Mystery/Crime

Twelve months of internship, top of my class in every evaluation. I showed up at Vanguard Systems to finalize my hire, and Ryan Caldwell blocked the door.
"The Aegis research position and security clearance nomination went to Madison. Five hundred thousand. Sign the NDA and walk away."
Madison Cole stood beside him. She knew her scores didn't come close to mine, yet a federal project access badge ...

My dad was a highly decorated narcotics detective. Fifteen years ago, they framed him for corruption and claimed he swallowed his own gun. It ruined our family.
But tonight, everything changed. I was digging through his old evidence box when a heavy, battery-less police radio suddenly crackled to life.
"Pumpkin, I'm bringing a turkey home."
"Dad! Don't go to the motel today!"
Right before my eyes,...

I make a living solving cold cases, earning just enough to get by.
Until I saw my long-time crush on the latest corpse.
He used to be an unreachable light, but now he's the deepest darkness before my eyes.
At this moment, he stands across from me, eyes full of innocence, asking for my help, saying he loves me.
Should I arrest him, or trust him?

Forty-eight hours before my wedding, I was kidnapped and gang-raped, surviving by only a thread in the depths of despair.   When my mafia boss fiancé and my police detective best friend stood guard by my hospital bed with bloodshot eyes, I heard him suddenly switch to Navajo and ask her, "The death row inmates from the dark web—were they dealt with cleanly?"   My best friend chuckled, replying in ...

My boyfriend entered our village shrine to ask for a blessing before our wedding.

Ten minutes later, he came out, wrapped his hands around my throat, and promised my father he would kill me himself.

He wasn't the first.

Every man who offered to take me away went into that shrine and came back disgusted, violent, or both.

My father called it a curse. Then he beat me for bringing it upon myse...

They pulled my husband Beckett’s car out of the Avery River at four in the morning.
I was sitting in the reception area of the Ardenvale police station, having waited all night. Everyone thought I was just the pathetic wife—the one who had been humiliated at her mother-in-law’s birthday banquet, went home early, and panicked when her husband never returned.
No one knew that from the moment I diale...

I got off work two hours early, hoping to surprise my boyfriend whom I had just bailed out for $30,000.
I pushed the bedroom door open. The surprise was on me—my stepsister Chloe was straddling Dorian. The same man who, just three days ago, sat crying on the police station floor swearing "I only have you," now slowly lit a cigarette and asked if I wanted to join them.
I thought that was the worst ...

At eleven o'clock on a hurricane night, the new intern posted in the company Slack channel asking for help.
Her apartment was flooding, she said. Could my brother drive over and take her to a hotel?
In my last life, I felt sorry for her, and I let him go.
The next morning, Brielle Hart held up a torn lace slip
and sobbed that my brother had assaulted her.
He was eighteen, a college freshman, and n...

In my first life, blinded by greed, I claimed to be that mysterious woman. Silas glanced at my left shoulder and said coldly, "No butterfly tattoo." His bodyguards dragged me to the backyard and shattered my ribs with a baseball bat.
In my second life, Cleo learned from my mistake. She got the butterfly tattoo at an underground parlor. But Silas lifted her skirt and sneered, "No birthmark on her i...

The day our family went out on the water, my husband took his first love, Maeve Hayes, jet-skiing in a restricted maritime zone.
After half a bottle of wine, Maeve insisted on riding to the island across the bay to draw a heart for him.
The moment she climbed onto the jet ski, she twisted the throttle all the way.
The machine shot forward and slammed straight into my younger brother's yacht.
Inste...

A month before we made our engagement official, Blake, the man I planned to marry, suggested taking a trip to the Rocky Mountains with his friends.

His close friend Brooke handed out bottles of bear spray she claimed had cost her a fortune.

The sickly sweet smell seemed wrong to me. I warned everyone not to use it, but they accused me of being jealous of her. To defend Brooke, Blake sprayed the ...

Not long ago, my pregnant daughter was murdered, and the killer remained at large.
Until that day, as I stood before her grave, her husband Oliver asked me,
"Mom, do you know who Robin is?"
"Stella came back from her prenatal checkup one day and said she bumped into Robin," he choked out. "She even said she wanted to take the baby to visit him."
My hand, reaching out to comfort him, froze in mid-...

The club is dragging everyone out to a tomb Blair Whitmore's family dug up in Egypt, and nobody asked if this was a good idea.

She even brings some so-called expert along. Everyone crowds around the dark opening, practically shaking with excitement.

I'm the only one who tries to stop it.

"There's a mechanism in there. It's dangerous. We shouldn't go in. We need to report it to the antiquities a...

I was kidnapped at five. Found at sixteen. Dead at nineteen.
My parents are top transplant surgeons. The night I was murdered, they were saving my sister's life with a "legally sourced" donor heart. They signed the paperwork themselves.
That heart was mine. Cut from my chest while I was still breathing.
The sister they saved? She's the one who handed me to the killer.
For three years I lived under...

"You sure dispatch called this... natural causes?" I gripped the steering wheel, staring at the perfect suburban house.
"That's what they said," Gates muttered. The victim's father, Arthur, stood at the door in pressed khakis, weeping.
He swore his daughter, Grace, died in her sleep last night after eating vanilla pudding.
But the moment we stepped inside, a suffocating cocktail of cheap lavender...

Everyone thought the disfigured obsessive fan was stalking actress Sophia Brown.

No one believed I was the real Sophia.

My twin sister, Lily, slept beside my husband, Don Jason. She used my face to star in my movies. She even took over my social media accounts and posted under my name.

I wanted an explanation. But Jason only looked at my scarred face with cold disgust and said he had always tho...

To end two years of a long-distance marriage with my husband, Sutton Brennan, I quit my job and moved halfway across the state to join his top-tier medical center.
But from the moment I clocked in on day one, a nightmare awaited me.
IV pain pumps violently popped open in my hands, medication cabinets rejected my fingerprints, coffee machines sprayed me with boiling water, microwaves exploded in pu...

My daughter was murdered on her eleventh birthday during a brutal snuff livestream on the dark web.

The chat was flooded with the sick revelry and obscene tips of twisted buyers.

"Break her legs a little more."
"I want to hear her cry out."

Lying in a pool of blood, my daughter cried out in sheer despair: "Mom... save me... it hurts so much..."

Watching my daughter take her last breath ami...

I grew up alongside my next-door neighbor, ice hockey prodigy Lachlan, silently paving the way for his future. In my past life, he planned to quit his crucial scout game for his girlfriend Tamsin.
Fearing he would ruin his career, I tipped off his parents to stop him. After graduation, I joined his sports agency and spent three years cleaning up his messes, clinging to the hope that my devotion w...

My brother Miles blames me for our parents' deaths.
So he chose to adopt the deaf Vivian instead of keeping me.
Later, I met Sullivan.
He gave me a grand confession. He chose me, resolutely.
He also said I hired someone to assault Vivian—that I didn't deserve sympathy.
Five years after being cast out of my family, a dismembered female body was found inside a carnival mascot costume.
Miles, now a p...