Isabella Maldonado

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About Isabella Maldonado
Wall Street Journal bestselling author Isabella Maldonado wore a gun and badge in real life before turning to crime writing. She can be found at www.isabellamaldonado.com.
The first Latina to attain the rank of captain in her police department, she retired as the Commander of Special Investigations and Forensics. Selected to attend the prestigious FBI National Academy in Quantico, she uses her extensive law enforcement background to bring a realistic edge to her writing. THE CIPHER, the first book in her bestselling series featuring FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera, was published in 2020 and will be made into a feature film on Netflix starring Jennifer Lopez. The sequel, A DIFFERENT DAWN, was published in 2021. The third book in the series, THE FALCON, will be published on June 28, 2022.
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Titles By Isabella Maldonado
A Wall Street Journal bestselling series.
A serial killer wants to play. FBI Agent Nina Guerrera has no time for games.
Six female undergrads at an elite university vanish. The media descends. The families demand action. And as Special Agent Nina Guerrera follows clue by chilling clue, she realizes she’s tracking the most cunning predator of her career.
The case takes a turn for the worse, and the bizarre, when several victims are found perfectly preserved. No signs of violence, no hint of how they died. Just more evidence that the killer is cruel, calculating, and a master of mind control.
With her mission compromised, Nina must face her greatest failure—and greatest fear—to stop a deadly hunter before he claims another prize.
A Wall Street Journal bestseller.
For nearly thirty years a serial killer has been hiding in plain sight. So has the key to an FBI agent’s dark past.
A family is murdered as they sleep. FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera and her new team are tasked with determining whether there is any link between this attack and another triple homicide from four years earlier and more than two thousand miles away. In the process, they’ll discover a serial killer so cunning that his grisly trail of death spanning nearly three decades has gone undetected. Each crime scene reminds Nina of the ghostly Latin folktale of La Llorona, which terrified her when she was an abandoned and vulnerable child. Now it’s back to haunt her.
Nina has known evil, but these macabre reenactments are as disturbing as they are baffling. Now she must uncover the meaning behind the rituals as the evidence leads her in an unexpected direction—far closer to home than anyone could have imagined. As the team narrows in on a suspect, the present collides with Nina’s past in a twist of fate that forces her to make the ultimate sacrifice.
An Amazon Charts bestseller.
To a cunning serial killer, she was the one that got away. Until now…
FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera escaped a serial killer’s trap at sixteen. Years later, when she’s jumped in a Virginia park, a video of the attack goes viral. Legions of new fans are not the only ones impressed with her fighting skills. The man who abducted her eleven years ago is watching. Determined to reclaim his lost prize, he commits a grisly murder designed to pull her into the investigation…but his games are just beginning. And he’s using the internet to invite the public to play along.
His coded riddles may have made him a depraved social media superstar—an enigmatic cyber-ghost dubbed “the Cipher”—but to Nina he’s a monster who preys on the vulnerable. Partnered with the FBI’s preeminent mind hunter, Dr. Jeffrey Wade, who is haunted by his own past, Nina tracks the predator across the country. Clue by clue, victim by victim, Nina races to stop a deadly killer while the world watches.
Beautiful, shrewd, and lethal, Daria Villalobos is on a mission. Determined to be the first woman to take the reins of her father's notorious organization, she hatches a plot to eliminate Veranda, framing a rival to take the fall.
Veranda Cruz is on a mission of her own. Intent on destroying the powerful Villalobos criminal empire, Veranda battles her department and her personal demons as she takes on Daria.
To survive the most cunning adversary she’s ever faced, will she make a pact with a killer?
Winner of the Mariposa Award for Best First Novel
Phoenix detective Veranda Cruz is dead set on taking down the Villalobos crime family, but the ruthlessness of her quarry demands a ruthless edge of her own.
No one in the department suspects the real motivation behind the obsession that pits her against Bartolo Villalobos, heir apparent to a powerful criminal empire...until an operation goes horribly wrong.Targeted by an increasingly unstable foe, Veranda must protect her family and navigate adversaries within the force while she sets a trap for Bartolo. As the action heats up, Veranda and her new Homicide team—along with an arson investigator who kindles a flame of his own—are all drawn into a deadly gambit.
Taking down Bartolo is the ultimate goal, but is Veranda ready to trade her life for justice?
One of Book Riot's Best 25 Suspense Books of 2018
“Maldonado’s a writer to watch, and she showcases her own extensive law enforcement background in this tightly plotted police procedural.” —Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW
Phoenix detective Veranda Cruz has vowed to bring the Villalobos crime family to justice, but when a wave of violence in the city escalates, she is forced to confront her darkest fear.
Adolfo Villalobos is a crime boss who's determined to stake his claim. To prove that he's ready to run his family's sprawling criminal empire, he devises a plan to silence his siblings and destroy Veranda, leaving a trail of destruction through downtown Phoenix that makes national headlines.
Veranda believes the task force she's been assigned to lead will end Adolfo's reign of terror, until his revenge takes a cruel-and highly personal-twist.
The cunning scheme devastates Veranda, who struggles with secrets from her past that may end her career. And her life.Vater, Mutter, Kind, Tod: ein neuer packender Thriller um die toughe FBI-Agentin Nina Guerrera von der preisgekrönten Autorin Isabella Maldonado.
»Nina war in ihrem Leben schon vielen schlechten Menschen begegnet, aber jetzt spürte sie das Böse in seiner reinsten Form.«
Kaltblütig werden ein Vater, eine Mutter und ihre kleine Tochter im Schlaf hingerichtet: ein Fall für FBI Special Agent Nina Guerrera und ihr Team. Bei ihren Ermittlungen stoßen sie auf eine grausige Mordserie. Alle vier Jahre, immer am 29. Februar, ermordet ein Psychopath eine junge Familie.
Für Nina wird der Fall verstörend persönlich. Sie weiß, dass sie nur weiterkommt, wenn sie das tut, was ihr seit ihrer Kindheit im Waisenhaus am schwersten fällt – anderen trauen, sich selbst für wertvoll halten. Und als könnte der Täter ihre Gedanken lesen, setzt er genau dort an, um ihre Seele zu zerstören und sie auszulöschen …
Die Jagd nach dem Psychopathen beginnt: ein intelligenter, hochspannender Psychothriller um FBI-Agentin Nina Guerrera.
»Nach jahrelanger Suche hatte ich die Hoffnung beinahe aufgegeben. Aber heute hat sich alles geändert. Für mich wird sie immer die Einzige sein, die entkommen konnte.«
In letzter Sekunde entkommt die sechzehnjährige Nina Esperanza einem Killer. Unter neuem Namen – Nina Guerrera, Kriegermädchen – taucht sie unter. Elf Jahre später ist für die FBI-Agentin ihre Vergangenheit nur noch ein dunkler Schatten. Bis ein Video viral geht, wie sie einen Angreifer im Park überwältigt.
Denn der Killer hat sie nie vergessen. Und jetzt weiß er, wo sie ist. Ein mörderisches Spiel beginnt, bei dem der Täter das FBI und die Öffentlichkeit mit komplexen Rätseln herausfordert. Versagt das FBI bei der Lösung, stirbt jedes Mal qualvoll ein Mädchen. Dabei will der Psychopath doch vor den Augen der Welt nur das beenden, was ihm damals misslang: Nina zerstören.