by Carla Kovach
The gripping new novel from the author of bestseller THE NEXT GIRL. Her Final Hour will have you hooked!
Melissa Sanderson is the perfect wife and mother. She dotes on her daughter, and lives in her dream home in a quiet cul-de-sac in the suburbs.
But looks can be deceiving.
Something is amiss in that house – all the neighbours think so. Some say Melissa is having an affair. Others say she’s been drinking too much.
Then one night, sirens wake up the whole neighbourhood.
Melissa Sanderson is dead.
AN ABSORBING THRILLER WITH AN ENDING YOU WON’T SEE COMING – if you like Lisa Gardner, Robert Bryndza or Clare Mackintosh, you’ll love this absolutely heart-stopping thriller from Carla Kovach.
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Her Pretty Bones
Detective Gina Harte Book 3
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THE UNPUTDOWNABLE NEW THRILLER FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE NEXT GIRL
She’s just the girl he’s looking for…
A young woman falls from a vehicle speeding down a quiet road. Battered and bruised, she turns her head to the person who comes to her aid. ‘Help her’, she whispers before her eyes close.
Days later, the body of another young girl is found in a shallow grave just a few miles away. The similarities between the two girls are startling – same age, same frail body, same shocking red hair.
As the town fears there’s a serial killer living amongst them, Detective Gina Harte must put aside her own struggles at home, and catch the killer before he finds another perfect girl.
AN ABSOLUTELY HEART-STOPPING CRIME THRILLER FROM CARLA KOVACH – if you like Lisa Gardner, Robert Bryndza or Clare Mackintosh, Her Pretty Bones will have you hooked.
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The Liar’s House
Detective Gina Harte Book 4
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Samantha stumbled out of the party and on to a busy street only ten minutes away from her home. But she never made it home…
Seven years after Samantha’s disappearance, on what would have been her thirty-fifth birthday, her best friend Diane is shocked to find a letter addressed to Samantha on her doorstep.
Opening the envelope, Diane pulls out a birthday card and a finger nail painted in dusky pink nail polish. The same shade Samantha always wore. The same shade she was wearing the night she went missing.
When police analyse the nail, they don’t get the result they expected. Instead of linking them to Samantha, the nail belongs to another woman, Jade Ashmore. And Jade was murdered the night before the envelope was delivered…
THE COMPLETELY ADDICTIVE NEW CRIME THRILLER FROM BEST SELLING AUTHOR CARLA KOVACH – if you love Lisa Gardner, Robert Bryndza or Clare Mackintosh, you’ll love The Liar’s House. Gripping from the first page – you won’t be able to put it down.
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Her Dark Heart
Detective Gina Harte Book 5
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Rory is waiting at the door of the pre-school – a painted picture of his mother Susan in his small hand. But Susan isn’t going to see the picture, because she has vanished.
Susan Wheeler is a devoted mother. She would do anything for her three children. She drops them off and picks them up every single day. Until one day when Susan kisses them goodbye and then never comes to pick them up.
Susan’s mother Mary is worried. Susan is recently divorced and has been finding things hard recently, but she loves her kids – she’d never leave them.
Susan’s sister Clare is furious. It’s just like her to go missing. It’s not the first time, either. Susan has always been a troublemaker. Always seeking attention. She knows Susan has been lying to the family for years. And she knows that Susan has been sneaking out of her family home for weeks…
As the hours turn into days, even Clare becomes fearful for Susan. And, when Mary discovers Susan’s diary, she begins to uncover a dark secret from her childhood. Something no one in the family knew. When the final diary entry leads the police to a man who is discovered dead in a local park, they’re left wondering whether Susan has vanished because she is a victim. Or because she is a suspect…
An explosively compelling crime thriller from bestselling author Carla Kovach – if you love Lisa Gardner, Robert Bryndza or Clare Mackintosh, you’ll love Her Dark Heart.
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Her Last Mistake
Detective Gina Harte Book 6
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Dressed in a sage green bridesmaid dress, and smiling for pictures, Holly is the happiest she’s ever been. Hours later, Holly is dead.
People love to hate Holly Long. Smart, beautiful and a woman who men find it hard to say no to, she’s the town’s most gossiped about resident.
Now Holly’s body lies in her hotel room, strangled at her best friend’s wedding party. And the gossip has stopped, because nobody wants to look like they did it.
When police search Holly’s immaculate apartment, amongst her stylish furnishings and expensive jewellery, they discover a different side to Holly. Orderly and precise, she wasn’t the chaotic party girl everyone thought her to be. In fact, Holly was a planner, and her next plan was to come out and tell her biggest secret – something she had been hiding for months, something that had the potential to ruin the lives of more than one wedding guest.
There are plenty of people who might have wanted to kill Holly, but only one who has finally made good on their promise.
An unputdownable crime thriller with an ending you will never see coming, this is the latest gripping novel from bestselling author Carla Kovach. If you like Angela Marsons, Cara Hunter and Clare Mackintosh, you’ll love Her Last Mistake.
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Their Silent Graves
Detective Gina Harte Book 7
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Dressed in garish Halloween costumes, two teenage girls run through a patch of dense woodland towards the outskirts of town. But before they can reach the safety of the streets beyond, they make a shocking discovery.
Following a piece of old rope, the girls find a large mound of freshly laid earth, undisturbed in the darkness of the trees. Clawing at the ground beneath them, they make contact with something solid. When they realise what they’ve discovered, the silence is broken by their piercing screams as they stare down at the shallow grave.
Without looking back, they run as fast as they can, failing to spot the person nearby watching their every move…
And when another grave is found just days later, it’s clear a serial killer is praying on the small town. But who is the killer watching now? And when will another grave be filled?
If you like Angela Marsons, Cara Hunter and Clare Mackintosh, you’ll love this heart-racing thriller from bestselling author, Carla Kovach. With gripping suspense and a twist you won’t see coming, Their Silent Graves will have you hooked from page one.
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The Broken Ones
Detective Gina Harte Book 8
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Amber applies a dash of red lipstick and checks herself out in the mirror before heading out on a date. ‘Don’t wait up!’ she calls to her housemates as she leaves. But Amber never returns home that night. Amber Slater is never seen again.
The last person to see Amber was her housemate. He remembers everything she was wearing that night. He watched her leave. He listened to every word of her phone conversation with her friend before she left. He knows more about Amber’s movements than anyone.
At university, she is well-liked by her fellow students and teachers. Her tutor’s voice shakes when he is questioned by the police. Some say he and Amber were very close. Too close. Some say his wife had just found out about their relationship.
The manager at the restaurant where Amber was supposed to eat that night says she didn’t show up. Yet the chef at the restaurant is overly chatty about her. He wasn’t working that night. He wasn’t answering his phone. Nobody knows where he was when Amb
er went missing.
Rumours begin to circulate about Amber, it seems that everyone has a story to tell. But when the young girl’s lifeless body is found in a local park, with her blue lips glued shut, the gossip suddenly goes quiet. As the police trace the last few hours of Amber’s life, it seems that the girl simply vanished on her way to catch her bus. And when another woman goes missing in the dead of night, it’s a race against time to find her before she too is silenced forever.
Fans of crime books from Angela Marsons, Cara Hunter and Clare Mackintosh will love The Broken Ones.
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Acknowledgements
I’m super thankful to the team behind the book. I might write a draft but so many people are a massive part of the package as a whole and I couldn’t do this without them.
Massive thanks to my editor, Helen Jenner. As always, I’m grateful for all the work that you do. You see things I don’t notice and come up with the best notes that really polish my work. I love working with you and hope to continue being a part of team Helen for many books to come. I also love the covers that you and the designer work so hard on. They look stunning and make my books stand out like shiny diamonds on a shelf.
Covers mean so much which is why I want to say thank you to cover designer, Lisa Brewster. I absolutely adore it!
Huge thank you to Peta Nightingale too. It’s always a joy to hear from you about contracts and how my books in the Netherlands are doing.
Kim Nash, Noelle Holten and Sarah Hardy; you are all superstars in the world of publicity. You work above and beyond, creating a fanfare for our books. Thank you so much for all that you do.
I’d like to share a huge thank you to all the brilliant bloggers for giving up their time, I appreciate everything you do and it’s lovely to read your blogs too. I’m touched that you chose my book to read and review. It means a lot. And I need to mention the Fiction Café Book Club, a group on Facebook of which I’m a member. I’m grateful of all the mentions and positivity that comes my way.
I need to mention the other Bookouture authors. The amount of support given makes me feel as though I’m part of a big happy family. It’s wonderful to have this sense of belonging and I’d never take that for granted.
Derek Coleman, Su Biela, Brooke Venables, Anna Wallace and Vanessa Morgan, thank you so much for beta reading my work. Getting those first reads before my books are published always makes me feel less nervous on publication day. Your input and support remains invaluable to me. Thank you for your friendship too.
DS Bruce Irving, you help me when it comes to the real world of policing; the bits I’ve never seen except on TV dramas. I know we have some gruesome conversations, each valuable in bringing my plots to life – hehe. Ginormous thanks for that and long we may continue to have our discussions.
Finally, I have to thank my fabulous husband, Nigel Buckley. I’m grateful for the cups of coffee, the encouragement and the support you give me. You help me when I’m stressed and having a bad day and you’re always there to celebrate my achievements too.
We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.
Did you know that 9% of children don’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.
We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.
Click HERE for a list of brilliant books to share with a child – as voted by Goodreads readers.
Thank you.
*As reported by the National Literacy Trust
Published by Bookouture in 2021
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.bookouture.com
Copyright © Carla Kovach, 2021
Carla Kovach has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-80019-395-6
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.