Showing results by author "Melinda Leigh" in All Categories

A pair of hikers find a tarp-wrapped body in a clearing in the woods. When a search in the surrounding area yields two more, Sheriff Bree Taggert knows they’ve stumbled onto a serial killer’s dumping ground. With the help of investigator Matt Flynn, Bree works the case. They go to interview Jana, the best friend of one of the victims. But when they arrive at her apartment, it’s been ransacked and set on fire. And Jana is missing.

During a vicious heat wave, a county maintenance worker stumbles upon two suspicious suitcases abandoned by the side of the road. Sheriff Bree Taggert responds to find two bodies stuffed inside the luggage. The press demands action. The community is on edge. Suddenly, Bree is at the center of a media firestorm. In Oregon, a senator’s daughter goes missing. FBI Special Agent Mercy Kilpatrick agrees to keep the politically sensitive case on the down-low.

After Sheriff Bree Taggert’s takedown of cold-blooded murderer Travis Ekin, his family vows revenge. Travis’s mother and brothers are every bit as violent, and Bree is in their crosshairs. To complicate matters, Bree’s best friend, Dana Romano, walks into her date’s home and finds him shot in the chest. Dana tangles with an unidentified intruder, but he escapes through the back door. The crime scene is in another police department’s jurisdiction, and the lead investigator focuses on Dana as the prime suspect.

Deputy Tessa Black spots a man disturbing a grave in the local cemetery and gives chase. But when Tessa catches him, she learns that the ghoulish trespasser wasn’t robbing graves; he was burying a box of bones. With the help of her fiancé, park ranger Logan Wilde, Tessa discovers that the remains belong to a missing teenager from a nearby island. After the girl disappeared nine months ago, police labeled her a runaway. Now, though, it’s clear the teenager was murdered.

After the devastating loss of her husband in Iraq, Morgan Dane returns to Scarlet Falls, seeking the comfort of her hometown. Now, surrounded by family, she’s finally found peace and a promising career opportunity - until her babysitter is killed and her neighbor asks her to defend his son, Nick, who stands accused of the murder.

All communities have their secrets...but on Widow’s Island, there’s a skeleton in every closet, as Deputy Tessa Black knows all too well. When Tessa stumbles upon a half-buried body in the woods, a peaceful morning hike suddenly turns into a race to catch a killer. Tessa identifies the skeletal corpse as Aurora Franklin, a young college student and aspiring actor. She’d come to Widow’s Island for a summer job, only to be strangled and discarded. Aurora has been dead for over a month - and not a single islander has reported her missing.

When a man is shot in the head, Bree Taggert and her new partner, veteran detective Dana Romano, respond to the call. They break the news to the victim’s ex-wife and learn the estranged couple’s five-year-old daughter was supposed to have been with him. What starts as a murder investigation quickly morphs into a desperate search for a missing child. The case stirs memories of Bree’s own traumatizing childhood. To find the little girl, Bree will have to relive her own terrifying past.

When a retired sheriff’s deputy is shot to death in his home, his troubled teenage stepson, Evan, becomes the prime suspect. Even more incriminating, the boy disappeared from the scene of the crime. Desperate to find her son, Evan’s mother begs PI Lance Kruger for help. She knows her son is innocent. Kruger and defense attorney Morgan Dane want to believe that too, but the evidence against the boy is damning. Just as the trail goes cold, another deputy vanishes.

County investigator Seth Harding intends to spend the holidays with his newly reconciled family, but a few days before Christmas, a homicide thwarts his plan. Seth arrives at the scene and makes a painful discovery: the victim is his brother-in-law's girlfriend. Her apartment has been ransacked and her toddler left motherless. To make matters worse, Seth's brother-in-law, Bruce, is missing. With Solitude locked in a rare, deadly deep freeze and the temperature plummeting, the residents launch a desperate search.

Haley Powell wakes up covered in blood, with no memory of the night before. When she sees a man lying in the backyard, stabbed to death, she has only one terrified thought: What have I done? Agreeing to take the case as a favor to her PI friend Lincoln Sharp, Morgan must scale a mountain of damning circumstantial and forensic evidence to prove her client innocent.

Twelve years ago, Cristan’s wife was murdered. He was forced on the run to keep his infant daughter safe. They’ve finally settled in a small Pennsylvania town, but he can’t shake the feeling that they are being watched. Newly divorced, Sarah is ready to start over. As her ex becomes increasingly hostile, she appreciates help from a neighbor. But the violence she senses beneath Cristan’s polished manners makes her wary.

When a body washes up on the state park beach, Deputy Tessa Black’s experience as a former Seattle detective tells her that the death was not an accident. All evidence points to another murder on the remote island. The victim is a local contractor with a shockingly long list of enemies. The more locals Tessa interviews, the more people she suspects - from the bitter ex-wife and estranged current wife to disgruntled former clients and employees. They all have different reasons to want him dead.

While fighting in Afghanistan, Major Grant Barrett receives devastating news: his brother and sister-in-law have been murdered in Scarlet Falls, the sleepy suburb of Grant's youth. Emotionally scarred from war, the career soldier returns home on emergency leave to temporarily care for his orphaned nephew and niece. But when someone tries to kidnap the kids and their teenage babysitter, Grant knows it's not a random act... and neither were the murders.

Wildlife biologist Mac Barrett avoided his hometown of Scarlet Falls for years - too many bad memories. But when he receives the news that his father is dying, he rushes home only to discover he’s too late. Shaken, Mac retreats to his remote cabin seeking peace and solace. Instead, he crashes his jeep to narrowly avoid running over the naked body of a woman lying in the road. Even more disturbing, when he regains consciousness, the body is gone.

After corporate attorney Hannah Barrett tries - and fails - to stop a kidnapping in Vegas, she can’t shake the haunting image of the terrified young girl she couldn’t save. She tells herself that a visit to her hometown in Scarlet Falls could be a welcome distraction. But soon, Hannah realizes the kidnappers have all the info they need to track her every move. And when chilling e-mails about the victim appear in her inbox, it’s frighteningly clear what happened in Vegas has followed her home.

When two hikers disappear from their hometown in Maine, everyone blames the blinding storms. But the truth is far more sinister. Unaware of the danger, tabloid photographer Jayne Sullivan follows an anonymous tip to find the most reclusive sculptor in the art world. Instead, she finds mysterious handyman Reed Kimball - and a small town full of fatal secrets.

When Chase Ryan, a popular crime TV star, turns up dead, the entire town of Solitude is shaken - but the show isn't over yet. The confessed murderer is violently abducted on the way to the county jail, and now Detective Seth Harding must find both the killer and the kidnapper. Seth's investigation unearths unsavory secrets from the celebrity's life that incriminate a cast of suspects: Chase's family, his sleazy agent, and a fanatical stalker with a troubled thirteen-year-old daughter.

When Sheriff Bree Taggert discovers the body of a young woman floating near the bank of the Scarlet River, a note in her abandoned car suggests suicide. The autopsy reveals a different story. Holly Thorpe was dead long before she dropped off the bridge and hit the water. As Bree and her investigator Matt Flynn delve into the case, secrets in Holly’s personal life complicate their efforts to solve the murder.

In one moment, high school teacher and single mother Brooke Davenport interrupts a vicious assault, saves a young woman’s life, and attracts the attention of a serial killer. Sixteen years ago, Brooke lost her roommate to a brutal murder. Now she teaches women’s self-defense, still trying to heal from the guilt and grief that plague her.

When a terrible accident abruptly ends her riding career, Rachel Parker returns to Pennsylvania to rebuild her family’s horse farm. But her welcome home is anything but warm. Her sister’s abusive husband and a violent vandal threaten Rachel’s new business and her life. Someone is systematically trying to destroy her. Someone who knows private things about her. Someone who’s been watching her.