Linda Watkins

Annie Gore is a fascinating character. A former special investigator in the Air Force, she now works as a P.I. The novel opens on a holiday weekend. Annie is reluctantly going through her bills when a young woman walks into the office. The woman wants to hire Annie to investigate the death of her estranged father, Ezra King, who was an itinerant preacher in the Appalachian town of Mount Zion. But…

This was a truly disturbing read and I couldn’t put it down. Michelle is a newly divorced architect who decides to move from Indiana, where her parents live, to the wilds of New Hampshire. In the latter stages of her marriage, Michelle and her now ex-husband were co-dependent alcoholics. Her decision to move is spurred on by a nebulous “diagnosis” that she refers to, but never explains. With her…

They came to her house in the middle of the night, Men with guns, Men with masks, They arrested her while her children slept For exercising her First Amendment rights. What country is this? Is this America? Land of the free, home of the brave?  They broke her car window, Men with guns, Men with masks, Then dragged her to the street, cutting her seat belt with a knife. What country is this? Is…

Roslyn is consumed with the mysterious death of her older sister, Adeline. Her grief is all-encompassing and, despite the passage of time, she cannot get over it. Enter a strange caravan of teenage girls, apparently passing through town. They stop at the diner where Roslyn works and invite her to a party that evening at an empty house that is for sale. During the evening, Roslyn discovers that…

This novel by Ronald Malfi is like a jigsaw puzzle that you find in the attic in a plain old shoe box. The pieces are there but you don’t know what the final picture will turn out to be. You start on the edges, slowly revealing the puzzle’s subject. The novel, like the puzzle, begins on the edges with the discovery of a body in the desert. It’s a woman and she’s been horribly mutilated – her eyes…

This novel begins with the mysterious death of the ninth president of the United States, William Henry Harrison. History tells us he died of pneumonia, but author Frost presents a more malevolent picture of his demise. His successor is John Tyler, a slave-owner from Virginia and vice president at the time of Harrison’s death. Tyler journeys to the capital with his man-servant James, a slave, who…

When I saw the cover of this book, I knew I had to read it! I finished it yesterday and it didn’t disappoint! The story is set in the small town of Tomahawk Hollow, Wisconsin. Tomahawk used to be a thriving community but the sudden closure of the local pesticide plant, which employed its citizens, sent the town into a downward spiral. However, local ingenuity resurrected Tomahawk and turned it…

Dr. Alexander Gregory is a forensic psychiatrist whose practice includes violent criminals. One of these is Cathy, a woman diagnosed with Munchausen syndrome by proxy, who has been incarcerated for years following the murders of two of her three children. Dr. Gregory seems to be particularly fixated on this patient, trying to elicit from her the motive for the killings. However, Gregory’s…

You Did Nothing Wrong by CG Drews is an extraordinary psychological thriller. I literally couldn’t put it down. Elodie is living a dream. Only twenty-two years old and the mother of six-year-old, she has met the perfect man who has whisked her away from the hovel she was living in in Australia, to an old Victorian home in Virginia. Bren, her new husband, adores her, but she has secrets that she…

Ghost Girls and Rabbits is a tale of grief, madness, and abduction. It also provides a platform to give air to the epidemic of lost and missing indigenous girls and women in the United States of America. Set in Alaska, the tale is told through the eyes of two Native American women. Mary Nelson is the grieving mother whose daughter, Ryska, went missing ten years before. Noni Begay is a young,…

Have you ever played a video game where you travel through rooms in a house, trying to find an exit? If you have, you know all the rooms have booby-traps that can wipe you out in an instant. Yet you keep playing because you want to get out of that house and you want to win. The Staircase in the Woods is much like one of those games, with the exception being that the booby-traps are deadly…

Memorials starts out as a slow burn and builds menacingly into a raging inferno of dread. The novel, set in 1983, is narrated by Billy, who – along with two friends – embarks on a week-long trip to film and document roadside “memorials” for their American Studies class. However, Billy and his friends, Melody and Troy, have more in common than just a college assignment. Each of the three has lost…

OMG, what a brilliant page-turner this was! I literally couldn’t put it down. The plot of the novel is revealed by its characters, written in the first person. It begins with Jasmine. Jasmine is a 40-something year old barmaid who lives with an abusive boyfriend. Her background is that of a high school outcast and littered with mistakes she’s made along the way. Jasmine needs to get away – away…

I really wanted to like this book. The editorial reviews are great. But, unfortunately, for several reasons, it left me feeling kind of empty. The story begins with the discovery of the bodies of three hikers in the Kentucky wilderness. One is a skeleton, picked clean. Another, identified as Luke, has his eyes gouged out. A third, Clay, has his ribcage folded outward like a set of cabinet doors.…

The Deeping Woods have a history. Since the 1800s, young girls have disappeared – vanishing into thin air – when they near the woods or dare to enter them. Olive’s best friend, Stacia, is one of these unfortunates. At the age of twelve, Stacia and Olive entered the woods, but only one girl came back. Haunted by the loss of her best friend, Olive, who has no recollection of the day Stacia…