Jonathan Kellerman  

Dr. Alex Delaware series

Blood Test     3 hours     abridged     John Rubinstein  

Psychologist Alex Delaware and his friend, homicide detective Milo Sturgis, investigate the disappearance of a gravely ill child and the murder of his parents, a search that leads to a reclusive religious cult and the discovery of dark family secrets.

Silent Partner     3 hours     abridged     John Rubinstein  

At a party for a controversial Los Angeles sex therapist, Alex encounters a face from his own past--Sharon Ransom, an exquisite, alluring lover who left him abruptly more than a decade earlier. Sharon now hints that he desperately needs help, but Alex evades her. The next day she is dead, an apparent suicide. Driven by guilt and sadness, Alex plunges into the maze of Sharon's life--a journey that will take him through the pleasure palaces of California's ultra-rich, into the dark closets of a family's disturbing past, and finally into the alleyways of the mind, where childhood terrors still hold sway.  

Private Eyes     3 hours     abridged     John Rubinstein     CD

The voice belongs to a woman, but Dr. Alex  Delaware remembers a little girl. It is eleven  years since seven-years-old Melissa Dickinson dialed  a hospital help line for comfort--and found it in  therapy with Alex Delaware. Now the lovely young  heiress is desperately calling for psychologist's  help once more. Only this time it looks like  Melissa's deepest childhood nightmare is really  coming true ...  Twenty years ago, Gina Dickinson, Melissa's  mother, suffered a grisly assault that left the budding  actress irreparably scarred and emotionally  crippled. Now her acid-wielding assailant is out of  prison and back in L.A.--and Melissa is terrified  that the monster has returned to hurt Gina again.  But before Alex Delaware  can even begin to soothe his former patient's  fears, Gina, a recluse for twenty, disappears. And  now, unless Delaware turns crack detective to  uncover the truth, Gina Dickinson will be just one  more victim of a cold fury that has already spawned  madness--and murder.

Bad Love     3 hours     abridged     John Rubinstein  

A terrifying audio tape received in the mail is Delaware 's first intimation that he is stepping into a living nightmare. As he investigates the connections among a number of violent deaths, Delaware himself becomes the target of a psychotic individual's terror campaign.  

The Web     6 hours     abridged     John Rubinstein  

Alex and Robin travel to a small island in Micronesia , where Alex has agreed to help Dr. Bill Moreland write articles on his research in the South Pacific. Soon, mysterious deaths and shocking secrets disturb this tropical paradise.  

Monster     5 hours     abridged     John Rubinstein  

A second-rate actor is found mutilated in a car trunk. Then a psychologist at a Los Angeles hospital for the criminally insane is murdered in a similar grisly fashion. Suddenly the incoherent ramblings of an inmate at the presumably secure institution begin to make chilling sense--they are, in fact, horrifying predictions. Yet how can a barely functional psychotic locked behind asylum walls possibly know such vivid details of crimes committed in the outside world? Drawn into a labyrinth of secrets, revenge, sex, and manipulation, Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis set out to unlock this enigma and put an end to the brutal killings before the madman predicts their own demise…

Dr. Eldon Mate has helped his last terminally ill patient commit suicide, for now someone has murdered him, using the doctor's own equipment. Even as Kellerman stalwart Dr. Alex Delaware consults on suspects ranging from the families of Mate's patients to the doctor's own son, he wrestles with a serious conflict of interest that could wreck the case.

Flesh and Blood      13.25 hours      unabridged      John Rubinstein

Psychologist Alex Delaware hasn't been in private practice for a long time, but when the mother of a former patient calls and asks for his help, he can't turn her down. He couldn't help Lauren Teague when she was alive, but something about his failure with the beautiful, sullen teenager who grew up to be a high-priced call girl won't let him walk away after her bullet-ridden body turns up in an L.A. dumpster. When she wasn't turning tricks, she was a straight-A student; despite his detective pal Milo's demurral, Alex is convinced there's a connection between Lauren's death and another beautiful UCLA psych major who disappeared a year earlier.

Troy Turner and Rand Duchay were barely teenagers when they kidnapped and murdered a younger child. Troy, a remorseless sociopath, died violently behind bars. But the hulking, slow-witted Rand managed to survive his stretch. Now, at age 21, he's emerged a haunted, rootless young man with a pressing need: to talk, once again, with psychologist Alex Delaware. But when the young killer comes to a brutal end, that conversation is silenced forever.

As Delaware and Sturgis retrace their steps through a grisly murder case that devastated a community, they discover a chilling legacy of madness, suicide, and multiple killings left in its wake, and even uglier truths waiting to be unearthed. And the nearer they come to understanding an unspeakable crime, the more harrowingly close they get to unmasking a monster hiding in plain sight.

Missing acting students Dylan and Michaela are found in the remote mountains of Malibu, battered and terrified after a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor. But forensic evidence soon exposes the incident as a hoax, and the kids are charged as criminals themselves. Aft examining Michaela, psychologist Alex Delaware is certain that there's more to this sordid psychodrama, and his instincts prove dead-on when she is savagely murdered. Casting their dragnet into the murkiest corners of L.A Delaware and homicide cop Milo Sturgis unearth more questions than answers--and a host of eerily identical killings. What bizarre and brutal epidemic is infecting the city with terror, madness, and sudden, twisted death?

Bones      7 hours     abridged      John Rubinstein    CD

The anonymous caller has an unnerving message about something "real dead .. . buried in your marsh." The eco-volunteer on the other end of the line thinks it's a prank, but when a young woman's body turns up in L.A.'s Bird Marsh preserve, no one's laughing. And when the bones of more victims surface, homicide detective Milo Sturgis realizes that the city is in the terrifying grip of an insidious killer. Milo's first move: calling in psychologist Alex Delaware.

Bizarre details of the crimes suggest that a devilish serial killer is prowling L.A.'s gritty streets. But when a new murder deviates from the pattern, derailing a possible profile, Alex and Milo must look beyond the suspicion of madness and consider that an even more sinister mind is at work. Answers don't come easy, but the darkest of drives and desires may fuel the most devious of foes.

Compulsion      6.5 hours     abridged      John Rubinstein    CD  

A tipsy young woman seeking aid on a desolate highway disappears into the inky black night. A retired schoolteacher is stabbed to death in broad daylight. Two women are butchered after closing time in a small-town beauty parlor. These and other bizarre acts of cruelty and psychopathology are linked only by the killer's use of luxury vehicles and a baffling lack of motive. The ultimate whodunits, these crimes demand the attention of LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his collaborator on the crime beat, psychologist Alex Delaware.

What begins with a solitary bloodstain in a stolen sedan quickly spirals outward in odd and unexpected directions, leading Delaware and Sturgis from the well-heeled center of L.A. society to its desperate edges; across the paths of commodities brokers and transvestite hookers; and as far away as New York City, where the search thaws out a long-cold case and exposes a grotesque homicidal crusade. The killer proves to be a fleeting shape-shifter, defying identification, leaving behind dazed witnesses and death - and compelling Alex and Milo to confront the true face of murderous madness.

Twisted      6 hours     abridged      Lindsey Crouse   CD

Hollywood homicide detective Petra Connor has helped psychologist Alex Delaware crack tough cases in the past. And in Jonathan Kellerman’s New York Times bestseller Billy Straight she took the lead in the desperate hunt for a teenage runaway stalked by a vengeful murderer. Now the complex and wryly compassionate Petra is once again at the center of the action, in a novel of cunning twists and page-turning suspense.

Lifeless bodies sprawl in a dance-club parking lot after a brutal L.A. drive-by. Of the four seemingly random victims, one stands out: a girl with pink shoes who cannot be identified–and who, days later, remains a Jane Doe. With zero leads and no apparent motive, it’s another case destined for the cold file–until Petra decides to follow her instincts and descends into a world of traveling grifters and bloodthirsty killers, pursuing a possible eyewitness whose life is in mortal danger.

Finding her elusive quarry–alive–isn’t all Petra has on her plate: departmental politics threatens to sabotage her case, and her personal life isn’t doing much better. If all that wasn’t enough, Isaac Gomez, a whiz-kid grad student researching homicide statistics at the station house, is convinced he’s stumbled upon a bizarre connection between several unsolved murders. The victims had nothing in common, yet each died by the same method, on the same date–a date that’s rapidly approaching again. And that leaves Petra with little time to unravel the twisted logic of a cunning predator who’s evaded detection for years–and whose terrible hour is once more at hand.

 Therapy      6 hours     abridged      John Rubinstein    CD

 "Sometimes anxiety and fear make me feel alive." That's psychologist Alex Delaware's take on life and, by extension, his rationale for assisting his LAPD pal Milo Sturgis with the various criminal investigations that come across his desk. Lucky for fans of this long-running and wildly successful series, that's pretty often. This time the crime, the murder of a couple of twentysomethings parked in a secluded spot, is exceptionally vicious. When Delaware and Sturgis investigate, they discover one of the victims was associated with a celebrity psychologist. Therapy emerges as the key to the mystery after the psychologist and another of her patients turn up dead, but there's a tangled mess to unravel before it's clear precisely how it plays a part. As the investigation widens, numerous gritty secrets come to light and a deliciously complicated solution unfolds.

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Billy Straight     15 hours     unabridged     Alexander Adams  

12-year-old Billy Straight, precocious, heartbreakingly perceptive, relentlessly moral, has fled the chaos and abuse of his life at home. All alone, Billy has fashioned a precarious existence for himself, using principled tricks to nourish his body and his mind. Late one night, he watches from his hiding place as a man viciously butchers a woman. The victim turns out to be the ex-wife of a television celebrity with a history of domestic violence, and Billy becomes the center of terrifying attention.