Brian Freeman is a best-selling author of psychological suspense novels. His books have been published in 46 countries and translated into over 20 languages with some picked as Main Selections by the Literary Guild and the Book of the Month Club. His most known series is Jonathan Stride and Frost Easton.
Brian was born in Chicago in 1963 and spent several years in the Bay Area of California. After that, he attended college in Minnesota and settled there with his wife, Marcia. Before making a name for himself as a writer, he was a well-known communication strategist. He was also a business writer in the Twin Cities. Later, he became the director of marketing and public relations for an international legal company.
He is well-known for his “you are there” settings, with intricate, multifaceted characters, and plot twists. Brian was also chosen to continue Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series. His novel, The Bourne Evolution, was rated one of the greatest thrillers of 2020 by Kirkus.
Freeman successfully explored other genres and achieved popularity with his chick-lit comedy-drama The Agency. The book was described by People Magazine as “entertaining, witty, and delightful.” Published under the name Ally O’Brien, The Agency was written in the first person. It has a female narrator and takes place in London and New York. WEST 57 was Freeman’s follow-up to THE AGENCY.
Brian Freeman Books in order
Jonathan Stride
- Immoral (2005)
- Stripped (2006)
- Stalked (2007)
- In The Dark (2008)
- The Burying Place (2009)
- Spitting Devil (2012)
- The Cold Nowhere (2013)
- Turn to Stone (2014)
- Goodbye to the Dead (2015)
- Marathon (2017)
- Alter Ego (2018)
- Funeral for a Friend (2020)
- The Zero Night (2022)
Tess Drake
Cab Bolton
Frost Easton
Standalone Novel
- Spilled Blood (2012)
- Thief River Falls (2020)
- The Deep, Deep Snow (2020)
- Infinite (2021)
- The Ursulina (2022)
Jason Bourne
Similar authors
- Minka Kent’s When I Was You, is a gripping psychological suspense novel. It follows a woman with a stolen identity that leads her down a dark and desperate path.
- Matthew Farrell’s Adler and Dwyer Book series is a mind-bending page-turner. It involves a series of dark crimes from the past.
- Victor Methos‘s Desert Plains series follows a prosecutor confronted with the darkest part of her past. At the same time, she has to deal with the worst fears for her future.
See also: Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan Jr. Books in Order.
Most recommended books
- The Crooked Street (Frost Easton #3) (4.48 Goodreads score)
- The Voice Inside (Frost Easton, #2) (4.43 Goodreads score)
- The Ursulina (4.39 Goodreads score)
- Alter Ego (Jonathan Stride #9) (4.30 Goodreads score)
- The Bourne Treachery (Jason Bourne, #16) (4.26 Goodreads score)
Awards
- His seventh novel, Spilled Blood, was named the Best Hardcover Novel in 2013, by the International Thriller Writers organization’s annual Thriller Awards, while his fifth novel, The Burying Place, was a finalist for the same category.
- His sixth work, The Bone House, was a finalist for Best Thriller/Suspense Audiobook of the Year.
- Immoral, his first thriller, earned the Macavity Award for Best First Novel. It was also a finalist for the Edgar, Dagger, Anthony, and Barry Awards.
Upcoming books
The Bourne Sacrifice will be released in the summer of 2022. In the fall of 2022, though, get ready for a new stand-alone, I remember you, and the long-awaited new Jonathan Stride novel The Zero Night.
Book summaries
Immoral (2005)
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride is suffering from an ugly case of déjà vu. For the second time in a year, a beautiful teenage girl has disappeared off the streets of Duluth, Minnesota—gone without a trace, like a bitter gust off Lake Superior. The two victims couldn’t be more different. First it was Kerry McGrath, bubbly, sweet sixteen. And now Rachel Deese, strange, sexually charged, a wild child. The media hounds Stride to catch a serial killer, and as the search carries him from the icy stillness of the northern woods to the erotic heat of Las Vegas, he must decide which facts are real and which are illusions. And Stride finds his own life changed forever by the secrets he uncovers. Secrets that stretch across time in a web of lies, death, and illicit desire. Secrets that are chillingly…immoral.
Stripped (2006)
They looked like isolated cases: a hit-and-run and a celebrity murdered during a fling with a prostitute. No one could ever imagine they’d be linked to a brutal crime in Las Vegas’s steamy past–and that the race against the clock to corner a determined serial killer would stir up secrets long thought buried with the dead. As detectives Jonathan Stride and Serena Dial are called separately to investigate, they have no idea what they’re stepping into: a world where desperate ambition rules and loyalties know no bounds, and where their own uncharted emotions and sexual desires will reach an explosive conclusion.Shocking, twisted, with edge-of-your-seat suspense, Stripped pushes the limits of its heroes and keeps the reader turning ever page until the last plot twist.
Stalked (2007)
Lieutenant Jonathan Stride knows his partner Maggie Bei is in trouble when she reports a deadly crime on a bitter winter night. She’s obviously hiding a terrible secret, and her silence only feeds suspicion. Maggie isn’t the only one keeping secrets in Duluth. A seductive young woman has disappeared, leaving behind a stash of lurid fantasies and a cryptic message: I know who it is. Following a twisted trail, Stride uncovers a sordid web of violence and voyeurism that someone is willing to kill to keep hidden. Stride isn’t alone. His lover Serena Dial – a homicide cop turned private investigator – is chasing a blackmailer who knows all the city’s dirty secrets. Even Maggie’s. But as Stride and Serena hunt for a killer, a predator with a vicious past is hunting them – with a terrifying plan for revenge. Now every step they take to expose the truth brings them closer to a showdown amid the howling winds of a winter storm. Where survival in the blinding snow is measured in seconds. Where crimes can be buried forever.
In The Dark (2008)
It’s the case that has haunted Stride for thirty years. During the summer after his junior year of high school, he fell in love with beautiful Cindy Starr, the girl who would become his wife. But on the Fourth of July, the same night that Jonny and Cindy cemented their love, Cindy’s older sister Laura was savagely murdered. The police suspected a vagrant of committing the crime, but no one was ever arrested, and the case was closed.Now, Laura’s best friend Tish Verdure has returned to Duluth to write a book about Laura’s death. Tish knows secrets that a lot of people would like to keep hidden, including information about Cindy that leave Stride questioning his entire past. When a young girl is found drowned in the St. Louis River and a witness to the original murder attempts suicide, Stride realizes that the violence of the past is spilling over into the present.As he unearths the explosive events that led to Laura’s murder, Stride discovers that the ripples of her death changed everyone’s lives, including his own. Can Stride put to rest the ghosts of his past, or will they devour him whole?
The Burying Place (2009)
One cold night. Two shocking mysteries.In the quiet town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, a baby vanishes from her bedroom in an opulent lakeside home. Was she abducted – or does her father have a terrible secret to hide?That same night, a young policewoman gets lost in the fog and stumbles into the middle of a horrific crime. Now a sadistic killer wants her to play his deadly game.Lieutenant Jonathan Stride and his team need to move fast to save a child and stop a vicious killing spree. As fear grips the frozen winter farm lands, Stride knows that every snow-covered field may be the next burying place.Each twist in the investigation takes Stride into an elaborate web of deceit and desire. But his biggest obstacles may be the very people he’s trying to help. With everything at risk and time running out, Stride worries how far a desperate mother will go to rescue her baby – and how far a desperate cop will go to save herself.
Spitting Devil (2012)
A third woman dead in two months.And for the third time, Alison Malville isn’t sure her husband was home all night.When the killer sends the usual photo of his victim to the press, she sees an item of her clothing left with this body, too.Could you believe your own husband was capable of murder? Would you turn him in?
The Cold Nowhere (2013)
Ten years ago, six-year-old Catalina Mateo hid under the porch of her family home while a knife butchered her mother and a bullet killed her father.Now, a rough-sleeping orphan, Cat arrives at the house of Detective Jonathan Stride, pleading for protection. Covered in blood and drenched in the icy waters of Lake Superior, she claims to have narrowly escaped a cold-blooded killer.Stride’s raw instinct is to protect Cat, whose late parents’ case – and his personal guilt associated with it – still sends a shiver down his spine. As a result, he takes the troubled teenager under his wing without as much as a second thought.However, Stride’s partner Maggie Bei is not convinced. She doubts the sincerity of this beautiful young streetwalker who has so easily won Stride’s trust, and now sleeps in his house with a butcher’s knife under her pillow.As Stride continues to care for Cat, Maggie’s suspicions solidify, and a single question occupies the void between them: should Stride be afraid for, or of, this terribly damaged girl?
Turn to Stone (2014)
The Duluth Detective makes a fly-by visit to his mother’s resting place, only to become caught up in the apparent suicide of one of the town’s policeman.
Goodbye to the Dead (2015)
To shed light on a recent murder in Duluth, Jonathan Stride is forced to relive the darkest days of his and the city’s past…Nine Years It is almost a decade since Duluth said goodbye to its innocence. The city creeps ever closer to the tenth anniversary of the year in which it found itself both gripped by murder and united in terror; and during which the pillar of its community, DS Jonathan Stride, had his home and heart torn to ribbons by the claws of cancer.Nine Lives Cat Mateo, an orphan with a knack of landing on her feet, has bid farewell to a life on the streets. This once-stray teenager owes her rescue to Detective Stride, the father figure she holds close to her heart. But Cat holds something else to her chest – a secret: the sheer power of which she could not possibly comprehend.A secret that, once out of the bag, will not just viciously scratch at Duluth’s still-healing wounds, but will make DS Jonathan Stride wave goodbye to his convictions about the events nine years before, and say hello to his darkest fears.
Marathon (2017)
A powerfully compelling thriller that strikes at the heart of our current fears as a nation, Detective Jonathan Stride must investigate a marathon bombing in his city- before more people get hurt.On a rainy June morning, tens of thousands of people line the streets of Duluth while exhausted runners push to reach the finish line at the city’s biggest annual event. Then, in a terrifying echo of the Boston bombing, there is an explosion along the race course, leaving many people dead and injured.Within minutes, Jonathan Stride, Serena Dial, and Maggie Bei are at work with the FBI to find the terrorists behind the tragedy. As social media feeds a flood of rumors and misinformation, one young man becomes the most wanted person in the city. And the manhunt is on.But are the answers behind the Duluth bombing more complex than anyone realizes? And can Stride, Serena, and Maggie find the truth before more innocent people are killed?
Alter Ego (2018)
When a freak auto accident kills a driver carrying false identification on the remote roads outside Duluth, Jonathan Stride is disturbed to find a gun in the trunk – and the gun has recently been fired.The next day, a Duluth college student has also vanished, and Stride worries they’re connected – but what would have put an ordinary young woman in the crosshairs of a man who has all the hallmarks of an assassin for hire?Stride’s investigation leads him to a film crew in Duluth, where a movie is being made based on a case in Stride’s own past. The actor playing Stride is Hollywood royalty, an award-winning icon who has charmed his way to the top of the box office. But Stride soon hears whispers that his cinematic alter ego has a dark side.
Funeral for a Friend (2020)
Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull.Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps … but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him?Stride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but won’t tell her why. With suspicion in the murder pointing at him, Stride finds himself off the case and on leave from the Duluth Police.His only ally in clearing his name is his wife, Serena, who retraces the reporter’s investigation into the explosive allegations. The clues all point to a hot Duluth summer years earlier that everyone in town would prefer to forget.Someone was willing to kill rather than let those long-ago secrets come out, and the suspect with the strongest motive … is Stride.
The Zero Night (2022)
A woman has been kidnapped.Now Jonathan Stride must decide if her husband wants her back…dead or alive.After nearly dying of a gunshot wound, Jonathan Stride has been on leave from the Duluth Police for more than a year. When his partner, Maggie Bei, gets called about a suspicious abduction involving a local lawyer, she tells Stride it’s time for him to come back.Attorney Gavin Webster says he paid $100,000 in ransom money to the men who kidnapped his wife. Now they’ve disappeared with the cash, and she’s still missing. Gavin claims to be desperate to find her – but Stride discovers that the lawyer had plenty of motive to be the mastermind behind the crime.Even as Stride digs for the truth about Gavin Webster and his wife, he must also deal with a crisis in his own marriage.His wife, Serena, is struggling after the death of her mother, the abusive woman she hadn’t seen in 25 years. When she loses control at a crime scene and draws her gun on a fellow cop, Serena finds herself kicked off the Webster case. Alone at her desk, she begins hunting through old police files and starts to ask questions about a mother’s death that was written off as suicide. That death haunts Serena like an echo of her own childhood – but her obsession with it takes a terrible toll.As Serena shuts him out of her despair and his own investigation grows increasingly tangled, Stride wonders whether going back to his detective work was the right decision. But all he can do is keep moving forward. Because Stride fears the Webster kidnapping may be only one part of a horrific murder conspiracy.And it’s not over yet.
The Agency (2009)
Tess Drake is in trouble – she just doesn’t know it yet. As an agent in a multinational media agency, Tess deals with some of the worlds biggest egos. And that’s just those inside her firm. After the mysterious death of a senior partner, Tess’s sworn enemy, Cosima Tate, has taken over the firm and would do anything to thwart Tess’s career.Tess wants to start her own agency and take her biggest client with her, but can she jump ship and risk losing her reputation? Are her balls made of steel, or are they about to be crushed under Cosima’s stilettoed heel?
The Bone House (2010)
Hilary and Mark Bradley are trapped in a web of suspicion. Last year, accusations of a torrid affair with a student cost Mark his teaching job and made the young couple into outcasts in their remote island town off the Lake Michigan coast. Now another teenage girl is found dead on a deserted beach. . . and once again, Mark faces a hostile town convinced of his guilt.Hilary Bradley is determined to prove that Mark is innocent, but she’s on a lonely, dangerous quest. Even when she discovers that the murdered girl was witness to a horrific crime years earlier, the police are certain she’s throwing up a smoke screen to protect her husband. Only a quirky detective named Cab Bolton seems willing to believe Hilary’s story.Hilary and Cab soon find that people in this community are willing to kill to keep their secrets hidden—and to make sure Mark doesn’t get away with murder. And with each shocking revelation, even Hilary begins to wonder whether her husband is truly innocent. Freeman’s first stand-alone thriller since his Stride novels is a knockout.
Season of Fear (2014)
A storm’s wrath. An assassin’s return.Lake Wales, Central Florida. Ten years ago, a political fundraiser became a bloodbath when a hooded assassin carried out a savage public execution. Three men were massacred, casting a dark shadow over the Sunshine State.A decade on, history is threatening to repeat itself. The widow of one victim, herself now running for governor, has received an anonymous threat – a newspaper clipping from that fateful day, along with the chilling words ‘I’m back.’Florida detective Cab Bolton agrees to investigate the threat against this candidate, Diane Fairmont: an attractive politician who has a complicated history with Cab’s mother, Hollywood actress Tarla Bolton – and with Cab himself.But by doing so, Cab is entering dangerous waters. Fairmont’s political party is itself swamped in secrecy – a fact that, unknown to Cab, has led one of its junior staff to start asking very sensitive questions about the death of a party employee.Both Cab and this young researcher, Peach Piper, are digging up the kind of dirt that ten years can’t wash away. And as the powerful crosswinds of state politics swirl around Cab and Peach, and the threat of a tropical storm hangs over Florida, this whirlwind of pressure and chaos will ultimately unearth a poisonous conspiracy, and reawaken a killer who has lain dormant for a decade.
The Night Bird (2017)
Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn’t like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco—as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks—Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie’s controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories—and all the victims were her patients.As Frost and Frankie carry out their own investigations, the case becomes increasingly personal—and dangerous. Long-submerged secrets surface as someone called the Night Bird taunts the pair with cryptic messages pertaining to the deaths. Soon Frankie is forced to confront strange gaps in her own memory, and Frost faces a killer who knows the detective’s worst fears.As the body count rises and the Night Bird circles ever closer, a dedicated cop and a brilliant doctor race to solve the puzzle before a cunning killer claims another victim.
The Voice Inside (2018)
Four years after serial killer Rudy Cutter was sent away for life, San Francisco homicide inspector Frost Easton uncovers a terrible lie: his closest friend planted false evidence to put Cutter behind bars. When he’s forced to reveal the truth, his sister’s killer is back on the streets.Desperate to take Cutter down again, the detective finds a new ally in Eden Shay. She wrote a book about Cutter and knows more about him than anyone. And she’s terrified. Because for four years, Cutter has been nursing revenge day after stolen day.Staying ahead of the game of a killer who’s determined to strike again is not going to be easy. Not when Frost is battling his own demons. Not when the game is becoming so personal. And not when the killer’s next move is unlike anything Frost expected.
The Crooked Street (2019)
San Francisco homicide detective Frost Easton hadn’t seen his estranged friend Denny in years. Not until he dies in Frost’s arms uttering a final inexplicable word: Lombard. Denny appears to be the latest victim in a string of murders linked by a distinctive clue: the painting of a spiraled snake near the crime scenes. Is it the work of a serial killer? Or is Denny’s death more twisted and personal?To find the answer, Frost reaches into a nest of vipers—San Francisco’s shady elite—where the whispered name of Lombard is just one secret. Now, drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with an enemy who knows his every move, Frost finds there is no one he can trust. And somewhere down the crooked streets of the city, Frost’s cunning adversary is coiled and ready to strike again.
Spilled Blood (2012)
\It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Chris Hawk’s daughter has been accused of murder… and she looks guilty as sin.Chris rushes to the small town in Minnesota where his ex-wife and his only child, Olivia, now live, determined to defend his daughter. He discovers two towns at war: Barron, where a chemical works has brought jobs and fortune, and St Croix, Olivia’s downriver home, where the same chemical works are believed to have brought death: a cancer cluster with mysterious origins.Olivia is at the centre of this feud. So is the girl she’s suspected of killing. If Chris is to find out what really happened, he needs to learn everything about his daughter… but he’s beginning to realise he hardly knows her at all. Chris wants to believe Olivia is innocent, but belief is only the first step. Now he has to prove it. And all the while, the Barron boys are waiting, baying for her blood.
Thief River Falls (2020)
Lisa Power is a tortured ghost of her former self. The author of a bestselling thriller called Thief River Falls, named after her rural Minnesota hometown, Lisa is secluded in her remote house as she struggles with the loss of her entire family: a series of tragedies she calls the “Dark Star.”Then a nameless runaway boy shows up at her door with a terrifying story: he’s just escaped death after witnessing a brutal murder—a crime the police want to cover up. Obsessed with the boy’s safety, Lisa resolves to expose this crime, but powerful men in Thief River Falls are desperate to get the boy back, and now they want her too.Lisa and her young visitor have nowhere to go as the trap closes around them. Still under the strange, unforgiving threat of the Dark Star, Lisa must find a way to save them both, or they’ll become the victims of another shocking tragedy she can’t foresee.
The Deep, Deep Snow (2020)
In an intense, emotional mystery that spans a decade in the life of a small town, bestselling author Brian Freeman brings us an unforgettable heroine who discovers that the dead may sometimes be easier to rescue than the living. Deputy Shelby Lake was abandoned as a baby, saved by a stranger who found her in the freezing cold. Now, years later, a young boy is missing—and Shelby is the one who must rescue a child. The only evidence of what happened to ten-year-old Jeremiah Sloan is a bicycle left behind on a lonely road. After a desperate search fails to locate him, the close bonds of Shelby’s hometown begin to fray under the weight of accusations and suspicion. Everyone around her is keeping secrets. Her adoptive father, her best friend, her best friend’s young daughter—they all have something to hide. Even Shelby is concealing a mistake that could jeopardize her career and her future. Unearthing the lies of the people in Jeremiah’s life doesn’t get the police and the FBI any closer to finding him. As time passes and the case grows cold, Shelby worries that the mystery will stay buried forever under the deep, deep snow. But even the deepest snow melts in the spring. When a tantalizing clue finally comes to light, Shelby must confront the darkest lie of all. Exposing the truth about Jeremiah will leave no one’s life untouched—including her own.
Infinite (2021)
One rainy night, the unthinkable happens: Dylan Moran’s car plunges off the road into a raging river, his beautiful wife drowning as he struggles to shore.In the aftermath, through his grief, Dylan experiences sudden, strange visions: wherever he goes, he’s haunted by glimpses of himself. Dylan initially chalks it up to trauma, but that changes when he runs into a psychiatrist who claims he’s her patient. She says he has been undergoing a unique hypnotherapy treatment built on the idea that with every choice, he creates an infinite number of parallel universes.Now those parallel universes are unlocked—and Dylan’s doppelgänger has staked a claim to his world. Can Dylan use these alternate realities to get a second chance at the life that was stolen from him? Or will he lose himself…to himself?
The Ursulina (2022)
The mythical beast goes by many names. Bigfoot. Sasquatch. Yeti.In Black Wolf County, he’s called … the Ursulina.But to Deputy Rebecca Colder, the beast is no myth. A serial killer has taken on the identity of the monster — and with each body left behind, there’s a chilling message written in blood: I am the Ursulina.
The Bourne Evolution (2020)
After the death of his lover in a mass shooting, secret agent Jason Bourne is convinced that there is more to her murder than it seems. Worse, he believes that Treadstone–the agency that made him who he is, that trained him–is behind the killing. Bourne goes rogue, leaving Treadstone behind and taking on a new mission to infiltrate and expose an anarchist group, Medusa.But when a congresswoman is assassinated in New York, Bourne is framed for the crime, and he finds himself alone and on the run, hunted by both Treadstone and the tech cabal that had hired him. In his quest to stay one step ahead of his enemies, Bourne teams up with a journalist, Abbey Laurent, to figure out who was behind the frame-up, and to learn as much as he can about the ever-growing threat of the mysterious Medusa group.As more and more enemies begin to hunt Bourne, it’s a race against the clock to discover who led him into a trap…and what their next move may be.
The Bourne Treachery (2021)
Three years ago, Jason Bourne embarked on a mission in Estonia with his partner and lover, a fiery Treadstone agent code-named Nova. Their job was to rescue a Russian double agent who’d been smuggled out of St. Petersburg in the midst of an FSB manhunt. They failed. The Russian died at the hands of a shadowy assassin known only by the nickname Lennon. Now everything has changed for Bourne. Nova is gone, killed in a mass shooting in Las Vegas. Bourne is a lone operative, working in the shadows for Treadstone, when he’s called in for a new mission in London—to prevent another assassination masterminded by Lennon. But nothing about this mission is what it seems. As Bourne engages in a cat-and-mouse game with Lennon across the British countryside, he discovers that everything he thought he knew about the past was a lie. And with the body count rising, he comes to an inevitable conclusion: Some secrets should stay buried.