Jack Carter is a private investigator with an ordinary life, right up until he wakes up bound to a chair with a splitting headache and a ghostly figure standing over him, offering a choice that will define the rest of his life: follow Jesus, or become something called a Chaser. Jack accepts, and the world he thought he understood splits open into something far stranger.He learns that the dead don’t always move on the way they’re supposed to. Some spirits, called Runners, reject their appointed afterlife journey and cling stubbornly to the earthly world instead, hiding among the living and refusing to cross over. Chasers exist specifically to find them: divinely chosen individuals granted supernatural speed and fighting ability, tasked with tracking Runners down and compelling them to complete their crossing, typically through contact with a wooden cross.
After a crash course in his new calling, Jack takes on his first assignments, including a case tangled up with a client’s deceased husband, a Runner whose refusal to move on is causing real harm to the living people left behind. Each case blends detective work with genuine spiritual warfare, forcing Jack to rely equally on investigative instinct and his newly granted abilities as he chases down spirits determined to stay exactly where they don’t belong.
The Chaser Chronicles Boxed Set collects the opening chapters of John C. Dalglish’s series, following Jack’s transformation from ordinary investigator to reluctant spiritual enforcer, one stubborn Runner at a time. Clean, profanity-free content and a brisk pace keep the supernatural premise grounded in real detective work rather than heavy-handed sermonizing, letting the mystery and the faith elements build side by side across multiple cases in one collected volume.
Why this delights: a private investigator forced to choose a supernatural calling becomes a divinely appointed hunter of restless spirits refusing to leave the world of the living.
In a small town that looks, on the surface, like the kind of place nothing bad ever happens, a serial killer has been operating with brutal precision, leaving behind a trail of horror that the community can’t reconcile with its own quiet reputation. Three women have vanished so far, each one enduring severe torture before disappearing entirely, and investigators can find no obvious thread connecting the victims to explain why they were chosen.Grace McKenna takes on the case determined to find the connection everyone else has missed, working methodically through the victims’ lives, routines, and relationships for some pattern the official investigation has overlooked. Her instincts keep circling back to Dale Young, a local man whose demeanor sets off every alarm Grace has learned to trust, even though nothing concrete yet ties him directly to the disappearances.
As Grace pushes deeper into the case, the town’s carefully maintained calm starts to fracture, with neighbors eyeing each other with new suspicion and old secrets surfacing under the pressure of a killer who shows no sign of stopping. Grace has to move fast, aware that every day without an answer likely means another woman added to the list, while walking the delicate line between following her instincts about Dale and building the kind of case that can actually hold up.
Missing Women opens Kate Anslinger’s McKenna Mystery series with a small-town investigation that peels back a community’s polished surface to expose the predator hiding in plain sight. Grace’s growing certainty about Dale runs up against the hard reality that suspicion alone won’t stop a killer, forcing her to find proof before her instincts are tested in the worst possible way, with the town’s trust in its own safety collapsing by the day.
Why this grips: a small town’s idyllic reputation cracks wide open as a relentless investigator hunts a torturer targeting women with no apparent connection between them.
Paradise Falls is a small town that hides a far bigger secret than most of its residents will ever know: a hidden gateway to Neverwood, an enchanted alternate forest accessible to almost no one. Elora, daughter of one of the town’s two powerful founding families, is among the rare few who can cross into it, a gift that sets her apart from everyone she knows, including Callum, the son of her family’s oldest rivals and the only other person alive who shares her ability.Elora and Callum have spent their whole lives as enemies, their families’ feud running deep enough that neither has ever considered the other anything but an obstacle. That changes abruptly when both of their fathers vanish into Neverwood on the same day, leaving Elora and Callum with no choice but to go after them, each initially determined to search alone rather than accept help from the other.
Neverwood has other plans. Injured, lost, and increasingly reliant on each other just to survive the forest’s dangers, Elora and Callum are forced into the kind of forced proximity neither wanted, and neither can fully resist. As they dig deeper into what happened to their fathers, they uncover dark secrets and darker lies that implicate both of their families, secrets dangerous enough that discovery by the wrong people could make Elora and Callum disappear just like the men they’re searching for.
Cursed Ever After follows two sworn enemies forced to trust each other in a world built on old magic and older grudges, testing whether forbidden attraction can survive family feuds and the secrets underneath them.
Why this delights: two rival heirs with a rare magical gift are forced to team up when both their fathers vanish into a hidden enchanted forest neither of them can navigate alone.
The French Illusion: A Novel (The French Illusion Series)
Paul and Chelsea Tanner are newlyweds on their honeymoon in Paris when a day trip into the French countryside turns into a nightmare: the couple is kidnapped in broad daylight, vanishing without explanation or a clear demand. What looks at first like an isolated, terrifying crime against two unlucky tourists quickly reveals itself as something far larger, as investigators begin to suspect the Tanners aren’t the first honeymooners to disappear this way.As the scope of the case becomes clear, it draws in the FBI, the CIA, and French intelligence services, forces that rarely cooperate smoothly finding themselves compelled to work together against a threat none of them fully understands yet. At the center of the operation is Stuart Nash, a young lawyer recruited by the CIA and thrust into an elaborate intelligence operation that uses him as bait to draw out whoever, or whatever network, is responsible for the abductions.
The investigation pushes across borders and jurisdictions as agents race to determine not just who took the Tanners but why they were targeted specifically, a question that turns out to be as dangerous to answer as the kidnapping itself. Layers of deception peel back slowly, each one raising the stakes for Stuart and for the international operation now running through him.
The French Illusion marks a departure from Grisham’s courtroom-driven thrillers into full espionage territory, trading legal maneuvering for international intrigue, and delivering the same propulsive, surprising pacing that has defined his career, now turned toward spies, honeymooners, and the illusion at the center of it all.
Why this grips: a Parisian honeymoon kidnapping pulls the FBI, CIA, and French intelligence into a conspiracy that uses one recruited lawyer as bait for something much bigger.
Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the 1950s, an era shadowed by McCarthyism and the low hum of suspicion it cast over anyone who didn’t fit neatly into the expected mold. Ava Abbot arrives from a small, restrictive town in Maine carrying a past she doesn’t talk about and abilities she’s spent her whole life trying to hide, hoping college might finally offer room to become someone else.At Radcliffe, Ava meets Lauren, the brazen, wealthy daughter of an old Cambridge family and her exact opposite in nearly every way, and the two become fast, inseparable friends. Before long, both women are drawn into the Lilith Society, a secret organization of witches operating at Radcliffe since colonial times, tracing its lineage back to Lilith, the figure cast out of religious tradition as Adam’s first, disobedient wife.
As Ava and Lauren deepen their friendship and come into their own magical inheritance, the novel draws a deliberate, unsettling line between the Salem witch trials of the past and the McCarthy-era persecution unfolding in the present, suggesting the same impulse to punish difference never really disappeared, it just changed its language. That parallel turns urgent when members of the Lilith Society begin disappearing one by one, forcing Ava and Lauren to confront the possibility that the old witch trials aren’t nearly as buried as they’d believed.
The Witches of Cambridge follows Ava and Lauren as they fight to protect their sisterhood and themselves, exploring female power, chosen belonging, and resistance against institutions built to suppress anyone deemed too different to be safe.
Why this delights: a secret sisterhood of witches at 1950s Radcliffe discovers the machinery of the Salem trials never really vanished, it just learned to wear McCarthyism instead.
Elliott has spent the last five years making single fatherhood work through sheer stubborn routine, raising his daughter Baylor on his own and building a life he’s not looking to disrupt. He’s settled into a rhythm that suits him fine, right up until Emelia arrives in town and upends every carefully maintained boundary he’s built around himself and his daughter.Emelia isn’t trying to cause trouble, but her presence has a way of pulling Elliott out of the careful holding pattern he’s kept himself in since becoming a single dad, drawing out a version of him that’s sharper, funnier, and considerably less guarded than the one the town is used to seeing. Their initial friction gives way to the kind of banter that neither of them can quite pretend is nothing, even as Elliott’s protective instincts, both for himself and for Baylor, keep pulling him back toward caution.
As Emelia settles into the community and Elliott finds himself looking for reasons to be near her, the two are forced to navigate what it means to let someone new into a life that’s been built, deliberately, around just two people. Baylor’s presence raises the stakes beyond the usual will-they-won’t-they, making trust and timing matter as much as chemistry, while the town’s colorful cast of locals keeps nudging the two of them toward each other whether they’re ready or not.
Holding Ground opens Piper Rayne’s Mercer Family series with a grumpy single dad, a woman determined to shake up his careful routine, and a small town watching the whole thing unfold with open delight.
Why this delights: a guarded single dad’s carefully held-together life gets rocked when a new arrival in town proves impossible for him, or his daughter, to ignore.