Which Contemporary Mystery Authors Excel At Unreliable Narrators?

I quit and dipped. City threw a parade. Only Jenna Blake—my oh-so-gifted junior who claimed she could "see through killers' eyes"—lost it. At her celebration banquet, she went full drama queen: "I owe everything to Kate Mercer. Please, bring her back!" I laughed. Cold. Not happening. Last time around, I was the hotshot detective. But every clue I found? She dropped it first like she read my mind. People started saying I was washed. So I went all in—three months, no sleep, cracked a massive trafficking ring. Led the raid myself. She beat me there. Again. Place was cleaned out. Boom. She's the city's golden girl. I'm the clown with no game. Pressure got ugly. My head snapped. I died chasing the last scumbag. Then—bam. I woke up. Same day. Raid morning. Round two.

"He's gone, Elizabeth," her captain Charles Johnston tells her. Elizabeth blinks back her tears. Her face full of shock and disbelief. Her frozen stare interrupted by his words. "He left his badge." "There's no way," she thought. He wouldn't leave her like this. No warning, no phone call, no letter. She was more to him than that or at least so she thought. That conversation has plagued her for 3 years. For 3 long years, Detective Elizabeth Ryan tried to shut out him, to finally be able to move on. But just as she does, he abruptly returns seeking more than what either of them anticipated. Will Elizabeth be able to forgive him, or will the past be too much to swallow? What happens when life throws her too many twists to handle?

Lena Mercer makes a living off saving and believes that love can be saved no matter what. However, when a frightened woman named Claire Reynolds appears at her office door insisting she is being purposely murdered by her husband, Lena is hesitant to trust her. Days go by, and Claire vanishes into thin air. Worrying but brushing it off as coincidence, Lena attempts to pick up where they left off—until she uncovers unsettling information connecting Claire's life to her own. The same scent. The same coffee order. Even bruises in identical locations. And then Lena begins receiving ominous messages: "You know the truth. Don't look for me."

Meet Esmerelda Sleuth. Sleuth is her name and investigating is her game. (Paranormal Investigating, that is.) Esmerelda makes a good living as an investigator in a rather progressive firm. She lives a stable and sensible life until she meets Lance; an old money "hottie" who works for a real estate firm next to her building. After accepting an invitation for a weekend getaway party, she quickly discovers that Lance has a secret. He is wealthy. That part is true. And, yes, he's procured a job as a realtor in the building next door. His secret is that he belongs to an underground society of humans who didn't abandon their connection to magic centuries ago when religion declared it evil and he has traveled through time specifically to find her and bring her back to his time to marry him. If that isn't enough of a far fetched tale to absorb, he informs her that she was born in his time to a family belonging to that same secret society and was promised in marriage to him as an infant. When enemies who didn't want to see the union of families take place made attempts on her life, her parents sent her into the future and erased her memories of them as a precaution. Possessing virtually no belief in magic, ghosts, psychics, time travel, etc., it takes some doing on Lance's part to convince her to believe his story and go back with him. When she does, the lies, deceit and attempts on her life start all over again. Will she escape emotionally and physically unscathed? "The Other Side Of the Mirror" is a steamy-paranormal-romance- mystery-thriller and book one of the Esmerelda Sleuth series.

Desperate to clear her name, Shady marries a wealthy man who offers to protect her from a murder she didn't commit. But as their marriage of convenience becomes a passion-filled obsession, she uncovers a web of secrets far deeper than she ever imagined. What happens when the truth is a lie, and the lie is a beautiful obsession?

He broke down my door at 9:47 on a Tuesday to kill my husband. He wasn’t supposed to find me. I should have been afraid of the most wanted man in the state. Instead I asked him for something no woman had ever asked him for. Then I drove north. I thought I was free. Content Warning Domestic Violence, intimate partner abuse, violence, morally-grey anti hero, love interest, stalking, explicit sexual content