r.a.t. dubrueler

official site of future best-selling author & storyteller

stories

best served cold

175059579-macabre-murder-mystery-dinner-party-event-with-bloody-knife.jpg

“There are no rewards or punishments—only consequences.” —W.R. Inge

In the shadowed heart of distinguished Silver Circle, a judge’s home erupts into a silent scream, and a fractured family spins toward a midnight reckoning, as upscale walls bear witness to the moment everything breaks. In the kitchen, an eight-inch cleaver glints in the moonlight. A woman trembles beside a sink slick with blood.

A few houses down, a young mother struggles with the mounting stacks of bills, haunted by the growing suspicion that her baby’s father is hiding something worse than infidelity. Her heart sinks as she scans the search engine on the glowing screen left unattended—how to kill someone without getting caught.

Miles away, a solitary singer cradles her dream of Broadway like a secret too delicate for daylight. No friends, no distractions, but then he came: charming and unforgettable, butterflies bloomed in her stomach. She couldn’t have known that monsters don’t wear masks. They smile, showing up in the form of everything you've ever asked for.

Their stories shouldn't intersect, but murder doesn’t care for coincidence, and it doesn't have boundaries.

Best Served Cold is a psychological thriller that doesn’t just twist—it chokes—exposing the fallout of the choices we make, and the terrifying truth that one terrible act is never isolated. It echoes. It spreads. And in Silver Circle, it is far from over.

preorder coming soon

what's done in the dark

Dear, suspicion. Meet obsession.

Fourteen-year-old Ben Whitlock earned the nickname "the Bird Killer" after one too many disturbing acts, but lately his behavior has curdled into something darker, something that even his homicide detective father can’t ignore. Paul Whitlock knows how killers think. What terrifies him more is realizing his own son might share that mind.

But danger doesn’t live only in Ben’s eyes.

Paul’s wife, drowning in addiction and twisted devotion to their sickly youngest daughter, is unraveling by the day. Her obsession poisons the air inside their crumbling home, and Paul is left to battle ghosts both old and new, clawing through secrets long buried. And their neighbors? Well, the Whitlocks aren’t the only ones whose walls whisper at night.

What's Done in the Dark is a suffocating descent into the paranoia that festers behind picket fences and picture windows, an insidious tale of what happens when hysteria guides good intentions straight into the gutter. When fear becomes the loudest voice in the room, three families must choose: expose the truth—or be consumed by it.

preorder coming soon

the tangled webs we weave

Abby Peralta wasn’t supposed to come home. Now she wishes she hadn’t.

A gnawing feeling draws Abby back to her house, and she discovers a truth she was never meant to see. The basement door yawns open. A woman’s corpse lies twisted at the bottom of the stairs. And her husband, the charming Dr. Jasper Peralta, nowhere to be found. Abby screams, but no one hears, and what remains are the questions that strip her bare, each demanding more than she’s ready to confront.

Have her suspicions her husband has been sleeping with other women been right all along? Did she fall in love with the man she married or his money? Which bothers her most, cheater or murderer?

Despite her best efforts, Abby knows reason doesn’t live where wrath does. The possibilities spin in her mind, and pulse racing, she considers calling the police, but when she checks the basement again, the body is gone. And then, Jasper walks through the front door like he hasn't been gone at all, smiling like the world hasn’t shifted.

Now, with reality splintering at its edges, Abby must untangle a nightmarish tapestry of secrets and deceit, facing the question she doesn't want to ask: what truth is so terrible you’d kill to protect it?

The Tangled Webs We Weave is a chilling plunge into domestic terror, where madness smolders behind perfect smiles and loyalty is the first thing to rot. In this unnerving tale of psychological suspense, darkness doesn’t just lurk. It pretends to be love.

preorder coming soon

Works

running with scissors

Stone Cloud sees itself clearly—faithful, orderly, safe. A neighborhood of retirees, where lawns are trimmed, prayers are said, and gossip dies quietly behind closed blinds and carefully clipped hedges. But what good is vision when the whole neighborhood insists on keeping its eyes closed?

Betty Gibson realizes she hasn’t seen Margaret in weeks, and she knows her worries are rooted in something sinister. She reports it. The sheriff dismisses it. But Betty refuses to let it go. She knows something has gone terribly wrong.

Because Ruth—Ruth with the dead husband and the twin sister she once tried to kill—is acting stranger by the day, and no one seems to care. The neighbors continue to water their lawns and polish their garden gnomes, behaving as if Margaret’s absence was just another leaf swept off a porch.

But Betty keeps asking questions, and those questions start to echo. Who are the villains? Who’s lying to the law? Where in God’s name could Margaret have gone?

One thought torments Betty most: What if it’s all in her head? Her own daughter seems to think so.

Then, beneath a sky heavy with dread, the deputies find a body. And suddenly, Running with Scissors reveals that the scariest thing isn’t who’s missing. It’s who’s watching.

preorder coming soon

red herring

Are humans born good? Or are they simply monsters waiting for the right moment?

Dr. Mendoza has stared into the darkest parts of the human psyche. She believed she could help Oliver Fish—the intelligent boy with an unsettling quiet—but she was wrong. Years later, he has become the nightmare she tried to prevent: a cannibalistic serial killer who left five women mutilated… and stole a child no one can find.

Now, homicide detective Irene “Reenie” Pike must peel back Oliver’s mind to find the little girl. He’ll speak, but only if she listens to him relive every kill in his personal journal, written in nauseating detail. Every page is a trap. Every sentence another wound, and what begins as an interrogation quickly spirals into a psychological battle. Oliver isn’t just recounting the horrors. He’s reliving them.

Reenie’s own past isn’t without scars. Her rise through the force was forged in trauma: a father killed before her eyes, a mother lost to madness, and whispers of nepotism she can’t shake. But she’s never faced anything like this. Oliver knows her darkness. He speaks to it, and as the line between hunter and prey blurs, Reenie must confront the possibility that she understands him a little too well.

Red Herring drips with dread as it explores mental illness, guilt, and the terrifying intimacy of violence. In Oliver’s own words, “Do you know what it’s like to kill someone?”

This isn’t just a case. It’s a reckoning. And Reenie may not escape it untouched.

preorder coming soon

bio

Rachel Ann Taylor DuBrueler has always felt most at home when she was alone and in the dark.

Raised by gloriously supportive parents who saw no issue with a toddler watching Psycho, she cemented a love for twisty plots, creepy atmospheres, and the uncanny ability to spot the killer faster than the opening credits.

A proud West Virginian, Rachel earned four degrees from her home state’s flagship university—Let’s go, Mountaineers!—and considers herself a lifelong learner, even if she ghosted her Mensa dues years ago.

By day, she strategizes in corporate boardrooms. By night (and most weekends), she writes what keeps you up at night, and her stories don’t knock. They break in.

Her home is shared with her husband and a rotating cast of rescued Doberman Pinschers who have the looks of security guards but the hearts of marshmallows.

When she’s not writing twisty tales, Rachel can be found passionately arguing about science, politics, or current events, whether or not anyone asked her to. And when the Steelers are on? Let's just say the neighbors know.

Bio