Showing results by narrator "Whitney Dykhouse" in All Categories

I preferred it when life came in tidy packages. When it didn’t — when something went awry — I was exceedingly skilled at packaging it back up. It was my job to do so after all. I was a reconstructionist. I collected the puzzle pieces, then I gave those pieces to an investigative team to sort out. I didn't ask questions. I didn't offer answers. I saw. I recorded. I moved on. I didn't dwell or obsess. I didn’t hunt down suspects. I didn’t follow clues to find a killer. And I certainly didn’t work side by side with anyone.

On a cold evening in November, Zoey Knight gets a frantic call from her sister. Their childhood home in remote Maine has burned to the ground. Two bodies have been discovered in the basement. When the FBI suddenly takes over the case, it's clear something more sinister than a random double homicide has taken place. Rumors go back to The Family-cult or commune, the wealthy enclave of Black Castle, Maine has never been sure. Twenty years ago, after the disappearance of a local girl, the group vanished. Now, signs of them are resurfacing.

Ricki Wagner and her husband, Brock, are thrilled when they get an invite to her boss’s stunning lake house, never imagining the weekend of horror that awaits them. When a woman’s body washes up on the sandy shore, they soon find themselves tangled up in a dark crime with many threads.

Before Ratmansky was the artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet, the resident choreographer at American Ballet Theatre, the artist in residence at New York City Ballet, and generally, as The New Yorker has it, "the most sought-after man in ballet," he was just a boy from Kyiv, sneaking into the ballet at night, concocting his own juvenile adaptations of novels and stories, and dreaming up new possibilities for bodies in motion.

Hagatha could not be more pleased as she approached her centennial celebration. All the pieces to her devious plan of destruction were finally coming together. And now, she had cast a spell on her great-granddaughter to help her carry out the crowning blow. Karen Garber-Slaughter, however, felt conflicted. She harbored a web of lies from her husband and wanted to come clean but was never quite able to do so. Something always compelled her to continue the charade as she hurtled toward carrying out Hagatha’s deadly masterstroke.

Eighteen-year-old Jill Charron wakes up in a hospital room, leg in a cast, stitches in her face and a big blank canvas where the last 6 weeks should be. She comes to discover she was involved in a fatal accident while on a school trip in Italy three days previous but was jetted home by her affluent father in order to receive quality care. Care that includes a lawyer. And a press team. Because maybe the accident...wasn't an accident.

I never got involved in the dirt and the details of an investigation. I never let my preconceptions muddy a reconstruction. And I steadfastly refrained from ever allowing my past to dictate my future. At least until the one person I couldn’t lose went missing. Because then I’d relive every dark moment of my childhood, confront every heartbreak, and even sell my soul if that was what it took to get her back. Because I couldn’t accept a future - not even a promised one of immortality and unbridled power - that didn’t include one of the only two people I’d ever truly loved.

Aja Minor goes undercover. The target, an international child trafficking ring. When her cover is blown, the mission and her life are in jeopardy. Fresh off of the Peace Sign Killer case, Aja Minor is asked to join a joint CIA-FBI task force based in New York City. There, she joins a team whose aim is to take down the Fountain of Youth network - an international child trafficking and exploitation ring. When Aja is asked to go undercover for the first time, all doesn’t go as planned.

The authorities claim the serial killer doesn’t exist. Only Darcy has the unwavering courage to follow his deadly trail. One dead girl at a popular campsite. A second woman’s corpse tossed along a running trail. And unexplainable spider bites on both victims. After the medical examiner concludes both women died from venomous spider bites, the police want to close the case. Then a third woman goes missing, and Darcy discovers a dangerous man linked to the three victims. Is a murderer stalking the darkness?

When Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island more than a century ago, her otherworldly skills might have benefited friendlier neighbors. Guilt and fear instead led the island's original eight settlers to burn "the witch" out of her home. So Rona cursed them. Fast-forward 100-some years: All Nor Blackburn wants is to live an unremarkable teenage life.

Her life is about to change—if she survives the road trip. Driving the I-40 coast-to-coast was never on Cora Dalton’s bucket list, until the day she finds out she has inherited a house in New York from a grandmother she has never met. Terrified of flying, Cora talks her best friend, Adele, into accompanying her on what they think will be a rip-roaring fun, 10-day road trip. But when they pick up a teenage runaway at a gas station with a dark and disturbing past, things begin to go awry.

Former FBI serial killer profiler Darcy Haines put the past behind her. She’s happy living along the coast in her new marriage and keeping her family safe. Then a rash of grisly murders force Darcy to make an impossible decision. Will she answer the law enforcement community’s call and risk her sanity? Or will she allow more innocents to die?

At the Happily Ever After Bookstore, happiness is always found within the pages of the books on its shelves. Its owner, Leona, revels in finding each reader just the right book to bring them joy. She also enjoys meddling just enough to bring readers together who might not know they are destined for one another. In need of a holiday pick-me-up, Sadie seeks out Leona’s advice for a good holiday romance. While scanning the book selections, she knocks into Charlie McGowan, who is certainly out of his element.

When a young woman, Sarah Connelly, is found murdered in her home in New York’s elite Sleepy Point suburb, it triggers questions about the neighbor who discovered the body, Audrey Hughes. This kind of attention is the last thing Audrey wants. Moving to Sleepy Point was supposed to provide her with a new quiet start after a trauma left her with incurable blindness. But the other reason she settled next door to Sarah was to spy on her.

Fourteen years ago, I bit through the lip of the first boy brave enough to kiss me. Since then, I've acquired a PhD in Archaeology, a new teaching gig at a prestigious university, and research interests out the wazoo.

"There was one thing she knew. This would not be the end. She would not give up, not ever. Nico might have the victory now, but she would find a way to turn the tables on him. Holding her head high, she vowed that somehow, someday, Rosie would be with her again". Elizabeth Bennett arrives in Haven Valley, seeking healing after her emotionally abusive, unscrupulous ex-husband uses his family’s political influence to gain sole custody of their daughter, solely on the basis that Elizabeth is blind.

Grace was one paycheck from becoming a single mother-to-be on the streets, until she's offered the job of a lifetime: live-in maid for millionaires Naomi and Jack Hamilton. Grace doesn't belong in the Hamiltons' luxurious world of privilege, wealth, and power, but she willingly cleans the messes they make.

What Sheryl remembered most about her life up to now was the cycle of chaos - brief moments of happiness soon snuffed out by misery - again and again and again. Now married, she thought those days were finally behind her. She had strong faith, a wonderful husband, and a baby in her womb. So why were dark thoughts flooding her mind? Why was she walking to the cliff in the dead of night? Why was a tall, lanky stranger intensely studying her from the darkness?

Trying to piece her shattered life together, ex-FBI profiler Darcy Gellar clings to a struggling relationship with Detective Julian Haines. Then a new case forces her to act when Julian's niece vanishes from a private college in Upstate New York. But Julian's niece has a dark secret. And the understaffed sheriff's department lacks the expertise to find the missing girl.

Somewhere in the Badlands, embedded deep in centuries-buried rock and sand, lies the skeleton of a massive dinosaur, larger than anything the late nineteenth century world has ever seen. Some legends call it the Black Beauty, with its bones as black as ebony, but to seventeen-year-old Samuel Bolt it's the "rex," the king dinosaur that could put him and his struggling, temperamental archaeologist father in the history books if they can just quarry it out.