Author: Brenda Novak

It was a shocking experience that jump-started Brenda Novak’s bestselling author career.

“I caught my day-care provider drugging my children with cough syrup and Tylenol to get them to sleep while I was away,” Brenda says. “It was then that I decided that I needed to do something from home.”

However, writing was the last profession she expected to undertake. In fact, Brenda swears she didn’t have a creative bone in her body. In school, math and science were her best subjects, and when it came time to pick a major in college, she chose business.

Abandoning her academic scholarship to Brigham Young University at the age of 20 in order to get married and start a family, Brenda dabbled in commercial real estate, then became a loan officer.

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Face Off

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Face Off
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, Book # 3
Headline
August 28th 2018
Paperback
416
English
February 20, 2021 February 23, 2021
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Tortured and left for dead at sixteen, Evelyn Talbot turned her personal nightmare into her life’s work—studying the disturbing psychopathy of some of the world’s most vicious serial killers. Now a leading psychiatrist at Hanover House in a small Alaskan town, she tries to believe the past will never come back to haunt her—until a woman goes missing from a cabin nearby, and every clue points to the man who once brutalized her…

As her boyfriend, who is the area’s only police, begins to investigate—and finds not one but two bodies—Evelyn can’t forget that her would-be killer, Jasper Moore, was never caught. But there are no new faces in tiny Hilltop, no one who seems suspicious or potentially violent. In this twisted game of cat and mouse, Evelyn is certain of only one thing—Jasper must be hiding in plain sight. And if she can’t find him before he comes for her, she won’t be lucky enough to survive twice…

About the book

Third book in the Brenda Novak series set in Alaska. Eight months have passed since the last book in which Evelyn, for the umpteenth time, was attacked because of her job, but fortunately she was saved by her new guard. Now she would like to have a child with Amarok, but the baby doesn’t arrive. Meanwhile, a tourist disappears and fear returns to Hilltop and many, including Amarok’s ex, blame Evelyn and Hanover House, the psychiatric clinic where she works in which the most dangerous criminals are locked up.

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Hello Again

Laura2 Comments on Hello Again
Hello Again
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, Book # 2
Headline
October 3rd 2017
Paperback
352
English
February 16, 2021 February 19, 2021
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SHE CAN MAKE SENSE OF A COMPLEX CRIMINAL MIND.
Evelyn Talbot, a psychiatrist at a maximum-security prison in Alaska, studies some of the world's worst serial killers. But she’s about to meet her most elusive patient at Hanover House yet: Dr. Lyman Bishop, AKA the Zombie Maker given his fondness for performing ice-pick lobotomies on his victims. A brilliant cancer researcher, Bishop is either the most cunning psychopath Evelyn has ever encountered—or he is wrongly convicted.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A CRIMINAL CAN SEE INTO HER OWN?
When a new ice-pick fatality occurs, it seems Bishop really was wrongly convicted. Except...Evelyn has a personal connection to the victim and that suggests the killer may be someone from her own past: Jasper Moore, her high school boyfriend who tortured her and left her for dead when she was only sixteen. Jasper also murdered three of her friends—and was never caught. Is he trying to send a message with this copycat crime? The only thing Evelyn knows for sure is that if Jasper is on her trail, she might not be able to escape again.

About the book

Sequel to Her Darkest Nightmare and the third book I read by the author. It’s been a year since the last book and Evelyn has fully integrated into the new state even though she still has doubts about whether she will stay or leave in the future. Hanover House is working full time and after the scandal of the previous year, many things have changed. Evelyn’s colleague has resigned (to not be fired) and there are new prisoners like Lyman Bishop called the Zombie Maker, a geneticist accused of lobotomising his victims with an ice pick. Bishop has the ability to question everything Evelyn believes, especially when another body of a young woman is found in Boston, murdered with Bishop’s modus operandi.

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Her Darkest Nightmare

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Her Darkest Nightmare
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, Book # 1
St. Martin's Paperbacks
August 30th, 2016
ebook
416
English
February 8, 2019 February 11, 2019

THE HUNT FOR A SERIAL KILLER
Evelyn Talbot knows that a psychopath can look perfectly normal. She was only sixteen when her own boyfriend Jasper imprisoned and tortured her—and left her for dead. Now an eminent psychiatrist who specializes in the criminal mind, Evelyn is the force behind Hanover House, a maximum-security facility located in a small Alaskan town. Her job puts her at odds with Sergeant Amarok, who is convinced that Hanover is a threat to his community…even as his attraction to beautiful Evelyn threatens to tear his world apart.
BEGINS WITH AN ESCAPE FROM HER PAST
Then, just as the bitter Alaskan winter cuts both town and prison off from the outside world, the mutilated body of a local woman turns up. For Amarok, this is the final proof he needs: Hanover has to go. Evelyn, though, has reason to fear that the crime is a personal message to her—the first sign that the killer who haunts her dreams has found her again... and that the life she has so carefully rebuilt will never be the same…

About the book

Book starts with a brief chapter about a crime committed in the past. A 16-year-old girl, Evelyn, kidnapped and tortured for 3 days by her high school boyfriend, is able to run away from her tormentor. 20 years later, the same girl, now a woman, is a psychiatrist running a maximum-security facility located in a small Alaskan town and she is the doctor studying their behavior.

A prisoner says something chilling to the doctor, something bad is going to happen and it won’t be because of the prisoners, but because of someone from the outside. In the meantime a new prisoner arrives in Alaska, Anthony Garza and with him a bad snow storm.

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Hanover House

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Hanover House
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, Book # 0.5
Headline
September 1, 2015
ebook
200
English
February 16, 2019 February 17, 2019

Psychiatrist Evelyn Talbot has dedicated her life to solving the mysteries of the antisocial mind. Why do psychopaths act as they do? How do they come to be? Why don’t they feel any remorse for the suffering they cause? And are there better ways of spotting and stopping them?

After having been kidnapped, tortured and left for dead when she was just a teenager—by her high school boyfriend—she’s determined to understand how someone she trusted so much could turn on her. So she’s established a revolutionary new medical health center in the remote town of Hilltop, Alaska, where she studies the worst of the worst.

But not everyone in Hilltop is excited to have Hanover House and its many serial killers in the area. Alaskan State Trooper, Sergeant Amarok, is one of them. And yet he can’t help feeling bad about what Evelyn has been through. He’s even attracted to her. Which is partly why he worries.

He knows what could happen if only one little thing goes wrong...

About the book

This is the prequel to Her Darkest Nightmare, series with Evelyn Talbot, a psychiatrist who runs a prison in the freezing cold of Alaska. In this book we see the construction of Hanover House, the prison, and the beginning of Evelyn’s relationships with Hilltop and with Sergeant Benjamin Murphy, known as Amarok.

We also see what happened to Evelyn while he was in Boston, a story that is mentioned in the first book in the series but whose details are not given.

I need to say that I first read first Her Darkest Nightmare and than this book, because I didn’t know about the prequel, so in my review there are minimal references to Alaska.

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