Faith Gardner

A new marriage. A perfect home. A machine that says it’s all a lie. Welcome to Silicon Valley, where the weather is perfect, the income is high … and Rowena Snyder is miserable. A transplant from New York, Rowena moved into her husband Jacob’s idyllic childhood home with their new baby. But suburbia isn’t Rowena’s cup of Starbucks. And she’s got serious anxiety and depression to boot. Jacob, worried about their marriage, scores a new product currently in beta testing from his tech job: Maxine, a “digital friend” that bonds with an individual by continually gathering their personal data. Along with functioning like an upscale digital assistant, Maxine has “advice” and “prediction” modes that have shown promise for patients with mental health issues. To Rowena’s shock, the device turns out to be not just helpful, but eerily accurate, predicting events before they occur. It’s a godsend until Maxine offers a series of increasingly bone-chilling predictions that will change Rowena’s life forever. This domestic suspense novel set in a near-future dystopia asks, who do you trust more—your mind, your man, or your machine?

The deeper the secret, the darker the shadow.Ten years ago, Jolene nearly killed her friend Elizabeth in a gruesome accident. And no one has any idea. Not even Elizabeth.Jolene has been trying to outrun the guilt ever since, wandering from place to place and career to career. So she’s shocked when, after her latest move, she runs into the very person she’s been trying to avoid for ten years.Elizabeth still lives with scars from the accident. And she’s still clueless about what happened that fateful night.Or is she?As the two women rekindle a friendship, Elizabeth’s increasingly disturbing behavior makes Jolene wonder if it’s her own guilt stalking her—or Elizabeth finally exacting her revenge.

The family that slays together, stays together. The Hunters appear to be the textbook definition of a perfect family leading a charmed life. When the enigmatic Olivia West befriends teenage daughter Eliza, Olivia becomes one of the family—an “honorary Hunter.” Here’s what they don’t know about Olivia: she’s planning a murder. And whether they like it or not, every member of this family is going to become an accomplice. And here’s what Olivia doesn’t know about the Hunters: they’ll do just about anything to protect their reputation.

Is he the love of her life … or the end of it? When Pearl meets Christopher, he seems like the perfect catch: charming, wealthy, and brilliant. Their connection is electric. There’s just one little problem—Christopher also happens to be a psychopath. As Pearl falls deeper in love with Christopher, his mind games become more dangerous. But the more she tries to free herself from his grasp, the tighter it becomes. Escape seems all but impossible. Pearl moves to a new city. She tries to hide. But Christopher isn’t about to let her go that easily. If he can’t have her, nobody can.

The twisty, intricate mystery of I Killed Zoe Spanos meets the whip-smart sleuthing of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder in the newest novel from acclaimed author Faith Gardner, in which a club of misfits must come together to solve a dangerous mystery—and learn to lean on each other all the while. Posey Spade loves asking questions—it’s what’s going to make her a fantastic journalist someday. And ever since her best friend and crush chose someone else, Posey’s only focusing on her future career. Unfortunately, she’s just moved to the small town of Wild Pines—which doesn’t provide a lot of groundbreaking journalism opportunities, only a scrappy AV Club full of self-proclaimed slackers . . . who Posey must somehow inspire to greatness. She never thought that inspiration would come from the disappearance of the club’s beloved sponsor and teacher, Ms. Moses. But as the days tick by with no answers, Posey and the AV Club take it upon themselves to dig into the mystery. From a nepotism scandal to a local cult, Posey learns a lot about her new town. And as she spends more time with the AV Club, she also learns that friendship is just as necessary to solving a mystery as lots of questions. Good thing Posey has both.

Life’s tough when you didn’t expect to be living it. But now that Journey has a future, she apparently also has to figure out what that future’s supposed to look like. Some days the pain feels as fresh as that day. The one with the pills, the hospital, and the end that didn’t come. Her parents don’t know how to speak to her. Her best friend cracks all the wrong jokes. Her bipolar II disorder feels like it swallows her completely. But other days—they feel like revelations. Like meeting the beautiful Etta, a community college student who is a world unto herself. Or walking into the office of the volunteer hotline and discovering a community as simultaneously strong and broken as she is. Or uncovering the light within herself that she didn’t know existed.

An isolated compound. A so-called family. A collision course with unthinkable violence. When Winona rents a room at the eccentric Mirror House, she hopes to make new friends. What she gets instead is a “family” led by the charismatic psychologist Simon Spellmeyer. But if she wants to stay at Mirror House, Winona must join in following Simon’s strange protocols for self-improvement. Warning bells chime inside her, but she ignores them. Yes, his methods are disturbing, but the results are undeniable. Soon, Simon’s vision for their future spirals in a darker direction. The group relocates, expands, and Winona’s once-close bond with her housemates grows fractured by mistrust until she’s trapped among people she hardly recognizes. Including herself. Can Winona wake up to the true cost of Simon’s vision in time to get out alive? Or will the utopian dream turn into a tragic nightmare?

Two strangers. One phone. Everything on the line. Rising rock star Violet is kidnapped from her Los Angeles home, waking up locked in a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a mysterious note and a burner phone that only dials one unfamiliar number. Construction worker Bud answers a call from his Bay Area apartment and a stranger’s on the line claiming to have been kidnapped and locked in a cabin. The note says they have one week to figure out the connection between them. Otherwise someone out there—or something—will take her life. This psychological thriller is part of The Jolvix Episodes.

An edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller novella. When an outspoken writer buys the car of her dreams, it turns into a full-speed nightmare. Eve Alexopoulos is a journalist, but you’d be better off calling her what she really is: a professional troll-hunter. For a couple of years now, her column “What’s Your Problem, Bro?” has been exposing some of the most outrageous online trolls to hold them publicly accountable for their abusive behavior. Her column has been so successful, she got a fat book advance—one big enough to afford a Sunray, the most cutting-edge vehicle available. Sleek, self-driving, solar-powered, with every car custom-programmed by an engineer at the tech goliath company Jolvix. Too bad the engineer who programmed her new Sunray isn’t a big fan of Eve’s work. Because now her life’s about to make a sharp U-turn into unthinkable terror. Eve in Overdrive is one of the Jolvix Episodes, standalone psychological thrillers set in the same universe.

Granted, Arielle has a vast, excitable imagination. But she's not imagining how strange and out of control her life becomes after the death by drowning of her older sister's best friend, Perdita. Not only does this death echo the death of Arielle's own older brother, ten years before, it leads to dreams and visions in which Perdita seems to be reaching out to Arielle, asking for her help. The only other explanation—that Arielle's high-strung emotions have finally caused her to break with reality—is even more terrifying. A story that builds to greater and greater heights of suspicion and fear, Perdita is also a multi-layered literary achievement that leaves no emotion untouched.

On Halloween night twelve years ago, Vera Rivers’ twin sister Ava disappeared. The once-happy Rivers family has been spiraling ever since. The case shocked their Northern California community and made front-page news. But after years of investigators, theories, tips, and clues, the headlines have faded. There are still no answers. And now Vera is eighteen, ready to go to college and finally build a new life away from her family’s dark history. Until Ava Rivers turns up at a local hospital—broken, amnesia-stricken, and crying to go home. Ava’s miraculous return thrusts the Rivers back into the spotlight. Vera bonds intensely with the twin she’s missed all these years. Their estranged brother comes back. Her parents laugh again. After so much unending suffering and uncertainty, the family begins to heal. But behind the celebration, the rediscovered joy of sisterhood, and the dizzying media attention, there’s still one glaring, unanswered question on everyone’s mind. Where on earth has Ava Rivers been all these years?

A dysfunctional family holiday, a possible murder, and a partridge in a pear tree. The Jaggers were once a tight-knit family. But after their mother’s tragic death years ago, the four children and their father have drifted further apart. The children grew up, moved away, and now have lives of their own. And Dad? Well, let’s just say his new live-in friend January also has a permanent residence in the uncanny valley. After a disturbing, violent Christmas two years ago the Jaggers wish they could forget, they’re reuniting in their childhood southern California home dubbed “the Pink Castle” to give celebrating the holidays one more shot this year. But in the days before they gather, the children each get a sinister note that reads Your mother was murdered. Could this be the bizarre work of January? Or is one of the Jaggers hiding a horrible, guilty secret?

A new marriage. A perfect home. A machine that says it’s all a lie. Welcome to Silicon Valley, where the weather is perfect, the income is high … and Rowena Snyder is miserable. A transplant from New York, Rowena moved into her husband Jacob’s idyllic childhood home with their new baby. But suburbia isn’t Rowena’s cup of Starbucks. And she’s got serious anxiety and depression to boot. Jacob, worried about their marriage, scores a new product currently in beta testing from his tech job: Maxine, a “digital friend” that bonds with an individual by continually gathering their personal data. Along with functioning like an upscale digital assistant, Maxine has “advice” and “prediction” modes that have shown promise for patients with mental health issues. To Rowena’s shock, the device turns out to be not just helpful, but eerily accurate, predicting events before they occur. It’s a godsend until Maxine offers a series of increasingly bone-chilling predictions that will change Rowena’s life forever. This domestic suspense novel set in a near-future dystopia asks, who do you trust more—your mind, your man, or your machine?