Showing results by author "Tami Hoag" in All Categories

He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won't stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn't talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still.

New Year's Day is a time for new beginnings, but Minneapolis homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are focused on endings: specifically, the tragic end of their latest murder victim, an unidentified young woman discovered on the side of the freeway. Believed to be the victim of a serial killer, Kovac and Liska are determined to do the girl the small justice of returning her body to her family as they investigate her case, but it is no simple task matching the broken corpse to any of the scores of missing persons reports.

A peaceful Minnesota town, where crime is something that just doesn’t happen, is about to face its worst nightmare. A young boy disappears. There are no witnesses, no clues — only a note, cleverly taunting, casually cruel. Has a cold-blooded kidnapper struck? Or is this the reawakening of a long-quiet serial killer?

She was a vision. She was a siren. She was a nightmare. She was dead. Now he needed her to disappear. And he knew just how to make it happen. The Palm Beach elite go to great lengths to protect their own—and their own no longer includes Elena Estes.

Five years after Rachel Lindquist had left California to chase her dreams, she returned home to care for her aging mother, only to find herself chasing a ghost! Addie Lindquist insisted a presence haunted Drake House and had hired noted parapsychologist Bryan Hennessy to investigate, but Rachel knew better than to believe in what she couldn't see—or to surrender to the strong current of desire pulling her towards Bryan.

Katie Quaid could never refuse a dare. It was the quality that had once made her a world-class equestrian. And it was the reason she'd been elected to introduce herself to Briarwood's intimidatingly gorgeous new resident. It had taken one week to make Nick Leone the focus of the Virginia town's rumor mill. So far he was a CIA agent, a male model, a fugitive - maybe all three.

Young widow Jayne Jordan had denied her feelings for rough and rowdy cowboy Pat Reilly - cursed and fought them - but Reilly was through being haunted by memories, tired of feeling guilty for wanting to lose himself in the warm honey of Jayne's sweet soul. Loving Reilly was like taking her heart on a roller coaster ride - breathtaking highs and heartbreaking lows - but could she do less than surrender to the man who was her destiny?

Three children, running in the woods behind their school, stumble upon a partially buried female body, eyes and mouth glued shut. Close behind the children is their teacher, Anne Navarre, shocked by this discovery and heartbroken as she witnesses the end of their innocence. What she doesn't yet realize is that this will mark the end of innocence for an entire community, as the ties that bind families and friends are tested by secrets uncovered in the wake of a serial killer's escalating activity.

She was a blond goddess, a box office megastar. Every woman wanted to be her; every man wanted to bed her. But over a year ago Devon Stafford vanished without a trace. As a biographer, Jake Gannon taught himself to follow the clues of a person's life story like a detective. As an ex-Marine, he is accustomed to being firmly in control. But when his car dies in a little town called Mare's Nest on the Carolina coast, he has to admit he's come to a dead end.

A peaceful Minnesota town, where crime is something that just doesn't happen, is about to face its worst nightmare. A young boy disappears. There are no witnesses, no clues - only a note, cleverly taunting, casually cruel. Has a cold-blooded kidnapper struck? Or is this a reawakening of a long-quiet serial killer?

As a trauma nurse, Julia McCarver is accustomed to dealing with life-and-death emergencies. But she is the one in shock when she answers the door and finds the past standing there in the person of S. T. "Storm" Dalton. Julia had painstakingly put her life together not just once but three times in the wake of his abrupt and devastating departures, and she has no intention of doing it a fourth time.

With her frayed jeans and cascade of tousled dark hair, Lynn Shaw looks more like one of the teenage residents of Horizon House than their counselor. So it's no wonder State Senator Erik Gunther mistakes her for one. Not that he exactly fits the description of a politician, with his movie-star looks and athletic build. Even Lynn, cynical, stubborn, and decidedly not looking for a relationship, can't ignore her body's response to the man.

At the end of a long day battling street traffic, bike messenger Jace Damon has one last drop to make. But en route to delivering a package for one of L.A.'s sleaziest defense attorneys, he's nearly run down by a car, chased through back alleys, and shot at. Only the instincts acquired while growing up on the streets of L.A. allow him to escape with his life, and with the package someone wants badly enough to kill for.

A cold-blooded kidnapper has been playing a twisted game with a terrified Minnesota town. Now a respected member of the community stands accused of a chilling act of evil. But when a second boy disappears, a frightened public demands to know: Have the police caught the wrong man? Is the nightmare continuing...or just beginning?

Maggie McSwain should have been thrilled when Rylan Quaid asked her to marry him. Instead, she was crushed. After all her romantic fantasies, Ry's proposal was missing one crucial element: love. But Maggie would prove to Ry that he had a heart-and then she'd use every teasing, tempting ounce of seductive power she had to capture it. The next time he proposed to her--and there would be a next time--common sense would be the last thing on his mind.

Attorney Laurel Chandler did not come back to Bayou Breaux to seek justice. That once-burning obsession had destroyed her credibility, her career, her marriage - and nearly her sanity. But when a ruthless predator strikes too close to home, she's lured into a perverse game from which there may be no escape. Once before, Laurel's cries against a monstrous evil went unanswered. Who will listen now?

On a frigid New Year’s Eve in Minneapolis, a young woman’s brutalized body falls from the trunk of a car into the path of oncoming traffic. Questions as to whether she was alive or dead when she hit the icy pavement result in her macabre nickname, Zombie Doe. Unidentified and unidentifiable, she is the ninth nameless female victim of the year, and homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are charged with the task of not only finding out who Zombie Doe is but who in her life hated her enough to destroy her. Was it personal? Or could it just have been a crime of opportunity?

Bronwynn Prescott Pierson had certainly made a mess of things. She'd left a disloyal groom at the altar, driven to Vermont, and now stood, near-tears, on the steps of a ramshackle Victorian house in her satin wedding gown.

Just what Genna Hastings needed: a a new neighbor with rippling muscles, mile-wide shoulders, and a wicked Jack Nicholson smile that could melt stone! It wasn't often that women resisted star quarterback J. J. Hennessy. With his summer sky eyes and kisses that stole her sanity and her willpower, J. J. was impossibly charismatic, magnificently male - and a bachelor father who was in danger of losing custody of his little girl, unless he could persuade Genna to help change his fast-lane image in time!

Dana Nolan was a promising young TV reporter until she was kidnapped by a notorious serial killer. A year has passed since she defeated her attacker, but Dana is still physically, emotionally, and psychologically scarred by her ordeal, with aftereffects including PTSD and memory loss. In an attempt to put herself back together after surviving the unthinkable, Dana returns to her hometown. But it doesn't provide the comfort she expects.