Recommendations based on "Black Dog"

A small town hides big secrets in The Dry, an atmospheric, page-turning debut mystery by award-winning author Jane Harper. After getting a note demanding his presence, Federal Agent Aaron Falk arrives in his hometown for the first time in decades to attend the funeral of his best friend, Luke. Twenty years ago when Falk was accused of murder, Luke was his alibi. Falk and his father fled under a cloud of suspicion, saved from prosecution only because of Luke’s steadfast claim that the boys had been together at the time of the crime. But now more than one person knows they didn’t tell the truth back then, and Luke is dead. Amid the worst drought in a century, Falk and the local detective question what really happened to Luke. As Falk reluctantly investigates to see if there’s more to Luke’s death than there seems to be, long-buried mysteries resurface, as do the lies that have haunted them. And Falk will find that small towns have always hidden big secrets.

It's one of the most disturbing cases DI Fawley has ever worked.The Christmas holidays, and two children have just been pulled from the wreckage of their burning home in North Oxford. The toddler is dead, and his brother is soon fighting for his life. Why were they left in the house alone? Where is their mother, and why is their father not answering his phone?Then new evidence is discovered, and DI Fawley's worst nightmare comes true.Because this fire wasn't an accident.It was murder.

'Stroud is a genius' Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series.Ghosts and ghouls beware! London’s smallest, shabbiest and most talented psychic detection agency is back.Life is never exactly peaceful for Lockwood & Co. Lucy and George are trying to solve the mystery of the talking skull trapped in their ghost jar, while Lockwood is desperate for an exciting new case.Things seem to be looking up when the team is called to Kensal Green Cemetery to investigate the grave of a sinister Victorian doctor. Strange apparitions have been seen there, and the site must be made safe. As usual, Lockwood is confident; as usual, everything goes wrong – a terrible phantom is unleashed, and a dangerous object is stolen from the coffin.Lockwood & Co must recover the relic before its power is unleashed, but it’s a race against time. Their obnoxious rivals from the Fittes agency are also on the hunt. And if that’s not bad enough, the skull in the ghost-jar is stirring again…The author of the blockbuster BARTIMAEUS sequence delivers another humorous and chilling instalment in the critically acclaimed LOCKWOOD & CO. series.

John Taylor is the name. I work the Nightside. Only in that dark heart of London where it’s always three A.M., where human and inhuman can feed their darkest desires, do I feel at home. Probably because I was born there.What I do is find things—people, objects—and in this case, the truth about the origins of the Nightside.That’s what Lady Luck has hired me to investigate. But the more I dig, the more I discover, not about the Nightside but about the great question in my life: exactly who—and what—was my long-vanished mother.Paying jobs are one thing. Personal quests are another. And I’ve been warned that uncovering the facts about dear old mum could be a very bad thing, not just for the Nightside but for all of existence.Still I can’t stop…I’m John Taylor. Finding things is who I am. It’s what I do. Whatever the consequences…

The sixth volume in The Dark Tower series - the most anticipated series of publications in Stephen King's legendary career - The Dark Tower VI; Song Of Susannah is a pivotal instalment in the epic saga. It provides the key to the quest that defines Roland's life. In the next part of their journey to the tower, Roland and his band of followers face adversity from every Susannah Dean has been taken over by a demon-mother and uses the power of Black Thirteen to get from the Mid-World New York City. But who is the is the father of her child? And what role will the Crimson King play? Roland sends Jake to break Susannah's date with destiny, while he himself uses 'the persistence of magic' to get to Maine in the Summer of 1977. It is a terrible for one thing it is real and bullets are flying. For another, it is inhabited by the author of a novel called 'Salem's Lot. Song Of Susannah is driven by revelation and by suspense. It continues the Dark Tower seamlessly from Wolves Of The Calla and the dramatic climax will leave readers desperate to read the quest's conclusion.

A “superior thriller”(Oakland Press) about a man, a dog, and a terrifying threat that could only have come from the imagination of #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.On his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever who will let him go no further into the dark woods.That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life. What he finds is a dog of alarming intelligence that soon leads him into a relentless storm of mankind’s darkest creation...

Chyna Shepherd is a twenty-six-year-old woman whose deeply troubled childhood taught her the hard rules of survival, and whose adult life has been an unrelenting struggle for self-respect and safety. Now rare trust has blossomed for Chyna into friendship with the woman whose family home she is visiting for the weekend: a farm in the Napa Valley surrounded by vineyards and hills, which Chyna can see from the guest-room window where she sits at one o'clock in the morning, fully dressed, unable to sleep. Suspicions she learned in childhood still make her uneasy in unfamiliar houses--even this one, where her closest friend is sound asleep down the hall. And in this case her most disturbing instincts prove reliable. A man has entered the house, a man who lives for one purpose: to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse, or limits--to live with intensity.His name is Edgler Foreman Vess. He likes to make words with the letters from his name--GOD, DEMON, SAVE, RAGE, ANGER, FEAR, FOREVER, are just a few of them--and then makes sentences with the words. One of his favorites, GOD FEARS ME, is sometimes the last thing he whispers to his victims. Edgler Vess is a self-proclaimed "homicidal adventurer": On this night, his adventure--murdering everyone in the house--becomes Chyna's long nightmare.Trapped in Vess's deadly orbit, Chyna thinks only of getting out alive. But when she inadvertently learns the identity of Vess's intended next victim, waiting for him far from Napa Valley, Chyna is gripped with concern for this other person, who is as innocent as Chyna, and as endangered. Driven now by a sense of responsibility for another, by a purpose and meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna rises to unexpected heights of courage and daring--her only hope as the threat of Edgler Foreman Vess closes in and grows more horrifying moment by moment.Intensity unfolds over the course of just twenty-four hours, but within that brief time frame, Dean Koontz gives us what is perhaps his most inventive, emotionally intricate, and terrifyingly suspenseful novel yet.

DC Simon Serrailler is faced with his worst crimes yet, and Lafferton is left reeling. The eighth in the Simon Serrailler crime series. From the outside, the cathedral town of Lafferton seems idyllic, but in many ways it is just like any other place. It suffers from the same kinds of crime, is subject to the same pressures from a rapidly changing world, has the same hopes and fears as any number of towns up and down the land. When one day DC Simon Serrailler is called in by Lafferton's new Chief Constable, Kieran Bright, he is met by two plainclothes officers. He is asked to take the principal role in a difficult, potentially dangerous undercover operation and must leave town immediately, without telling anyone -- not even his girlfriend Rachel, who has only just moved in with him. Meanwhile, Simon's sister Cat is facing difficult choices at work, as Lafferton's hospice closes its bedded units; and at home, as her daughter is presented with a glittering opportunity that they would struggle afford. And all is not well with Simon and Cat's step-mother, Judith, either. To complete his special op, Simon must inhabit the mind of the worst kind of criminal. This takes its toll on Simon and, as the op unfolds, also on the town and some of its most respected citizens.

As high summer bakes the rich earth of north-east Herefordshire, dark shadows gather around a converted hopkiln where the last owner was savagely murdered. Though the local vicar dismisses claims by its current occupants that the place is haunted, their story is soon splashed over a Sunday newspaper—and Merrily Watkins is directed by the Bishop of Hereford to defuse this situation. Merrily, however, is already contending with a woman's claim that her adopted teenage daughter is possessed by an evil spirit. In both cases Merrily remains unconvinced, but in this summer of oppressive heat and sudden storms, nothing is ever quite what it seems.

An old friend's promise of access to some rare texts of Aristotle's has taken Master William Falconer far from Oxford to the remote Furness Abbey. While crossing the dangerous shifting sands of Lancaster Bay, he witnesses the recovery of a body from the sandbanks that mark the changing course of the River Kent. Back at the abbey, the body is identified as that of a monk who disappeared twenty years earlier. His death may not have been an accident. The dead man was to have been the new abbot, and the present incumbent, who took his place exactly two decades ago, is the prime suspect. But Falconer's friend is convinced of the abbot's innocence. Will Master William look into the matter?