Category Archives: Thriller

Sneak Peek Wednesday: Painless by Marty Thornley (GIVEAWAY)

Painless
by Marty Thornley
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication date: Jan. 12, 2018
Genre: Physiological thriller, Horror

The debut psychological-horror novel from author Marty Thornley is a page-turning ride, a front row seat to a clinical trial gone horribly wrong.

For Greg Owens, this was supposed to be a chance to end years of back pain and escape his reliance on pain pills. If it all worked out, he could maybe even get back the life he left behind as the pills took control.

Instead, as the patients are cured of their physical pain, they encounter a different sort of pain building inside them – obsessive thoughts, depression, self-destruction. The side-effects grow worse, and the suspense ratchets tighter. The patients want answers and violent revenge, setting them on a collision course with a crazed doctor, determined to protect his life’s obsession.

 

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Sneak Peek Wednesday: The Forgotten Ones by Steena Holmes

The Forgotten Ones
by Steena Holmes
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publication date: April 1, 2018
Genre: Psychological Thriller

Elle is a survivor. She’s managed to piece together a solid life from a childhood of broken memories and fairy tales her mom told her to explain away bad dreams. But weekly visits to her mother still fill Elle with a paralyzing fear she can’t explain. It’s just another of so many unanswered questions she grew up with in a family estranged by silence and secrets.

Elle’s world turns upside down when she receives a deathbed request from her grandfather, a man she was told had died years ago. Racked by grief, regrets, and a haunted conscience, he has a tale of his own to tell Elle: about her mother, an imaginary friend, and two strangers who came to the house one night and never left.

As Elle’s past unfolds, so does the truth—if she can believe it. She must face the reasons for her inexplicable dread. As dark as they are, Elle must listen…before her grandfather’s death buries the family’s secrets forever.

 

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Sneak Peek Wednesday: Dark Glitter by C.M. Stunich & Tate James

Dark Glitter
(Wild Hunt Motorcycle Club #1)
by C.M. Stunich & Tate James
Publisher: Self-published
Publication date: Jan. 24, 2018
Genre: Paranormal Thriller

Ciarah O’Rourke was born into torture.
A human spirit reincarnated in the body of an ancient fae goddess, she’s spent the last five years in iron shackles, her mind poisoned with magic for secrets she doesn’t know.

Waking up in a dirty alley with no memory of her escape, Ciarah finds herself in the hands of The Wild Hunt Motorcycle Club–a ruthless and violent group of bikers with faerie blood in their veins.

Arlo. Reece. Killian.
Three men drenched in death, sin, and old magic.
From their clubhouse in the middle of the Louisiana bayou, they’ll offer Ciarah the keys to unlock her memories and control the veil between worlds. But even her knights can’t erase the twisted scars that remind her they aren’t the only ones who hunt.

When The Wild Hunt rides, the souls of the dead join their parade.
All that’s missing now is their queen.

 

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Sneak Peek Wednesday: Devil’s Gold by Amanda McKinney

Devil’s Gold
(Black Rose Mystery #1)
by Amanda McKinney
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: Feb. 13, 2018
Genre: Mystery Thriller

Death and Darkness are the norm at Black Rose Investigations . . .

Despite being chronically late, occasionally disheveled and a tad disorganized, Dixie Knight is one of the top private investigators in the country, and when a young woman goes missing in the small, Southern town of Devil’s Den, Dixie takes the case. She expected it to be another ordinary missing person case—until it takes a brutal turn.

While visiting relatives on his two-week leave, Marine Liam Cash bumps into Dixie at the local bar, and his attraction to her is immediate. When he becomes suspicious that Dixie’s current case is connected to two unsolved murders in his hometown, he steps in to help investigate, and keep Dixie safe, whether Dixie wants him to or not.

As the bodies start stacking up, Dixie turns the town upside down looking for the killer—could it be the rumored witch that lives in the mountains; the rich, neurotic doctor’s wife; or the perky, blonde receptionist at the local medical clinic?

Time is running out and Dixie knows she has to put the pieces of the puzzle together before another body turns cold in Devil’s Den.

 

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Review: Positive by David Wellington

Positive
by David Wellington
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Publication date: Aug. 21, 2015
Genre: Dystopian Thriller
Rating:

Anyone can be positive . . .

Years after a plague killed 99 percent of the population, turning them into infectious zombies, Finnegan and his family live in a barricaded New York City. But Finn’s sheltered life fractures when his unsuspecting mother falls sick with the zombie disease—latent inside her since before her son’s birth.

Finn, too, can be infected. If he remains healthy for the last two years of the potential incubation period, he’ll be cleared. Until then, he must be moved to a special facility for positives, segregated to keep the healthy population safe.

Tattooed with a plus sign on his hand that marks him as a positive, Finn is exiled from the city. But when marauders kill the escort sent to transport him, Finn must learn how to survive alone in an eerie, disintegrated landscape. And though the zombies are everywhere, Finn discovers that the real danger is his fellow humans.

 

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Excerpt: The Threshing Circle by Neil Grimmet

threshingThe Threshing Circle
By: Neil Grimmet
Publisher: Grimpen Publications
Published: Feb. 19, 2014
Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Goodreads | Amazon

A young couple arrive on the Greek island of Crete and begin prying into the execution of a beautiful English woman during the German occupation sixty years before. They enter a labyrinth of forbidden love, betrayals, murder, greed and vendettas, old and new.

Then they disappear.

A feisty Scottish woman and an irascible, Zorba-like Greek form a reluctant allegiance in a desperate attempt to find and rescue them. They both have very different motives for their involvement. Their search will take them to hidden rituals, ceremonies, remote gatherings, famous monasteries and villages abandoned after decades of vendettas. To the remote island of Gavdos and finally back to a place that, “Even God does not know exists”.

They will encounter characters good and evil; some modern and pragmatic, others ancient and magical.
All the time they are being stalked by the sons of man who seeks to complete the crimes of his father and sate his own greed and insane desire for vengeance. These men are more animal than human and have been raised in the remote mountains for the sole purpose of carrying out the brutal will of their father.

The mystery of the real, hidden Crete runs deep, and THE THRESHING CIRCLE explores some of the myths and romance while not shying away from its often violent nature.
By the end choices will have to be made. If such actions are really possible on an island where many Cretans still believe that: “The Cycle of Blood”, can never stop flowing.

Excerpt

Marianna didn’t resist the men as they tore her clothes off. She felt no shame as she stood naked, balanced on the stool with the coarse fibres of the rope already cutting into her neck. She stared proudly and defiantly at the villagers and saw Kapetanios Rossos struggling to break free and the looks of horror on the faces of the women and children. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she called out in her best mix of English and Greek. ‘My husband will avenge this. Save my child is all I ask of you.’

A huge cry of pain answered her and echoed into the mountains as Meissher jackbooted the stool over and Marianna

Link lit a cigarette and watched until the kicking death dance became a tremble, and finally stilled. He waited as his men began to drive the villagers into their homes before moving to Hofner. ‘Tell Meissher to clear up then follow us.’

‘What about the child?’ Hofner, a father of three, asked,

gesturing to the house where Athena was still wailing.

Oberleutnant Link had his orders and knew what his part in this bargain was, but he didn’t kill children for traitors and cowards no matter what they’d given in return. ‘Leave it for Meissher, he’ll enjoy taking his frustration out on it.

Anyway, if he hasn’t the stomach it won’t matter. These scum hate all foreigners. The child is a Frank to them; they’ll loot the house before we’re out of sight, and either smother it or let it starve.’

Hofner made his own decision after Oberleutnant Link left. He dimmed the light on the writing table, closed the broken door to the house on Athena and made sure his sadistic

Lieutenant was kept amused with some of the young village girls until he tired of his sport and wanted to leave. Hofner felt good, and if he ended up on the Eastern Front with Meissher for forgetting to remind him of Link’s orders then so be it. But there was no way he wanted to see that beautiful child follow her mother to the grave.

Later, after the last of the Germans disappeared into the fading darkness and Athena cried as her mother grew cold, shadowy figures began to move. One of them, silver-haired, tall and dressed in a flowing black robe, slipped stealthily into the house. She looked around and began gathering up what she could take, then moved towards the screaming child. Her long, thin hands closed around the baby and quickly silenced its cries.

author
neil

Neil Grimmett has had over eighty five short stories published. In the UK by among others: London Magazine, Stand, Panurge, Iron, Ambit, Postscripts Magazine, Pretext etc. Australia, Quadrant, South Africa, New Contrast. Plus stories in the leading journals of Singapore, India, France, Canada, and the USA, where he has appeared in Fiction, The Yale Review, DoubleTake, The southern Humanities Review, Green Mountains Review, Descant, The Southern Review, West Branch and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He has appeared online in Blackbird, Plum Ruby Review, Tatlin\’s Tower, Web Del Sol, In Posse Review, m.a.g., Word Riot, Blue Moon Review, 3AM, Gangway, Eclectica, The Cortland Review, Segue, The Dublin Quarterly , Ducts, Sugar Mule, Mysterical E, Thuglit and over thirty others. His stories have also appeared in the anthologies: ENGLAND CALLING, BOOK OF VOICES and Italy’s ISBN’s Top International Stories. He has made the storySouth Million Writers Notable Short Story list for the last three years. In addition, he has won the Write On poetry award, 7 Oppenheim John Downes Awards, 5 major British Arts Council Awards, a Royal Society of Authors award and was just awarded a major grant from the Royal Literary Fund. He has been signed over the last ten years by twelve of the leading literary agents in both the UK and USA. His current agent is Jon Elek at United Agents who is just going out with his 2nd literary thriller, THE HOARD.

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