Samantha Hayes books in order

January 1992. A baby girl is left alone for a moment. Long enough for a mother to dash into a shop. Long enough for a child to be taken. Thirteen years later, solicitor Robert Knight's stepdaughter wins a place at a prestigious London school for the gifted. The only puzzle is his wife Erin's reaction. Why is she so reluctant to let Ruby go? Doesn't she want what's best for her? 

As Erin grows more evasive, Robert can't help but feel she has something to hide, and when he stumbles on mysterious letters, he discovers she has been lying to him. Somewhere in his wife's past lies a secret; a shocking secret that threatens to destroy everything...

A woman stands on a bridge, the water rushing below. In a few seconds she will jump, plunging more than two hundred feet to her death. Who is she? And why is she desperate to take her own life? Nina Kennedy, a wife and mother, is afraid. A man is following her, threatening her family, toying with her sanity. What does he want? And how long will it be before he strikes? Eight-year-old Ava sits waiting for her daddy. But, like the others in the children's home, she knows her father will never come. The home is a place of whispers and shadows. But no one dare tell the truth. Until now...

Do we ever really know our children?

There must have been some mistake... TV presenter Carrie Kent can't believe the voice on the end of the phone. Surely it didn't just say that her son - her beloved son Max - has been stabbed within his school gates?

This sort of thing happens only to the guests on her daily morning chat show. Not to someone like her boy. But when Carrie arrives at the hospital and learns that Max is dead, she is thrown into a nightmare. No one will reveal what really happened and the only witness, a schoolgirl, is refusing to talk. Carrie must enter an unknown world of fear and violence if she wants to find the truth. But can she live with what she discovers?

Your husband goes out to buy a newspaper. He never comes back.

Months later, an unexpected phone call puts you and your daughter in unimaginable danger.

Even if he were still alive, your husband can't save you now.

He told you way too many lies for that.

They were all there the day your sister went missing... Who is lying? Who is next?

THEN – In charge of her little sister at the beach, Claire allowed Eleanor to walk to the shop alone to buy an ice cream. Placing a coin into her hand, Claire told her to be quick, knowing how much she wanted the freedom.

Eleanor never came back.

NOW – The time has finally come to sell the family farm and Claire is organizing a reunion of her dearest friends, the same friends who were present the day her sister went missing.

When another girl disappears, long-buried secrets begin to surface. One of the group hides the darkest secret of them all…

Tell her all your secrets and she’ll tell you all her lies…

Everything in Lorna’s life runs like clockwork, from her 6 a.m. morning run to the strict 60-minute counselling sessions she gives. It’s the only way she can deal with the terrible secret she carries.

When a new client arrives for his first appointment, Lorna feels her perfect life unravel in a matter of seconds. It’s Andrew, the man she’s spent the last year desperately trying to forget. It seems he can’t forget her either…

Against her better judgement she anonymously contacts him on a dating site. Messaging him could mean the end of her marriage and her career, but she needs to know if his motives are genuine.

When Andrew is found dead in his home, grief quickly turns to fear when messages from him continue to arrive on Lorna’s phone. Somebody knows her secret and wants to use it to destroy everything she has.

Will she risk her family and her sanity to keep her secret? Will she risk her life…?

When Ella wakes up in hospital following a hit and run incident, she is scared and confused. Close to tears, her eyes fall on a get-well-soon card on the window sill and the nurse reassures her that her loving husband will be back soon.

But Ella has never been married…

Absolutely love twisty and unputdownable psychological thrillers like Girl on the Train, The Wife Between Us and Gone Girl? Then you will be totally hooked by this jaw-dropping novel about the dangerous secrets behind a perfect marriage.

Returning early from a disastrous date night with my husband, I know something is wrong the moment the wheels crunch the gravel drive of our home. Inside, the TV is on and a half-eaten meal waits on the table. My heart stops when I find our little girl is alone in the house and our babysitter, Sasha, is missing…

Days later, when I’m arrested for Sasha’s murder and torn away from my perfect little family, I’ll wish I had told someone about the threatening note I received that morning.

I’ll hate myself for not finding out who the gift hidden inside my husband’s wardrobe was for.

I’ll scream from the rooftops that I’m innocent – but no one will listen.

I will realize I was completely wrong about everything that happened that night…

But will you believe me?

Me and Will. Will and Me. A perfect match.

He said he would always be there for me, but it’s been a year since he drained his coffee, walked out the front door and vanished.

Did he leave me? Or did something terrible happen? I’m scared someone finally found out about what happened on the drive home that night…

I lie awake at night trawling the internet for rental properties, desperate for an escape. Until I see my husband’s gorgeous face smiling back at me from a photograph on the fireplace in someone else’s home, and something inside of me snaps.

At the house, I find no trace of him and the woman who lives there has no idea who I am. But I’m certain she’s hiding something behind the locked door upstairs. I know that if I want answers, I have to stay.

You might think that what’s inside that room is the answer to all my questions and the end of all my pain. But it’s only the beginning…

I will do anything to protect my daughter.

She’s all I’ve ever wanted and all I really have, but the moment I opened that letter and accepted the inheritance, I walked us right into a dangerous trap.

I know I should have got her to tell me who she’s been talking to on the phone late at night, and where she was the day I went to pick her up from school and couldn’t find her, but she’s not spoken a word since she found that little pile of bones buried in the garden.

And now she’s missing…

This is not the happy family you think.

The fire crackles, my son smiles, the man jokes whilst I pour drinks.

But my husband has disappeared. The man is a stranger. My skin crawls every time he brushes my hand.

He says if I don’t play along, he has photos that will destroy my family.

What happened the night before my husband disappeared – the night I don’t remember?

There’s nothing I can do to save my family… is there?

YOU TRY TO TELL THE TRUTH. BUT THERE IS NO ONE TO HEAR YOU.

Mary Marshall would do anything for her daughter, Julia. A devoted grandmother, Mary has always been the rock her family can rely on. But she has a past that Julia knows nothing about. And now it's back to haunt her.

Julia's husband, Murray French, is walking a tightrope. A solicitor struggling with an alcohol problem, he's about to lose his wife and his children to another man: someone successful, someone they deserve. Someone who's everything he's not. Can he ever get his family back?

Just when Julia thinks life is starting to turn around, she stumbles upon the brutalized body of a girl she teaches. And as the terrible present starts to shed light on her mother's past, Julia realizes her family's nightmare is only just beginning...

NB: Previously published as Unspoken.

You thought you were safe. Until he moved in next door…

I haven’t lived here long. The house is small and a little rundown, but each piece of faded floral wallpaper I peel away feels like unwrapping the second chance I never thought I’d get. I’m finally free to wear what I want, and I don’t flinch when I accidently burn dinner. My new home is warm, and the kids are safe inside. Anywhere would feel idyllic after the nightmare marriage I’ve just escaped.

But then I see my ex-husband Craig stroll past my window and let himself into the house next door. Fear chokes me. How did he find me? Does he want me back, or to destroy me for good?

As the removals van pulls away, Craig tells me it’s just a coincidence, that we can all get along and be good neighbours. But at night I lie awake listening to the sound of laughter and lovemaking through the thin wall that separates us, wondering if his new girlfriend is safe. And in the morning, I rifle through his trash, trying to guess his next move. I know how crazy I look, but I’d do anything to protect my children.

Weeks later, when the night air fills with smoke, and this quiet street dances with blue and red flashing police lights, all the secrets behind our two closed doors will be revealed. But after everything that’s happened, will anyone believe I’m innocent?

You thought you had escaped him. Until he proposed to your daughter.

‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ Belle says, as a man draws up to her side. He’s tall with dark hair and stubble on his square jaw. He’s not exactly smiling, but the corner of his mouth curls upwards as he slides his hand around my daughter’s waist.

I grab my husband’s arm to steady myself, as the room spins around me.

I stare into the man’s eyes – jet black. Nothing and everything hidden behind them.

Fear prickles my skin as I remember what he did.

How I only just escaped.

All the lies I’ve had to tell since.

‘I want you to meet Jack,’ Belle says, brimming with excitement. ‘He’s my fiancé.’ She rests her head on his shoulder. ‘Isn’t it exciting? We’re engaged!’

Fear hammers in my chest. I have to stop this.

My daughter’s life is in danger, and it’s all because of me…

You're alone. You're vulnerable. And you have something that someone else wants. At any cost. 

Claudia Morgan-Brown finally has it all. Pregnant with a much-wanted first baby of her own, she has a happily established family of two small step-sons and a loving husband with a great career. But she is also committed to her full-time job as a social worker, and her husband travels often. 

So when Claudia hires Zoe to help her around the house in anticipation of the baby’s arrival, it seems like the answer to her prayers. But despite Zoe's glowing recommendations and instant rapport with the children, there's something about her that Claudia cannot trust. 

Moreover, there has been a series of violent attacks on pregnant women in the area, and Claudia becomes acutely aware of her vulnerability. With her husband out of town for work and her family far away, who will be there to protect her? And why does she feel unsettled about Zoe? 

Realizing appearances can be deceiving even in her seemingly perfect world, Claudia digs deeper into Zoe’s blurry past and begins to wonder – how far would someone go to have a child of her own?

A spate of teenage suicides appear to be taking place in rural Warwickshire. DI Lorraine Fisher must find out whether they're suicide or murder.

Five years previously, nineteen-year-old Simon Hawkeswell hung himself at his family home. He had had the perfect life, and seemed to have the perfect future ahead of him. As the years pass, the reasons behind his death remain a mystery.

Present day, and Simon’s parents and his local community remain haunted by his death and by the spate of ‘sympathetic’ suicides among teenagers in the area that followed. But this is all over now –or is it: a question that becomes particularly relevant when a young homeless man is killed in a freak motorbike accident, and the authorities find a suicide note in his belongings.

Can this be the beginning of more suicides? Detective Inspector Lorraine Fisher has just arrived to stay with her sister in rural Warwickshire. The atmosphere within the house is tense and edgy: Lorraine’s sister Jo is having an extra-marital affair, and her teenage son, Freddie, seems troubled and uncommunicative.

A second homeless lad takes his own life, this time on the railway tracks outside the village. And when Freddie disappears, Lorraine knows she must act quickly if she's to ascertain whether the teenage deaths are suicide –or murder. And if she's to find Freddie, before it's too late.

NB: This book is also known as What You Left Behind.

Fleeing the terrors of her former life, Isabel has left England, and at last is beginning to feel safe. Then a letter shatters her world, and she returns home determined not to let fear rule her life any more. But she's unable to shake off the feeling that someone who knows her better than she knows herself may be following her. Watching. Waiting. Ready to step back into her life and take control all over again.

Your wife and daughter have been kidnapped and are being

held hostage. Only you can save them.

But how far will you go...?