinging to life after a hit and run is FBI agent Macy Crow. What the woman from Quantico was doing in a dark alley after midnight is just one mystery. The other is more unsettling: Macy is Faith’s mirror image—the twin sister she never knew she had.

Marie Walker has vanished from the face of the earth. Her besotted boyfriend, newspaper photographer Richard Thompson, vows to find her, convinced that Marie's unusual beliefs hold the key. But a shocking discovery makes him question if he ever really knew his girlfriend. And when people around him start to die, Richard is plunged into terrible danger. Drawn into the world of a sinister cult and the darkest corners of the Internet, Richard finds himself increasingly out of his depth as he discovers just how far people will go to protect what they believe in.....

It was the job she had dreamed of since childhood. But on her very first day, when an unnerving encounter drags up memories Sophie Greenwood would rather forget, she wonders if she has made a mistake. A fatal mistake. What is her ambitious young assistant really up to? And what exactly happened to Sophie's predecessor? When her husband and daughter are pulled into the nightmare, Sophie is forced to confront the darkest secrets she has carried for years.

In her small hometown, librarian Ruth Cornier has always felt like an outsider, even as her beloved father rains fire-and-brimstone warnings from the pulpit at Holy Fire Baptist. Unfortunately for Ruth, the only things the townspeople fear more than the God and the Devil are the myths that haunt the area, like the story of the Low Man, a vampiric figure said to steal into sinners' bedrooms and kill them on moonless nights. When a skull is found deep in the swamp next to mysterious carved symbols, Bottom Springs is thrown into uproar.

For four years Jessica has never doubted that her sister Isabel’s death was an accident. But when Jessica’s young daughter seems to know long-forgotten details about her aunt’s past, Jessica can’t shake the feeling that there’s a more sinister truth behind the tragedy. As Jessica unearths disturbing revelations about her sister, and about the people she loved and trusted most, it becomes clear Isabel’s life was less than perfect and that Jessica’s might also be at risk.