The Night Side

When her mother goes missing, a woman returns to her childhood home after twenty years. But is she walking into a trap?

Ruby had to get away. Get away from her mother – a phoney medium and psychic scammer. Get away from her lies, her manipulation, her twisted desire to ruin people’s lives.

So, at eighteen, Ruby left her home in Stoneybrook, Montana and vowed she’d never return.

Now, twenty years later, she’s back.

Her mother is missing. Presumed dead. But Ruby isn’t so sure. Has Ida saved her final, darkest scheme for her own daughter? The jaw-dropping truth will shake Ruby to her core . . .

Readers of Colleen Hoover’s Verity, Tana French’s The Searcher and Ashley Flowers’ All Good People Here will love this frighteningly dark, page-turning novel of suspense.

THE PERFECT FAMILY MAN

I wish I could say that the tragedy of little Jack disappearing brought me and Nate closer together. But my husband is more distant from me now than he’s ever been. Perhaps that’s why I don’t ask him exactly where he’s going when he sets off on another business trip.

Or perhaps I was too distracted by the woman moving in across the street with bouncing blonde hair and a cherubic toddler boy. He reminds me so much of the child I lost. But his mother doesn’t seem to properly watch him. And I can’t be sure, but I think Nate and this woman share a look of recognition before he leaves.

The first day Nate’s away, things feel okay, even though I know when he returns we’re going to have to discuss what I found in his coat pocket. But one day turns into two, and then three. I don’t want to seem like the crazy wife, but I have to call his work and ask what’s going on. And that’s when they tell me the shocking truth.

Nate hasn’t worked for the company in six months.

Once I’ve found this lie, it’s hard not to pick at the scab of our marriage, see what other secrets lie beneath his apparent love for me. By the end of the week, I hope I might finally learn the truth about my husband, about the woman across the street, and about what really happened to my little boy.

THE SAVAGE INSTINCT

May 18th 2021 (Inkshares)

In the lineage of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, The Savage Instinct is the chilling story of one woman's struggle for her sanity, set against the backdrop of the arrest and trial of Mary Ann Cotton, England’s first female serial killer.
England, 1873. Clara Blackstone has just been released after one year in a private asylum for the insane. Clara has two goals: to reunite with her husband, Henry, and to never—ever—return to the asylum. As she enters Durham, Clara finds her carriage surrounded by a mob gathered to witness the imprisonment of Mary Ann Cotton—England’s first female serial killer—accused of poisoning nearly twenty people, including her husbands and children.

Clara soon finds the oppressive confinement of her marriage no less terrifying than the white-tiled walls of Hoxton. And as she grows increasingly suspicious of Henry’s intentions, her fascination with Cotton grows. Soon, Cotton is not just a notorious figure from the headlines, but an unlikely confidante, mentor—and perhaps accomplice—in Clara’s struggle to protect her money, her freedom and her life.

THE SECRET SISTER

March 25th (Canelo)

Anna’s done bad things before. Neglected and unloved as a child, she had to do whatever it took to keep herself and her little sister, Birdie, safe. But the worst thing she’s ever done is let her sister walk out of a diner when they were teenagers. She would never see her sister again.

Years later, and Anna is a new person. After a whirlwind romance, she’s married handsome, successful, and generous Guy. She has a steady job and a new life of comfort. Things seem perfect.

But she hasn’t told her husband about her dark past or about Birdie, that she’s still looking for her. It’s not about his too-perfect veneer, or her suspicion that he flirts with other women. It’s that he has a complicated past and family secrets, too. Secrets that might be more entwined with hers than he knows.

After all this time, one thing about Anna remains the same. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for her sister. And when she finds out who’s kept them apart for all these years, there will be hell to pay.

THE PITMAN'S DAUGHTER

When Crag Street—once a grim row of colliery houses—reappears as a reconstructed exhibit in an open-air museum, newly divorced Rita Hawkins receives an invitation she never expected. Stepping back onto the street she fought so hard to escape forces her to confront the secrets, sorrows, and one enduring love she left behind.

Growing up in the East Durham coalfield, Rita dreamed of a life beyond poverty and gossip, while George, the last surviving son of a mining family, was dragged underground to be a miner at fourteen and later into the fierce politics of the miners’ union.

Fate kept pulling them together, yet ambition, pride, and circumstance always held them apart. Around them orbit unforgettable figures—tragic Maggie, crushed by motherhood and abuse, and sharp-tongued Ella, who knows everyone’s business but her own.

Spanning five decades, The Pitman’s Daughter is a sweeping story of love, resilience, and the inescapable pull of the past. Vivid and richly human, it reveals how the places that shape us never truly let us go

Lilah

Journalist, Nick Hendricks is coasting on auto pilot with his job, his relationships and his life. All that changes one snowy night when the beautiful and mysterious Lilah arrives in sleepy little Silver Narrows. Caught hopelessly in her spell, Nick begins to investigate some tragic disappearances from the town’s past. Soon he realizes that there are guilty secrets lurking beneath the town's cozy exterior. Secrets some of the town’s long-standing citizens want to keep buried. But he can’t help wondering where Lilah came from, why she’s there and what connection she has with the unexplained disappearances of four teenagers. Nick’s investigation sets off a string of disturbing events as he struggles to answer these questions and come to terms with unsettling secrets from his own past while falling crazily in love with the elusive Lilah.

Chasing a Thrill (YA mystery)

ISBN-58-2459886032524

On her morning run, seventeen year old Katie discovers a frozen body lying on the snowy forest trail. The story goes back three months to trace the events leading up to the tragedy as seen through the eyes of:
Mike, the import car fanatic who worships his older brother, Frankie, a hotshot graduate who’s gone East and developed big spending habits fuelled by poker winnings.
Jay, the budding musician whose father wants him to be an NHL player even though he hates hockey.
Kim, the math whiz and talented artist whose mother recently died and left her alone with a cold, abusive father who spends most nights at the casino.
Nick, forced to be a parent to his two kid sisters while his single mom goes off for days at a time and drowns herself in booze .
Lured by the thrill of gambling, their lives spiral out of control until events come to a head in a gripping final showdown. Along the way they’ll learn about love, heroism, sacrifice and failure, but someone pays the ultimate price and dies on the snowy forest track.

THE IDUNA PROJECT TRILOGY (YA)

Paige is a Forever — genetically engineered to stay nineteen forever, living in luxury inside the secretive Iduna Corp compound, where age reversal isn’t science fiction… it’s reality.

But beneath the perfect façade, something is deeply wrong.

When her friends start vanishing without a trace, Paige begins to suspect the truth is far darker than anyone will admit. The official story blames outside kidnappers — criminals who enslave Forevers as feeders, draining their youth to keep the Crime Lords young. But Paige isn’t buying it.

With the help of her rebellious friend Junius, and the magnetic, music-obsessed Chale, a Keener with secrets of his own, Paige joins a daring escape mission to uncover what’s really happening beyond the compound walls. But the world outside is nothing like she expected — and neither are the people she thought she could trust.

As the truth about immortality unravels, Paige is forced to face a brutal question:
What is she willing to sacrifice to stay free — and who is she willing to lose?

In the gleaming utopia of Carter City, Paige thinks she’s found peace — until she uncovers a secret that shatters the illusion. Before she can confront Junius, her enigmatic companion, they’re pulled into a covert mission: infiltrate the brutal ranks of the Crime Lords, an underground society where survival hinges on loyalty, violence, and spectacle.

After grueling training, Paige and Junius descend into Sin City — a ruined, lawless world ruled by chaos and myth. There, they meet Antoine, the magnetic leader of the Snakes, who introduces them to the dark allure of Sin City's gladiatorial culture and reveals the horrifying truth behind the Forever serum — a secret extracted from the enslaved feeders at a terrible cost.

As Paige fights to navigate this savage new world, she uncovers buried truths about her own past — and when Chale, long thought lost, resurfaces, she’s forced to risk everything for those she loves. But in a world where power is everything, and immortality is up for grabs, no one can be trusted.

The war for Forever has begun.
Will the Crime Lords reign? Will the corporate ARPS backed by the ruthless Iduna Corporation seize control?
Or will a new force rise — one Paige never saw coming?

Paige is back in Carter City — but peace is fleeting. With Chale at her side and her father lost somewhere on the mysterious Masalina Island, Paige sets her sights on a sanctuary for the Forevers. But forces far more powerful have other plans.

When Junius’s father resurfaces and Marcia seizes control of the next mission, everything shifts into overdrive. At the same time, a shocking secret buried within the ARP stronghold of Golden Heights threatens to bring Yul’s empire crashing down. Desperate and dangerous, Yul will stop at nothing to find Paige — and the father who may hold the key to saving The Iduna Project.

To survive, Paige must outmaneuver Marcia’s manipulation and Yul’s growing fury, all while navigating a minefield of betrayal, buried truths, and deadly ambition. Because in the race for immortality, anyone can be sacrificed.

Can Paige break free from the game — or is she destined to remain a pawn in someone else’s power play?

The thrilling conclusion to The Iduna Project will leave you breathless.

M.M. DELUCA