SAMANTHA OWENS NOVELS

#2 - EDGE OF BLACK (12.2012)​

Dr. Samantha Owens is starting over: new city, new job, new man, new life. She's trying to put some distance between herself and the devastating loss of her husband and children—but old hurts leave scars.

Before she's even unpacked her office at Georgetown University's forensic pathology department, she's called to consult on a case that's rocked the capital and the country. An unknown pathogen released into the Washington Metro has caused nationwide panic. Three people died—just three.

A miracle and a puzzle…

Amid the media frenzy and Homeland Security alarm bells, Sam painstakingly dissects the lives of those three victims and makes an unsettling conclusion. This is no textbook terrorist causing mayhem with broad strokes, but an artist wielding a much finer, more pointed instrument of destruction. An assassin, whose motive is deeply personal and far from understandable.

Xander Whitfield, a former army ranger and Sam's new boyfriend, knows about seeing the world in shades of gray. About feeling compelled to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Only his disturbing kinship with a killer can lead Sam to the truth…and once more into the line of fire.​

#1 - A DEEPER DARKNESS (8.2012)

As a medical examiner, Samantha Owens knows her job is to make a certain sense of death with crisp methodology and precision instruments. But when the Tennessee floods took her husband and children, the light vanished from Sam's life. She has been pulled into a suffocating grief no amount of workaholic ardour can penetrate - until she receives a peculiar call from Washington... On the other end of the line is an old boyfriend's mother asking Sam to do a second autopsy on her son.

Eddie Donovan is officially the victim of a vicious carjacking, but under Sam's sharp eye, the forensics tell a darker story. The ex-Ranger was murdered...though not for his car. Forced to confront the burning memories and feelings about yet another loved one killed brutally, Sam loses herself in the mystery contained within Donovan's old notes.

It leads her to the untouchable Xander - a soldier off-grid since his return from Afghanistan - and then to a series of brutal crimes stretching from that harsh mountainous war zone to the nation's capital. The tale told between the lines makes it clear that nobody's hands are clean, and that making sense of murder sometimes means putting yourself in the crosshairs of death.

TAYLOR JACKSON NOVELS

#1 - ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS (2007) 

"A terrific lead character, terrific suspense, terrific twists ... a completely convincing debut."    NYT Bestselling Author Lee Child

When a local girl falls prey to a sadistic serial killer, Nashville Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson and her lover, FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin, find themselves in a joint investigation pursuing a vicious murderer.

The Southern Strangler is slaughtering his way through the Southeast, leaving a gruesome memento at each crime scene—the prior victim's severed hand.

Ambitious TV reporter Whitney Connolly is certain the Southern Strangler is her ticket out of Nashville; she's got a scoop that could break the case. She has no idea how close to this story she really is—or what it will cost her.

As the killer spirals out of control, everyone involved must face a horrible truth—the purest evil is born of private lies.

#2 - 14 (2008) 

Twisty, creepy and wonderful...Crimespree

Ten victims, each with pale skin and long dark hair. All have been slashed across the throat, the same red lipstick smeared across their lips.

In the mid-1980s the Snow White Killer terrorized the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. Then suddenly the murders stopped. A letter from the killer to the police stated that his work was done.

Now four more bodies are found, marked with his fatal signature. The residents of Nashville fear a madman has returned, decades later, to finish his sick fairy tale.

Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson believes the killings are the work of a copycat killer who’s even more terrifying. For this monster is meticulously honing his craft as he mimics famous serial murders…proving that the past is not to be forgotten.

#3 - JUDAS KISS  (2009) 

An impressive and arresting thriller... Publishers Weekly (starred review)

It was a murder made for TV: a trail of tiny bloody footprints. An innocent toddler playing beside her mother's bludgeoned body.

Pretty young Corinne Wolff, seven months pregnant, brutally murdered in her own home. Cameras and questions don't usually faze Nashville Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, but the media frenzy surrounding the Wolff case is particularly nasty... and thorough.

When the seemingly model mommy is linked to an amateur porn website with underage actresses and unwitting players, the sharks begin to circle.

The shock is magnified when an old adversary uses the sexy secret footage to implicate Taylor in a murder – an accusation that threatens her career, her reputation and her relationship.

Both cases hinge on the evidence – real or manufactured – of crimes that go beyond passion, into the realm of obsessive vengeance and shocking betrayal.

Just what the networks love.