The Dead Secret

“Call[ing] to mind the forensic mysteries of Aaron Elkins and Patricia Cornwell” (Chicago Sun-Times), Beverly Connor’s spellbinding series proves that the dead do tell tales—and reveal secrets that can threaten the living in the most chilling of ways… In the depths of an unmapped cave, forensic anthropologist Diane Fallon makes an astonishing discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a caving victim. Soon, the remains of two more bodies are found—one in an old car submerged in the waters of an abandoned quarry, another buried in the Georgia woods. At first, with nothing to link the dissimilar victims except desiccated bones, Diane can’t fathom the connection. But someone in her shadow does. It’s the key to a mystery that reaches back seventy years in a heritage of love, greed, and murder—and an unearthed family secret that still holds the power to kill.

Detective Del Farmer is investigating a murder. But the usual suspects are all in his head. "Believe in nothing, believe in Hell, believe in the Brain Hotel... Secret Dead Men is the most inventive, uplifting, hilarious, moving novel since Catcher in the Rye" -- Ken Bruen Del Farmer isn't your ordinary hardboiled private eye. Instead of collecting fingerprints or clues, he collects souls of the recently dead. His latest dead guy, Brad Larsen, might just be the key to destroying Farmer's longtime nemesis, The Association. Of course, Farmer is sadly mistaken. Larsen isn't offering up the goods. An FBI agent unstuck in time is toying with him. A mysterious couple keeps trying to kill him. Another job-a mundane babysitting gig that pays the bills-is threatening to steer him way off course into a violent hell of sexual deceit, fractured identities and cheap apartment toilets.

A grieving daughter discovers letters in her late father's desk that make her question everything she thought she knew about him. Did he murder her mother? Is her sister really her sister? A shattering journey into the past follows, as she tries to find out what really happened in a remote Highland village twenty years ago.

Even the dead have a story to tell... Naples, 1566. During a sweltering summer, eighteen-year-old Giordano Bruno takes his final vows at San Domenico Maggiore and is admitted to the Dominican Order - despite doubts over his tendency to ask difficult questions. Assisting in the infirmary, Bruno witnesses an illicit autopsy performed on the body of a young woman. Her corpse reveals a dark secret, and Bruno suspects that hers may not have been an accidental death. His investigation leads him to a powerful figure who wants to keep the truth buried - and Bruno is forced to make a choice between his future in the Order, and justice for an innocent victim and her grieving family. A spellbinding and eerily poignant short story that brings the tense atmosphere of the Inquisition and the promise of the Renaissance to vivid life.

The secret of the title is the parentage of the heroine, Rosamund Treverton, who has been passed off as the daughter of the wealthy former actress Mrs Treverton of Porthgenna Tower, but is in fact the illegitimate child of her servant Sarah Leeson by a local miner (Mrs Treverton's motive was to provide her husband with a child, being apparently unable to bear children herself). Sarah writes down the details of the secret from the words of the dying Mrs Treverton, and hides the paper bearing the message in an unused room at Porthgenna. The novel then jumps forward some twenty years. Rosamund has married the blind Leonard Frankland, who now owns Porthgenna Tower. Sarah, under an assumed name, obtains a post as servant to the family, and gives Rosamund a cryptic warning to avoid the room in which the Secret is hidden. On a visit to Porthgenna, Rosamund finds the paper detailing the Secret and reveals it to Leonard. Leonard, who was originally deceived into thinking Rosamund was a wealthy heiress, accepts that his wife is illegitimate, but refuses to accept her inheritance. In the course of things, this would now pass to Mrs Treverton's miserly brother Andrew (whose introduction, together with his villainous servant, provides some comic relief in the novel). But Andrew Treverton, somewhat out of character, refuses to accept the windfall and Rosamund remains the heiress of the Trevertons in the expected happy ending.

The "must-read YA thriller" (Bustle) from #1 New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying about a small town with deadly secrets. "When it comes to YA suspense, Karen M. McManus is in a league of her own..." --Entertainment Weekly Echo Ridge is small-town America. Ellery's never been there, but she's heard all about it. Her aunt went missing there at age seventeen. And only five years ago, a homecoming queen put the town on the map when she was killed. Now Ellery has to move there to live with a grandmother she barely knows. The town is picture-perfect, but it's hiding secrets. And before school even begins for Ellery, someone has declared open season on homecoming, promising to make it as dangerous as it was five years ago. Then, almost as if to prove it, another girl goes missing. Ellery knows all about secrets. Her mother has them; her grandmother does too. And the longer she's in Echo Ridge, the clearer it becomes that everyone there is hiding something. The thing is, secrets are dangerous--and most people aren't good at keeping them. Which is why in Echo Ridge, it's safest to keep your secrets to yourself. Fans of the hit thriller that started it all can watch the secrets of the Bayview Four be revealed in the One of Us is Lying TV series now streaming on NBC's Peacock!