"Two hitmen in a depressed rust belt town struggle with a job gone wrong. A girl witnesses a horrifying accident and carries it with her for the rest of her life. Medical students bring a severed foot to a college party. Five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Joyce Carol Oates has made a career of exploring the forbidden corners of human experience, and the stories collected here, spanning her first three decades as a writer, are among her most unsettling...

When a local journalist is found dead in an isolated spot on Roydon Common, lying beneath a hangman's noose on the anniversary of a teenager's suicide, DI Tom Janssen is asked to take on the investigation as a favour to local colleagues and must unpick the deceased man's life to discover how he came to be there.The dead man was working on something, a story he was keeping close to his chest and even those closest to him, loved ones and colleagues,...

"When girls go missing here, no one says a word...Twenty-four-year-old Lila has disappeared without a trace. It's the kind of case that ex-military loner Grant Fletcher would normally be happy to take on-he will always seek justice if someone has the money to pay him. But this one he's doing for free. This one's personal. Because Fletcher owes his life to Lila's father. And Fletcher knows that returning Lila safe and sound is the only thing that matters...

The last time homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite was in Cedar Grove, it was to see her sister’s killer put behind bars. Now she’s returned for a respite and the chance to put her life back in order for herself, her attorney husband, Dan, and their new daughter. But tragic memories soon prove impossible to escape. Dan is drawn into representing a local merchant whose business is jeopardized by the town’s revitalization. And Tracy is urged by...

"The accidents are not a matter of chance. They are deliberate. As English gentleman William Kensley becomes aware of the danger at Rosenleigh Manor, he pleads for the truth of his past from the only man he can trust--until that man is murdered. As the secrets unfold into scandal, William's world is tipped into destitution, leaving him penniless and alone. His only comfort is in the constant friendship and love of Isabella Gresham. If he does not...

Flower shop owner Abby Knight and her husband, Marco, are ecstatic to finally be moving into their new home, despite the prospect of unpacking a seemingly infinite number of boxes. After all, Brandywine their new subdivision seems like an oasis with its welcoming neighbors and beautifully manicured lawns. But their idyllic community is suddenly uprooted when a body is found floating in a nearby pond. The police think Abby and Marco s helpful next...

"A tragedy brings a young boy into the home of a "perfect" family--one whose dark secrets begin closing in, until a horrifying moment changes everything. Tommie Ware's life is turned upside down the summer of 1958, just after his eleventh birthday. When his beloved aunt; the woman who raised him; doesn't return after her shift as a night nurse and is later found murdered, there is only one place left for Tommie to go: “home” to the mother who...

"Still reeling from a personal tragedy, investigative journalist Rooker Lindström finds a grim hideaway from the world. It's the dilapidated cabin on Minnesota's Deer Lake bequeathed to him by his late father--one of the most notorious serial killers in the state. If the walls of this murder house could talk, they'd scream. Detective Tess Harlow needs something from Rooker only he can provide: a window into the mind of a murderer. A copycat is on...

Cousins Coleman and Dinah Greene moved from North Carolina to New York after college to make their mark on the art world. Coleman is the editor of an influential arts magazine and Dinah is the owner of a print gallery in Greenwich Village. But their challenges are mounting as one of Coleman's writers is discovered selling story ideas to a competitor and the Greene Gallery is in the red because sales are down. When billionaire Heyward Bain arrives...

"In 1999, in the small provincial town of Beauval, France, twelve-year-old Antoine Courtin accidentally kills a young neighbor boy in the woods near his home. Panicked, he conceals the body and to his relief--and ongoing shame--he is never suspected of any connection to the child's disappearance. But the boy's death continues to haunt him, shaping his life in unseen ways. More than a decade later, Antoine is living in Paris, now a young doctor with...