J A Baker

A long-ago trauma and a family mystery may shed light on her troubled sleep—or pull her into the darkness once and for all. As a child, Grace Cooper suffered from bouts of sleepwalking. Now, after the unexpected death of her husband, she’s moved back to Woodburn Cottage, her childhood home—and the sleepwalking returns. It’s all stirring up dark memories—memories that involve the disappearance of her brother Simon, who vanished one night when he was a child, and the death of her father, who fell from an upstairs window. With her mother in a care home with dementia and her sister living in a nearby village, Grace tries to settle in—but with the passage of time, the sleepwalking only becomes more regular and the blurred memories of the past only become more disturbing. Spurred on by these hazy dreamlike recollections, Grace becomes determined to find out what happened to Simon that fateful night. But digging up the past isn’t always a good idea, because you never know what skeletons you might unearth.

A small town in northern England is rocked by murder and scandal at the local school in this chilling novel of psychological suspense. Dominic Rose is a North Yorkshire school teacher with an antiquated hobby. He studies physiognomy, the art of judging somebody’s character by their facial features and expressions. Living alone with his bedridden mother, he has spent decades pining after Clara, the love of his life, who vanished while staying with her grandparents. When Kate Winston and her family move to town, she hopes her children will fit in at school. But her son’s new friend has a bad reputation—and a serious grudge against their teacher, Mr. Rose. As rebellious mischief and dark secrets collide, they set in motion a chain of events that lead to terrifying consequences.

When a boy goes missing from a small English village, deadly secrets and paranoid suspicions collide in this psychological thriller. When Ashton was a child, he committed a heinous crime. Now he's back in the North Yorkshire town where the traumatic event took place, having taken a job as an art instructor. Though it's good to be home, he fears unwanted attention especially after an older teacher recognizes him as the troubled boy from all those years ago. When eight-year-old Leo disappears on his way home from school, a desperate search begins. Then a local woman hears of Ashton's return and reports him to the police. Being added to a short list of suspects is a frightening turn of events for Ashton. But it's not nearly as terrifying as Leo's predicament: being locked in a soundproof room, wondering what his unpredictable captor will do next.

If your life flashed before your eyes, would you have any regrets? Everyone has their secrets, some are more deadly than others... When Leah is involved in a train crash, she goes to a therapist, Will. He attempts to help her through the trauma but whenever Leah is in his presence, strange things occur. She suffers from hallucinations that include visions of her dead brother, Ellis. As Leah reveals to Will that her friends Jacob and Chloe wronged her, further flashbacks of her childhood and parts of her life she would sooner forget begin to surface, troubling Leah even more. But what is actually bothering her and what led Leah to be on that train? Nothing is as it seems, and soon she will learn the heart-breaking truth… What everyone is saying about In The Dying Minutes: "A fantastic read full of twists." "This book blew me away." "The storytelling is as near to perfect as you can get." "A gripping psychological suspense which will have you reading in one sitting" "A twisting blinding read." J. A. Baker is also the author of the bestselling psychological thrillers The Other Mother, The Woman at Number 19 and The Girl I Used to Be. In The Dying Minutes is a tense and completely compelling novel which will keep you guessing until the very end. It will appeal to fans of authors like S. E. Lynes, K. L. Slater and Lucy Dawson.