Best Up to Now
4 stories
Dark Places by JonEvans
JonEvans
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An acclaimed, award-winning thriller, published and translated around the world, now freely available on Wattpad. Paul Wood is a modern vagabond, a man who chooses to leave the comforts of San Francisco to spend months backpacking through some of the world's most challenging terrain. While hiking in the Himalayas, Paul gets more of a rush than he bargained for when he finds the body of a murdered hiker - mutilated in a way he has witnessed once before, in Africa, years ago and thousands of miles away. The police in Nepal, anxious to quell a scandal, close the case and declare the victim a suicide. Only Paul is left to search for answers. He reaches out to his farflung tribe of fellow backpackers for help, and his discoveries lead him to a terrible conclusion: a killer is stalking the international backpacker trail, preying on victims in wild places far beyond the reach of any authorities. A killer whom Paul may already know. Finding the murderer becomes an obsession that leads Paul from Himalayan peaks, through the jungles of Indonesia, across the bleak Sahara desert -- and into some of the darkest places imaginable... Dark Places won the 2005 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Reviews "You're hooked ... the characters are delightfully delineated ... beautifully controlled ... Evans contrives to slip the necessary specialist net-head detail into the plot without being boring or patronising. He can also pin down a character with a few details deftly brushed in ... A pacy thriller for the 21st century." - The Times "Anyone would enjoy Evans' clever, relentlessly absorbing debut thriller that becomes a lot more than just another serial-killer mystery." - The Ottawa Citizen "In this haunting suspense debut, Evans takes the reader on a page-turning adventure across five continents ... (a) spooky, inventive tale." - Publishers Weekly
Five Star Hotel by MayaApples
MayaApples
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|#2 in Romance 2/20/16| *** So he sent you here. The dirtiest, grimiest, most vile building in New York City. The building where countless have silently lost their lives. He sent you to this Five Star Hotel so you could feel the fear that comes without having his protection. He picked one of the most dangerous places in the country to send his beloved son. He sent you to the dogs, who he hoped would eat you alive. (This is a quote from the spin off but it fits)
Set Me Free by elsetterby
elsetterby
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After escaping her past, Miranda finds herself in coastal Maine, and when she meets Owen, she must help him uncover what truly happened to his now-dead ex. ***** On the run from her abusive ex, Miranda Lewis figures a small town in coastal Maine is just the place for her to lay low. There she befriends Claire, the owner of a local cafe, and her son, Owen. A woodworker and musician, he keeps to himself, especially since the town believes he played a part in the disappearance of the town's pride and joy... a skilled artist and his former girlfriend. As the two begin to grow closer, Miranda agrees to help him uncover the truth behind what really happened, especially now that strange things are occurring again, leading all roads back to Owen. [[word count: 70,000-80,000 words]] Cover designed by Simone Northey
The Blood Price by JonEvans
JonEvans
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Sequel to the award-winning DARK PLACES. Paul Wood was just a tourist in Sarajevo. Then an unexpected encounter made him a desperate woman's only hope of escape. Now, to get her to safety, he must find a way through the minefield of warlords, criminals, and peacekeepers that is postwar Bosnia. Pursued by brutal gangsters, unable to leave the country legally, Paul agrees to do a job for a shadowy group of human traffickers, in exchange for safe passage. The smugglers seem friendly. The job seems harmless. But when he discovers the secrets seething beneath, the repercussions will propel him on a perilous journey around the world - from a warlord's compound in lawless Albania, through the jungles of Latin America, and towards an explosive confrontation at the extraordinary Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert... "Reading Blood Price reminded me of being a kid running down a too-steep hill, going faster and faster so that you can barely get your feet in front of you quickly enough to stop, loving every second of it. You can't stop. You don't want to stop.... I wanted to keep reading to find out what the hell happened next." - Quill & Quire "Albanian smugglers, Bosnian guerrillas and Central American drug dealers populate Evans's colorful transcontinental story of self-preservation and harebrained derring-do ... a highly readable, inventive thriller." - Publishers' Weekly "The real appeal of Evans' hero, Paul Wood (who first appeared in the nail-biter Dark Places) is ... an undercurrent of wry humor that should make readers care about what happens to this fully fleshed hero. [...] A fantastic read." - Booklist "Despite its sometimes disconcerting insouciance, The Blood Price is knowledgeable about Balkan history, the current fragile peace maintained by NATO and the multi-billion-dollar international refugee-smuggling industry. Evans can write, too." - The Washington Post