Thrills To Make You Forget The Chills These Winter Days

Touch is the electrifying new thriller from the author of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.

He tried to take my life. Instead I took his.
It was a long time ago. I remember it was dark, and I didn’t see my killer until it was too late. As I died, my hand touched his. That’s when the first switch took place.

Suddenly, I was looking through the eyes of my killer, and I was watching myself die.

Now switching is easy. I can jump from body to body, have any life, be anyone.

Some people touch lives. Others take them. I do both.

 

 

New York City school teacher Raymond Donne has no idea how bad his night is going to get when he picks up the phone. Ricky Torres, his old friend from his days as a cop, needs Ray’s help, and he needs it right now---in the middle of the night. Ricky picks Ray up in the taxi he’s been driving since returning from serving as a marine in Iraq, but before Ricky can tell Ray what’s going on, the windows of the taxi explode under a hail of bullets killing Ricky and knocking Ray unconscious as he dives to pull his friend out of harm’s way.

Ray would’ve done anything to help Ricky out while he was alive. Now that he’s dead, he’ll go to the same lengths to find out who did it and why. All he has to go on is that Ricky was working with Jack Knight, Ray’s old nemesis, another ex-cop turned PI. They were investigating the disappearance of a PR giant’s daughter who had ties to the same Brooklyn streets that all three of them used to work. Is that what got Ricky killed or was he into something even more dangerous? Was there anything that Ray could’ve done for him while he was alive? Is there anything he can do for him now?

Filled with the kinds of unexpected twists that make for the best crime fiction, and with secrets that run far deeper than loyalties, Dead Red is the most thrilling mystery yet in Tim O’Mara’s widely acclaimed series. 

 

 

The award-winning New York Times bestselling author of After I'm Gone, The Most Dangerous Thing, I'd Know You Anywhere, and What the Dead Know brings back private detective Tess Monaghan, introduced in the classic Baltimore Blues, in an absorbing mystery that plunges the new parent into a disturbing case involving murder and a manipulative mother

 

"I'm every woman's worst nightmare. . . . Because whenever a woman kills her child every other mother--at least every one who's honest with herself--has a flash of sympathy. Not empathy. They don't want to have done it, cannot imagine doing it. But they know."

On a searing August day, Melisandre Harris Dawes committed the unthinkable: she left her two-month-old daughter locked in a car while she sat nearby on the shores of the Patapsco River. Melisandre was found not guilty by reason of criminal insanity, although there was much skepticism about her mental state. Freed, she left the country, her husband, and her two surviving children, determined to start over.

But now Melisandre has returned to Baltimore to meet with her estranged teenage daughters and film the reunion for a documentary. The problem is, she relinquished custody and her ex isn't sure he approves.

Now that she's a mother herself--short on time and patience--Tess Monaghan wants nothing to do with a woman crazy enough to have killed her own child. But her mentor and close friend Tyner Gray, Melisandre's lawyer, has asked Tess and her new partner, retired Baltimore PD homicide detective Sandy Sanchez, to assess Melisandre's security needs.

Tess has always felt that her curiosity about others is her greatest strength. Yet the imperious Melisandre is someone she cannot begin to understand, much less empathize with. A decade ago, a judge ruled that Melisandre was beyond rational thought. But was she? Tess tries to keep her distance from her mercurial yet confident client. This strategy gets tricky after Melisandre becomes a prime suspect in a murder.

And as her doubts about Melisandre grow, Tess realizes that she's under scrutiny as well, followed by a judgmental stalker with an ax to grind . . . 

 

 

It is the autumn of 1278. The harvest is in. The air is crisp. Dusty summer breathes a last sigh before the dark seasons arrive. For Prioress Eleanor, dark times arrive early in Norfolk. The head of her order, Abbess Isabeau, has sent Father Etienne Davoir from its headquarters in France to inspect all aspects of Tyndal Priory from its morals to its roofs. Surely the Abbess would not have chosen her own brother for this rare and thorough investigation unless the cause was serious and she had reason to fear intervention from Rome. 

 

Prioress Eleanor knows something is terribly amiss. The situation turns calamitous when Davoir's sick clerk dies from a potion sent by Sister Anne, Tyndale s sub-infirmarian. Is Sister Anne guilty of simple incompetence or murder? Or, Davoir asks, did Prioress Eleanor order the death to frighten him away before he discovered the truth behind accusations she is unfit for her position? When Davoir himself is threatened, the priest roars for justice. Even expectant father Crowner Ralf, the local representative of the king's justice, has lost all objectivity. The most likely suspects are Anne, the woman Ralf once loved, the prioress he respects, and the Tyndal monk, Thomas, who is his closest friend. Who among the French and English assembled at Tyndal has succumbed to Satan's lullaby?

Magician Valentine Hill always introduces her act by announcing "Reality is an illusion. Illusion is reality, and nothing is what it seems." When Valentine is reunited with her grifter mother, nothing is what it seems becomes true in real life. A wealthy socialite turns out to be a ruthless criminal, a car mechanic a psycho killer, and a cab driver a seductive gangster. When an FBI agent who'd befriended her is killed, Valentine takes on the hated role of a con artist to get evidence to put the criminals away. Will her skills as a magician prove enough to help her maintain the illusion?

David Randall, a private detective short of work, invites his psychic friend Camden into a case. Miss Viola Mitchell, an aging local actress, has recently been reported missing. The Parkland PD's Jordan Finley objects to Randall and Cam inspecting Viola s home, claiming the police don't need their help. Moments later, despite the array of birds and cats perfuming the residence, Cam advises Finley, Check the basement. Viola is neatly planted there in a square of dirt. Who would kill her? Why? Are others targeted? Is a local performer twisted by jealousy? Could a role in a Parkland Little Theatre production, maybe "My Fair Lady" or "Arsenic and Old Lace", have caused her death?

Cam goes undercover at the theater while rejecting demands from his fiancee that they marry this month. His psychic gifts have expanded to levitate objects, make garbage cans dance in the street, and restrain a car from hitting a lady. He fears for their children. She wants to put him on television. Meanwhile, a new Grace Street client, owner of popular BeautiQueen Cosmetics, is searching for her arrogant, absconding partner. Randall tracks him to Clearwater, Florida, and soon finds himself chasing shoplifters stealing pharmaceuticals and helping a jazz musician woo his woman while failing to woo his own love, Kary. Will Randall and Cam piece all this together?

 

Kepler had never meant to die this way -- viciously beaten to death by a stinking vagrant in a dark back alley. But when reaching out to the murderer for salvation in those last dying moments, a sudden switch takes place.

Now Kepler is looking out through the eyes of the killer himself, staring down at a broken and ruined body lying in the dirt of the alley.

Instead of dying, Kepler has gained the ability to roam from one body to another, to jump into another person's skin and see through their eyes, live their life -- be it for a few minutes, a few months or a lifetime.

Kepler means these host bodies no harm -- and even comes to cherish them intimately like lovers. But when one host, Josephine Cebula, is brutally assassinated, Kepler embarks on a mission to seek the truth -- and avenge Josephine's death.

- See more at: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/claire-north/touch/9780316335928/#desc

Kepler had never meant to die this way -- viciously beaten to death by a stinking vagrant in a dark back alley. But when reaching out to the murderer for salvation in those last dying moments, a sudden switch takes place.

Now Kepler is looking out through the eyes of the killer himself, staring down at a broken and ruined body lying in the dirt of the alley.

Instead of dying, Kepler has gained the ability to roam from one body to another, to jump into another person's skin and see through their eyes, live their life -- be it for a few minutes, a few months or a lifetime.

Kepler means these host bodies no harm -- and even comes to cherish them intimately like lovers. But when one host, Josephine Cebula, is brutally assassinated, Kepler embarks on a mission to seek the truth -- and avenge Josephine's death.

- See more at: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/claire-north/touch/9780316335928/#desc

Kepler had never meant to die this way -- viciously beaten to death by a stinking vagrant in a dark back alley. But when reaching out to the murderer for salvation in those last dying moments, a sudden switch takes place.

Now Kepler is looking out through the eyes of the killer himself, staring down at a broken and ruined body lying in the dirt of the alley.

Instead of dying, Kepler has gained the ability to roam from one body to another, to jump into another person's skin and see through their eyes, live their life -- be it for a few minutes, a few months or a lifetime.

Kepler means these host bodies no harm -- and even comes to cherish them intimately like lovers. But when one host, Josephine Cebula, is brutally assassinated, Kepler embarks on a mission to seek the truth -- and avenge Josephine's death.

- See more at: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/claire-north/touch/9780316335928/#desc