Tag Archives: Psychological Thriller

Hot House Blitz

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E&A Investigations, Book 1

 

Psychological Thriller

Date Published: June 15, 2022

Publisher: Indies United Publishing

 

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When a former CIA operative and private investigator Mari Ellwyn starts
digging into the blackmail case of a federal appellate judge, she becomes
targeted by a van following her, threatening notes in her mailbox, and a
breach of her home. Teaming up with seasoned investigator and former
detective, Derek Abernathy, the crime-savvy pair begin looking into the
wrongful death of a mentally-ill college student, Sophie Michaud, as well as
two journalists – one dead, one missing, who were writing a story on
the dead college student with allegations of her connection to the federal
judge. The two investigators must uncover the truth about Sophie Michaud
before her killer makes them their next target. But more importantly, Mari
needs to find her missing father and reconcile her broken past and
family.

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Praise for Hot House:

“The plot is propelled forward by the clever use of suspense, measured
action, and ingeniously written conflict. It is a moving and delightful read
with cinematic scenes and characters that will stick with readers for a long
after they turn the last page.” – The Book Commentary

 

“An exceptional read with a powerfully unexpected conclusion, leaving
the door more than ajar for a follow-up. This will attract audiences both
within and beyond the thriller and mystery genres.” – Midwest Book
Review

 

“Towles has produced a knockout novel with Hot House. Nowhere will
thriller fans find a more engaging keep-you-on-your-toes read.” –
Literary Titan, 5 Star Review

 

“A dark, edge-of-the-seat thriller. Highly recommended!” –
Chanticleer Reviews, 5 Star Review

 

“This meticulously constructed, remarkable mystery deftly explores
people’s darkest flaws while revealing hard truths about the hidden workings
of the world. A fast-paced and psychologically astute thriller.” –
Prairies Book Review

 About the Author

Lisa Towles

 Lisa Towles is an award-winning crime novelist and a passionate speaker on
the topics of fiction writing, creativity, and Strategic Self Care. Hot
House is her 8th publication and won a GOLD Literary Titan Award for
Fiction. Lisa’s last four books each won numerous literary awards, and she
continues to write consistently while working full time in the tech
industry.  Her next book, The Ridders, is a political thriller that
will be released on November 30, 2022. She also serves on the board of a Bay
Area nonprofit called Bridgegood. Lisa is an active member and frequent
panelist/speaker of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and
International Thriller Writers. She has an MBA in IT Management and lives in
Oakland, California.

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Harm Reduction Blitz

 

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Psychological Thriller

 

Published: December 2021

Publisher: Unhooked Media

A secret binds them together, the truth will unravel them.

Jenny Ocean’s life is already on shaky ground when a violent attack sparks a chain of events that leaves her with a terrible secret that she can share with no one, and which clouds her every waking moment with guilt and fear for years to come.

Trying to make amends, Jenny works hard and becomes a professional counselor dedicated to helping others unravel their problems. For a time, it seems her life is finally on track, but her past catches up with her in the form of Rio Winston. At first an enigmatic client, Rio turns out to be a narcissistic serial killer who leverages her past to draw her into a web of complicity in his delusional and homicidal mission.

Jenny becomes trapped in a confusing, dark journey mixing horror and fascination, balancing her coerced alliance with Rio with her affair with police detective Sam Longford—only to find that the distance separating a killer from the law isn’t as great as she once thought. Featuring a trio of characters bound together by desire, obsession, grandiosity, and remorseless need, Harm Reduction journeys into the depravity of serial murder, the pain of ambivalence, moral compromise in the face of survival, and the tenuous hope of finding a way out.

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About the Author

Todd Grande

Todd Grande is a professional counselor, counselor educator, and content creator who specializes in personality disorders, addiction, trauma, and psychopathology. He operates a popular YouTube channel in which he covers mental health disorders, personality theory, true crime, relationships, and narcissism. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor of Mental Health and Licensed Chemical Dependency Professional in Delaware and is a National Certified Counselor. He holds a Master’s of Science in Community Counseling from Wilmington University and a Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision from Regent University. For many years, Dr. Grande was an associate professor in Wilmington University’s Clinical Mental Health Counseling program and provided counseling and consulting services in his community.

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Emergence Blitz

 

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Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller

 

Published: January 1021

Publisher: Tellwell Talent

It starts with Just Watching. But danger emerges when Just Watching ends.

When the “wild child” Xavier first encounters Cass Harwood and her dogs in the woods of West Quebec, he is enthralled. Unknown to them, he Just Watches them in a lengthy ongoing surveillance, before finally staging a meeting. His motives are uncertain – even to him.

The intersection of the lives of Cass, a competitive dog-handler, her dogs, her cousin Lori and the complex and enigmatic Xavier, leads them all into a spiral of danger. It starts when Just Watching ends – when Cass and her crew encounter tragedy in the bush. Xavier’s involvement in the tragedy, unknown to Cass, sets off a chain of potentially lethal events, that begin in the dark woods of Lac Rouge, when hiking, skiing, hunting, trapping, marijuana grow-ops, and pedophilia, collide. It matures in the suburbs of both Ottawa and Baltimore, and culminates back in Lac Rouge, when danger arrives uninvited at Cass’ isolated cabin in the woods. In the night. In the cold. In the heavily-falling snow. Xavier observes it all. His motives are again uncertain, but his propensity for action is not.

Join Xavier, Lori, Cass and the realistic and compelling dogs that are essential players in this dark drama, as their fates converge in a deadly loop of revenge, fear, guilt, and hope.

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Excerpt from Emergence
From Chapter 13 – Xavier – Secrets

 

Our cabin doesn’t have a basement. It is raised on cinderblocks, and is only maybe a foot off the ground…That has allowed me to have an excellent place to hide things I don’t want Stefan to know about. There are boards underneath where the kitchen is, that I’ve had to explore when working with insulation. I now have my own special board, where I’ve hollowed out a space where I can hide stuff. My secret stuff incudes extra notebooks with the drawings of Cassie and the dogs, that would reveal how much time I spend observing them. But it also includes special stuff I’ve liberated, that I don’t want Stefan to know about.

Liberation is a game Stefan taught me when I was littlelittle. He told me that good equipment deserves to be well cared-for. When he was teaching me how to Just Watch, he’d find hunting stands where we could watch campers, fishermen, and hunters. And he would explain when they did things right, and when they didn’t. Not looking after your equipment is not right. So when people were careless, and particularly when they were careless and drunk, or even better – careless, drunk and asleep ( which happens pretty often!) he taught me how to do a super-quiet “leopard crawl”, which means crawling really low to the ground on your belly. And I would have to leopard crawl to liberate the good equipment. It was scary and very fun! I got us lots of good stuff. As far as Stefan knew, it all went into a big wooden chest in the book room.

But I have liberated some stuff on my own – things I never told Stefan about. And that stuff goes into my hiding space under the house. Most of it is small stuff. My favorite little liberation was a system for carrying water in a pack with a hose you can sip it through. But the main thing, the big thing in my hiding space, is the rifle I liberated a year ago, when Stefan was away.

I was Just Watching a little clearing off the main road where hunters often met up with each other. It was early in the season, and I was there before any one arrived. But as the sun rose, four SUVs showed up. They were all big, expensive looking vehicles. Six men got out, all dressed in in the kind of clothes that hunters from the city wear and that Stefan makes fun of. One of the men, who I think maybe was younger than the others, acted really excited. He reminded me of how bullshit dogs like Zeke try to act tough but end up wagging their tails really fast and low and licking the mouths of the no-bullshit dogs. He was the guy with the biggest SUV. While they were getting ready to go, he took two rifles out of the car and showed them to the other men. There was a lot of discussion. I’m pretty sure they were deciding which one he should use that day. They decided on the fancier, newer-looking one, with a powerful-looking scope. The guy put the other one back in the SUV…

It never occurred to me to liberate it. Breaking into a car was not something Stefan had taught me to do. But the guy never locked his vehicle! I couldn’t believe it!

About the Author

Ellie Beals

Ellie Beals grew up Baltimore, Maryland and moved to Canada when she was 20. She spent the majority of her professional career as a management consultant in Ottawa, Ontario. Plain language writing was one of her specialties.

Dogs have been a constant in Ellie’s life from the time she was a child. In the mid-1990s, she started to train and compete in Obedience with Golden Retrievers, with considerable success. In 2014, she had the highest-rated Canadian obedience dog (Fracas – upon whom Chuff is modeled), and her husband David Skinner had the second-rated dog. During a ten-year period, both Ellie and David were regularly ranked among Canada’s Top Ten Obedience competitors. They have an active obedience coaching practice in Ottawa, having retired from their previous professional careers in order to spend more time playing with their dogs and their students.

Like Cass and Noah Harwood, Ellie and David have a log cabin in the wilds of West Quebec, where Ellie is an avid wilderness recreationist, constantly accompanied by her dogs. As Covid19 spread in March of 2020, she and David temporarily shut down their coaching practice and retreated to their cabin, where Emergence was written. Lac Rouge is not the real name of the lake on which they live. Everything else about the locale for Emergence is faithful to the character of the gentle Laurentian mountains of West Quebec.

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The Trophy Room Blitz

 

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Crime Thriller, Psychological Thriller

 

Published: March 2021

Publisher: Bleaknorth Publishing

What terrible secrets lie inside those doors?

It was to be an ordinary holiday by the sea for the Miller family, a chance to bond after difficult times; but when they meet a local family, the Trevelyans, they become embroiled in a dangerous and disturbing conflict with the unstable owner of Leybury Hall, and must face the terrifying truth of The Trophy Room.

Written in a mixture of second and third person, this novel about the evil doings of the disturbed and psychotic inhabitant of Leybury Hall. The novel flirts with gothic horror but is, at heart, the story of families brought together to face terrible truths. Children from both families play a central and disturbing role.

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Excerpt

 

A young boy approaches the watchtower along the cliff path. He is alone and intent on some game which absorbs all his attention. He swerves and circles, arms outstretched, and accompanies each move with excited chatter. He is about ten and has a mop of untidy red hair, and a rash of freckles.

So intent is he on his game that he doesn’t see the low, wooden door of the watchtower open, and a man step out, at least not until it is too late. When the boy does notice, he pauses, and his hands drop to his side. His shoulders hunch, and he stands there, waiting for the man to approach. The look of fear on the boy’s face seems to entertain the newcomer, because he offers an unpleasant smile—close to a sneer—and takes up a position blocking the path. The man is gaunt, with a sickly complexion, and his clothes hang loose, like they were intended for a stockier man. He’s in his mid-twenties but has a pinched, shifty look, and a hollow face which makes him look ten years older. There’s something cold about him, too, and a glint of malice lingers around his mouth and eyes. He has the air of someone who would pull the wings off a butterfly, just for fun.

The boy senses the danger and looks around for other walkers, but it’s early and it’s October, and there is nobody else out. They are alone on the cliff.

Are you following me, Sammy?’ The man’s voice curls around him like a snake, then it darts a poisoned tongue. ‘Because if you are—’

About the Author

Barry Litherland

Barry Litherland is a writer of character-driven crime / mystery thrillers, sometimes tinged with the paranormal. His books have received excellent reviews and are commended for the quality and depth of the characters, the reality of the settings, the strength of the narrative and the quality of writing. He lives in the far north of Scotland with his wife and two springer spaniels.

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The Darkness Blitz

 

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Thriller, Psychological Thriller

 

Published: February 2021

Publisher: Bedazzled Ink Publishing

Enter the mind of a serial killer . . . and lock your doors.

Edward Olson presents himself as the all-American guy. His stunning looks, captivating blue eyes, and charisma make it easy to meet women. But Edward has a dark secret—behind his charming smile, a vicious serial killer lies in wait.

Edward is driven to kill by an entity he calls The Darkness. Believing this creature is the evil that possesses him, he struggles to rid himself of the creature he thinks has stolen his soul.

Nurse Cate Derry, Edward’s naïve girlfriend, is the newest member of the hospital’s critical care unit, with secrets of her own. Her rocky relationship with Edward and her connection to a detective on the case plunge all three into a downward spiral to a world where no one is safe.

The Darkness is a harrowing journey into the depths of evil and the battle to overcome it.

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About the Author

Robbi Sommers Bryant

Robbi Sommers Bryant’s award-winning books include a novella, 6 novels, 5 short-story collections, and 1 book of poetry. Her work has been published in magazines including Readers Digest, Redbook, Penthouse, college textbooks, and many anthologies. As editor-in-chief of the Redwood Writers 2018 anthology, she supervised the creation and publication of Redemption: Stories From the Edge. Robbi’s work was also optioned twice for television’s Movie of the Week, and she appeared on TV’s Jane Whitney Show to discuss her article, “A Victim’s Revenge.”

Robbi is past president of Redwood Writers, the largest branch of the California Writers Club. Besides writing, her professional focus is developmental editing, content editing, copy editing, and proofreading. She is also a professional writing coach. Find out more at robbibryant.com

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