Best Selling Books by Peter Abrahams

A husband hunts for the secrets behind his wife''s death in this ingenious new novel from the Edgar Award-nominated author who has Ra truly remarkable talent for writing psychological thrillers of enormous powerS ("Denver Post").

The monster storm "Bernardine" did more than devastate the tiny Gulf Coast community of Belle Ville. It uncovered suppressed evidence that exonerates a man wrongly imprisoned for murder. Twenty years ago Nell Jarreau identified Alvin "Pirate" DuPree as the murderer who killed her boyfriend right in front of her—and she later went on to marry the detective, now the police chief, who made the arrest. She and Clay raised a daughter and had a happy life—but now Pirate is free, leaving Nell haunted by doubt, guilt, fear . . . and troubling hints that a rot may be festering at her own family''s core. For the sake of her sanity, her marriage, and the safety of those she loves, Nell must uncover the truth about a nightmare that will not end. But the search is leading her into twisting dark alleys she might never escape from . . . where a wild card ex-con waits in the shadows.

It was more than a white lie. It was deception on a grand scale. But the motive was admirable--to save the bright future of a deserving young man. And the victim, too, was deserving--an arrogant billionaire who would hardly notice his loss, crumbs from a vast fortune. All the plotters needed was a believable story, desperate and frightening, but false. Nothing bad was supposed to happen. They were only crying wolf. But what if the wolf were real? For Nat, a shining all-American boy with blue-collar roots, acceptance to New England''s exclusive Inverness College seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. The chilling events that follow are nothing like what he imagined. It begins at Christmas break. Nat, unable to afford going home for the holidays, remains alone on the deserted campus. Alone--until he meets Grace and Izzie Zorn, twin sisters who, although biologically identical, are utterly different. Thrown off by the irresistible attraction of this astonishing pair, Nat''s moral compass starts to fail him. How could it not, as he enters a seductive new world of private Caribbean islands, personal jets, and endless possibility? A world where folly, even crime, now seems like a good idea. When classes resume, Nat and the twins fall under the influence of a charismatic philosophy professor with dangerous ideas and a secret of his own. His teachings will be used to justify a bold scheme, plotted deep beneath the school in the lair of a forgotten social club, banished for almost a century. But someone in the underground shadows is listening, someone who thinks he deserves a future just as bright as Nat''s. Suddenly, a risky but basically innocent game will take a horrifyingturn. An intricate, tightly coiled plot, relentless tension, stunning reversals, and vividly rendered characters as real as people you know. Peter Abrahams weaves these powerful elements into a masterpiece of psychological suspense. Folly quickly turns to crime in Crying Wolf.

“Peter Abrahams is my favorite American suspense novelist.”—Stephen King “Mackie dreaded the mail.” From this simple beginning, Peter Abrahams opens the curtains on a mesmerizing world down on the Mexican border, a world of complex and passionate people whose ambitions will lead them on a relentless collision course, a desert world that rises to the mythic in Their Wildest Dreams. The suspense will grab you and not let go, the surprises will shock you, but in the end it will be the wonderful characters who linger in your mind. Characters like Mackie Larkin, a suburban mother desperate for money, who finds she can earn it as a stripper; Kevin Larkin, her ex-husband whose get-rich-quick schemes left her with a mountain of debt, and who now dreams up an even better one; Lianne, their beautiful, impulsive teenage daughter, for whom almost anything, even bank robbery, is possible; Jimmy Marz, the wrangler she loves, who gets a dangerous onetime offer that could take him to the life he’s always wanted; Buck Samsonov, the charismatic strip-club owner building a southwestern empire in the lawless style of a 19th-century robber baron; Clay Krupsha, a twenty-first-century captain of detectives in a border town where no crime is what it seems; and Nicholas Loeb, a struggling mystery writer whose encounter with an unstable muse entangles him in a web of true crime more mysterious than anything he imagined. Utterly original, multilayered, and marked by the gripping suspense, sharp wit, and fascinating psychological insights for which Peter Abrahams has been acclaimed, here is a major work—a riveting story of modern-day desperadoes living their wildest dreams.

When a baseball star fails to bring victory to his team, Gil Renard, an outraged fan who has lost everything except his fanatic passion for baseball, decides to murder him. The novel follows the murderer, a knife salesman, as he infiltrates the world of the fallen hero to make things right. By the author of Pressure Drop.

A young woman who hopes to give up her bartending job to become a successful writer, Ivy Seidel falls under the spell of Vance Harrow, convicted for a terrible crime, while teaching writing to inmates at a maximum security prison.

QB of the varsity football team. Passing grades in all his classes. Dating the hottest—and smartest—girl at school. Summer job paying more than minimum wage. Things in Cody''s world seem to be going pretty well. Until, that is, his girlfriend, Clea, is sent off to boarding school across the country, and a torn ACL ends his high school football career. But bad things come in threes—or in Cody''s case, sixes and twelves—and the worst is yet to come. While limping through town one day, Cody sees a newspaper heading: "Local Girl Missing." Clea, now his ex, has disappeared from her boarding school in Vermont, and the only clue is a letter she sent to Cody the morning of her disappearance. With that as his guide, Cody sets out to find out what happened. Once in Vermont, he unearths the town''s secrets—and finds out that football isn''t the only thing he''s good at. Reality Check is another edge-of-your-seat suspense novel by the New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author of Down the Rabbit Hole.

“A perfect page-turner . . . Books this well written and involving don’t come along often. . . . Peter Abrahams is my favorite American suspense novelist.”—Stephen King An unfaithful wife. A cheating lover. A loyal friend. A jealous husband. In this stunning thriller, four lives hang in precarious balance—as a cunning killer prepares their roles in A Perfect Crime. Distraught by a failing marriage, Francie Cullingwood enters into a secret affair with charismatic radio psychologist Ned Demarco. But what seems like a refuge takes a decidedly dark turn. For when the liaison is discovered, a seething, enraged genius begins to construct the perfect, flawless murder, manipulating Francie, her lover, and her best friend like chess pieces in a lethal game. But even the most brilliant mind can make mistakes. And soon the intricate plan is spinning wildly out of control—in shocking, fatal directions. . . . Praise for A Perfect Crime “Abrahams gets the human dimensions just right. . . . Each stage of this perverse puzzle has been constructed with deadly artistry.”—The New York Times Book Review “A first-rate psychological thriller . . . a plot filled with Machiavellian maneuvers and subtle irony . . . Drawing the reader unrelentingly through the chain of events, this novel is a must-read.”—The Denver Post “Abrahams has written more than a crime story here. His prose is elegant by any literary standard. . . . Abrahams grips us so closely, line by line, making everything hyper-real.”—Los Angeles Times “A Perfect Crime is a perfect read—a novel of malice and retribution that crackles from page one like a live wire.”—New York Times bestselling author Michael Palmer

"A terrific yarn, full of smart detection and hip good humor" (Stephen King) Behind the Curtain is the second book in the Echo Falls mystery series by bestselling crime novelist Peter Abrahams, following the acclaimed Down the Rabbit Hole. Perfect for middle school readers looking for a good mystery. In this "deliciously plotted, highly satisfying adventure" (Kirkus), the Sherlock Holmes-loving eight-grade heroine, Ingrid, starts to see some alarming signs of trouble in her home. Her dad is surfing the internet in search of a job when Ingrid had no idea his job was in jeopardy. Her brother, Ty, is trying to succeed on the high school football team—perhaps at the cost of his health. And Ingrid''s beloved soccer coach is replaced by an icy newcomer who seems a little too savvy to be in it for the postgame pizza. True to her hero, Sherlock Holmes, Ingrid begins fishing around to find out who''s really pulling the strings in her hometown of Echo Falls. But one morning, while en route to the dreaded MathFest, Ingrid is kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a car. Even if she escapes, will anyone believe her story? The third and final book in this Edgar Award-nominated series is Into the Dark. Sherlock Holmes for Kids: Eighth-grader Ingrid Levin-Hill lives by the master detective''s rules of observation, but noticing too much is exactly what gets her into serious trouble. Small Town Secrets: Behind the perfect facade of Echo Falls, Ingrid uncovers a web of secrets involving her own family, the high school football team, and a mysterious newcomer. Pulse-Pounding Suspense: Locked in the trunk of a moving car, Ingrid has to rely on her wits to escape. But getting out is only the beginning of her problems. A Hero No One Believes: After her terrifying ordeal, Ingrid''s biggest challenge isn''t finding the culprit—it''s getting a single person, from her parents to the police, to believe her story.

Nick Petrov was a world-famous private investigator -- until a brain trauma destroyed part of his memory and changed who he is forever. Now a killer is on the loose, looming up from a past that Nick can no longer remember.

Presents five short stories about teens who stay up all night, written by award-winning authors.

Roy Hill married the girl of his dreams, dotes on his eleven-year-old son, and is next in line for a big promotion in the Atlanta office of a global corporation. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, everything starts to unravel. He losing control of his life. When his best friend joins a Civil War reenactment group, spending his weekends in camps where the year is forever 1863, Roy finds the idea laughable . . . even though he is the descendent and namesake of a Confederate Civil War hero. But when he visits the regiment just to be polite, something unexpected happens, gradually opening Roy’s eyes to the secret of a distant conflict that never ended–and leading him down a path that grows more menacing at every turn. With his job disappearing in a way he could never have foreseen, his whole life slipping out of control, Roy falls deeper and deeper into the Rebel past. A strange and powerful idea takes hold: that his life went wrong long before he was born, in the fateful campaigns that preceded the burning of Atlanta. Among the men, a hard-core splinter group is formed–with Roy at its center. On an ancient battlefield, the once-clear lines between reenactment and reality begin to disappear. When his son is taken hostage is it real? When the old muskets fire will they still fire blanks? Or will a bloody history come stunningly to life? An extraordinary novel about the fate of men and women no longer in step with the rhythms of the modern world, marching back into Southern history to make things right, Last of the Dixie Heroes is Peter Abrahams’s most dazzlingly original work yet.

A woman must untangle a dark enigma that dates back to World War II in order to find her kidnapped son in this riveting international thriller from Peter Abrahams, aka Spencer Quinn, author of the Chet and Bernie Mysteries Rachel Monette arrives home to a scene of unspeakable violence: Her French-born husband, Dan, is dead—the victim of a savage stabbing—and her five-year-old son is missing. A neighbor claims she saw a rabbi taking Adam away. But there are no synagogues in Williamstown. The only clue is a letter Rachel finds in Dan''s safety deposit box. Written in 1942, it''s about the reassignment of three German soldiers to a place called Camp Siegfried in the supposedly unoccupied western part of North Africa. Convinced that the murder and abduction are related to a book Dan recently completed about German-occupied countries during World War II, Rachel travels to North Africa and then on to Israel, where a mass murderer hiding in plain sight is determined to keep the horrors of the past buried forever.

Blake Wrightman died during the Vietnam War. Not on a Southeast Asian battlefield, but on an American college campus. He died the day the bomb he planted at an anti-war protest claimed a small boy’s life—and forced Blake Wrightman to vanish. Now, after twenty-years as “Charlie Ochs,” Cape Cod lobsterman, Blake finds out that the feds are closing in. But a vengeful G-man gives Charlie a choice: face the music or help smoke out the beautiful hardcore radical who seduced him into the anti-war movement back in the ’60s. So begins a long, strange trip for the former Blake Wrightman, as he revisits the scene of a deadly revolution that didn’t end with the Vietnam War—and is about to claim a few more casualties. . . .

When the director of her school play suddenly has an accident, her shoes go missing, and things in town start becoming more strange with every passing moment, Ingrid must find a way to get to the bottom of the matter in order to set things right in her small community of Echo Falls once again. Reprint.

The CIA concludes that the disappearance of math genius Teddy Wu is an obvious defection to Red China, but his lover, Beth Hunter, investigates further and discovers an international political conspiracy of terrifying proportions