Thomas H. Cook

Red Leaves: A Novel

Thomas H. Cook

• 2006 Barry-Novel winner
• 2006 Anthony-Novel nominee
• 2006 Dagger shortlist
• 2006 Edgar–Novel nominee
• Score: 28.56

Eric Moore has reason to be happy. He has a prosperous business, a comfortable home, a stable family life in a quiet town. Then, on an ordinary night, his teenage son Keith is asked to babysit Amy Giordano, the eight-year-old daughter of a neighboring family. The next morning Amy is missing.

Suddenly Eric is one of the stricken parents he has seen on television, professing faith in his child’s innocence. As the police investigation increasingly focuses on Keith, Eric must counsel his son, find him a lawyer, protect him from the community’s steadily growing…

The Chatham School Affair

Thomas H. Cook

• 1997 Edgar–Novel winner
• 1997 Barry-Novel nominee
• Score: 16.47

Attorney Henry Griswald has a secret: the truth behind the tragic events the world knew as the Chatham School Affair, the controversial tragedy that destroyed five lives, shattered a quiet community, and forever scarred the young boy. Layer by layer, in The Chatham School Affair, Cook paints a stunning portrait of a woman, a school, and a town in which passionate violence seems impossible…and inevitable. “Thomas Cook’s night visions, seen through a lens darkly, are haunting,” raved the New York Times Book Review, and The Chatham School Affair…

Into the Web

Thomas H. Cook

• 2005 Barry-Paperback nominee
• 2005 Edgar-Paperback nominee
• Score: 12.55

Twenty-five years ago, an unspeakable crime was committed and Roy Slater fled—from the life he thought he wanted, from the memories he couldn’t avoid, and from the devastating suspicions of those he called friends. But now that his estranged father is dying, the prodigal son has returned to confront the past—and finds himself inextricably caught up with an old flame and a new murder, one that leads him inevitably back into the twisted web of deceit and violence from which he thought he’d escaped.

Places in the Dark: A Novel

Thomas H. Cook

• 2001 Barry-Novel nominee
• Score: 6.51

It is autumn 1935 when a mystery woman appears in Port Alma, a small sea village nestled on the chilly coast of Maine. A fragile, green-eyed beauty, the woman arrives with little more than the clothes on her back and a wealth of unspoken secrets. Before a year goes by, she will flee Port Alma on the same bus that brought her there. But before she goes, she will irrevocably alter the lives of two brothers—leaving one dead, and the other perched on the edge of madness….

In lyrical and sumptuous prose, Edgar Award-winning writer Thomas Cook has penned a…

Breakheart Hill

Thomas H. Cook

• 1995 Hammett nominee
• Score: 6.45

The town was Choctaw, Alabama. The place was Breakheart Hill. The girl was Kelli Troy. But the story of what really happened to her there on an August afternoon in 1962 is known by only one man, Ben Wade, the boy who loved her then and who must tell her story now:

“For what really happened never truly leaves me, no matter how often my imagination insists upon rewriting it. I hear the blow that echoed through the trees, see her fall to the ground, then rise and begin to stagger up the killing slope…. And after that, each life returns to me, each life…