Don't Cry

Barton (Dead by Midnight) delivers a solid mix of romance and terror in her latest thriller. When the bodies of kidnapped women are discovered with long-dead babies in their arms, J.D. Cass of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation gets called in. Therapist Audrey Sherrod, a counselor for families of the victims, has dark secrets in her own family's past. The two despise each other at first, but are slowly brought together when Audrey befriends J.D.'s rebellious teenage daughter, Zoe. Barton paces the romance nicely, intertwining it with the mystery and an ever-growing list of suspects. Occasional sloppy prose hurts the flow of the book, but readers willing to overlook this will enjoy the action sequences and the leads' antagonistic attraction as well as the assorted twists in the murder case. (Sept.)