Showing results by author "Lisa Unger" in All Categories

Darkness has a way of creeping up when Ian is with Priss. Even when they were kids, playing in the woods of their small Upstate New York town, he could feel it. Still, Priss was his best friend, his salvation from the bullies who called him "loser" and "fatboy" - and from his family's deadly secrets.

In the final installment of her Lydia Strong series, best-selling author Lisa Unger, writing as Lisa Miscione, brings us her most shocking and emotionally wrenching case yet. An NYPD detective visits Lydia and her husband, P.I. Jeffrey Mark, to inform them that Lily, one of Lydia’s former writing students, has been missing for more than two weeks. Before she disappeared, Lily had tried to get in touch with Lydia, seeking her help. Could this have had something to do with the death of Lily’s brother, which Lily refused to accept as a suicide?

Is it a hoax, or is it something unspeakably real? In this short story about evil games and spiraling secrets, whatever bargain you strike, there’s a price to be paid. Mason Brandt dropped out of seminary and found a job at a spiritual center offering guidance to troubled teens. Mason was one himself years ago - a suspect in a young girl’s disappearance. When a female student is found murdered, Mason is dogged by suspicion and flees. He hopes Merle House will offer him sanctuary once again.

The transporting stories in this year’s The Best American Mystery and Suspense are populated by those who exist on the fringe of our society and want more than what life has dealt them: A haunted veteran turned career criminal is on the run. An injured fighter turned bouncer seeks vengeance for his lost love. An assassin on his last job finds himself questioning his life choices and breaks all the rules to understand his final victim.

Driven by an uncanny mystery from his youth, Ian Randall became a “spiritual cleanser”, ridding disturbances from homes. But his belief in the beyond was challenged by his wife’s death. Merle House, the root of Ian’s obsession, could change that. The woods are restless again. Maybe here, Ian will find what he needs - if he’s willing to make a deal with the dark.

Acclaimed artist Julian Ross has just been found standing over her husband’s bloody corpse in their New York City apartment. Julian claims that she slept peacefully beside him while he was violently stabbed in their bed. But police are skeptical, especially since Julian’s first husband was killed and mutilated in exactly the same way. Julian turns to the tough-as-nails crime writer Lydia Strong, who plunges into the case with her signature grit and the help of her partner, P.I. Jeffrey Mark. Meanwhile, Lydia learns that Jed McIntyre, the serial killer who murdered her mother, is on the loose in New York.

On the surface, Annie Powers' life in a wealthy Floridian suburb is happy and idyllic. Her husband, Gray, loves her fiercely; together, they dote on their beautiful young daughter, Victory. But the bubble surrounding Annie is pricked when she senses that the demons of her past have resurfaced and, to her horror, are now creeping up on her.

Ridley Jones is trying to get on with her life when a seemingly mundane act - picking up a few envelopes of prints at a photo lab - puts her at the nexus of a global network of crime. The shadowy figure of a man appears in almost every picture she's taken in the last year, lurking just far enough away to make identification impossible. Now the FBI is at her door, some serious bad guys are following her every move, and the family she once loved and relied on is more distant than ever.

If Ridley Jones had slept 10 minutes later or had taken the subway instead of waiting for a cab, she would still be living the beautiful lie she used to call her life. She would still be the privileged daughter of a doting father and a loving mother. Her life would still be perfect, with only the tiny cracks of an angry junkie for a brother and a charming drunk with shady underworld connections for an uncle to mar the otherwise flawless whole.

After giving up his post at the Hollows Police Department, Jones Cooper is at loose ends. He is having trouble facing a horrible event from his past and finding a second act. He’s in therapy. Then, on a brisk October morning, he has a visitor. Eloise Montgomery, the psychic who plays a key role in Fragile, comes to him with predictions about his future, some of them dire.

Despite their mostly happy marriage, when their son Ricky’s girlfriend vanishes, Maggie and Jones find themselves at odds – Maggie is positive Ricky had nothing to do with Charlene’s disappearance, while Jones isn’t as sure. With Charlene gone, the memory of another young girl who went missing some 20 years ago is haunting the town. That story didn’t have a happy ending, and almost everyone has an unrevealed reason to keep the horror of it firmly in the past.

How do you know whether a real-world situation calls for a storybook hero? Is there such a thing as a knight in shining armor, or does every good deed come with unintended consequences? With chilling insight, five bestselling crime writers explore what it means to rise to the occasion—and the space between intentions and results.

It’s a day like any other for Eloise Montgomery - until tragedy strikes. While she is recovering from a horrible accident that takes the lives of her husband and oldest daughter, and as she works to help her younger daughter move forward, Eloise experiences her first psychic vision. Though she struggles to understand her newfound gifts, Eloise finds a way use them to save lost women and girls - for whom her help may be the only way out...

A seemingly mundane act - picking up a few envelopes of prints at a photo lab - puts Ridley Jones at the nexus of a global network of crime. A shadowy figure of a man appears in almost every picture she's taken in the last year, lurking just far enough away to make identification impossible. Everyone from the federal government to the criminal underworld wants to know who the man is - and where he is - and some people are willing to kill to find out.

Everybody knows everybody in The Hollows, a quaint, charming town outside of New York City. It’s a place where neighbors keep an eye on one another’s kids, where people say hello in the grocery store, and where high school cliques and antics are never quite forgotten. As a child, Maggie found living under the microscope of small-town life stifling. But as a wife and mother, she has happily returned to The Hollows’s insular embrace.

It’s been a year since Poppy’s husband, Jack, was brutally murdered during his morning run. She’s trying to move on, but what happened that morning is still haunting her. And now she’s sure she is being followed.... Sleep deprived and secretly self-medicating, Poppy is unable to separate her dreams from reality. She feels like she’s losing her mind. But what if she’s not? What if she’s actually remembering what really happened? What if her husband wasn’t who he said he was? And what if his killer is still watching her?

Charismatic daredevil and extreme adventurer Maverick Dillan invites you to the ultimate game of hide-and-seek. But as the players gather on Falcao Island, the event quickly spirals into a chilling test of survival. A storm rages as a deadly threat stalks the contestants, turning the challenge into something far more sinister than the social media stunt it was intended to be.

Ten years after Eloise Montgomery discovers her psychic abilities, she is a full-fledged working psychic, with a partner and a business. Now, in The Burning Girl, she’s discovering some disturbing things: secrets about her genealogy that are, perhaps, best left in the past; that her granddaughter Finley has powers of her own; and that not all of Eloise’s visitors actually want to be helped. Some of them are just looking for trouble.

When Eloise's granddaughter, 20-year-old Finley, comes to live with her, Eloise's abilities start to change - things seem to be getting easier. Her load is lighter, and rather than chasing down people she needs, they are coming to her. She teams up with detective Jones Cooper to help a desperate father bring his daughter's killer to justice. Meanwhile, Finley, who is developing gifts of her own, has bigger problems than she's willing to admit.

Fresh from a tour promoting her last book, reclusive true-crime writer Lydia Strong receives an anonymous cry for help, begging her to find and protect Tatiana Quinn. Maybe the plea strikes close to her heart; maybe her investigator’s intuition ignites. She takes it on. But this simple case of a missing teenager soon becomes much more. Someone wants Lydia to drop the case, someone anxious enough to engineer the reappearance of one of Lydia’s most dangerous adversaries. Now, in addition to tracing the roots of Tatiana’s disappearance on a trail across the country and eventually overseas, Lydia must find the man who wants her dead.