S K Epperson: 27 books

Over a hundred years ago a series of murders were committed by a family called the Benders. The people posing as father, mother, son and daughter took in weary travelers and offered a warm bed but murdered them at dinner and robbed them of their goods before burying the bodies. The Benders were never...

The birth of Edie Jackson's baby will at last make the population of tiny Dumford, Kansas a thousand people, a number they would have reached a month ago if the latest baby born hadn't disappeared from its crib a day after arriving home. Edie's brother, police officer Ben Portlock is beginning to...

Zito said, "So what are you asking of me? Why not go to the police?" Marti stopped, lifted both hands then sat. "I don’t know! I didn’t think the police would—I have no idea what I’m asking. Aren’t you supposed to know? Isn’t this what you do?" "I hear your father in that remark." "My...

Cosmetics heiress Terra Donlevy has opted to shun the trappings of wealth and live in the country with only a modest security system and a few dogs to keep her safe. Junius Redwine is newly released from prison and though the rapist-murderer claims to have been born again, he becomes increasingly...

A determined billionaire takes people from refugee camps in the poorest areas around the globe and brings them to the U.S. to live in a grand humanitarian experiment that finds him strung from a tree, bloodied by the Taliban, haunted by an albino African witch then kidnapped by a homeless man with a tattoo on his butt that reads 'No Embalming'.

At a haunted house on Halloween, high school senior Jordan Peale meets a pretty teen in foster-care named Caley. After a gruesome car accident, she disappears. Five years later he meets her again in a diner outside Brownsville and now her pretty face is scarred with scratch marks and she calls herself...

Some crimes are too horrible to forget, and some just keep happening over and over again. In a town where a frontier military fort was once converted to an orphanage for destitute children, dark deeds took place. A woman who lived there has come back to face down the ghosts that torment her but when...

Tarbari has warmed to the subject. David can’t stop grinning. "The word you just said: Amen. In my country, Amun was the name of the king of all gods. Amun was also known as Amen, so each time a Christian says ’amen’ he is calling the name of the ancient sun god.” "Amun-Ra," David says. "Very...

A downed plane full of passengers is halved by two realms, one that looks a lot like the hot, dry desert of the southwest, and one that doesn't, where the flora is blue trees with curly leaves and the fauna is something no one on board has ever seen. When passengers and crew realize they're in a fight...

A dangerous search for diamonds on an island with a history of murder and insanity leads Sutton De Berg and her adopted older brother Gerard Brach to remember feelings they suppressed years ago. But Sutton's father, the wealthy Edward De Berg, and her French husband, Paul Dubois, have nefarious plans...

What they find when they arrive is a desperate beauty named Myra and her genius son Cal living on goat's milk, eating carrots, and praying for help. Vic's father's house is filled with dust, guns, ancient furniture and an unsettling presence with dripping wet hair. The town isn't much better, it's...

In 1870 Abilene is a destination for cowboys, cattlemen, prostitutes and a family of doctors attempting to practice an unorthodox type of medicine learned in Europe, a technique that involves manipulation of the spine to effect cures and ease minor ailments. Acceptance for their ways has been hard...

"I find it amusing that you ask me only now," said the old man. "Did you believe you knew the answer?" "I didn't think about it," Joe said. "I figured from the first that you did something like I did, something not too bad, but serious enough to do serious time." Zhang nodded. "And what I did, do...