The Disinvited Guest

The Disinvited Guest
Author: Carol Goodman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2022-07-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0063020718

From two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author Carol Goodman comes a new mystery, about a group of friends isolated on a remote island with a history of foul play. "Carol Goodman is a brilliant writer, and she shines here.” —Gilly Macmillan, New York Times bestselling author Lucy Harper still has traumatic memories and lingering health problems from the 2020 pandemic. So, when a new virus surfaces years later, she and her husband, Reed, seek refuge on his family’s private island off the coast of Maine. Ostensibly safely sequestered with their five closest friends and family, Lucy should feel at ease. So why does she feel the weight of the island’s dark history pushing down on the group? As Lucy uncovers Reed’s family secrets and the island’s history as a quarantine hospital for typhus patients, she becomes obsessed with the past and feels her own grip on reality slipping. Tempers flare, strange signs appear in the woods, and accidents turn deadly. Is the island haunted by the dead? Or is someone amongst the living taking their revenge?

The Lake of Dead Languages

The Lake of Dead Languages
Author: Carol Goodman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2005-12-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345490916

“A gothic and elegant page-turner.”—The Boston Globe Twenty years ago, Jane Hudson fled the Heart Lake School for Girls in the Adirondacks after a terrible tragedy. The week before her graduation, in that sheltered wonderland, three lives were taken, all victims of suicide. Only Jane was left to carry the burden of a mystery that has stayed hidden in the depths of Heart Lake for more than two decades. Now Jane has returned to the school as a Latin teacher, recently separated and hoping to make a fresh start with her young daughter. But ominous messages from the past dredge up forgotten memories. And young, troubled girls are beginning to die again–as piece by piece the shattering truth slowly floats to the surface. . . .

Arcadia Falls

Arcadia Falls
Author: Carol Goodman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2010-03-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345515196

BONUS: This edition contains an Arcadia Falls discussion guide. Financial straits and a desire for a fresh start take recently widowed Meg Rosenthal and her aloof teenage daughter, Sally, to Arcadia Falls, a tucked-away hamlet in upstate New York where Meg has accepted a teaching position at a boarding school. The creaky, neglected cottage they’ll be calling home feels like an ill omen, but Meg is determined to make the best of it. Then a shocking crisis strikes: During Arcadia’s First Night bonfire, one of Meg’s folklore students plunges to her death in a campus gorge. Sheriff Callum Reade finds the presumed accident suspicious, but then, he is a man with a dark past himself. Meg is unnerved by Reade’s interest in the girl’s death, and as long-buried secrets emerge, she must face down her own demons and the danger threatening to envelop Sally. As the past clings tight to the present, the shadows, as if in a terrifying fairy tale, grow longer and deadlier.

The Night Visitors

The Night Visitors
Author: Carol Goodman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2019-03-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062852019

WINNER OF THE 2020 MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD The latest thriller from the internationally bestselling author of The Lake of Dead Languages and The Other Mother, a story of mistaken identities and missed chances, forgiveness, and vengeance. “Carol Goodman is, simply put, a stellar writer.”—Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of The Red Hunter ALICE gets off a bus in the middle of a snowstorm in Delphi, NY. She is fleeing an abusive relationship and desperate to protect... OREN, ten years old, a major Star Wars fan and wise beyond his years. Though Alice is wary, Oren bonds nearly instantly with... MATTIE, a social worker in her fifties who lives in an enormous run-down house in the middle of the woods. Mattie lives alone and is always available, and so she is the person the hotline always calls when they need a late-night pickup. And although according to protocol Mattie should take Alice and Oren to a local shelter, instead she brings them home for the night. She has plenty of room, she says. What she doesn't say is that Oren reminds her of her little brother, who died thirty years ago at the age of ten. But Mattie isn't the only one withholding elements of the truth. Alice is keeping her own secrets. And as the snowstorm worsens around them, each woman's past will prove itself unburied, stirring up threats both within and without.

The Prey

The Prey
Author: Tom Isbell
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2015-01-20
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 006221604X

“A compellingly drawn dystopian future.” —BCCB The Maze Runner meets The Hunger Games in this heart-pounding trilogy—now in paperback. Orphaned teens, soon to be hunted for sport, must flee their resettlement camps in their fight for survival and a better life. For in the Republic of the True America, it's always hunting season. Riveting action, intense romance, and gripping emotion make this fast-paced adventure a standout debut. After a radiation blast burned most of the Earth to a crisp, the new government established settlement camps for the survivors. At the camp, sixteen-year-old "LTs" are eager to graduate as part of the Rite. Until they learn the dark truth: LT doesn't stand for lieutenant but for Less Thans, feared by society and raised to be hunted for sport. They escape and join forces with the Sisters, twin girls who've suffered their own haunting fate. Together they seek the fabled New Territory, with sadistic hunters hot on their trail. Secrets are revealed, allegiances are made, and lives are at stake. As unlikely Book and fearless Hope lead their quest for freedom, these teens must find the best in themselves to fight the worst in their enemies. Catch the rest of the series in The Capture and The Release!

House of a Thousand Lies

House of a Thousand Lies
Author: Cody Luke Davis
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2022-08-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1639100067

Perfect for fans of Julia Heaberlin’s We Are All the Same in the Dark and Megan Collins’s The Family Plot, Cody Luke Davis’ debut psychological thriller brings a sinister serial-killer tale to life with hair-raising twists and chilling turns. How far will some families go to protect their legacy? Diana Wolf likes to think she has it all: a rock god husband, an empty nest, a wine cellar, and a dream home in the woods. Life is good. It has to be. But when she hires a cartographer, Kerry Perkins, to survey and map her estate in rural Tennessee, she pulls back a frayed corner of the lie that is her fairytale life. On his first night at Wolf Hollow, Kerry stumbles across a young girl's skeleton buried in the woods. But what really scares Diana is a familiar symbol carved into the girl’s skull: two wolves. A week later, the cops are digging in her backyard. Diana begins to question how good her life really is. How good of a man is her husband and how good a father? She’s not the only one with questions. Kerry Perkins can’t shake what he saw in the woods that night. He suspects that Diana recognized that symbol, that she lied to the police; that someone is watching him, and that whoever it is, they desperately want him to keep his mouth shut. His search for answers leads him to Pink, a deeply disturbed man obsessed with the Wolfs’ celebrity. Pink knows the family better than they know themselves—and he knows that the more he and Kerry dig, the more bones they will find. Told through the eyes of multiple narrators, none reliable, this is a story about parents, the lies they tell their children, and the lies they tell themselves.

River Road

River Road
Author: Carol Goodman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2016-01-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1501109901

Wrongly accused in the hit-and-run accident that has killed a favorite student, a creative writing professor is shunned by the same community that once rallied around her when her own daughter was killed in an eerily similar accident six years earlier.

The Detour

The Detour
Author: S. A. Bodeen
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1250078636

Livvy Flynn is a big deal - she's a New York Times-bestselling author whose YA fiction has sold all over the world. She's rich, she's famous, she's gorgeous, and she's full of herself. When she's invited to an A-list writer's conference, she decides to accept so she can have some time to herself. She's on a tight deadline for her next book, and she has no intention of socializing with the other industry people at the conference. And then she hits the detour. Before she knows it, her brand new car is wrecked, she's hurt, and she's tied to a bed in a nondescript shack in the middle of nowhere. A woman and her apparently manic daughter have kidnapped her. And they have no intention of letting her go.

Original Fake

Original Fake
Author: Kirstin Cronn-Mills
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2016
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0399173269

"Frankie Neumann's an introvert, and he's always been the outsider in his family of performers, but all that's about to change once he finds an outlet for his artistic talents"--

The Widow's House

The Widow's House
Author: Carol Goodman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017-03-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062562630

This chilling novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Lake of Dead Languages blends the gothic allure of Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca and the crazed undertones of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper with the twisty, contemporary edge of A.S.A. Harrison’s The Silent Wife—a harrowing tale of psychological suspense set in New York’s Hudson Valley. When Jess and Clare Martin move from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to their former college town in the Hudson River valley, they are hoping for rejuvenation—of their marriage, their savings, and Jess's writing career. They take a caretaker's job at Riven House, a crumbling estate and the home of their old college writing professor. While Clare once had dreams of being a writer, those plans fell by the wayside when Jess made a big, splashy literary debut in their twenties. It's been years, now, since his first novel. The advance has long been spent. Clare's hope is that the pastoral beauty and nostalgia of the Hudson Valley will offer some inspiration. But their new life isn't all quaint town libraries and fragrant apple orchards. There is a haunting pall that hangs over Riven House like a funeral veil. Something is just not right. Soon, Clare begins to hear babies crying at night, see strange figures in fog at the edge of their property. Diving into the history of the area, she realizes that Riven House has a dark and anguished past. And whatever this thing is—this menacing force that destroys the inhabitants of the estate—it seems to be after Clare next…