Philip Horkman is a happy man who is the owner of a pet store called The Wine Shop, and on Sundays a referee for kids' soccer. Jeffrey Peckerman is the sole sane person in a world filled with goddamned jerks and morons, and he's having a really bad day. The two of them are about to collide in a swiftly escalating series of events that will send them running for their lives, pursued by the police, soldiers, terrorists, subversives, bears, and a man dressed as Chuck E. Cheese.

When notorious gangster 'Fat Sam' Mahood is murdered, the chief suspect is arrested nearby. But he seems to have suffered a breakdown. Incarcerated in a mental institution, he's known only as the Man in the White Suit.

Officer Gunnhildur, of the Reykjavik's Serious Crime Unit, is tasked with hunting down escaped convict Long Ommi - who has embarked on a spree of violent score-settling in and around the city. Meanwhile, she's also investigating the murder of a fitness guru in her own city-center apartment. As Gunna delves into the cases, she unearths some unwelcome secrets and influential friends shared by both guru and convict.

When a spat donut shop owner Suzanne Hart has with a local blacksmith ends with his murder, Suzanne is suspected. The heat is on as Suzanne tries to solve the case and save her business. But how did the killer strike in the middle of the day without a single witness to the crime? And who knew that the humble blacksmith was actually an heir to a family fortune?

The psychotic rapist and murderer Jerome Monk has escaped from high security prison - and seems to be targeting anyone involved with the original search for his victims' bodies. That would include forensics expert Dr. David Hunter. Then Hunter receives a mysterious appeal for help from Sophie Keller, a young woman who also worked on the operation. He suddenly finds that the past is far from dead and buried. Neither the events unfolding now, nor those from all those years ago, are quite as they seem.

The Good Buy Girls are ready to pounce on the St. Stanley flea market, where wealthy Vera Madison is selling off her vintage clothing. It's just what Maggie Gerber needs to give her second-hand shop, My Sister's Closet, the edge over vindictive rival Summer Phillips, who has opened her own second-hand shop across the street. But when Vera is found dead, it turns out that she collected enemies like Dior gowns - and had more than a few skeletons in her walk-in closet.

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Tom Sagan, discredited by a fraudulent report, cannot prove that his downfall was a deliberate act of sabotage by an unknown enemy. Zachariah Simon has the look of a scholar, the soul of a scoundrel, and the zeal of a fanatic. He also has Tom Sagan's estranged daughter at his mercy. Simon desperately wants something only Sagan can supply: the key to a 500-year-old mystery, a treasure with explosive political significance in the modern world.

Under secret orders from the President, US Army Major Zeus Murphy sabotages a Chinese invasion fleet on the eve of its assault against Vietnam. Meanwhile, back in the States, President Chester Greene fails to convince Congress that the Chinese invasion of Vietnam is the first step in a plan to rule Asia and eventually go to war with the United States. Not even the Pentagon will support the president - yet the countdown to all-out war is on.

Self-proclaimed witch Cookie Randall joins the Cumberland Creek Scrapbook Crop. She can whip up a sumptuous vegan meal and rhapsodize about runes and moon phases with equal aplomb. But she becomes a murder suspect when bodies start turning up carved with strange runic patterns. Fellow scrapbooker and freelance reporter Annie can't believe her friend is guilty and starts digging into the case.

The first death was ruled an accident. But when a second accountant from A.D.E. - a popular relief organization that resettles East African refugees - turns up dead, FBI Special Agent and forensic artist Sydney Fitzpatrick is called in to lend her expertise in an increasingly troubling case. Not only is the charity backed by a powerful U.S. senator, but the investigation reveals that its funds have been siphoned off to bankroll terrorist cells in black list countries, and Sydney fears the consequences.

When new witch and owner of Savannah's most enchanting bakery Katie Lightfoot learns a killer has stolen a deadly spellbook, she and her Aunt Lucy's coven leave the baked goods on the rack to cool and set off in hot pursuit.

In the depths of the Maine woods, the wreckage of a plane is discovered. There are no bodies, and no such plane has ever been reported missing, but men both good and evil have been seeking it for a long, long time. What the wreckage conceals is more important than money. It is power: a list of names, a record of those who have struck a deal with the devil. The race to secure the prize draws in private detective Charlie Parker, who fears that his own name may be on the list. It lures others, too - a beautiful, scarred woman with a taste for killing; a silent child who remembers his own death; and a serial killer known as the Collector, who sees in the list new lambs for his slaughter.

Nicolaos walks the mean streets of Classical Athens as an agent for the promising young politician Pericles. His mission is to find the assassin of the statesman Ephialtes, the man who brought democracy to Athens and whose murder has thrown the city into uproar. It's a job not made any easier by the increasing number of dead witnesses. But murder and mayhem don't bother Nico; what's really on his mind is how to get closer (much closer) to Diotima, the intelligent and annoyingly virgin priestess of Artemis, and how to shake off his irritating twelve-year-old brother Socrates.

A LAPD cop has been rendered unfit after a nighttime assault by unidentified men killed his partner. His new partner is a German shepherd who survived three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan sniffing explosives before losing her handler to an IED. Shunned and shunted to the side, the two set out to investigate the one case that no one wants them to touch: the identity of the men in the nighttime assault.

When the police tell a wealthy industrialist that her missing son has faked his own kidnapping, she hires Elvis Cole and Joe Pike - and Cole soon determines that it was no fake. The boy and his secret girlfriend have been taken, and are now lost in the gray and changing world of the professional border kidnappers. Fortunately, the kidnappers don't yet know who the boy is, but when Cole goes undercover to try to buy the two of them back, he himself is taken, and disappears. Now it is up to Pike to trace Cole's steps.

Edwin Sharp thinks Kayleigh's songs contain messages that speak directly to him. Despite her clear rejection and threats from lawyers and law enforcers, he remains convinced that "Your Shadow" was written just for him, and he announces he's coming for Kayleigh. Then a potentially fatal accident occurs at the concert hall where Kayleigh is rehearsing for a triumphant hometown performance, and she is convinced that someone - maybe Edwin - was there watching her from the darkness.

When newly unemployed Patrick and Barbara McDougal decide a vacation in Florida is just what they need to put life back on the right track, awful accommodations, a robbery, and a not-so-helpful police department make them rethink their decision to drown their troubles in paradise. Luckily, charismatic (and crazy!) tour guide Serge Storms and his sidekick, Coleman, are on hand.

A diver is found with a gaff hook in his chest and Glory, the owner of a Florida souvenir shop, is enlisted to solve the crime. But secrets in Keyhole Bay run deeper than she imagined.

Saddlemaker Lucas McGavin is thrilled that Ruby McGavin has come back to Cardinal. He hasn't given up on his love for her, despite the awkward fact that she is his brother's widow, and he's well aware that this may be his last chance to win Ruby's heart. But when Ruby's alcoholic brother Nash ends up in a devastating accident, Ruby decides she must turn to her estranged mother Etta, who harbours a horrible secret that keeps her from reconnecting with the children she deserted so many years ago.

Inspector Thomas Lynley is sent undercover to investigate the death of Ian Cresswell at the request of the man's uncle, the wealthy and influential Bernard Fairclough. Though the death has been ruled an accidental drowning, Lynley -- with the help of his friends Simon and Deborah St. James -- soon learns that the Fairclough clan is awash in secrets, lies, and motives. Deborah's investigation of the prime suspect-Bernard's prodigal son Nicholas, a recovering drug addict-leads her to Nicholas's wife, a woman with whom she feels a kinship. Lynley and Simon delve for information from the rest of the family, including the victim's bitter ex-wife and the man he left her for, and Bernard himself.

A lost Nazi bunker in Germany contains a dreadful secret. Marine archeologist Jack Howard returns to the lost island of Atlantis to answer the question about its priests that has plagued him. He discovers a link between the 1930 Himmler Ahnenerbe and the Nazi Department of Cultural Heritage and Atlantis. Fearing the Reich has left concealed devices of evil, Jack must uncover the truth before the wrong move triggers unimaginable destruction.

13 years ago surgeon Edward Hammond performed a life saving operation on a Serbian gangster, Dragan Gazi, who now stands trial for war crimes in the international court in The Hague. After his life was saved, Gazi's men went on to slaughter thousands in the Balkan civil wars. If Hammond would like this secret to be kept secret, then he will have to find -- for Gazi's family -- the Italian financier who holds the key to all the money Gazi squirreled away before he was locked up.

One morning in picture-perfect Bath, England, a teenage girl's body is found on the towpath of a canal. Lorne Wood was beautiful, popular, and apparently the victim of a brutal murder. Why was she on the towpath late at night alone? Zoe Benedict - Harley-riding police detective, independent to a fault - is convinced the department head needs to look beyond the usual domestic motives to solve the case. Meanwhile Zoe's sister Sally - recently divorced and supporting a daughter who was a friend of the dead girl - has begun working as a housekeeper for a rich entrepreneur who quickly begins to seem less eccentric than repugnant, and possibly dangerous. When Zoe's investigation uncovers evidence that Lorne's attempts to break into modeling had delivered her into the world of webcam porn, a crippling secret from Zoe's past seems determined to emerge.

Back from her somewhat unusual honeymoon, Claire Malloy finds the perfect place for her new life with her new husband and her teenage daughter Caron. There are only a few problems. Such as the real estate agent disappeared mid-showing and hasn't been seen since. And the last owner died in circumstances labeled 'accidental' but were actually both 'mysterious' and 'dubious'. The family that owned the estate is now suing the lover of the dead owner over the rights to the property. Oh, and it isn't really for sale. When the previous owner's lover dies practically at her feet, Claire decides to take matters into her own hands.

The murder of a very old woman in a housing project rocks the town of Lafferton. The murderer has left a distinctive "sign" on the body and at the scene of the crime. A couple of weeks later, a similar murder occurs, and a month or so later, so does another. Initial investigations discover that the mysterious "sign" left on the body was the calling card of a suspect who was charged with several murders in the northwest of the country, tried but acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence. All indications suggest that this person has simply vanished. Or is he right under their noses?

A brutally-wronged girl - now a grown woman - cold, clever, calculating - is mistakenly presumed dead. A macabre magician with a secret past, stalked by an exotic and enigmatic assassin. A woman with breathtaking beauty and an insidious scheme that is as vicious as "she" is vindictive. An ex-pro-lineman turned savage gangster - a threat to everyone with his all-consuming greed. A young ambitious cop drawn to a wealthy but willful woman - a woman as wily as she is wild. His father, legendary Chicago cop, Larry Cole, must stop them all, particularly the deviously deadly femme fatale. Beautiful as she is bloody, relentlessly obsessed, bent on vile, violent revenge.

Bob Lee Swagger begins asking questions about the third bullet in the JFK assassination. Why did it explode? Why did Oswald risk all by returning to his rooming house to secure a pistol he easily could have brought with him? Pitted against him is a gifted, Yale-educated veteran of the CIA Plans Division. Hugh Meachum has secrets and the means and the will to keep them buried.

White House executive chef Olivia Paras has always believed that her father was an honourable man - until a trip to visit her mother reveals that he was dishonourably discharged from the army. Olivia is even more shocked to learn that he was brutally murdered because someone at his company suspected him of selling corporate secrets. Olivia is determined to clear his name. But what she's about to discover may not only put her at risk, but threaten national security as well.

A major Hollywood movie is being filmed about the love story between King George IV and Maria Fitzherbert on location in Brighton and Hove. For producer Larry Brooker and rock superstar Gaia, it could mean Oscar nominations. For Detective Superintendent Roy Grace of Sussex CID it is a nightmare unfolding in front of his eyes. An obsessed stalker is after Gaia and one attempt on her life is made days before she flies to Brighton for the shooting of the film. Now Roy Grace has been warned that the stalker may be at large in his city, waiting, watching and planning his next move.

After Santa Cruz County deputy sheriff Jose Reyes, Ali Reynolds's classmate from the Arizona Police Academy, is gunned down and left to die, he and his pregnant wife, Teresa, both fall under suspicion of wrongdoing. Ali finds it hard to believe that he's become mixed up in the drug trade, despite evidence to the contrary. Upon arriving at the hospital, Ali finds that her good friend, Sister Anselm, is there, too - working as a patient advocate on behalf of another seriously injured victim, an unidentified young woman presumed to be an illegal border crosser, who was raped and savagely beaten. Ali becomes determined to seek justice in both cases and secure safety for both victims.

Retired NHL player Brad Shade is now a scout for LA. But when the brutally murdered body of coaching legend Red Hanratty turns up in a parking lot after an old-timers charity game, Shade's scouting job starts to overlap with investigating the killing of the grizzled old coach. Then the killer goes after Shade's girlfriend.

NHL scout Brad Shade is checking out the talent in Regina with his old friend and teammate "Chief". But when they learn of the suicide of an old teammate from their playing days in L.A., they take a sometimes violent detour through the dark side of a small town with no shortage of secrets to be kept at any cost.

Four months after a man disappears on his way to work in Fjallbacka he is found murdered, frozen beneath the ice. Then it emerges that one of the dead man's friends has been receiving anonymous death threats. And when yet another man is found murdered Patrik Hedstrom realizes there is a connection between the killings, which leads them into the dead men's past.

Kidwella Castle in northern Wales is rumoured to be haunted by a deadly ghost - the Grim Widow, who allegedly drowns unsuspecting guests in the castle's moat. Not long after M. J. and her crew arrive at the castle to film their ghost-hunting cable TV show, two new victims are added to the widow's grisly roster.

Spider is used to playing undercover cop, not the handler. And when two students are recruited to stop a Muslim extremist group's terrorist attack on a London shopping centre, he is forced to lie to them about the danger. With his loyalties split, can he protect them before it's too late?

Harlan County, Kentucky: when Dickie and Coover Crowe, dope-dealing brothers known for sampling their own supply, decide to branch out into the body business, it's up to U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to stop them. But by the time Raylan finds out who is making the cuts, he is lying naked in a bathtub, with Layla, the cool transplant nurse, about to go for his kidneys. The bad guys are mostly gals this time around: Layla, the nurse who collects kidneys and sells them for ten grand a piece; Carol Conlan, a hard-charging coal-mine executive not above ordering a cohort to shoot point-blank a man who is standing in her way; and Jackie Nevada, a beautiful sometime college student who can outplay anyone at the poker table and who suddenly finds herself being tracked by a handsome U.S. marshal.

Tempted by the offer of a free Caribbean cruise, wannabe sportswriter-turned food critic Jordan accepts a spot as a judge in a week-long big-time cooking competition aboard the "Carnation Queen." But after a chef falls face first into his signature halibut dish during the first event, Jordan wonders if she's set sail with a murderer.

Josie Giancola, owner of the Button Box shop, is approached at her shop to appraise a very rare item - a complete charm string. In Victorian times, girls strung buttons on long strings to make the charms. Once the string reached 1,000 buttons - no two alike - the legend was that the owner would meet her beloved. But the owner of this charm string believes it cursed. When Josie finds the woman strangled with the charm string, she doesn't know whether the curse is real...but the killer certainly is.

Bodies are turning up on the outskirts of Aberdeen: burned from the neck up, hands chained behind their backs. The similarities between the real life killings and the plot of a bestselling novel about witchcraft seem more than coincidental, but the more that DI Logan McRae digs, the more dangerous and blurred the line between fact and fiction becomes.

At the department's graduation party, math professor Sophie hears heated arguments coming from the graduates about Mayor Graves, the commencement speaker. Later the mayor is found with a Henley College letter opener - something that is gifted to every member of the graduating class, embedded in his back. Sophie is led to a complicated puzzle of scandal and corruption, and it seems that Mayor Graves is at the apex of it all. When Sophie finds out that the mayor was seeking her help on the day he was murdered, she must use her top-notch logic to crack the puzzle and catch the killer running free on campus...

Convicted serial killer Clarence Little has escaped from death row in Oregon, and attorney Brad Miller receives threatening messages in D.C., where he is working for Senator Jack Carson, a high-ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Ex-SAS operative Ben Hope has returned to his long-abandoned theology studies - until his professor asks him to help find his missing daughter, archeologist Zoe Bradbury. As Ben investigates, he realizes that Zoe's most recent archeological discovery, an artifact related to the Book of Revelation, is at the heart of her disappearance. He is led from the islands of Greece to the tree-lined streets of Savannah and the holy city of Jerusalem - and to a fundamentalist plot to gain ultimate power.

May 1915. Zeppelin bombs fall on London and anti-German hysteria reaches a fever pitch and attacks on German immigrants surge. Jacob Stein's business is sacked, his daughter is raped, and Jacob is murdered. Inspector Harvey Marmion is detailed to the case and faces an uphill struggle to track down the perpetrators.

Jacko Vance, ex-celebrity and sociopath, has escaped from prison - even more twisted and cunning than before, he is focused on wreaking revenge on Tony Hill and Carol Jordan for his years spent in prison. They don't know when Jacko will strike, or where. All they know is that Jacko will cause them to feel fear like they've never known.

Declan Cleary's body has never been found, but everyone believes he was killed for informing over 30 years ago. Now the Commission of Location of Victims' Remains is following a tip that he was buried on a small island in the middle of the River Foyle. Instead, the dig uncovers a baby's skeleton. Because evidence uncovered by the Commission cannot lead to prosecution, Devlin is torn. He does not want to resurrect the violent past, yet he has no desire to let a murderer go unpunished.

Tinker's Cove, Maine, is launching a travel promotion for Valentine's Day. As a reporter for the PENNYSAVER, Lucy Stone is assigned a puff piece on upscale Chanticleer's Chocolates. She soon discovers that Chanticleer's sultry store manager Tamzin Graves is leaving a throng of jealous women in her wake. It's little surprise when Tamzin turns up dead, her body covered in chocolate. Could a bitter ex-wife be behind the crime? Or a candy shop competitor?

1890s San Francisco. Former Pinkerton operative Sabina Carpenter and her detective partner, ex-Secret Service agent John Quincannon, undertake what initially appear to be two unrelated investigations. Sabina's case involves the hunt for a ruthless lady "dip" who uses fiendish means to relieve her victims of their valuables at Chutes Amusement Park and other crowded places. Quincannon, meanwhile, is after a slippery housebreaker who targets the homes of wealthy residents, following a trail that leads him from the infamous Barbary Coast to an oyster pirate's lair to a Tenderloin parlor house known as the Fiddle Dee Dee.

At a New Year's Eve party at the Algonquin Hotel, a parlour game of "Murder" turns into the real thing when a dead starlet is found in a bathtub. Along with guests Douglas Fairbanks and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Parker plays detective to find the killer.

Dr. John Meacham goes on a shooting spree at his office, killing his business partner, staff, two patients and self. The blame falls on Dr. Lou Welcome who'd helped Meacham return from drug addiction. Lou is incredulous. And when he begins to look into it further, the terrifying evidence he finds takes him down a path to an unspeakable conspiracy that seems to lead directly to the White House and those in the highest positions of power.

When his former lover is found murdered in his bed, Jack Morgan, CEO of the world's most effective investigation firm, instantly becomes the number one suspect. While he is under police investigation, the mob strong-arms him into recovering $30 million in stolen pharmaceuticals for them. And the beautiful manager of a luxury hotel chain persuades him to quietly investigate a string of murders at her properties.

Small time PI Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he'd been hired to find Rose Janko, the wife of a charismatic son of a travelling Gypsy family who went missing seven years earlier.

Deep in the Arctic, a long-forgotten Soviet military base enshrouds a weapon of unimaginably destructive force - a Cold War doomsday device with the power to obliterate the planet. When a mysterious and brutal terrorist group known as the Army of Thieves seizes control of the remote base and unleashes the weapon upon an unsuspecting world, there is only one team close enough to sabotage them: a ragtag band of Marines and civilians led by Captain Shane Schofield, known as "Scarecrow." Outnumbered, outgunned, and with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, Scarecrow has only a few short hours to bring down the Army of Thieves - or see the Earth go up in flames.

1660. With the restoration of the monarchy, Suzanne Thorton hopes to find a second life by reopening the historic Globe Theater and staging the classics. Instead, on opening night, she finds the dead body of her most recent patron on stage. And she is considered a suspect.

When reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a "Have You Seen This Child?" flyer in the mail, her heart stops - the child in the photo is identical to her adopted son, Will. Her every instinct tells her to deny the similarity between the boys, because she knows her adoption was lawful. But she's a journalist and won't be able to stop thinking about the photo until she figures out the truth. And she can't shake the question: if Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up?

In an isolated village in the Icelandic Westfjords, three friends set to work renovating a derelict house. But soon they realise they are not alone there - something wants them to leave, and it's making its presence felt. Meanwhile, in a town across the fjord, a young doctor investigating the suicide of an elderly woman discovers that she was obsessed with his vanished son. When the two stories collide the terrifying truth is uncovered.

Leo Demidov is no longer a member of Moscow's secret police. But when his wife, Raisa, and daughters Zoya and Elena are invited on a "Peace Tour" to New York City, he is immediately suspicious. Forbidden to travel with his family and trapped on the other side of the world, Leo watches helplessly as events in New York unfold and those closest to his heart are pulled into a web of political conspiracy and betrayal-one that will end in tragedy. Crippled by grief and haunted by the need to find out exactly what happened on that night in New York, Leo takes matters into his own hands in a quest that will span decades, and take him from Moscow to the mountains of Soviet-controlled Afghanistan to the backstreets of New York. He pursues the one man who knows the truth: Agent 6.

Oh, no! Burcak Veral - kickboxing transvestite, nightclub owner, Audrey Hepburn lookalike, and amateur sleuth - has finally been invited to strut her stuff on a local television show. But during her appearance, an angry viewer calls in vowing to kill off everyone close to Burcak. Later that night, the show's host is shot dead. What did Burcak do to infuriate the mystery caller? And in a city as chaotic as Istanbul, where does a girl even begin to look?

Now a major motion picture. Parker isn't happy. Three associates have borrowed his money for a job without permission, and he isn't satisfied to wait and see if they make good. Instead, he vows to kill them all. Tearing across America to take their job out from under them, Parker finds himself in West Palm Beach. There things go sour. While attempting to trick the denizens of Palm Beach into accepting him for one of their own, Parker is gut-shot and forced to rely on a beautiful civilian for help. But even injured and exhausted, Parker still has his killer instinct, and he shows how unwise - and deadly - it is to cross him.

During the deadly Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 Bess Crawford discovers the body of a murdered British officer among the many dead and sets out to unmask a craven killer.

One nurse lies dead and another vanishes after their hospital is hit by a blackout. The only witness claims to have seen Nurse Tekla doing her rounds, but Nurse Tekla died sixty years ago. Detective Inspector Irene Huss of the Violent Crimes Unit has the challenge of disentangling wandering ghosts and complex human relationships to get to the bottom of this intriguing case.

Esau Til sits on death row, writing his life story - his last chance to protect his brother, Tory, after he's gone. When the genetic cards were dealt, Esau drew a genius IQ but a horribly crippled body. His brother Tory drew a slow mind but almost superhuman strength. A self-taught explosives expert, Esau became the top assassin for two rival local mobs. Now, as the State prepares to take his life, he plots going all-in on the last and most deadly hand he will ever play.

A man is found dead in his home. Only one thing is known about him - he was a money lender. People used to call him 'the newcomer', almost in order to emphasise his strangeness. Inspector Bordelli prepares to launch a murder investigation. But the case will be a hard one for him, arousing mixed emotions, the desire for justice conflicting with a deep hostility for the victim. And he is missing his sidekick, Piras, who is convalescing at his parents' home in Sardinia.

Detective Ellie MacIntosch has a serial killer on her hands, but without a body, she has few leads and the stalled investigation has her on edge. Bryce Grantham seems to be the perfect suspect. Eighteen months have gone by without a clue, and yet Grantham starts reporting stumbling across the bodies of the missing women with unbelievable frequency. The evidence against him is almost irrefutable...but Ellie's gut tells her the case is not so cut and dried.

After a productive trip to Bel-Air, Stone Barrington is back in Manhattan - and back in his element, ready to return to the world of deluxe fine dining and elegant high society that New York does best. But then an unexpected visit from his friend and periodic lover, CIA assistant director Holly Barker, draws Stone into a dangerous game of murder and vengeance, against an enemy with plans bigger than they could ever imagine.

Charlotte Bessette - owner of Fromagerie Bessette - has a lot on her plate - setting a date with her fiance, feeding the actors in her grandmother's production of "Hamlet," and planning the menu for her best friend's wedding. At least her new creation - sinfully delicious Brie blueberry ice cream - has turned out perfectly. But just days before the wedding, a stranger turns up dead in the Igloo Ice Cream Parlor's freezer, his head bashed with a container of Charlotte's signature ice cream.

The truth behind what seem at first to be gruesome, unrelated accidents is that someone is stalking the members of the Tau Upsilon fraternity. Detective John Stallings finds a connection between this case and that of his missing daughter and uncovers the grisly pattern.

Lila Wilkins has just been promoted to full-time literary agent. But great new authors aren't the only people she's trying to catch after she finds the body of an editor to whom she bears an eerie resemblance. Soon a blossoming author is also killed, and Lila has a gut feeling that the two murders are linked. Now she must hunt down the dark figure who killed these women - and to her surprise, she just might find the clues hidden in a manuscript.

It all started when her lover Selim insisted that she behave like the Turkish wife of a respectable lawyer. Looking demure and making witty small talk were the only requirements. Then her landlord announced an outrageous rent increase on her Istanbul apartment. She has no desire to move in with Selim. She'd rather learn the art of bribing government officials in order to find a new place. Kati is offered a large apartment with a view over the Bosphorus at a bargain price. Too good to be true until a man is found murdered there and she becomes the police's prime suspect.

Special Agent Ren Bryce must solve a kidnapping. Mark and Jenna Whaley were granted overnight access to Laurie, Mark's 11 year old daughter from a previous marriage. But they return from dinner in the hotel to find both Laurie and her 16 year old babysitter Shelby missing.

Seth Weinstein is on the plane now for his destination wedding in Florida. He has no idea that in the next several hours he and his friends will become embroiled with rioters, Russian gangsters, angry strippers, a pimp as big as the Death Star, a very desperate Haitian refugee on the run with her two children from some very bad men, and an eleven-foot albino Burmese python named Blossom. And there're still two days to go before the wedding.

At the height of a heat wave in the quaint shopping district of Victoria Square, a tragic fire strikes. But the fire may just be a smoke screen - for murder. A body is found among the charred wreckage, and the victim didn't die from smoke inhalation. He was shot. Now Katie Bonner, the manager of Artisans Alley and amateur sleuth, is hot on the trail of a cold-blooded killer.

Forensic investigator Dr. Bill Brockton, in Avignon, France, becomes embroiled in a deadly religious mystery that could shake the Vatican itself to its very foundations.

In 2009, the CIA's Kabul station fell for a source who promised to lead it to bin Laden, but instead he blew himself up, taking the station's most senior officers with him. Now, more than two years later, it is still floundering, agents are dying, and at Langley, the CIA's chiefs wonder if the unthinkable has happened, if somehow the Taliban has infiltrated the station. When John Wells arrives to investigate, he finds a viper's nest of hostility and mistrust - and clues that hint at drug-trafficking operation involving the agency, the military, and the Taliban.

Makana, a former Sudanese police inspector forced to flee to Cairo, is now struggling to make ends meet as a private detective. In need of money, he takes a case from the notoriously corrupt mogul Saad Hanafi, owner of a Cairo soccer team, whose star player, Adil Romario, has gone missing. Soon, Makana is caught up in a mystery that takes him into the treacherous underbelly of his adopted city, encountering Muslim extremists, Russian gangsters, vengeful women, and a desperate mother hunting for her missing daughter.

Summer, 2001. As the mutilated bodies of young boys are turning up in the backstreets of Cairo and religious tension grows around the Coptic community, Sudanese investigator Makana probes a case involving a disgruntled travel agent and stolen money. Then he stumbles onto a link between his case and the murdered boys. His search for answers takes him from the labyrinth of Cairo to the city of Luxor and an abandoned monastery near the tombs of the pharaohs.

Meizi, the new girlfriend of Aimee Leduc's long time business partner, disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never comes back to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musee, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway - with Meizi's photo in his wallet. A missing young woman, an illegal immigrant raid in progress, botched affairs of the heart, dirty policemen, the French secret service, cutting-edge science secrets and a murderer on the loose - what has she gotten herself into?

Maddie's love of classic fashion has made her Vintage Magic boutique a success - even if the visions certain items give her lead her into trouble. Decades ago, at a Mystic Country Club costume ball, a secret scavenger hunt ended in death. Maddie has been invited to participate in a similar event, but one touch of a vintage petticoat hurtles her into a scavenger hunt of her own.

As Canadian detective Mike Ellis tries to save his troubled marriage in Old Havana, Inspector Ricardo Ramirez, head of the Major Crimes Unit of the Cuban National Revolutionary Police battles his incurable dementia and attempts to secure an indictment that will prevent a vicious killer from leaving the island.

Detective Mike Ellis returns from Cuba to find he's the main suspect in his wife's unexplained and unexpected death. Then Havana's Inspector Ramirez is dispatched to Canada's capital to take custody of a priest found with a laptop full of disturbing pictures of Cuban children. As Ramirez untangles a web of deceit that extends from the corridors of power in Ottawa to the Vatican, he not only uncovers the truth about Mike Ellis but discovers the reason behind a series of unexplained deaths of women in Havana.

When the nation's economy tanks, taking the construction business with it, all it takes is one phone call to drag Keller back into the game -- and back to his former home city, New York, where his target is the abbot of a midtown monastery. Another call puts him on a West Indies cruise, with several interesting fellow passengers-the government witness, the incandescent young woman keeping the witness company, and, sharing Keller's cabin, his wife, Julia. But the high drama comes in Cheyenne, where a recent widow is looking to sell her husband's stamp collection.

When the tomb of St. Tancred is opened at the village church in Bishop's Lacey, its shocking contents lead to another case for Flavia de Luce. Greed, pride, and murder result in old secrets coming to light--along with a forgotten flower that hasn't been seen for half a thousand years.

Washington DC fashion reporter Lacey Smithsonian doesn't believe her friend's shawl is cursed, but when someone who wears the shawl is found dead, she must unveil the real killer.

In Victorian London, India Black is a full-time madam and occasional secret agent. When she is called upon by the Prime Minister to stop anarchists who have begun assassinating lords and earls, India must infiltrate the ranks of the underground group responsible for those attacks, the sinister Dark Legion. To stop their dread plot, India will go from the murkiest slums of London to the highest levels of society, uncovering secrets that threaten her very existence.

Jack Reilly, a dodgy ex-Boston cop, is trying to make ends meet as a private investigator. When a client is killed, execution style, Reilly finds himself in a whole world of pain. Someone wants him dead - but why? To find out, Reilly must weed through thirty years of duplicity, corruption, and killing...a web of politicians dirtier than mobsters and criminals nobler than senators.

When the body of journalist Jerry Markham is found in a traditional Shetland boat, outside the house of the Fiscal down at the Marina, young Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is drafted in from the Hebrides to head up the investigation. Helped by Jimmy Perez, she is soon led to Sullum Voe, the heart of Shetland's North Sea oil and gas industry. It seems that Markham was pursuing a story.

Megan is a suburban soccer mom who once upon a time walked on the wild side. Now she's got two kids, a perfect husband, a picket fence, and a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Ray used to be a talented documentary photographer, but at age forty he finds himself in a dead-end job posing as a paparazzo pandering to celebrity-obsessed rich kids. Jack is a detective who can't let go of a cold case-a local husband and father disappeared seventeen years ago, and Jack spends the anniversary every year visiting a house frozen in time, the missing man's family still waiting, his slippers left by the recliner as if he might show up any moment to step into them. Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn't recede.

It's 1954, and a rabble-rousing social critic has declared war on comic books - especially the scary, gory, bloody sort published by the bad boys of the industry, EF Comics. But on the way to a Senate hearing on whether these depraved publications should be banned, the would-be censor meets a violent end of his own - leaving his opponents in hot water. Can Jack Starr, private eye to the funny-book industry, and his beautiful boss Maggie unravel the secret of Dr. Frederick's gruesome demise? Or will the crackdown come, falling like an executioner's axe...?

Honouring the wish of her late grandmother, Maura Donovan visits the small Irish village where her Gran was born and ends up taking a job in one of the local pubs in order to get to know the people who knew her Gran. In the pub, she's swamped with drink orders as everyone in town gathers to talk about the recent discovery of a nearly one-hundred-year-old body in a nearby bog. When Maura realizes she may know something about the dead man - and that the body's connected to another, more recent, death - she fears she's about to become mired in a homicide investigation.

Drew Havens made a killing for the Rising Fund, which, thanks to him, was the only hedge operation to anticipate and capitalize on the mortgage crisis of 2008. Havens sees things others can't, and now he's rich beyond his dreams. But his work has cost him his marriage - and now it may cost him his life. His young protege has been brutally murdered and six other brokers around the world, each killed after executing a trade linked to the Rising Fund. And if Havens can't see what others have missed, he's next on the list to be terminated.

Alison Kerby's guesthouse is haunted all year round. Even in winter she can count on at least two guests - Paul and Maxie, the stubborn ghosts who share her shore town inn. Then there's her widowed mother, who hasn't just been seeing ghosts, she's been secretly dating one - Alison's father. But when he stands her up three times in a row, something's wrong. Is he a lost soul...or a missing apparition?

A beautiful clairvoyant from a small Lao village has been enlisted by the long-dead brother of a general to help his brother uncover his remains, which have been lost at the bottom of a river for many years. Lao national coroner Dr. Siri Paiboun and his wife, Madame Daeng, are sent along to supervise the excavation. Siri is obsessed with the pretty medium's special abilities -- but for some reason Madame Daeng doesn't trust the woman.

When the quilt show judge and gossiping mail carrier Jo Paxton is murdered, Beatrice Coleman and the Village Quilters of Dappled Hills, North Carolina, have to piece together the clues to make out a killer's pattern.

When Detective Inspector James joins forces with Detective Inspector Melody Talbot to solve the murder of an esteemed barrister, their investigation leads them to realize that nothing is what it seems--with the crime they're investigating and their own lives.

Kincaid and James are embroiled in the case of the puzzling drowning of a rower, a Met detective, on the Thames.

Emma Lord is fretting over how her brother and her son - both priests - will react to her affair with Sheriff Milo Dodge. Another family is singing the blues when Postmaster Roy Everson shows up with bones that may belong to his mother, who's been missing for sixteen years. But the most disturbing discovery is the decomposed corpse found in a cave on Mount Sawyer.

Travel writer Lily Moore has been persuaded by her closest friend, photographer Jesse Robb, to visit Peru with him. Jesse is convinced that the trip will lure Lily out of her dark mood, but Lily is haunted by betrayal and loss. At Machu Picchu, the famous Lost City of the Incas, they discover a woman clinging to life at the bottom of an ancient stone staircase. Just before the woman dies, she tells Lily the name of the man who pushed her. When the local police investigate, the forensic evidence they find doesn't match what Lily knows.

Rogue FBI agent Andy Fisher, upon learning that the only woman he has ever loved has been murdered, goes to work and uncovers a plot by the Chinese government to sabotage the launch of a satellite to harvest solar energy and beam it to earth as electricity.

When 4 Derby College students are reporter missing, few in Derby CID, least of all DI Damen Brook, pay much attention. Then a film is discovered on the internet puporting to show the students committing suicide. If real, why did they kill themselves? If faked, where are the students? And if they've been murdered, who could have planned such a thing?

A dangerous maze of events takes Hammett from 1930s San Francisco to the glamorous Hollywood of the 1940s, a federal penitentiary at the time of the McCarthy hearings, and finally to a fateful meeting on New Years Eve, 1959, at a Long Island estate. There the dying Hammett confronts a woman from his past who proves to be his most formidable rival. And his last hope.

When Hannah Swensen hears that the Cinnamon Roll Six jazz band will be playing at a festival in Lake Eden, Minnesota, she bakes up a supply of their namesake confections to welcome them. But tragedy strikes when their tour bus overturns on its way into town. And keyboard player Buddy Neiman's minor injuries turn deadly serious when someone plunges surgical scissors into his chest. Turns out, Buddy Neiman isn't the victim's real name. In fact, no one is really sure who he is. Hannah's investigation digs up a few local suspects. There is Doctor Bev, who seems to know more about "Buddy" than she's willing to admit. And Devon, an aspiring keyboard player who may have had a fatal case of jealousy.

When one of Ben's neighbours is bludgeoned to death in his sitting room, Ben and Lizzie discover that there is a lot more to Mr. Thomas Tapley than meets the eye - and more than one person who would benefit from his death.

Detective Inspector Lorimer's worst nightmare is a serial killer loose in his city. But two serial killers operating at once in Glasgow is a nightmare come to life. Is there any link between the brutal slaying of prostitutes in the backstreets of the city and the methodical killing of several unconnected businessmen? Lorimer is never one to jump to conclusions, but something about these cases just doesn't add up.

On Halloween night, the Smith Museum in King's Lynn is preparing for an unusual event -- the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop. But when forensic archaelogist Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise, she finds the curator, Neil Topham, dead beside the coffin. Topham's death seems to be related to other uncanny incidents, including the arcane tactics of a group called the Elginists, which aims to repatriate the museum's extensive collection of Aborigine skulls; the untimely demise of the museum's owner, Lord Smith; and the sudden, dangerous illness of DCI Harry Nelson, who Ruth's friend Cathbad believes is lost in The Dreaming -- a hallucinogenic state central to some Aboriginal beliefs.

Bristol Coroner Jenny Cooper investigates two troubling deaths. The first is Adam Jordan, recently returned from aid work in the Sudan. He fell from a motorway bridge into the traffic below. The second is a teenage girl who died hours after showing symptoms of a terrifying new strain of meningitis. Her investigations begin to suggest the two deaths are linked, and that gene engineering research may be involved.

LA burglar Junior Bender is being bullied into proving aging music industry mogul Vinnie DiGaudio is innocent of the murder of a nasty tabloid journalist he'd threatened to kill a couple of times. It doesn't help that the dead journalist's widow is one pretty lady, and she's trying to get Junior to mix pleasure with business. Just as the investigation is spiraling out of control, Junior's hard-drinking landlady begs him to solve the disappearance of her daughter, who got involved with a very questionable character.

In Helsinki, photographer Cass Neary authenticates a series of disturbing but stunning images taken by a famous fashion photographer who has cut himself off from the violent Nordic music scene where he first made his reputation. Paid off by her shady employer, she buys a one-way ticket to Reykjavik, in search of a lover from her own dark past. But when the fashion photographer's mutilated corpse is discovered back in Finland, Cass finds herself sucked into a vortex of ancient myth and betrayal, vengeance and serial murder, set against a bone-splintering soundtrack of black metal and the terrifying beauty of the sunless Icelandic wilderness.

Halloween is fast approaching, and preparations for the Pumpkin Bash, Cape Willington's annual autumn festival, are well underway. Candy is running this year's haunted hayride, in the hopes of making some extra cash. But when she discovers a real dead body near some fake tombstones, Candy's side job becomes a full-blown investigation to find out who turned a holiday attraction into a real horror show.

The victim of a grisly murder in a New York bookstore has been marked with a message for Detective Callum Doyle. Then phone calls come, and more deaths, and the pressure mounts for Doyle to find a link.

Small town librarian Charlie Harris and his Maine coon cat Diesel are famous all over Athena, Mississippi for their mild manners and skill at solving murders. When a feud between the town's richest ladies over the location of this year's library fundraising gala, ends with one of them dead, it is up to Charlie to set the record straight.

Ali Reynolds is contracted to investigate the grisly murder of a gold-digging divorcee on behalf of a woman accused of the crime. Lynn Martinson is dating the dead woman's ex-husband, and she and her boyfriend Chip Ralston have been charged. Ali is simultaneously drawn to the case of A.J. Sanders, a frightened teen who is the first to find the body in the Camp Verde desert when he goes to retrieve a mysterious buried box hidden by his absent father - a box that turns out to be filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in poker chips. When the body of an ex-con is discovered near the first crime scene, Ali struggles to determine if A.J. and Lynn's cases are related.

Blind for the first twenty years of her life, Kendra Michaels honed her other senses to almost superhuman perfection - and unintentionally became a secret weapon for the FBI. When Kendra is approached by a dubious source about a serial murder investigation, her instincts tell her to steer clear. This time, however, the case is personal. The next name to turn up on the killer's hit list is Kendra's own ex-lover, an FBI agent who disappeared without a trace.

Shelter manager and pet rescuer Lauren Vancouver once again takes on the role of amateur sleuth when there's a murder on a film set. No animals were harmed during the filming of a new movie about a heroic poodle, but the same couldn't be said about the film's director.

As the temperature in Sweden reaches a record-breaking 45 degrees, forest fires break out. All those who failed to escape Linkoping for the summer take shelter indoors, shocked and paralyzed by the heat. A teenage girl is discovered naked and bleeding in the local park and a second girl is found dead. It is clear that the raging heat is not the only plague affecting the town. Alarmed by the fact that the victims are the same age as her daughter, Detective Malin Fors will work round the clock to capture the perpetrators before they strike again.

A backyard renovation in LA unearths an infant's body, buried 60 years ago. And soon thereafter in a nearby park, another disturbingly bizarre discovery is made not far from the body of a young woman shot in the head. Milo Sturgis and Alex Delaware, backtracking six decades into the past, stir up tales of a beautiful nurse with a mystery lover, a handsome, wealthy doctor who seems too good to be true, and a hospital with a notorious reputation - all of them long gone, along with any records of a newborn.

When it comes to exposing tax fraud, Tara and her partner Eddie are really cleaning up. From their brilliant takedown of the disappearing "Tax Wizard" to their perfectly planned downfall of the "Deduction Diva," they've earned the respect of their peers at Criminal Investigations. Now Tara's ready to celebrate with an ice-cold pitcher of peach sangria - even if her next case is totally the pits.

Nineteen-year-old Paul sits in a stark interrogation room across from two police officers. What started as petty theft turned into murder; only terror and loyalty keep him silent. Louisa spends her days roaming a crumbling Elizabethan garden - until she meets Paul, who is a dead ringer for her long-lost love. Louisa starts to hope she can find happiness again, but neither of them can outrun his violent past.

When former Mayville Heights resident Mike Glazer returns to town, the town puts out their best food, art and culture in hopes he may put them on the map as a tourist destination. But when the abrasive Mike is found dead on the boardwalk, it's up to librarian Kathleen Paulson and her two curiously gifted cats, Hercules and Owen, to uncover the truth.

May Lynn is a pretty girl who dreams of becoming a Hollywood star until her dead body is dredged up from the Sabine River. Sue Ellen, May Lynn's strong-willed teenage friend, her friends Terry and Jinx, and Sue Ellen's mother set out to dig up May Lynn's body, burn it to ash, and take those ashes to Hollywood. If May Lynn can't become a star, at least her remains can be spread in the land of her dreams. Pursued by Uncle Gene and Constable Sy, who are after the money they've found, and Skunk, an all-too-real legendary killer who is after their lives, they begin to understand that when you set out to make the dreams of a friend your own, your worst nightmares might come along for the ride.

Three men are linked by murder: Niklas, a fanatic ex-mercenary; Thomas, a fallen cop; and Mahmud, a young Arab who involuntarily finds himself working for Radovan, Stockholm's own Godfather.

Raised by loving adoptive parents, San Francisco private investigator Wyatt Hunt never had an interest in finding his birth family-until he gets a chilling text message from an unknown number. "How did ur mother die?" Child Protective Services, who suspected but could never prove that Hunt was being neglected, is uninformed; his birth father, twice tried but never convicted of the murder, is in hiding; Evie, his mother's drug-addicted religious fanatic of a friend, is untraceable. And who is the texter, and how are they connected to Hunt?

The man Jason Bourne fishes out of the frozen lake is near death, bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound and drowning. He awakens as an amnesiac, with no memory of who he is or why he was shot--and Bourne is eerily reminded of his own past.

Twenty years ago, Ian Wallace watched coldhearted KGB colonel Vladimir Ivanchenko brutally murder the love of his life. Now the devil is in Boston on a twisted mission, and Wallace has teamed up with irresistibly sexy, tough-as-nails CIA agent Kathy Donahue to get his revenge. Their orders are to guard Ivanchenko's target, an obnoxious big government-loving MIT professor whose research is a matter of national security. But soon Wallace's bloodthirst reveals his own evil nature.

A brand-new collection of Sherlock Holmes stories from a variety of exciting voices in modern horror and steampunk, including James Lovegrove, Justin Richards, Paul Magrs, Guy Adams and Mark Hodder.

A young man is found dead with a Royal Wulff trout fly stuck through his lip. Sheriff Martha Ettinger's investigation leads her to cross paths with fly fisher, painter and has-been private detective Sean Stranahan. As the water temperature rises, the clues point them both toward Montana's big business: fly fishing. Where there's money, there's bound to be crime.

Naomi Stride was a wealthy woman, and her death has left several people richer - none more so than her twenty-six-year-old son Theo, with whom she had long had bitter differences over money. She was also a controversial woman, a writer whose novels had been banned in South Africa. But was it for money, politics, or some other unknown reason that she was killed? And why was her naked corpse strewn with flowers and herbs? Kramer and Zondi investigate.

As Dana Lewis settles into a quiet life of tofu this and tofu that, murder a la carte is the last thing she wants on her plate. But when she learns about the death of Monster Truck driver Bobby Joe Jones, frequent philanderer and boyfriend to Dana's sister Ashlee, she has no choice but to wipe up the mess. Especially when witnesses last saw Ashlee angry up in Bobby Joe's grill at the fairgrounds.

A lone robber bursts into a busy Glasgow post office carrying an AK-47. An elderly man suddenly hands his young grandson to a stranger and wordlessly helps the gunman fill bags with cash, then carries them to the door. He opens the door and bows his head; the robber fires off the AK-47, tearing the grandfather in two. DS Alex Morrow arrives on the scene and finds that the alarm system had been disabled before the robbery. Yet upon investigation, none of the employees can be linked to the gunman. And the grandfather-a life-long campaigner for social justice-is above reproach.

Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8 million had been stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp., whose offices are across the street from where Zella worked. Zella didn't remember shooting Harry, but she didn't deny it either. The district attorney was inclined to call it temporary insanity-until the police found $80,000 from the Rutgers heist hidden in her storage space. For reasons of his own, Leonid McGill is convinced of Zella's innocence.

1990: Faith Sibley is preparing for both her wedding and a move to chilly New England. But a series of baffling mysteries is making her path to the altar rocky. What family secret is her new assistant, Francesca, hiding? Who is trying to derail Faith's sister's financial career? Why is there a body in her great-uncle's Long Island mansion? And who is determined to sabotage Faith's special day - by eliminating the bride?

Matthew Bannon, a poor art student living in New York City, finds a duffel bag filled with diamonds during a chaotic attack at Grand Central Station. But Matthew's newly laid plans for a worry-free life have left out the Ghost, the world's greatest hit man. Since the assassin did all the work of exterminating a top member of the international Diamond Syndicate, he seems to feel that those diamonds are his.

Top plastic surgeon Elijah Creem is renowned for his skills in the operating room, and for his wild, no-expense-spared "industry parties," bringing in underage exotic dancers and models for nights of drugs, champagne, and uninhibited sex. That is, until Detective Alex Cross busts one of Creem's lavish soirees and ruins his fun. Now Creem is willing to do anything to avoid going to jail.

Adam Blaine arrives on the island of Martha's Vineyard to attend the funeral of his estranged father, Ben Blaine. As soon as he arrives, Adam discovers that his father has disinherited his mother, uncle, and brother in favour of his lover Carla, and begins to wonder if his father's death - caused by an inexplicable fall from a cliff - might be murder. Using his training as a CIA operative, Adam skillfully seeks to obscure the evidence suggesting that a family member may have killed his father, while at the same time fighting to undo the will, which favours the enigmatic Carla.

Chief Inspector John Kerr from Scotland Yard investigates suspected terrorists and other potential threats to his country. When Kerr's investigations are blocked, he goes at it alone and begins to expose a cover-up that extends to all levels of the British establishment.

Jane Whitefield spirits James Shelby, a man unjustly convicted of his wife's murder, out of the heavily guarded criminal court building in downtown Los Angeles. But within minutes employees of the real killer take Jane captive, shoot, and torture her to revealed Shelby's hiding place.

When the next generation of technology seeps into the brains of the next generation of people, former medical student turned journalist Nat Idle must investigate and stop the invasion.

Despite her inabiity to stay in one place longer than three months and her terrible record with romance, Gladie Burger is recruited by her eccentric Grandma Zelda into the family's matchmaking business in Cannes, California. When Zelda's neighbour drops dead in his kitchen, Gladie is swept into his bizarre family's drama. Despite warnings from the (distractingly gorgeous) chief of police to steer clear of his investigation, Gladie is out to prove that her neighbour's death was murder.

Will Trent is a brilliant agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Newly in love, he is beginning to put a difficult past behind him. Then a local college student goes missing, and Will is inexplicably kept off the case by his supervisor and mentor, deputy director Amanda Wagner.

Microbiologist Hallie Leland is summoned to the White House. A mysterious epidemic is killing American soldiers in Afghanistan - and poised for outbreak in the United States and beyond. Without the ultrarare organism needed to create an antidote, millions will die. Hallie knows more about "Moonmilk" than anyone - but it can be found only at the bottom of the deepest cave on Earth. To get there, she and her team of experts must brave a forbidding Mexican jungle crawling with drug cartels, federales, and murderous locals. And in the supercave await far greater terrors: flooded tunnels, acid lakes, bottomless chasms, mind-warping blackness - and a cunning assassin with orders to make the mission a journey of no return.

After recovering from surgery for a brain tumour, Kari Vaara begins running a rogue black-ops unit for the National Chief of Police, robbing Helsinki's mobsters blind of their cash, dope, and illegal firearms. But when Finland's leading immigrants' rights advocate is assassinated and her head sent by mail to the Finnish Somalia Network, the president assigns Kari to the murder. Cracking this case will involve the unsolved kidnapping of a billionaire's children, a Faustian bargain with a former French legionnaire - and Kari's American wife Kate.

London, summer 1920. An unidentified body appears to have been run down by a motorcar and Ian Rutledge is leading the investigation to uncover what happened. One small clue leads Rutledge to a firm built by two families, famous for producing and selling the world's best Madeira wine. Lewis French, the current head of the English enterprise, is missing. But is he the dead man? And does either his fiancee or his jilted former lover have anything to do with his disappearance--or possible death? What about his sister? Or the London office clerk? Is Matthew Traynor, French's cousin and partner who heads the Madeira office, somehow involved?

Ridley Jones is being a lot more careful about where she steps and trying to get on with her life when another seemingly mundane act - picking up a few envelopes of prints at a photo lab - puts her at the nexus of a global network of crime. A shadowy figure of a man appears in almost every picture she's taken in the last year, lurking just far enough away to make identification impossible. Everyone from the federal government to the criminal underworld wants to know who the man is.

At a reception hosted by a notorious Russian black marketeer, Doc Ford uses darkness, and his friend Tomlinson, as cover to get an underwater look at the billionaire's yacht. By the time Ford surfaces, everything has changed. Environmental extremists have taken control of the island. Or are they thugs hired by the Russian's competitors? Whatever the motive, they have herded everyone together and threatened to kill one hostage every hour until midnight unless their demands are met-at which point they will just blow everybody up.

It's Jordan Kelly's job to hunt down rare mysteries for an avid book collector. Her first assignment? Find a never-before-published play by Agatha Christie. It seems easy enough, but Jordan soon discovers that her predecessor was murdered while looking for it.

A heartfelt plea to look into the death of a world-famous vintner goes hand in hand with the opportunity to attend an exclusive gourmet event in British Columbia's stunning wine country. How can overindulgent foodie and criminologist Cait Morgan resist? Sure that the award-winning owner of a family-run vineyard was murdered, Cait shares her findings with Bud Anderson, a retired homicide cop. But he is convinced that the woman took her own life, whatever her grief-stricken sister might say. That is, until death strikes once again.

Ella Mae LeFaye's Charmed Pie Shoppe is wildly popular in Havenwood, Georgia - which is not surprising since Ella Mae can lace her baked goods with enchantments. But when she's asked to handle the dessert buffet at a wedding and a guest becomes seriously ill, she'll have to use all her skills to prove her pies don't contain a killer ingredient.

Will Robie is a contract hitman who works for the US government. Something about his latest job doesn't seem right to him, and he refuses to kill. Now on the run from his employer he crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a fourteen-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn't an ordinary runaway-her parents were murdered, and her own life is in danger. The more Robie learns about the girl, the more he's convinced she is at the center of a vast cover-up.

Disaster strikes a mere week before the Hemlock Falls Ladies' Auxiliary hosts the annual Spring Fete when the festival's chairwoman - the redoubtable Adela Henry - gives up her job in a huff. Hemlock's mayor hopes to assure the fete's success when he recruits professional organizer Linda Connally and her staff to take over Adela's duties. But when Connally's body turns up in the trunk of a used car at Peterson's Automotive, Meg and Sarah are back in the detecting business.

A possibly priceless long-lost Modigliani portrait, a grieving brother's blood vendetta, a Soviet secret that's been buried for 80 years - Parisian private investigator Aimee Leduc's current case is her most complicated one yet.

When a Cambridge student dramatically attempts to take her own life, DI Mark Joesbury realizes that the university has developed an unhealthy record of young people committing suicide in extraordinary ways. Against huge personal misgivings, Joesbury sends young policewoman DC Lacey Flint to Cambridge, with a brief to work under-cover, posing as a depression-prone, vulnerable student.

A local businessman runs afoul of the EPA when the land on which he intends to build his retirement home is declared a wetland. He disappears in the mountains after two EPA employees are murdered. But the more Joe Pickett looks into the matter, the more he uncovers -- and the more he finds himself in the middle of a war he never expected.

He never wanted to tell Joe Pickett about it, but in 1995, Nate Romanski was in a secret Special Forces unit abroad when a colleague did something terrible. Now high up in the government, the man is determined to eliminate anyone who knows about it, and Nate knows exactly how he'll do it-by striking at Nate's friends to draw him out. The entire Pickett family will be a target, and the only way to fight back is outside the law. Nate knows he can do it, but he isn't sure about his straight-arrow friend-and all their lives could depend on it.

Toy manufacturer Rob Karble is in town to meet the members of the Amish community who will soon be crafting a new toy line for his company. But when word gets out that Karble intends to use the Amish designs without employing the Amish to make them, someone sends the interloper to his final reward. No one wants to believe anyone from the Amish community could commit such an act, but as Claire and Detective Fisher have learned, no one is above sin - or suspicion.

New York, 1896. Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife Louisa arrive at the Britannic Hotel. As Doyle prepares his lectures for his first American tour, Louisa sees an artist's sketch of a woman whose brutally murdered corpse has been found in a Bowery alley. She is convinced that she has seen the woman before.

Before leaving for vacation with Livia, Montalbano witnesses a seagull doing an odd dance on the beach outside his home when the bird suddenly drops dead. Stopping by his office before heading off he finds Fazio is missing. Montalbano sets out to find him and discovers the seagull's dance of death may provide the key to understanding a macabre world of sadism, extortion and murder.

The opening of the aquarium is a major Charleston event, and Theodosia has been hired to cater tea for the private party to honour dignitaries and big buck donors. Things are going swimmingly, until Theodosia escapes the party for a momentary rest, only to discover the body of Parker Scully - her former boyfriend - entangled in a net, drowned in one of the aquarium's state-of-the-art tanks. The EMTs on the scene think it was an accident, but Theodosia believes that someone wanted Parker dead.

Biblical scholar Jonathan Lyons believes he has found the rarest of parchments - a letter that may have been written by Jesus Christ. Within days Jonathan is found shot to death in his study. At the same time, his wife Kathleen, who is suffering from Alzheimer's, is found incoherent and clutching the murder weapon. Even in her dementia, Kathleen has known that her husband was carrying on a long-term affair.

Six years ago Jake Sanders watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. For six years he has kept his promise to leave her alone, but now, after her husband dies, he attends the funeral hoping to catch a glimpse of Natalie. But the bereaved widow is not Natalie. And it turns out that no one has seen Natalie in years. Was his life for the last six years based on a carefully constructed fiction?

Lucky O'Toole - Head of Customer Relations at The Babylon, premier mega-resort on the Vegas Strip - thinks it's just another night in Las Vegas. But then a magician pulls a disappearing act, right under Lucky's nose. While Lucky chases leads, someone is trying to put her off the scent.

Athens, 460 B.C. When an Athenian official is murdered, Pericles puts Nico on the job. The case takes Nico, in the company of a beautiful slave girl, to the land of Ionia within the Persian Empire. The Persians will execute him on the spot if they think he's a spy. He's being chased by brigands who are only waiting for the right price before they kill him. And somehow he has to placate his girlfriend, who is very angry about that slave girl.

St.Patrick's Day is usually a time of revelry in Longely, but this year things will be different. The festivities certainly don't get off to a smooth start when Bernie's boyfriend finds Mike Sweeney floating face down in a vat of green beer. So much for the luck of the Irish. When their best customer's nephew, Duncan, is tagged for the crime, Bernie and Libby are asked to investigate. It won't be easy, though, because Duncan looks like a good fit for the crime. But the deeper Bernie, Libby, and Sean delve into Mike Sweeney's death, the more they discover that things are not what they seem.

Violetta's salon is up in arms. Business is dead. Snippets, a big box haircutting chain, has opened in St. Elizabeth, undercutting prices and luring away loyal customers. Violetta's daughter, hairdresser Grace Terhune, is shocked to discover that it's her old high school rival Lisa Butterworth who's behind the big sweep. Then a bitter confrontation leaves Grace more than frustrated, and Lisa less than alive. Now Grace is the prime suspect in her rival's murder.

Lily Moore joins a group of travel journalists for an all-expenses-paid press trip to Mexico's famous resort town of Acapulco. When she arrives at the luxurious Hotel Ceron, she finds a resort that's nearly deserted, a staff who waits attentively to serve guests who aren't there, and abandoned construction projects on the grounds. When Lily's fellow journalist, Skye McDermott, suddenly disappears, Lily knows something is terribly wrong.

A top secret research team in the Badlands of North Dakota is developing a way to produce clean energy from coal. A cadre of oil hedge fund managers hires a crew of mercenary fanatics to attack the team's experimental power station. Despite the bloody assault, the research continues as war-hero sheriff Nate Osborne and brash journalist Ashley Borden search for the attackers.

A woman is discovered hanged in a hotel room in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her parents are bereft and unable to explain the puzzling contents of the note she left behind. But Chief Inspector Erik Winter wonders whether the family is holding back some secret that might help identify the murderer. Meanwhile, Winter recalls that one of his first cases as a young detective concerned a young woman who disappeared - from the same room in the same hotel. That case was never solved.

1845. Bartender Timothy Wilde is forced to accept a job in the newly minted New York City Police Department. Returning exhausted from his rounds one night, Tim collides with a girl no more than ten years old - covered in blood. She claims that dozens of bodies are buried in the forest north of Twenty-Third Street. Now, as the image of a killer is revealed and anti-Irish rage infects the city, the reluctant cop will engage in a battle that may cost him everything.

IS JACK BACK? After a national book tour, Jessica lands in sunny Bermuda for some well-earned relaxation. But when she arrives, the local population is abuzz over a trio of brutal murders, each bearing an eerie resemblance to the infamous Jack the Ripper killings.

Hannah Swensen's famous Red Velvet cupcakes are being served at the Grand Opening of the refurbished Albion Hotel. Doctor Bev, who had left town in shame after two-timing her fiance, has arrived and busies herself trying to stir things up with her old flame Norman, who has reunited with Hannah. Then Bev is found dead at the bottom of Miller's Pond and Hannah becomes the target of a murder investigation.

When five-year-old Matthew Farraday is abducted, pscyhotherapist Frieda Klein cannot ignore the fact that his photograph perfectly matches the boy one of her patients describes from his fantasies. Before long, Frieda finds herself serving as the reluctant sidekick of Detective Chief Inspector Karlsson at the center of a desperate race to find the kidnapper.

Henry Steadman is a successful Florida plastic surgeon, in town to deliver a keynote address at a conference. Stopped by the police for a minor traffic violation, the situation escalates and he is pulled from his vehicle, handcuffed and told he is under arrest. Several other police cars arrive and the questioning turns scary, but just as Henry is released and about to move on, a blue sedan pulls up and the officer is suddenly killed. As the car speeds away, there is only one suspect left behind-Henry.

Vintage kitchenware and cookbook collector Jaymie Leighton finds a former friend murdered, with Jaymie's own Depression-era glass bowl. With her fingerprints all over the bowl and a troubled history with the victim, Jaymie suddenly finds herself at the top of the list of suspects. Did the killer intend to frame her for the murder?

When Gabrielle Tennyson is murdered, aristocratic investigator Sebastian St. Cyr and his reluctant new bride, the fiercely independent Hero Jarvis, find themselves involved in an intrigue concerning the myth of King Arthur, Camelot, and a future poet laureate...

After a year away from working in the field, archaeologist Cormac Maguire and pathologist Nora Gavin are back in the bogs, investigating a ninth-century body found buried in the trunk of a car. They discover that the ancient corpse is not alone - pinned beneath it is the body of Benedict Kavanagh, missing for mere months and familiar to television viewers as a philosopher who enjoyed destroying his opponents in debate. Both men were viciously murdered, but centuries apart - so how did they end up buried together in the bog?

After a tip-off, a man's body is exhumed from a shallow grave. Chief Constable Bob Skinner and his people keep digging to discover the identity of the man, and who buried him. Meanwhile corruption is discovered within the force, Skinner's marriage is heading for the rocks, and his career is hanging in the balance. Can Skinner win out or will his life implode?

Eve Duncan's mother, Sandra, asks for help in finding a missing friend named Beth Avery. Beth has been locked away in a mental hospital for years, which makes it even harder to understand how she could have disappeared. As Sandra reluctantly reveals small pieces of the truth about Beth's identity, Eve is shocked to discover that their lives are strangely entwined, and Beth's disappearance now puts them all in grave danger.

When superstar thriller writer William de Vallee is declared dead, his old friend Arthur Pfefferkorn greets the news with mixed emotions. A failed writer himself, he lost the woman he loved to de Vallee. But now Bill is gone, and Pfefferkorn is there to comfort Carlotta in her time of grief. Then he is plunged into a shadowy world of intrigue and double crosses, where no one can be trusted - and nothing can be taken seriously.

Detective Patrik Hedstrom investigates the death of a man found murdered in his own home, shot in the back of the head. He was the council's financial director, heading up a regeneration project worth millions. They discover he had been in a rush to return to his home town of Fjallbacka after years in Gothenburg. Is it pure coincidence that his childhood sweetheart Annie has also suddenly returned to the area?

Assistant DA Andy Barber is shocked when his teenage son Jacob is accused of stabbing to death a young boy in a leafy park. Andy believes in Jacob's innocence. Any parent would. But the pressure mounts. Damning evidence. Doubt. A faltering marriage. The neighbours' contempt. A murder trial that threatens to obliterate Andy's family. It is the ultimate test for any parent.

From the outside, Carter Tomlin's life looked perfect: a big house, pretty wife, two kids - a St. Paul success story. But Tomlin has a secret. He's lost his job, the bills are mounting, and that perfect life is hanging by a thread. Desperate, he robs a bank. Then he robs another. As the red flags start to go up, FBI Special Agent Carla Windermere homes in on Tomlin from one direction, while Minnesota state investigator Kirk Stevens picks up the trail from another.

Spring 1885, Northwest Territories. Amid the chaos and strife of the Battle of Batoche, Reuben Wake is murdered - shot at point blank range. Terrance Le Biche, a Metis man, is arrested for the crime. But Le Biche claims innocence - he admits he had every intention of killing Wake, but says someone beat him to the foul deed. When Durrant Wallace, a sergeant in the North West Mounted Police, begins his own investigation into Le Biche's possible motives, he learns there were many who wanted Wake dead.

The one mystery Supervisory Special Agent Caitlyn Tierney has never solved is her father's unexplained suicide after arresting his best friend for murder. It drove Caitlyn to become one of the FBI's best agents - and often the most unorthodox. Her latest case is no exception when the man she holds responsible for her father's death asks for help in finding his missing daughter. Caitlyn's search brings her back to her North Carolina hometown, now vibrant with new money, old lies, and an unknown enemy who will do anything to keep Caitlyn from learning the truth - and who will kill to keep it buried.

In Johannesburg prosperous whites live in gated communities. When they exit their cars to open the gates, car-jackings are common. But seldom is the victim killed, much less shot twice, like Annette Botha. Piet Botha, the husband of the wealthy woman, is the primary suspect in his wife's murder. P.I. Jade de Jong fled South Africa ten years ago after her father was killed. Now back in town, she offers to help her father's former assistant, Superintendent David Patel, with his investigation of this case.

Baghdad, 1917. Captain Jim Stringer has been dispatched to investigate what looks like a case of treason. But he arrives to find a city on the edge of insurrection, his cover apparently blown, and his only contact lying dead with flies in his eyes.

The tranquil life Brigid Quinn builds after being pushed into early retirement is disrupted when a man named Floyd Lynch confesses to the worst unsolved case of Brigid's career - the disappearance and presumed murder of her young protegee, Jessica. Though he knows details never made public, and has offered to lead the cops to Jessica's body in return for a plea bargain, the new FBI agent on the case, Laura Coleman, thinks the confession is fake.

In 1972 a gold bullion convoy is hijacked in Marseilles, and a ton of gold disappears. More than twenty years later, Daniel Jacquot receives an unexpected gift from an old fisherman. At the same time, a Marseilles lawyer called Claude Dupont receives an equally unexpected gift from a dying gangland boss. Both gifts point the way to the missing gold and pit Jacquot and Dupont against the Polineaux and Duclos familles, two of the oldest and most feared crime syndicates on the Cote d'Azur.

Louis Kincaid is taking his daughter, ten-year-old Lily, on a trip to Michigan's enchanting Mackinac Island. But when Lily takes a fall onto a pile of old bones in an abandoned hunting lodge, the vacation's over. Louis reluctantly agrees to help the island's inexperienced police chief. His reluctance only grows when he discovers the state investigator is Norm Rafsky, who had worked with Louis's girlfriend Joe Frye fifteen years ago. When Joe returns to the island to help, she and Louis must confront the simmering tension between her and Rafsky, and yet stay focused on finding a dangerous killer who may still be in the area.

Jeanine Fournier has looks to die for, a handsome police officer husband, and a carefree life in Key West. When she learns she's pregnant with their first child, her happiness is almost overwhelming. Jeanine's whole life is shattered when she unearths a terrible secret that causes her to run for her life and change her identity. Now, years later, an even greater horror leads her to risk everything she's earned-a secure life in New York City, a prosperous career as a lawyer, even the daughter she loves-to return to Florida and confront the murderous evil she fled.

When millionaire Chaz Smith is mercilessly gunned down, the now-pregnant Lindsay Boxer discovers that the murder weapon is linked to the deaths of four of San Francisco's most untouchable criminals. And it was taken from her own department's evidence locker. Lindsay is called next to the most bizarre crime scene she's ever seen: two bodiless heads elaborately displayed in the garden of a world-famous actor. Another head is unearthed in the garden, and Lindsay realizes that the ground could hide hundreds of victims.

When Jessie Clarkson left Sayer's Brook, Connecticut, she was pregnant, terrified, and married to a psychopath. She knew Emil would do anything to prevent her from incriminating him if he ever found her. Five years later, Emil is dead and Jessie is ready to stop running. Until the murders start -- each victim with a connection to Jessie.

Thomas Pitt, now the powerful head of Britain's Special Branch, hears rumours of a plot to blow up connections on the Dover-London rail line - on which Austrian duke Alois Habsburg is soon to travel to visit his royal English kin. Meanwhile, in a London sickroom, an old Italian woman at the end of a romantic career as a revolutionary spy, is terrified that as she sinks into dementia, she may divulge secrets that can kill. And a beautiful young Croatian woman, married to a British power broker, hoards her own mysteries.

PI Jack Till takes the case of a recently murdered young girl after the police come up empty. He discovers that the victim is just one of several young female escorts killed in different cities in the exact same way - all had strawberry blonde hair, and all were shot with a 9mm handgun in the sanctity of their apartments. Till must find his way around the tawdry and secretive online escort business, and decode ads placed by young women who all use false names, sometimes advertise using other women's pictures, and move from city to city every few months.

Sorenson Wisconsin's deputy coroner Mattie Winston is spending Christmas Day at the burnt remains of a house where a charred body has been found. The victim is a paraplegic who recently won a huge casino jackpot. It seems that someone wanted his winnings.

Surveillance operative Danny Baxter has been given a bigger job than photographing dissident Republicans in muddy Ulster fields or Islamic extremists on rainswept Yorkshire moors. And if he's caught, Her Majesty's Government will deny all knowledge.

Precious Ramotswe is called in to tackle a disciplinary problem at a local school. Meanwhile, her trusted assistant, Grace Makutsi, is having trouble adjusting to wedded bliss, a problem that may test even Precious Ramotswe's formidable talents. Finally, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi meet an old mentor for the first time, when the estimable Clovis Andersen, author of their personal manual, Principles of Private Investigation, arrives in Botswana on a case.

Sophie Brinkmann had no idea her former patient was an international crime lord. Hector Guzman had a Latin charm and easy smile she couldn't deny, so she agreed to a date. Jens Vall is in Paraguay facilitating a delivery of very dangerous weapons when he's attacked by angry Russians. They think he stole their drugs. Lars Vinge is a beat cop with a nasty drug habit he thought he kicked. He's given an important assignment that soon turns into deadly obsession. All of their paths will collide.

One hundred years of bad blood between the villages of Kushtaka and Kuskulana come to a boil when the body of a young Kushtaka ne'er-do-well is found wedged in a fish wheel. Sergeant Jim Chopin's prime suspect is a Kuskulana man who is already in trouble in both villages for falling in love across the river. But when the suspect disappears, members of both tribes refuse to speak to Jim. When a second murder that looks suspiciously like payback occurs, Jim has no choice but to call in Kate Shugak for help.

Reluctant spy Milo Weaver has no choice but to turn back to his old job as a "tourist", doing CIA dirty work. But he will have to prove his loyalty to his new bosses. And then he is suddenly put in a dangerous position, between right and wrong, between powerful self-interested men, between patriots and traitors - especially as a man who has nothing left to lose.

BC Authors. RCMP constable Danutia Dranchuk and drama critic Arthur Fairweather are visiting England's Peak District. Danutia has been transferred to the area for a police-training course, while Arthur returns for his mother's funeral. Suspecting foul play in her death, the two question the feuding members of the village's well dressing committee. When a child from the village is abducted, the race to save him leads Arthur into extreme danger.

Devereaux Sinclair loves running her old-fashioned five-and-dime store in a small Missouri town. After Elise Whitmore offers her a great deal on antique chocolate molds for Easter, Elise is shot and Dev's good friend Boone is taken into custody. Dev must clear Boone's name and find the real killer.

Manhattan, 1778: Edward Savill has been sent here, to last part of America under British rule, to look into the claims of dispossessed loyalists. However, a man is murdered in Manhattan's notorious Canvas Town, and when an escaped slave is hanged for the murder, Savill is convinced there has been a miscarriage of justice.

An Estonian woman begs Kari Vaara to find her daughter, Loviise, a young woman with Downs syndrome who was promised work and a better life in Finland - and has since disappeared. His search will lead him from the glittering world of Helsinki's high-class clubs to the darkest circles of Finland's underground trade in trafficked women - and straight into the path of Loviise's captors, who may be some of the most untouchable people in the country.

When a local baker gets run over by a big white Cadillac, psychic Sunny can see nothing good coming from the fact that Granny and Fiona were found at the crime scene. Sunny knows she should step aside and let Detective Mitch handle the investigating, but she's not about to ignore her visions and leave her granny's life in fate's hands.

London, 1861. Violet Morgan is running the undertaking business her husband Graham has largely abandoned. He has become involved in a scheme to sell arms to the Confederate States. Though she has received a commission to undertake the funeral of a friend of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, her position remain precarious. Graham has disappeared and she has become involved in an investigation of a series of deaths among the poor.

An accident two decades earlier decimated Christine's ability to form new memories. Every day her husband Ben must tell her who he is. But it is a phone call from a neurologist that directs her to the diary she has been keeping. She relearns the facts of her life as retold by her husband. But she begins to notice inconsistencies in Ben's account.

The year is 1977, and America is finally getting over the nightmares of Watergate and Vietnam and the national hangover that was the 1960s. But not everyone is ready to let it go. Not aging comedian Koo Davis, friend to generals and presidents and veteran of countless USO tours to buck up American troops in the field. And not the five remaining members of the self-proclaimed People's Revolutionary Army, who've decided that kidnapping Koo Davis would be the perfect way to bring their cause back to life... The final, previously unpublished novel from the legendary Donald Westlake!

While trying to solve one of Florida's most profound secrets, Doc Ford is the target of a murder attempt by someone who wants to make it look like an accident. Or is the target actually Tomlinson? What their small family of friends don't know is that their secret pasts make it impossible for the two of them to go to the law for help. There is an assassin on the loose, and it is up to them to find the killer.

DS Jessica Daniels is first on the scene as a stolen car crashes on a misty, wet Manchester morning. The driver is dead, but the biggest shock awaits her when she discovers the body of a child wrapped in plastic in the boot of the car. As she struggles to discover the identity of the driver, a thin trail leads her first to a set of clothes buried in the woods and then to a list of children's names abandoned in an allotment shed.