Tension is the heart of conflict, the backbone of uncertainty, the hallmark of danger. It keeps readers guessing and characters on their toes. When you've got tension in place, stories leave readers breathless and wanting more. When it's missing, scenes feel inconsequential, plots drag, and characters meander. Learning the craft of writing can sometimes feel like a paint by numbers approach--connect compelling character A to plot event B. To avoid...

A stranger shows up at William Trenchard's house claiming to be Sir James Davenall, supposedly dead eleven years. Trenchard is married to James' former fiancee and James is determined to repossess his inheritance and all that goes with it. Is he really James?

A beautiful American widow flees to a remote convent in Greece after an attempt on her life and becomes involved with a ruthless tycoon.

LAPD homicide lieutenant Milo Sturgis sees it all the time: Reinvention's a way of life in a city fueled by fantasy. But try as you might to erase the person you once were, there are those who will never forget the past . . . and who can still find you. A pool boy enters a secluded Bel Air property and discovers two bodies floating in the bright blue water: Gio Aggiunta, the playboy heir to an Italian shoe empire, and a gorgeous, even wealthier neighbor...

When Boston-based Dr. Craig Bowman is served with a summons for medical negligence, he's shocked, enraged, and more than a little humiliated. A devoted physician who has endured grueling years of training and worked continuously in the service of others, he is now a partner in an exclusive concierge medical practice. No longer forced to see more and more patients while spending less and less time with each one just to keep his office door open, he...

Internationally renowned thief and con artist Nicolas Fox is famous for running elaborate and daring scams. His greatest con of all: convincing the FBI to team him up with the only person who has ever caught him, Special Agent Kate O'Hare. Together they'll go undercover to swindle and catch the world's most wanted and untouchable criminals. Their newest target is Carter Grove, a former White House chief of staff and the ruthless leader of a private...

When Grace Ozmian, the beautiful and reckless daughter of a wealthy tech billionaire first goes missing, the NYPD assumes she has simply sped off on another wild adventure. Until the young woman's body is discovered in an abandoned warehouse in Queens, the head nowhere to be found. Liertenant CDS Vincent D'Agosta quickly takes the lead. He knows his investigation will attract fierce scrutiny, so D'Agosta is delighted when FBI Special Agent A. X. L....

A Face in the Crowd by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan. Dean Evers, an elderly widower, sits in front of the television with nothing better to do than waste his leftover evenings watching baseball. It's Rays/Mariners, and David Price is breezing through the line-up. Suddenly, in a seat a few rows up beyond the batter, Evers sees the face of someone from decades past, someone who shouldn't be at the ballgame, shouldn't be on the planet. And so begins...

"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and...