Showing results by publisher "Orion" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

In 1975, 15-year-old April Cooper and her 18-year-old boyfriend embark on a weeklong killing spree that results in the deaths in a dozen innocent people in Southern California's San Gabriel Valley. Was April a willing accomplice or a victim herself, abducted by an obsessed psychopath and forced into committing horrible acts? No one will ever know for sure, as April and Eric were apparently killed in a bloody shoot-out at the Death Valley compound of their final victims - a family of off-the-grid survivalists known as The Gideons.

The Last Gift is a short novella to chill you over Christmas - from psychological thriller writer Sarah J Naughton. On 24th December, husband and father Peter Biddiscombe is tragically killed. The body is not discovered until Boxing Day, but when PC Maxine Derbyshire delivers the news, Peter's wife believes it must be a case of mistaken identity. Peter spent Christmas with his family. Bonus material - includes an exclusive three chapters from Sarah J Naughton's new full-length thriller, The Other Couple.

Alma is a private detective in a near-future England, a country desperately trying to tempt people away from the delights of Shine, the immersive successor to the Internet. But most people are happy to spend their lives plugged in, and the country is decaying. Alma's partner is ill and has to be treated without fail every four hours, a task that only Alma can do. If she misses the five-minute window, her lover will die.

'Are you waiting for Monsieur Bellivier, madame?' Helena Folasadu should of course say no. She doesn't know the man talking to her, she doesn't know Monsieur Bellivier, and she certainly isn't waiting for him. But, bored of life, and sparked by a whim, she says yes. The go-between leads her to a deserted floor in an office building and offers her a large sum of money to sit at a computer and forward emails to Monsieur Bellivier.

Miri Goldstein is a party girl. Beautiful, dangerous, irresistible - and now she's dead. But the grave is not always good at keeping secrets. For those whose lives she touched, the truth is going to catch up with them. Denise Ang always played by the rules. Until she realised it couldn't protect you or the people you love from getting hurt. So when she meets Miri, a walk on the wild side is a siren song too hard to resist. Even if it means she'll be paying the price for years to come.

Billy Shaw lives in a palace. Potter's Pleasure Palace, the best entertainment venue in Yorkshire, complete with dancing and swing-boats and picnickers and a roller-skating rink. Jasper Harper lives in the big house above the valley, with his eccentric mother, Edie, and Uncle Charles, brother and sister authors who have come from London to write in the seclusion of the moors. When it is arranged for Billy to become Jasper's companion, Billy arrives to find a wild, peculiar boy in a curiously haphazard household.

After caring for his mother in her last days, Alex has gone off round the world - with no plan other than to travel and maybe recapture some of his lost youth. Beginning his travels in Indonesia, the idea of finding himself sounds appealing...but soon he finds himself in real trouble. It starts with a bus crash on a terrifying mountain road. Lucky to escape with his life, Alex loses everything else - even his identity. But then he meets Domino, a beautiful girl who takes Alex under her wing.

Heathcote, England, 1984. A mysterious figure is sneaking into homes through backdoors and open windows. Known locally as 'the Fox', he knows everything about everyone, leaving curious objects in their homes or taking things from them. When beloved Anna disappears, everyone believes the Fox is responsible. For the villagers, finding Anna will be difficult - but stopping the Fox from exposing their darkest secrets might just be impossible.

During the oppressive heat wave of 1976, a young journalist, Ed Peters, finds an Edwardian photograph in a junk shop in the Brighton Lanes. It shows an alluring dark-haired girl, an actress whose name was Leda Grey. Leda Grey is living still, in a decaying clifftop house once shared with a man called Charles Beauvois, a director of early silent film. As Beauvois' lover and his muse, Leda often starred in scenes where stage magic and trick photography were used to astonishing effect.

1933. Single mother Vera Ray kisses her three-year-old son, Daniel, good night and leaves with a heavy heart to work the night-shift at a local hotel. The next morning she emerges to discover an unseasonable snowfall has blanketed the city, and her son has vanished. Outside their home, she finds his beloved teddy bear lying face-down on an icy street, the snow covering up any trace of his tracks, or the perpetrator's.

When 18-year-old Joshua Mayo takes a man's life in a terrible accident, he leaves the scene without reporting the crime to the police. He hopes to put the awful night behind him and move on with his life. But, of course, he ends up telling his mother, Karen, what happened. Karen has raised Joshua on her own in Cedar Rapids, Iowa - and she'd thought they'd finally made it. He was doing well in school and was only months away from starting college at his dream school. After hearing his dark confession, she's forced to make a choice no parent should have to make.

Gary Foster's life is finally heading in the right direction. After years of trying, his wife, Beth, is pregnant, and he recently opened a business with his brother. But one phone call changes everything. After collapsing suddenly, Beth is rushed to the hospital. Tests reveal a devastating diagnosis: an inoperable brain tumour. Their only hope is an expensive experimental treatment available abroad, with a cost that's out of their reach. And Beth's time is running out.

Trapped inside a secure hospital after what may not be her first suicide attempt, Mya Dala's only contact with the outside world is a TV screen. One day, it starts to show videos of her sweet, gentle boyfriend, Marc - hand-in-hand with her doppelgänger. Convinced she has been replaced by a perfect clone, Mya plots how to get back to Marco with the help of a violently troubled inmate known as the Madboy. As she plans her escape, her memories of Marc become conflicted. It seems as if years ago he was a very different person, too.

Your partner has had a mysterious accident, leaving them with no memory. They don't remember anything: how you met, your first kiss, not even your wedding day. An experimental medical treatment promises a cure. A chance to relive the memories. Going through with it might bring you back together. But discovering the truth about the accident will tear you apart. Do you walk away? Or open Pandora's box?

When struggling photojournalist Harper tries to return a dress she bought that morning for a job that's fallen through something catches her eye: the same little girl who was waiting there that morning is still there. The sales assistant doesn't know whose she is. The security guard at the mall hasn't had anyone come looking for her. Same goes for the local police, and the media. In fact, no one seems to be looking for little May at all....

We've all had sleepless nights thinking about it. You're home alone. Someone breaks in. In defending yourself, you end up killing the intruder. Now you're the one the police want. That is the situation that criminal barrister Paul Reeve arrives home to find. His wife, Alice, stands in the bedroom, clutching a bloodied letter opener in her shaking hand. 'What have you done, Alice?' 'I didn't have a choice....' We would all believe the person we love most.

You can trust me. But can I trust you? Olivia is the domestic goddess who has won millions of followers by sharing her picture-perfect life online. And now she's releasing her tell-all autobiography. For professional ghostwriter Nicky it's the biggest job of her career. But as she delves deeper into Olivia's life, cracks begin to appear in the glamorous façade. From the strained relationship with her handsome husband, to murky details of a tragic family death in her childhood, the truth belies Olivia's perfect public image.

Last night my sister was murdered. The police think I killed her. I was there. I watched the knife go in. I saw the man who did it. And heard him laugh when he said he'd never be caught. Because he knows I have prosopagnosia - I can't recognise faces. And if I don't find the man who killed my sister, I'll be found guilty of murder.

I found I didn't know who I had become. I couldn't find the woman you'd met. I only knew that if you didn't want her, neither did I. There is more than one way to stay close to someone...if you're prepared to do whatever it takes. Skye meets the feckless but handsome Johnny Strachan in the Alps, where she reluctantly falls into a heady love affair. At home, Johnny has promised to call her - this is just the beginning after all. But when Skye hears nothing from him, it seems it's actually the end.

The Persian War is over, and an unaccustomed decade of peace has come to ancient Athens. Philocles, an aspiring comic playwright, is making his living as a writer for hire, but this year is the highlight of his career - he has a play in a drama competition at a prestigious festival. The last thing he wants to find on his doorstep the day before is a dead body. Just who is this dead man? Is it just a robbery gone wrong? With the play that could make his name on the horizon, Philocles must find out who this man is, why he has been murdered - and why the corpse was in his doorway.