Author

Jeff Ayers

Review

The Haunting of Emily Grace

by Jeff Ayers

Emily Grace has lost everyone she cares about, but rather than wallow in grief, she decides to work for a secretive millionaire renovating his mansion on a secluded island. The owner of the home, Cameron, is also grieving, since his wife disappeared in what appears to be a sailing accident over a month ago. The folks living on the island believe the house Emily’s working on is cursed, and mysterious events start to happen there when Cameron’s daughter, Chloe, arrives. Strange sounds, Cameron’s wife’s clothes folded in a closet, and other oddities that put Emily Grace in a bad light with her employer all put her on edge. She starts to question everything, including the motivations behind the friendships of a couple of others who live on the island. Both of them tell her different stories of what’s happening in Cameron’s creepy house, making it difficult for her to focus since she thinks that she’ll be next to disappear. Taylor takes the reader on a journey that never falters, invoking the setting and isolation so well that readers will see the fog, feel the darkness, and hear the faint footsteps throughout. When diving into this, make sure you are in a crowded room with bright lights.

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Review

The Survivor

by Jeff Ayers

Ben Cross arrives for the first day at his new job in New York City and is promptly fired and escorted out by security. Upset and struggling to understand what happened, he barely catches the 1 train heading uptown from South Ferry station. As he sits on the train, his phone starts receiving text messages telling him not to turn it off or to leave the train. Further, if a particular man in the train car exits at the next station, the man will die. Ben doesn’t believe it, but when the man leaves and is promptly shot, Ben realizes the texts aren’t bluffing, and he was not picked randomly to play this demented game. Outside the train, NYPD detective Kelly Hendricks investigates the murder of a man who just got off the subway and learns of Ben Cross hijacking that very same train. What she’s hearing from her superiors and what her gut is telling her are in conflict, so she decides that confronting Ben directly will provide the answers she wants and perhaps save the lives of every person on board. Reid’s first novel to be published in the United States is a fantastic action thriller that reads like Die Hard mixed with Thomas Harris. The Survivor would make an excellent film as the story primarily takes place in a short amount of time. Readers will want to uncover Reid’s other novel, The Hunter, which was published in the UK, while never riding on the subway again.

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Review

In the Bones

by Jeff Ayers

Beautiful, upstate New York, small town Cape Vincent is a place where everybody knows one another. When famous retired hockey player Mikko Helle buys a waterfront house and completely renovates it, he hires Nicole Durham, a local woman, to clean before he moves in. She finds a young woman secretly living inside the house, then the police investigate and discover the remains of another young woman in the basement. With a string of bizarre thefts of items that seem to have no value, the squatter in Helle’s house appears to be the perfect suspect for both the break-ins and the murder. Suspicions mount and trust disappears when Nicole learns about her husband’s surprising connection to the unexpected house guest, the dead body, and Helle’s secret business dealings. How do you discover the truth when everything is built on lies? Wegert creates a vivid town and realistic inhabitants with this taut and compelling mystery. Comparisons to Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects and books by Jane Harper and Lucy Foley are warranted

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Review

Her Cold Justice

by Jeff Ayers

The death of a drug dealer and his girlfriend leads immediately to a suspect, a young man named Michael Westbrook. Michael worked at the same company as the dealer and was known to frequently visit his home, where he would often watch sporting events with the victim. Defense attorney Keera Duggan takes the case when she learns her investigator, JP Harrison, is Michael’s uncle. The evidence is circumstantial at best, but the ruthless prosecutor, Kim Tran, refuses any thoughts of a deal. As the case progresses, it appears that the prosecution’s witnesses know more than the defense was led to believe, and the revelations only add to Michael’s possible guilt. It doesn’t help that the presiding judge wants Keera to fail. Dugoni is a master of stories that tackle injustice, and this latest Keera Duggan thriller verifies he’s one of the best storytellers as well. He should be considered in the same breath as Michael Connelly when it comes to writing about life in law enforcement and the courtroom. Don’t miss this one.

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Review

Illusion of Truth

by Jeff Ayers

Detective Emily Hunter of the Sacramento police department must stop someone targeting fellow officers, and it’s personal, in L’Etoile’s latest thriller. Her boyfriend, Brian Conner, is one of several officers sent to stop a riot near a church, but when they arrive, they see nobody around. Shortly after inspecting the area, the silence is pierced by two explosions, one under a police vehicle and the other from a donation box near the church entrance. Conner saves the life of one of the officers but takes the brunt of the blast. Hunter vows to find out who’s responsible for putting Conner on death’s door. Her pursuit of justice will entangle her with her boss, the mayor, and other fellow officers, while she constantly worries that Conner, if he lives, will never be the same. There’s a reason L’Etoile has been winning awards for his writing, and this series highlights why. Like the best of Michael Connelly, L’Etoile has created characters readers care about while also crafting a twisty and compelling story. Fans of police procedurals and heart-stopping thrillers should consider L’Etoile an essential addition to their reading pile.

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Review

Simultaneous

by Jeff Ayers

Therapist Sarah Newcomb can’t get her fiancé to commit to a wedding date. Still, doubts about their relationship take a back seat when one of her clients reveals evidence of a potential copycat killer. Newcomb uses past-life regression to help her clients overcome trauma, but this patient unveils a time in the future, and this part of their divided soul works as a homicide detective. Trying to prove her client is making up material, she learns from that split soul of a natural gas explosion that will kill seven people in New Mexico the next day. The following morning, federal agent Grant Lukather from Homeland Security visits a site in New Mexico where seven people died in a natural gas explosion. He learns of a 911 call that came in the day before, warning of the blast. Tracing the phone number puts him in Sarah’s office. The twists and turns that follow are wild and completely unpredictable, and the story only gets better as it becomes increasingly complex. Heisserer received an Oscar nomination for screenwriting for the film Arrival, and he delivers the cinematic scope and intensity of a novel-writing pro. And the ending! It’s hard to believe this is his first novel, and readers will eagerly want more.

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Review

How to Talk to Your Dog About Murder

by Jeff Ayers

Nikki Jackson-Ramanathan and her husband, Jai, live in a tiny apartment and get by on his job as a coach for a collegiate mock-trial team and her role as a dog walker and pet behaviorist. She’s asked by rich widow Ruth Van Meer to learn why her dog, Reginald, seems to be less energetic than usual. The rest of the Van Meer family appears petty and vindictive and question why Nikki was hired in the first place. Nikki begins to spend quality time with Reginald, taking him on walks every day, while the family continues to resent her presence. When Mrs. Van Meer is discovered deceased in her bed, the family begins pointing fingers at Nikki after it’s learned that the dead widow left a sizeable amount of money to Nikki to continue caring for Reginald. With the police’s dogged determination to prove Nikki’s guilt, and the eccentric family keeping her on a tight leash, she can’t let sleeping dogs lie and has to solve the murder herself. This engaging cast of quirky characters launches a terrific story that is hopefully the beginning of a series. Readers will also be wondering if Reginald is available to adopt.

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Review

Hole in the Sky

by Jeff Ayers

An astrophysicist, Dr. Mikayla Johnson, uncovers evidence from the Voyager spacecrafts that an enormous object of some type will crash into Earth. Jim Hardgray lives in Oklahoma, and his estranged teenage daughter is visiting. No matter what he does to try to make amends, it only makes her angrier. The possible meteor’s trajectory that Johnson discovered leads directly to Hardgray’s backyard. When others in the scientific community and government realize that what’s coming is actually a vessel, it provides the world with an opportunity for first contact with an alien species. But when a communication with the object produces a sound like screaming demons scratching long nails on a chalkboard, it quickly becomes evident that what is about to crash is beyond human understanding. Real-life theoretical physicist Michio Kaku once compared mankind meeting beings from another world to humans trying to teach ants about the internet—it’s impossible to comprehend a species so truly unlike anything we have ever imagined. Wilson combines the best classic alien films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Arrival, with the glue that holds even dysfunctional families together, the strength of love and heritage. Readers will not think about our place in the cosmos the same way again.

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Review

The Second Son

by Jeff Ayers

Chase Burke works as a sommelier for a restaurant in New York’s Chrysler Building and has put his military life behind him. He’s about to ask out a pretty government official, Tanya, who is visiting him on the job, when armed men attack, and she seems to be their target. Chase kills some of the men, but Tanya is hurt. Detective James Campbell and his partner, Detective Alice Doyle, are assigned the case and are told to work closely with Federal authorities. They soon determine that Chase has a lot of skeletons in his closet, and he immediately becomes the prime suspect. Chase realizes he must uncover the truth if he’s not going to rot in jail for the rest of his life, but digging for answers puts him in the crosshairs of a secret group of killers that thinks he knows too much. Whom can he trust while his face is plastered all over every news channel? From the opening page to the last, this book is a relentless force of non-stop action and thrills. Gervais and Steck write great books and have crafted a stellar story together. Comparisons to Mark Greaney and Jack Carr are warranted, but this first in a series might be even better. The next one cannot come fast enough.

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Review

Everyone a Stranger

by Jeff Ayers

Virginia Abrams lives in Washington, D.C., in 1943, and her husband has died overseas in the Pacific. The son of a prominent Senator attacks her, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy. When the son dies, his powerful parents decide to keep Virginia quiet by arranging to have her killed. Barely escaping, Virginia hops on a train and ends up on the other side of the country in Seattle. Under the identity of Ginny Moore, she rents an apartment and secures a job as a personal secretary to a well-established mystery author. But she can’t escape the feeling that the senator’s henchman will find her. When a young mom who looks almost identical to Ginny dies in what seems like an accidental fall, she starts to question everyone around her. Can anyone be trusted? At the height of WWII, when spies and traitors lurk around every corner, the paranoia escalates above a 10 in O’Brien’s latest thriller. In a story that feels like O’Brien traveled back in time and stole the manuscript straight from Alfred Hitchcock’s desk, Ginny’s struggle to find solace will have readers keeping their lights on while reaching for tissues. Everyone a Stranger is arguably the author’s best novel to date.

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