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  • Heartbreak Bay

Heartbreak Bay

Stillhouse Lake #5 / 7 ✓
by Rachel Caine
Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) by Rachel Caine
Unrated

An Amazon Charts, New York Times, and #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling series.

They’re hunting a killer so silent, so invisible, that his unspeakable crimes are the only proof he exists.

A car submerged in a remote pond. The bodies of two girls strapped into their seats. The mystery of their mother, vanished without a trace, leads Gwen Proctor and Kezia Claremont into dangerous territory.

On the surface, Gwen’s life is good — two children approaching adulthood, a committed partner, and a harrowing past dead and gone. But that past is attracting the attention of someone invisible... and unstoppable. Trouble’s just beginning. So is the body count in this backwoods Tennessee town.

As threats mount and Gwen’s hunted by an enemy who pulls all the strings, Kezia has her back. But working to solve these vicious and unreasonable crimes will expose them both to a killer they can’t for the life of them see coming.

Amazon: Check Best Offer

Thriller
Release date: March 9, 2021

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Rachel Caine

Rachel Caine

Rachel Caine was a pen name of Roxanne Longstreet Conrad (born 1962), who also wrote as Roxanne Longstreet. She was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, mystery, suspense, and horror novels.

Rachel Caine didn’t just write stories, she built entire worlds where danger felt one step behind you, and the only way out was through the fire. With a voice that could turn a simple page into a ticking clock, she mastered the art of suspense across genres, moving fluidly from the sharp edges of thrillers to the haunting corners of supernatural fiction.

Read more ...

Born Roxanne Longstreet Conrad in El Paso, Texas, she grew up in the vast stretch of the Southwest—landscapes that often crept into her books as both setting and silent witness. Her path to becoming a novelist wasn’t immediate. Before writing full time, she worked in corporate communications, balancing a creative spirit with a pragmatic day job. But fiction eventually demanded center stage, and when she stepped into the literary world, she never looked back.

Rachel’s breakout came with The Weather Warden series, where elemental magic met fast-paced action in a world teetering on collapse. But it was The Morganville Vampires that truly etched her name into the hearts of readers worldwide. Set in a town ruled by blood and secrets, the series brought a fresh, unflinching voice to young adult urban fantasy, laced with grit, loyalty, and survival. She had a knack for making the supernatural feel eerily ordinary, and the ordinary feel terrifyingly unstable.

What set her apart wasn’t just her prolific output—more than 50 novels across fantasy, science fiction, and suspense—but the way she could sustain tension without sacrificing heart. In her later work, including Stillhouse Lake, she veered into psychological thrillers with chilling precision, crafting stories where the real horror lay in what people were capable of doing to one another. Her protagonists, often women on the edge, weren’t caricatures of strength but fully drawn survivors—resilient, flawed, and fiercely human.

Behind the pen name, Rachel was known for her generosity to aspiring writers and her deep connection to her fan community. Even after being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, she continued writing, driven not by obligation but by the pure momentum of storytelling.

Rachel Caine passed away in 2020, but her legacy lives in every reader who held their breath during a chase scene, flinched at a sudden twist, or found courage in a character who refused to break. Her books continue to move through the world with the quiet force of a storm gathering speed—unsettling, unrelenting, and unforgettable.

 

Stillhouse Lake

In the quiet shadows of a lakeside town, a mother’s fight for survival becomes a relentless game of cat and mouse. What begins as a nightmare behind closed doors erupts into a haunting journey through paranoia, identity, and the question of how far someone will go to protect their children.

This chilling thriller series unfolds in a world where trust is fragile and the line between victim and suspect is constantly shifting. At the center is Gwen Proctor, once just a suburban wife and mother, now a fugitive defined by the crimes of the man she thought she knew. When the truth about her husband shatters everything, Gwen doesn’t break—she disappears, taking her children with her and building a new life on the run.

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But escape is never clean. Harassment follows her like smoke from a burned-down life, and danger creeps into the corners of even the safest-seeming towns. Each book draws deeper into a psychological storm, steeped in tension and hard-earned resilience. As Gwen navigates murder investigations, stalkers, and the ever-present ghosts of her past, she becomes something rare in the thriller genre—not an invincible heroine, but a mother who fights dirty because she has no choice.

Tautly written and emotionally charged, the series explores survival not as a dramatic moment but as a way of life. The atmosphere is thick with unease, every chapter brimming with dread and the quiet fury of a woman who has been hunted too long. It’s not just the crimes that keep readers hooked, but the quiet moments of doubt, the fierce protection of family, and the devastating cost of being believed too late.

Built on raw suspense and grounded in human vulnerability, this series doesn’t ask who the villain is—it asks what justice even looks like when the system fails you. It’s a portrait of trauma turned into armor, of motherhood sharpened into a weapon, and of a life rebuilt with grit instead of hope.


Stillhouse Lake consists of seven books and considered as a complete series. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.

Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake #1)
Unrated
Killman Creek (Stillhouse Lake #2)
★ 10.00 / 1
Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)
Unrated
Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake #4)
Unrated
Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5)
Unrated
Trapper Road (Stillhouse Lake #6)
Unrated
Darkwater Lane (Stillhouse Lake #7)
⧗ 8.00 / 1


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