Harlan Coben

From the Civil War-era south to 1950s New York to the present day's gritty cities and seemingly innocuous suburbs, the eighteen stories in this anthology edited by the award-winning mystery writer Harlan Coben chart the complications-always surprising, sometimes deadly-that arise between lovers, dear friends, and even complete strangers coming together for a single, shocking encounter. In Lee Child's "Safe Enough," a blue-collar city boy takes up...

"Paul Copeland, a New Jersey county prosecutor, is still grieving the loss of his sister twenty years ago--the night she walked into the woods, never to be seen again. But now, a homicide victim is found with evidence linking him to the disappearance. The victim could be the boy who vanished along with Paul's sister. And, as hope rises that his sister could still be alive, dangerous secrets from his family's past threaten to tear apart everything...

"A decade ago, kidnappers grabbed two boys from wealthy families and demanded ransom, then went silent. No trace of the boys ever surfaced. For ten years their families have been left with nothing but painful memories and a quiet desperation for the day that has finally, miraculously arrived: Myron Bolitar and his friend Win believe they have located one of the boys, now a teenager. Where has he been for ten years, and what does he know about the...

"You've lost your daughter. She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found. Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble. You don't stop to think. You approach her, beg her to come home. She runs. And you do the only thing a parent can do: you follow her into a dark...

Tia and Mike Baye never imagined they'd become spying, overprotective parents. But their sixteen-year-old son Adam has been unusually distant and aloof lately, and after the recent suicide of his classmate, Spencer Hill, they can't help but worry. They install a spy program on Adam's computer and within days they are jolted by a strange message to their son from an unknown correspondent: "Just stay quiet and all safe." Meanwhile, browsing through...

Three people--a suburban housewife, a talented documentary photographer, and a detective--living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn't recede ... and that desperation and hunger can lurk behind even the prettiest facades.

When a pregnant tennis star reports that her rock-artist husband has gone missing amid scandalous rumors, Myron Bolitar is forced to confront deep secrets about his client's past while struggling with fatherhood roles in his personal life.

"The man known as Wilde is a mystery to everyone, including himself. Decades ago, he was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. After the police concluded an exhaustive hunt for the child's family, which was never found, he was turned over to the foster system. Now, thirty years later, Wilde still doesn't know where he comes from, and he's back living in the woods on the outskirts of town, content to be an outcast, comfortable...

"David Burroughs was once a devoted father to his three-year-old son Matthew, living a dream life just a short drive away from the working-class suburb where he and his wife, Cheryl, first fell in love--until one fateful night when David woke suddenly to discover Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall. Half a decade later, David's been wrongly accused and convicted of the murder, left to serve out his time in a maximum-security...

"Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There's a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn't know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts -- and then he runs. Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who's working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at...