Karen Peakes has narrated 49 audiobooks on Listento.it by 37 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.3★ across 2,408 ratings. The most-rated is If You Tell.
If You Tell
Summary
2021 Audie Award Nominee for Best Nonfiction Audiobook A #1 Wall Street Journal, Amazon Charts, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller. #1 New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen’s shocking and empowering true-crime story of three sisters determined to survive their mother’s house of horrors. After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now. For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders. Harrowing and heartrending, If You Tell is a survivor’s story of absolute evil - and the freedom and justice that Nikki, Sami, and Tori risked their lives to fight for. Sisters forever, victims no more, they found a light in the darkness that made them the resilient women they are today - loving, loved, and moving on.
©2019 Gregg Olsen. (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
A Thin Dark Line
Summary
Terror stalks the streets of Bayou Breaux, Louisiana. A suspected murderer is free on a technicality, and the cop accused of planting evidence against him is ordered off the case. But Detective Nick Fourcade refuses to walk away. He’s stepped over the line before. This case threatens to push him over the edge. He’s not the only one. Deputy Annie Broussard found the woman’s mutilated body. She still hears the phantom echoes of dying screams. She wants justice. But pursuing the investigation will mean forming an alliance with a man she doesn’t trust and making enemies of the men she works with. It will mean being drawn into the confidence of a killer. For Annie Broussard, finding justice will mean risking everything - including her life. The search for the truth has begun - one that will lead down a twisted trail through the steamy bayous of Louisiana, and deep into the darkest reaches of the human heart.
©2014 Tami Hoag (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. “Could I Be Your Girl” written by Jann Arden Richards © 1997 Polygram Songs, Inc., and Girl On The Moon Music used By Permission. All Rights Reserved
The Sound of Rain
Summary
Former homicide detective Nicole Foster has hit rock bottom. Driven off the force by her treacherous partner and lover, she's flat broke and struggling with a gambling addiction. All Nicole has left is the dream of a warm bed at a homeless shelter and the haunting memories of three-year-old Kelsey Chase - whose murder case ended her career. As Nicole obsesses over the old facts, she realizes everything about that case felt off: a disinterested mom, a suicidal pedophile, and too many questions left unanswered. When the little girl's grieving father begs Nicole for help, she's drawn back into the investigation...and given one shot at redemption. But the deeper Nicole digs, the more evil she uncovers, including betrayals that hit painfully close to home. Will a shocking discovery be the key to finally getting justice for Kelsey and resurrecting her own life?
©2016 Gregg Olsen. (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
A Cold Dark Place
Summary
In a secluded farm house in the Pacific Northwest, a family has been slaughtered - and a teenage son has disappeared. Single mother and cop Emily Kenyon spearheads a dark hunt for a killer. But Emily's teenage daughter, Jenna, is one step ahead of her. Then another family is butchered, and another. As Emily fits the puzzle pieces together, she makes a chilling discovery: The killer is coming after her and her daughter.... Contains mature themes.
©2008 Gregg Olsen (P)2020 Tantor
The Weight of Silence
Summary
A heart-pounding novel of unspeakable crimes and unforgivable sins from the number one New York Times best-selling author of The Sound of Rain. Homicide detective Nicole Foster has finally balanced an unsteady life and is anxious for a second chance. There’s no better place to start over than at the beginning - back at her childhood home on the Washington coast, where’s she raising her niece and keeping an eye on her increasingly fragile father. But Nicole’s past is never truly behind her - not when a disturbing new case stirs dark memories of the haunting investigation that shattered her career. In the middle of the hottest August in a century, a toddler is found dead inside a parked car. Her father says he forgot her. It’s an unthinkable crime. And for Nicole, it’s made all the more unbearable by her own suffocating secrets - those shared by an old rival who has reappeared from the shadows and is pushing Nicole to the edge once again. Now, wherever the truth lies, solving this case and avenging an unforgivable death is the most important move in Nicole’s career. But to see it through to the end, how far is she willing to go? And what is she prepared to risk this time?
©2018 Gregg Olsen (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved
Good As Gone
Summary
Thirteen-year-old Julie Whitaker was kidnapped from her bedroom in the middle of the night, witnessed only by her younger sister. Her family was shattered, but managed to stick together, hoping against hope that Julie is still alive. And then one night: the doorbell rings. A young woman who appears to be Julie is finally, miraculously, home safe. The family is ecstatic - but Anna, Julie's mother, has whispers of doubts. She hates to face them. She cannot avoid them. When she is contacted by a former detective turned private eye, she begins a torturous search for the truth about the woman she desperately hopes is her daughter. Propulsive and suspenseful, Good as Gone will appeal to fans of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, and keep listeners guessing until the final minutes.
©2016 Amy Gentry (P)2016 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Lying Next to Me
Summary
No matter what you see, no matter what you’ve heard, assume nothing. Adam and Sophie Warner and their three-year-old daughter are vacationing in Washington State’s Hood Canal for Memorial Day weekend. It’s the perfect getaway to unplug - and to calm an uneasy marriage. But on Adam’s first day out on the water, he sees Sophie abducted by a stranger. A hundred yards from shore, Adam can’t save her. And Sophie disappears. In a nearby cabin is another couple, Kristen and Connor Moss. Unfortunately, beyond what they’ve heard in the news, they’re in the dark when it comes to Sophie’s disappearance. For Adam, at least there’s comfort in knowing that Mason County detective Lee Husemann is an old friend of his. She’ll do everything she can to help. She must. But as Adam’s paranoia about his missing wife escalates, Lee puts together the pieces of a puzzle. The lives of the two couples are converging in unpredictable ways, and the picture is unsettling. Lee suspects that not everyone is telling the truth about what they know - or they have yet to reveal all the lies they’ve hidden from the strangers they married.
©2019 Gregg Olsen (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Trail of Broken Wings
Summary
Goodreads Best Fiction Finalist and Amazon Charts and USA Today Bestseller When her father falls into a coma, Indian American photographer Sonya reluctantly returns to the family she'd fled years before. Since she left home, Sonya has lived on the run, free of any ties, while her soft-spoken sister, Trisha, has created a perfect suburban life, and her ambitious sister, Marin, has built her own successful career. But as these women come together, their various methods of coping with a terrifying history can no longer hold their memories at bay. Buried secrets rise to the surface as their father - the victim of humiliating racism and perpetrator of horrible violence - remains unconscious. As his condition worsens, the daughters and their mother wrestle with private hopes for his survival or death, as well as their own demons and buried secrets. Told with forceful honesty, Trail of Broken Wings reveals the burden of shame and secrets, the toxicity of cruelty and aggression, and the exquisite, liberating power of speaking and owning truth.
©2015 Sejal Badani (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.
Black-Eyed Susans
Summary
Top 5 Sunday Times and USA Today bestseller. For fans of Laura Lippman and Gillian Flynn comes an electrifying novel of stunning psychological suspense. I am the star of screaming headlines and campfire ghost stories. I am one of the four Black-Eyed Susans. The lucky one. As a sixteen-year-old, Tessa Cartwright was found in a Texas field, barely alive amid a scattering of bones, with only fragments of memory as to how she got there. Ever since, the press has pursued her as the lone surviving “Black-Eyed Susan”, the nickname given to the murder victims because of the yellow carpet of wildflowers that flourished above their shared grave. Tessa’s testimony about those tragic hours put a man on death row. Now, almost two decades later, Tessa is an artist and single mother. In the desolate cold of February, she is shocked to discover a freshly planted patch of black-eyed susans - a summertime bloom - just outside her bedroom window. Terrified at the implications - that she sent the wrong man to prison and the real killer remains at large - Tessa turns to the lawyers working to exonerate the man awaiting execution. But the flowers alone are not proof enough, and the forensic investigation of the still-unidentified bones is progressing too slowly. An innocent life hangs in the balance. The legal team appeals to Tessa to undergo hypnosis to retrieve lost memories - and to share the drawings she produced as part of an experimental therapy shortly after her rescue. What they don’t know is that Tessa and the scared, fragile girl she was have built a fortress of secrets. As the clock ticks toward the execution, Tessa fears for her sanity, but even more for the safety of her teenaged daughter. Is a serial killer still roaming free, taunting Tessa with a trail of clues? She has no choice but to confront old ghosts and lingering nightmares to finally discover what really happened that night. Shocking, intense, and utterly original, Black-Eyed Susans is a dazzling psychological thriller, seamlessly weaving past and present in a searing tale of a young woman whose harrowing memories remain in a field of flowers - as a killer makes a chilling return to his garden.
©2015 Julia Heaberlin (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC
A Wicked Snow
Summary
Hannah Griffin was a girl when tragedy struck. She still remembers the flames reflected against the newly fallen snow and the bodies the police dug up - one of them her mother's. The killer was never found.... Twenty years later Hannah is a talented CSI investigating a case of child abuse when the past comes hurtling back. A killer with unfinished business is on the hunt. And an anonymous message turns Hannah's blood cold: Your Mom called....
©2007 Gregg Olsen (P)2020 Tantor
Heart of Ice
Summary
Three bodies, three different towns. Each victim was a sorority girl - pretty, privileged, and brutally murdered. There are no fingerprints, no clues. He is scrupulously careful, craving those exquisite seconds when the light fades from his victim's eyes. But the rush never lasts, and the killing won't stop - not until one special woman has been made to suffer.... Contains mature themes.
©2009 Gregg Olsen (P)2021 Tantor
Water's Edge
Summary
The young woman’s body is lying with her arms stretched out to each side. Her lips slightly parted. Her face untouched by injury and her hair spread around her head like a fan. A redhead. Just like the others. When the body of Leann Truitt is found in a secluded cove in Mystery Bay, Detective Megan Carpenter is one of the first on the scene. The victim has telltale marks on her wrists, ankles, and neck where she has been bound. But that’s not all. Next to Leann’s body lies a puzzling clue - an unusual symbol scratched into a rock. With rookie Deputy Ronnie Marsh under her wing and the investigation underway, Megan starts to receive disturbing messages. Someone knows about her traumatic past. They know what she did. Determined to stay focused, Megan soon makes a chilling link between Leann’s brutal killing and the unsolved murder cases of two other women - all redheads with the same marks on their bodies, the same symbol carvings found at the crime scenes, and most shockingly, all had been pregnant. The killer stalks his prey, kidnapping and torturing them in a very exact and methodical pattern. And he is not finished yet. When the body of another woman is found bearing a striking resemblance to the other victims, Megan must crack the clues fast if she is to catch the twisted soul before they strike again. Megan might be closing in on the killer, but someone is watching her every move. Can Megan hide the secrets of her past threatening to destroy her future? And can she protect herself and Ronnie before they both find themselves in terrible danger?
©2020 Gregg Olsen (P)2020 Bookouture
The Funhouse
Summary
Once there was a girl who ran away and joined a traveling carnival. She married a man she grew to hate - and gave birth to a child she could never love. A child so monstrous that she killed it with her own hands.… Twenty-five years later, Ellen Harper has a new life, a new husband, and two normal children - Joey loves monster movies, and Amy is about to graduate from high school. But their mother drowns her secret guilt in alcohol and prayer. The time has come for Amy and Joey to pay for her sins.… Because Amy is pregnant. And the carnival is coming back to town.
©2001 Universal Studios Publishing Rights, a division of Universal Studios Licensing, Inc. (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved. Recorded by arrangement with The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company.
The Bone Box
Summary
If you are eager for more of number-one New York Times best-selling author Gregg Olsen's harrowing and heartrending prose, dig into this thrilling short story that will chill you to the bone.... They call it the Bone Box. A collection of old cases, solved and unsolved, that continue to haunt forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman. None is more disturbing than the first. After two decades, Birdy still remembers the screaming. The blood on the boy's hands. The body of a girl, butchered in the woods. Birdy's testimony helped put her own cousin behind bars. It was a sacrifice for what she thought was right - but now, 20 years later, she wants to reopen the box. Reexamine the evidence. And rekindle her fears that a killer walked free - and is closer than ever. Contains mature themes.
©2012 Gregg Olsen (P)2021 Tantor
The Last Thing She Ever Did
Summary
From the Amazon Charts and #1 New York Times bestselling author comes a psychological thriller exploring the things we dare to do when no one is looking... The community along Oregon’s Deschutes River is one of successful careers and perfect families. For years, up-and-comers Liz and Owen have admired their good friends and neighbors, Carole and David. They appear to have it all - security, happiness, and a beautiful young son, Charlie. Then Charlie vanishes without a trace, and all that seemed safe is shattered by a tragedy that is incomprehensible - except to Liz. It took one fleeting moment for her to change the lives of everyone she loves - a heartrending accident that can’t be undone. Neither can the second-worst mistake of her life: concealing it. As two marriages crack and buckle in grief and fear, Liz retreats into her own dark place of guilt, escalating paranoia - and betrayals even she can’t imagine. Because there’s another good neighbor who has his own secrets, his own pain, and his own reasons for watching Liz’s every move. And only he knows that the mystery of the missing boy on the Deschutes River is far from over.
©2017 by Gregg Olsen. (P)2017 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.
Silent Ridge
Summary
One bath wall is a mural of a brilliant-yellow sunflower. The theme carries over to the shower curtains, but the yellow vinyl is spattered with red blotches. Propped against the mirror is a South Kitsap High School photo of a teenaged girl. Detective Megan Carpenter is no stranger to horrifying crime scenes, but when she arrives at the home of a woman whose body has been brutalized, Megan is shocked to discover that she knows the victim. Monique Delmont helped Megan when she was in danger years ago. And the killer has left a disturbing calling card...two laminated photographs of a 16-year-old high school girl - Megan. Someone is taunting her in the worst way possible, and Megan is convinced she knows who is responsible. She just has to find him. With the help of her new partner, Deputy Ronnie Marsh, Megan begins to unravel the clues that will lead them to the killer including links to three female murder cases from nearly 20 years ago - one of which was Monique’s daughter. But to protect those closest to her, Megan must continue to hide the dark truth of her past, even if that means lying to her team about her connection to Monique. When two photographs of a teenage Megan are found at her boyfriend’s place in Snow Creek, she knows the killer is circling and ready to strike again. Can she get to him before he finds her? And will she pay the ultimate price for trying to keep her terrifying past buried? An addictive edge-of-your-seat crime thriller from the number one New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Amazon Charts best-selling author.
©2020 Gregg Olsen (P)2020 Bookouture, an imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Off the Beaten Path
Summary
When Ward Johannsen’s little girl, Ava, shifted into a werewolf, she was taken into custody by the feds and shipped off to the nearest pack, all ties between father and daughter severed. Ward burned every bridge he had discovering her location, and then almost froze to death in the Colorado mountains tracking her new pack down. And that’s just the beginning of his struggle.
Henry Dormer is an alpha werewolf and an elite black ops soldier who failed his last mission. He returns home, hoping for some time to recuperate and help settle the pack’s newest member, a little pup named Ava who can’t shift back to her human form. Instead, he meets Ward, who refuses to leave his daughter without a fight. The two men are as different as night and day, but their respect for each other strikes a spark of mutual interest that quickly grows into a flame. They might find something special together - love, passion, and even a family - if they can survive trigger-happy pack guardians, violent werewolf politics, and meddling government agencies that are just as likely to get their alpha soldiers killed as bring them home safely.
©2017 Cari Z. (P)2018 Dreamspinner Press
Fear Collector
Summary
In this thriller from a number one New York Times best-selling true-crime author, a detective's obsession with an infamous serial killer could lead to her demise. Ted Bundy. One of America's most notorious serial killers. For two women, he is the ultimate obsession. One is a cop whose sister may have been one of Bundy's victims. The other is a deranged groupie who corresponded with Bundy in prison - and raised her son to finish what Bundy started. To charm and seduce innocent girls. To kidnap and brutalize more women than any serial killer in history. And to lure one obsessed cop into a trap as sick and demented as Bundy himself.... Contains mature themes.
©2013 Gregg Olsen (P)2020 Tantor
Brush Back
Summary
Chicago's V. I. Warshawski confronts crooked politicians and buried family secrets in the gritty new novel from New York Times - bestselling author Sara Paretsky. No one would accuse V. I. Warshawski of backing down from a fight, but there are a few she'd be happy to avoid. High on that list is tangling with Chicago political bosses. Yet that's precisely what she ends up doing when she responds to Frank Guzzo's plea for help. For six stormy weeks back in high school, V. I. thought she was in love with Frank. He broke up with her, she went off to college, he started driving trucks for Bagby Haulage. She forgot about him until the day his mother was convicted of bludgeoning his kid sister, Annie, to death. Stella Guzzo was an angry, uncooperative prisoner and did a full twenty-five years for her daughter's murder. Newly released from prison, Stella is looking for exoneration, so Frank asks V. I. for help. V. I. doesn't want to get involved. Stella hated the Warshawskis, in particular V. I.'s adored mother, Gabriella. But life has been hard on Frank and on V. I.'s other childhood friends, still stuck on the hardscrabble streets around the dead steel mills, and V. I. agrees to ask a few questions. Those questions lead her straight into the vipers' nest of Illinois politics she's wanted to avoid. When V. I. takes a beating at a youth meeting in her old hood, her main question becomes whether she will live long enough to find answers.
©2015 Sara Paretsky (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, Inc. Recorded by arrangement with G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company.
Three Daughters
Summary
From the fertile hills of a tiny village near Jerusalem to the elegant townhouses of Georgetown, Three Daughters is a historical saga that chronicles the lives, loves, and secrets of three generations of Palestinian Christian women. Born in rural Palestine, just before the dawn of the 20th century, Miriam adores her father and is certain his love will protect her, but she soon finds that tradition overrides love. Uprooted by war, Miriam enters a world where the old constraints slip away with thrilling and disastrous results. Miriam's rebellious daughter, Nadia, is thrilled with the opportunity for a modern life that her elite education provides. But when she falls in love with an outsider, the clan reins her back with a shocking finality. Nijmeh, Nadia's daughter, is an only child and the path her father, the sheik, sets for her is fraught with difficulties, yet it prepares her for her ultimate journey to America, where she finds her future. Each woman, in her own time and in her own way, experiences a world in transition through war and social change... and each must stretch the bounds of her loyalty, her courage, and her heart.
©2014 Consuelo Saah Baehr (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.