In the tradition of Lisa Unger’s Beautiful Lies and Nancy Pickard’s The Scent of Rain and Lightning comes a twisting, riveting novel of shifting trust and shattered lives. Lie Still delves deep into the heart of an opulent Southern town, where gossip is currency and secrets kill.When Emily Page and her husband move from Manhattan to the wealthy enclave of Clairmont, Texas, she hopes she can finally escape her haunted past—and outrun the nameless stalker who has been taunting her for years. Pregnant with her first child, Emily just wants to start over. But as she is drawn into a nest of secretive Texas women—and into the unnerving company of their queen, Caroline Warwick—Emily finds that acceptance is a very dangerous game.It isn’t long before Caroline mysteriously disappears and Emily is facing a rash of anonymous threats. Are they linked to the missing Caroline? Or to Emily’s terrifying encounter in college, years earlier? As the dark truth about Caroline emerges, Emily realizes that some secrets are impossible to hide—and that whoever came for Caroline is now coming for her.Advance praise for *Lie Still “Julia Heaberlin deceives the reader in the most deliciously chilling way in Lie Still: With gorgeous prose and sterling character work, she takes us on a deeply felt and wonderfully composed thrill ride. Layer after layer of secrets, longing, and deception is peeled away and we begin to dread the twisted kernel at the heart, never guessing what Heaberlin has in store for us.”—Sophie Littlefield, bestselling author of Garden of Stones“Packed with larger-than-life characters, twisty and dangerous secrets, and a captivating heroine you can’t help but root for as the stakes skyrocket and her own terrifying past roars back to claim her.”—Carla Buckley, author of The Things That Keep Us Here“Mix a pregnant New Yorker with a big secret, an aging Southern belle who collects secrets like recipes, an ex–pageant queen, several plastic surgery victims, and a maid with an eye for revenge. Set in an upscale Texas community, and leaven with just the right amount of humor. I thoroughly enjoyed the result: a page-turning Texas gothic.”—Lisa Brackmann, author of Getaway*

A Texas map marked with three red dots like drops of blood. A serial killer who claims to have dementia. A mysterious young woman who wants answers. What could go wrong? “A rich hybrid work that’s at once . . . a murder mystery, a road novel, a pair of psychological case studies and a meditation on photography.”—The Sunday Times (U.K.), Thriller of the Month An obsessive young woman has been waiting half her life—since she was twelve years old—for this moment. She has planned. Researched. Trained. Imagined every scenario. Now she is almost certain the man who kidnapped and murdered her sister sits in the passenger seat beside her. Carl Louis Feldman is a documentary photographer who may or may not have dementia—and may or may not be a serial killer. The young woman claims to be his long-lost daughter. He doesn’t believe her. He claims no memory of murdering girls across Texas, in a string of places where he shot eerie pictures. She doesn’t believe him. Determined to find the truth, she lures him out of a halfway house and proposes a dangerous idea: a ten-day road trip, just the two of them, to examine cold cases linked to his haunting photographs. Is he a liar or a broken old man? Is he a pathological con artist? Or is she? In Paper Ghosts, Julia Heaberlin once again swerves the serial killer genre in a new direction. You won’t see the final, terrifying twist spinning your way until the very last mile. Advance praise for *Paper Ghosts* “I kept thinking of [Patricia] Highsmith while reading Paper Ghosts. . . . [Julia] Heaberlin anchors her books with troubled but endearingly badass women. Think Amy Schumer’s character in Trainwreck except with guns and the greater possibility of redemption. . . . Like Highsmith, Heaberlin displays a keen grasp of casual cruelty that defines human interaction, not to mention a flair for stories in which no one—least of all the protagonist—can be trusted. . . . Texas has yet again bred a major American noir writer.”—*D Magazine* “[An] artful and elegiac psychological thriller . . . The author wields words like weapons, with each one chosen to heighten tension, underscore emotion, or foreshadow doom. . . . Heaberlin brilliantly combines travelogue with a heartbreaking portrait of the damage done by childhood.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) **Review “[An] artful and elegiac psychological thriller . . . The author wields words like weapons, with each one chosen to heighten tension, underscore emotion, or foreshadow doom. . . . [Julia] Heaberlin brilliantly combines travelogue with a heartbreaking portrait of the damage done by childhood.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Paper Ghosts is an exceptional read, with a deftly woven plot—a book to devour in one sitting. This is breathless storytelling at its very best, with a deeply satisfying ending that will give book groups—and all your friends, when you recommend it—much to discuss.”—Elizabeth Haynes, New York Times bestselling author of Into the Darkest Corner  * “This book haunted me. The writing is beautiful and chilling, laced with a subtle dark humor, and the multiple twists build to a perfect icy shiver of an ending. I loved it!”—C. J. Tudor, author of The Chalk Man “Paper Ghosts* is a stunner: a creepy, complicated thriller that crawls under your skin from the outset and burrows deeper with every page; the kind of ‘there’s no way this is going to end well’ story in which you know that what the character is doing is a very, very bad idea but you can’t look away. It’s a chilling, nuanced, just-one-more-page novel from a master of psychological suspense. Highly recommended!”—Karen Dionne, author of The Marsh King’s Daughter “With prose as sharp and flinty as the book’s protagonist, Paper Ghosts* takes a deep dive into the murky well of moral ambiguity, as one woman’s obsession with her missing sister collides with a serial killer’s dementia over the course of a thrill-packed road trip deep into the heart of Texas. This novel brilliantly asks you to question everything you see (and don’t see) around you.”—Nina Sadowsky, author of Just Fall and The Burial Society “The heroine of Paper Ghosts* cons a suspected serial killer claiming dementia into joining her on a road trip, in the hope of triggering his memories—and confessions—of what happened to several missing women. Their journey hurtles through Heaberlin’s vivid Texas toward a surprising and satisfying conclusion, guided by clues in enigmatic photographs. The trip is engrossing, tense, and tightly written, with a luminous sense of place.”—Emily Winslow, author of the Keene and Frohmann mysteries   “Paper Ghosts is the spellbinding, brilliantly original story of a young woman desperate to find her missing sister and the man who she suspects knows the truth, joined together on a perilous journey as elusive and mysterious as the paper ghosts that lure them. Julia Heaberlin’s love for Texas spills across every page.”—Carla Buckley, author of *The Good Goodbye* About the Author Julia Heaberlin is an award-winning journalist. She has also edited numerous real-life thriller stories, including a series on the perplexing and tragic murders of girls buried in the Mexican desert and another on domestic violence. She lives with her husband and son in Texas. Black-Eyed Susans was a Sunday Times Top Five bestseller. 

"A compelling family mystery that kept me turning the pages. Highly recommended."--Margaret Maron, New York Times bestselling author of Three Day Town "Dear Tommie: Have you ever wondered about who you are?" The letter that turns Tommie McCloud's world upside down arrives from a stranger only days after her father's death. The woman who wrote it claims that Tommie is her daughter--and that she was kidnapped as a baby thirty-one years ago. Tommie wants to believe it's all a hoax, but suddenly a girl who grew up on a Texas ranch finds herself linked to a horrific past: the slaughter of a family in Chicago, the murder of an Oklahoma beauty queen, and the kidnapping of a little girl named Adriana. Tommie races along a twisting, nightmarish path while an unseen stalker is determined to keep old secrets locked inside the dementia-battered brain of the woman who Tommie always thought was her...

A Texas map marked with three red dots like drops of blood. A serial killer who claims to have dementia. A mysterious young woman who wants answers. What could go wrong? From the bestselling author of Black-Eyed Susans comes a gripping thriller about the ghosts that live in our minds—and the ones that stare back from photographs. An obsessive young woman has been waiting half her life—since she was twelve years old—for this moment. She has planned. Researched. Trained. Imagined every scenario. Now she is almost certain the man who kidnapped and murdered her sister sits in the passenger seat beside her. Carl Louis Feldman is a documentary photographer who may or may not have dementia—and may or may not be a serial killer. The young woman claims to be his long-lost daughter. He doesn't believe her. He claims no memory of murdering girls across Texas, in a string of places where he shot eerie...