Recommendations based on "Maggie's Grave"

In America to escape the violence that nearly killed him, forensics expert David Hunter has returned to the Body Farm in Tennessee. He needs to know whether he's still up to the job of confronting death. So when his former mentor asks him to accompany him to a crime scene, he agrees. But even he is unprepared for what awaits them in the remote cabin. The victim has been tortured, the body decomposed beyond recognition. Although fingerprints seem to identify the killer, Hunter is uneasy. Then a second body is found. And it becomes clear that they're dealing with a killer who is dangerously familiar with the intricacies of forensics. Has David Hunter met his match?

'At first glance it could have been anything - a stone, a knotted root - until you looked more closely. Thrusting out of the wet earth, its bones visible through rags of flesh, was a decomposing hand...'It was eight years ago that they found the body buried on the moor. They were certain that this was one of psychotic rapist and multiple murderer Jerome Monk's teenage victims. Which left just two more bodies to find? But the ill-conceived search ended badly. And with Monk safely behind bars, the momentum faltered. For forensics expert David Hunter, and those others who were part of the recovery team, life moved on. And the dead were left undisturbed.Now, though, a nightmare scenario unfurls. Monk has escaped and seems to be targeting anyone involved in that original ill-fated operation. Lured back to the moors by a desperate call for help, Hunter begins to realise that neither the events unfolding now - nor those of eight years ago - are quite what they seem. And as the maniac's violent trail edges ever closer, the past is suddenly anything but dead and buried...

Detective Inspector Tony McLean is on the case when the search for a missing journalist uncovers the scene of a carefully staged murder. In a sealed chamber, deep in the heart of Gilmerton Cove, a mysterious network of caves and passages sprawling beneath Edinburgh, the body is discovered in a seemingly macabre ritual of purification. But McLean knew the dead man and can't shake off the suspicion that there is far more to this case than meets the eye.For one thing, the baffling lack of forensics at the crime scene seems impossible. But that's just the first in a series of revelations about this case that seems beyond belief. Teamed with the most unlikely and unwelcome of allies, McLean must track down a killer--driven by the darkest compulsions and who will answer only to a higher power--until it's his own blood on the altar.Shocking and suspenseful, Prayer for the Dead, the fifth installment in James Oswald's internationally bestselling series, plunges readers into the bone-chilling darkness of an underground world filled with ancient secrets.

If you leave a door half-open, soon you'll hear the whispers spoken . . . Still devastated after the loss of his wife, Tom Kennedy and his young son Jake move to the sleepy village of Featherbank, looking for a fresh start. But Featherbank has a dark past. Fifteen years ago a twisted serial killer abducted and murdered five young boys. Until he was finally caught, the killer was known as 'The Whisper Man'. Of course, an old crime need not trouble Tom and Jake as they try to settle in to their new home. Except that now another boy has gone missing. And then Jake begins acting strangely. He says he hears a whispering at his window . . .

Sebastian Gage returns home to battle the ghosts of his past and prevent them from destroying his future with Kiera in the latest exciting installment in this national bestselling series. July 1831. It's been fifteen years since Sebastian Gage has set foot in Langstone Manor. Though he has shared little with his wife, Lady Kiera Darby, about his past, she knows that he planned never to return to the place of so many unhappy childhood memories. But when an urgent letter from his grandfather reaches them in Dublin, Ireland, and begs Gage to visit, Kiera convinces him to go. All is not well at Langstone Manor. Gage's grandfather, the Viscount Tavistock, is gravely ill, and Gage's cousin Alfred has suddenly vanished. He wandered out into the moors and never returned. The Viscount is convinced someone or something other than the natural hazards of the moors is to blame for Alfred's disappearance. And when Alfred's brother Rory goes missing, Kiera and Gage must concede he may be right. Now, they must face the ghosts of Gage's past, discover the truth behind the local superstitions, and see beyond the tricks being played by their very own eyes to expose what has happened to Gage's family before the moors claim yet another victim...

Aunt Blythe's house gives Drew the creeps - it's full of dark rooms, creaky noises, and the sound of a woman sobbing somewhere in the shadows. Then, in the middle of the night, Drew awakens to find a boy standing in his room...a boy who is Drew's exact double, except he looks as if he's come from the grave. He wants Drew to help him by traveling to a place where he will meet the spirits of long-dead ancestors...a place from which Drew may never return.

In New York Times bestselling author Kay Hooper's new novel, an SCU team investigates a troubling string of disappearances. But how do you find someone who has vanished without a trace? Something strange is happening in the small mountain town of Serenity, Tennessee. People going on routine errands never reach their destination. It's as if they simply disappear. Over the past few weeks, it's happened to five men and women--and now a child. The local police chief calls the FBI, and a team from the Special Crimes Unit is immediately sent in. Agents Lucas and Samantha Jordan, partners in work and in life, have very different abilities. Samantha is clairvoyant and Lucas possesses a unique ability to find the lost or abducted. With them are new partners Dante Swann, a medium, and Robbie Hodge, a telepath. The town is already on the edge of panic, but the mysterious events take a sinister turn when a body unrelated to the missing persons case surfaces and one of the SCU agents vanishes. Now, the team's hunt for the lost has turned into something very personal...and very dangerous.

Randall Haight has a secret: when he was a teenager, he and his friend killed a 14-year-old girl. Randall did his time and built a new life in the small Maine town of Pastor's Bay, but somebody has discovered the truth about Randall. He is being tormented by anonymous messages, haunting reminders of his past crime, and he wants private detective Charlie Parker to make it stop. But another 14-year-old girl has gone missing, this time from Pastor's Bay, and the missing girl's family has its own secrets to protect. Now Parker must unravel a web of deceit involving the police, the FBI, a doomed mobster named Tommy Morris, and Randall Haight himself. Because Randall Haight is telling lies . . .

It's no walk in the park for a Drood, a member of the family that has protected humanity from the things that go bump in the night for centuries. They aren't much liked by the creatures they kill, by ungrateful humans, or even by one another. Now their Matriarch is dead, and it's up to Eddie Drood, acting head of the family, to figure out whodunit. Unpopular opinion is divided: it was either Eddie's best girl, Molly. Or Eddie himself. And Eddie knows he didn't do it.

A Stitch of Madness: An Anthology Madness: extremely foolish behavior. Imprisoned for the murder of his best friend, Johnny Cleary sets out to tell what happened on the day Bobby "Buster" Lennon died, but are the words he writes true or does the deception run deeper. Madness: the state of being mentally ill, especially severely. There is something wrong with Irene. Momma's dead and a ragdoll speaks to her in a voice that is hauntingly familiar. And what about the stitches, the very things that just might hold Irene together? Madness: a state of frenzied or chaotic activity. After an odd stranger pays Robert Wallenger a visit, his world begins to unravel and the past comes rushing back, along with a sickly sweet scent. There is madness in everyone. For most, the madness never surfaces. For others, all it takes is one thing, big or small, for them to spiral out of control. (Photography by Marcus J. Ranum http: //www.ranum.com/)