Under seven different pseudonyms, Jayne Ann Krentz has written more than 120 romance novels. Many have been bestsellers. Now, she uses only three names: Jayne Ann Krentz when writing contemporary romantic-suspense; Amanda Quick for historical romance-suspense; and Jayne Castle when penning paranormal romance-suspense.

Trust No One, a contemporary romance-suspense novel, features Grace Elland, a creative marketing assistant to a Seattle-based motivational guru. Grace discovers her boss’s body, and after reporting it to the police, begins receiving cryptic and vaguely threatening emails. Strangely, they come from her dead boss’s computer. To make matters worse, when she was a teen-ager, Grace also found a dead body, an event that left her with night terrors and panic attacks. Even worse, it appears someone is trying to frame Grace for her employer’s murder.

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Jack Higgins is one of the best-selling authors of popular fiction in the world. He is often considered the architect of the modern thriller. His breakthrough novel, The Eagle Has Landed, written in 1975, sold more than 50 million copies. He’s penned more than 83 novels which have sold over 150 million copies and have been translated into 55 languages.

Rain on the Dead, featuring the recurring hero Sean Dillon, finds Dillon in the crossfire of an Al Qaeda attack on a former American president. The assassination attempt is thwarted, but an elusive terrorist known as The Master is intent on obliterating his target. Dillon must stay a step ahead of the terrorist in a world where the rules of war have changed, and everyone can be marked for annihilation.

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Peter James and Ian Rankin are among the foremost writers in the UK. Internationally acclaimed, their books have been translated into dozens of languages, and are regularly on best-seller lists.

Peter James has written 25 best-sellers. His most famous character is Brighton-based Detective, Roy Grace.

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When I look at the faces of my dogs, I see innocence and love. I see loyalty beyond comprehension. I see everything good about living in the world; and seeing them each day enriches my life to a degree that is indescribable. I truly believe the sentiments of Schopenhauer are correct:

Writers are often told, “Write what you know.” Historical thriller novelist Steve Berry says, “Write what you love.” As a novelist and psychiatrist, I’ve become intimate with fear, and while I don’t “love” it, I do love writing about it. I’m not referring to ordinary worries or anxieties: things such as, will I get fired, or will the IRS audit my return? These are troubling concerns, but they don’t rise to the level of true fear—the kind brimming in psychological thrillers.

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Reading newspaper accounts about Aaron Alexis, the Washington mass murderer, it’s abundantly clear he was a highly disturbed man. His hearing voices and complaints about electrical vibrations directed at him from outside his body indicated a specific psychiatric disorder, namely, Paranoid Schizophrenia. He was reportedly seen by mental health professionals at various times and was described as having a volatile temper.

There are chilling reports about Mr. Alexis which bring to mind James Holmes, the Aurora, Colorado shooter and Adam Lanza, the Newtown, Connecticut mass murderer. In these horrific instances, reports of the shooters’ mental illnesses emerged after the incidents, which left many innocents dead or injured. However, the existence of these people’s mental illnesses were known before the rampages took place.

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I’m occasionally asked why I write crime-thriller novels.

They always say write what you know, but I prefer to write what I love. And they always say, write the kind of book you would love to read. So, I write crime fiction.

But as a psychiatrist and novelist, I think there’s more than that when it comes to crime thriller fiction.

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