Showing results by author "Kerry Wilkinson" in All Categories

When six-year-old Olivia Adams disappeared from her back garden, the small community of Stoneridge was thrown into turmoil. How could a child vanish in the middle of a cozy English village? Thirteen years on and Olivia is back. Her mother is convinced it's her but not everyone is sure. If this is the missing girl, then where has she been - and what happened to her on that sunny afternoon? If she's an imposter, then who would be bold enough to try to fool a child's own mother - and why?

It’s almost midnight when Jennifer sees her son’s name flash up on her phone. Away at university, she’s normally so happy when he calls. But something is terribly wrong… Jennifer is devastated for poor Ella’s family–losing their precious girl, so young. She knows her sweet son, just twenty years old, would never, ever harm anyone. But the police are looking for him. And if Dan is innocent, why has he run?

Young married couple Heidi and Freddie just moved to Huntington Grove. All the neighbours see they are friendly and polite but why is one door in their house always locked? Across the street, Willow tries not to argue with her teenage daughter – even as her marriage is falling apart. And where does her husband really go each night, leaving the bed beside her cold?

Charley Willis was 13 years old when her parents were killed in their family home and she was found hiding in a cupboard upstairs. Fifteen years later, Charley is marrying Seth Chambers. It should be the happiest day of their lives, a chance for Charley to put her past behind her, but just hours after the ceremony, she is missing. No one saw her leave. No one knows where she is. One thing is for certain…Seth is about to discover he doesn’t really know the woman he just married. And his nightmare is only just beginning.

Eve is clearing her father’s house when she finds an old cassette player and a box of tapes. Though grieving, she smiles at the spark of nostalgia. One tape is labelled ‘Eve’–in her mother, Angela’s, scrawled handwriting. She disappeared for good more than ten years ago. The tape whirrs. A voice crackles. ‘My name is Angela’. Tears fill Eve’s eyes at the familiar voice–at the thought her mother recorded this message just for her. But the next words make her heart pound.

I return home to our beautiful house on a chilly winter evening expecting to find my handsome husband Richard waiting for me by the fire. We’re still so in love, and he always takes care of me. He usually comes straight back from work. But tonight, our antique clock ticks on through the dark evening, with no sign of him. Then a knock at the door shatters my perfect life. A 12-year-old-girl, Alice from the village, has been found unconscious in the field behind our house. They say she was last seen getting into Richard’s car.

Emma is so happy to have moved from the city to her husband’s small hometown. James was strangely reluctant at first – but she convinced him their little cottage is the perfect place to settle down. The perfect place to give their six-year-old son a new life. But then a woman at the school gates asks Emma if she is really married to ‘that man’. ‘Which man?’ Emma asks. The woman replies…

Leah and her three best friends get changed into their pyjamas, eat pizza, and argue about what film to watch. They laugh together, until the early hours. But the next morning, Leah blinks open her eyes and sees three empty sleeping bags. The other girls are gone. Twenty years later. In her small hometown, still-haunted Leah has never been able to shake off the rumours and whispers. How could she have slept through it all? She must know what happened.

I stare at the newspaper article about a baby snatched from the back of a car 30 years ago and wonder why someone would post it through my door. Looking closer, my blood freezes. The little girl in the photo has an unusual scar - just like mine. I’ve never met anyone with one like it. Is this stolen child...me? Trembling with shock, I know I have to confront my mother. My parents got me through a horrific accident, helped me find a job I love teaching art, and even with buying my own house. But was it all built on lies?

Wheeling my suitcase down the familiar, hedge-lined street, I smile at the sound of children playing in the park nearby. Suddenly, there’s a screech of car brakes. I rush over to see a bent bike wheel sticking out of the ditch, and underneath, a little boy....

Lucy gets the same bus every day. She hopes to get a seat to herself, tries to avoid eye contact, and, if she’s really lucky, reads a chapter of her book. But it’s a Friday - and the bus is always crammed at the end of the week. Personal space doesn’t exist. She keeps her elbows close and clings to a pole at every juddering stop. When she gets off, something feels different. An envelope stuffed with thousands of pounds is in her bag. Is it the answer to her prayers, or the beginning of a nightmare? Because, in the end, everything has a price.

Paige, Richard and me. We thought we’d be friends forever. But everything changed the day we took the shortcut home from school along the old railway line. I wish we’d gone the long way. I wish we hadn’t seen our classmate, pale and still in the undergrowth. And I wish we hadn’t promised to keep one, awful detail a secret just between us....

Nicholas Carr disappeared on his 18th birthday and the world has moved on. His girlfriend has gone to university, his friends have got jobs, the police have other things to look into. But his father, Richard, is still stuck on the three fingers the police dug up from a sodden Manchester wood. What happened to Nicholas on the night he disappeared, and why did he never come home? Private investigator Andrew Hunter is Nicholas's last hope.

With their parents gone and nobody left to ask, when Georgia and Oliver first come to amateur sleuth Millie Westlake for help with their daisy-shaped markings, she thinks the tattoos are a joke. A funny, if unusual, link between two strangers. In the seaside town of Whitecliff, stranger things have happened–especially to Millie herself.

Since Katie’s dad left, it’s just been the two of us, but we’re a team – singing in the kitchen at cheesy pop songs, tackling her homework. My teenage daughter is everything to me. But one night, as we’re curled up in front of the TV, the messages start. I keep my phone away from Katie so she can’t see the terrifying words: I know what you did. Now you’re going to do something for me....

Everyone in the small seaside town of Whitecliff knows the name Kevin Ashworth. Two boys disappeared 30 years ago–and although local teacher Kevin never admitted to knowing where their bodies are, he’s been in prison ever since.

Everyone’s invited. Someone will never leave. In a grand townhouse rented specially for the evening, Hannah beams at her guests under the sparkling chandelier. Her sisters, her mother and aunt, her best friends...although she’ll miss them all so much when she moves away, tonight is about celebrating the happy times and raising a toast to the future. But the next morning, one of the guests is found cold and lifeless in their pristine white bed. Hannah is desperate to call the police. After all, it must have been an accident.

Twenty-five years ago: teenage Leah had a sleepover with her three best friends. By morning, the other girls were missing. This small town has been searching for answers ever since. Now it’s happened again. Three boys decide to camp in a field next to one of their homes. When dawn comes, dew glistens on their empty tents. Overgrown farmland is searched. Three distraught families are desperate for news. A mother herself now, Leah’s heart breaks as terrible memories flood back.

They told us he had been missing for nearly two days, that he probably drowned. They told us a lie. Megan was 10 years old when her older brother, Zac, went missing among the cliffs, caves, and beaches that surround the small seaside town of Whitecliff. A decade later, a car crash has claimed the lives of her parents. Megan and her younger sister, Chloe, return to Whitecliff one summer for the first time since their brother's disappearance.

It started with a phone call. Just one word - ‘Jessica’ - and now Detective Inspector Jessica Daniel has a big problem. Her missing friend, Bex, called from a battered seaside payphone, and yet, by the time Jessica arrived, there was nobody there. One man claims he can help - but then he turns up on a beach stabbed to death. Jessica believes someone must be framing her. Someone who is always a step ahead. When she finds a boy whose tattoo matches Bex's, she becomes more desperate than ever for answers.