Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene is approached at a legal conference by Preston Davies, an unassuming young man and fellow law clerk to a federal judge in Idaho. Davies believes his boss, Judge Francesca Whitner, was being blackmailed in the days before she died. Another shocking murder leads Avery to a list of names - all federal judges - and, alarmingly, all judges on the FISA Court (the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).

A collection of 20 stories by Hard Case Crime founding editor Charles Ardai.

1968. Virginia lawyer Jack Lee decides to represent Jerome Washington, a black man charged with brutally killing an elderly, wealthy white couple. When he finds himself out of his depth, he enters a fractious partnership with black Chicago lawyer Desiree DuBose. On their own, neither one can stop the prosecution's deliberate march towards a guilty verdict and the electric chair. But together, the pair fight for what once seemed impossible: a chance for a fair trial and true justice.

Commissaire Georges Dupin is at home in Concarneau for Pentecost, his future-in-laws due to visit. But Dupin's plans as host must change when the body of Doctor Chaboseau is discovered. Chaboseau fell to his death, pushed from his home above Dupin's favourite restaurant. With only two new colleagues to help - no one else is answering their phone - Dupin is tasked with finding out what happened to the doctor.

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return of his family: his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe. But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

As a team, Matt Drake and his partner, Frodo, have watched each other's backs through some very dark days. But one thing they've never doubted was their commitment to each other...until now. Frodo has been accused of a war crime ten years after leaving Afghanistan. Matt is determined to prove his friend innocent, but what will he do when he finds that his closest friend has secrets he won't share?

Stationed in Bahrain off the coast of Saudi Arabia for his final tour, CIA agent Shane Collins is anxious to dispense with his mission - uncovering Iranian support for the insurgency against the monarchy. But then he meets Almaisa, a beautiful and enigmatic artist, and his eyes are opened to a side of Bahrain most expats never experience, to questions he never thought to ask. When a trusted informant becomes embroiled in a murder, Collins finds himself drawn deep into the conflict and his growing romance with Almaisa upended.

Florence. Summer, 1538. A night patrol finds a rich merchant hanged and set ablaze in the city's main piazza. More than mere murder, this killing is intended to put the fear of God into Florence, by reenacting the execution of puritanical monk Girolamo Savonarola. When another important merchant is slain even more publicly than the first, Cesare Aldo must investigate.

Parisian PI Aimee LeDuc is framed for the murder of her ex, Melac, and now finds herself in police custody, debilitated by a concussion. She must figure out who murdered Melac - not an easy job, given the target on his back as a former homicide investigator. Cut off from her typical network and forced to operate under multiple layers of cover, she will go deep into the underbelly of Paris's 19th arrondissement, with its biker gangs, paranoid journalists, grieving parents, and frustratingly tight-lipped ex-cops.

The struggling vinyl records shop/coffee nook, Sip & Spin Records in Cedar River, Texas, has attracted the attention of predatory investors, but the Jessup sisters have no intention of selling. When a pushy finance bro is killed outside their shop during a torrential Texas thunderstorm that's washed out all the roads in and out of town, they find themselves trapped in town with a killer.

Christmas is coming and holiday cheer--and plenty of treats for Irish Wolfhound puppy Pirate--keep spirits high. But the holidays aren't cheerful for everyone. Harry's friend on the police force, Cynthia Cooper, warns that the season can bring an uptick in crime. Her words prove tragically prescient when Harry and Susan discover the dead body of a man by the side of the road, without any clues to his identity.

Winner of the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Best Thriller. Sixteen people have done this job before me. I am Seventeen. The most feared assassin in the world. But to be the best, you must beat the best. My next target is Sixteen, just as one day Eighteen will hunt me down. It's a dog-eat-dog world and it gets lonely at the top. Nobody gets to stay for long. But while we're here, all that matters is that we win.

Agent Seventeen, the most infamous hit man in the world, has quit. But whoever wants to become Assassin Eighteen must track him down and kill him first. So when a bullet hits the glass inches from his face, he knows who fired it - doesn't he? It turns out that the sniper isn't the hardened killer he was expecting. It's Mireille - a mysterious silent child abandoned in the woods with instructions to pull the trigger. Reuniting with his spiky lover, Kat, Seventeen has to protect Mireille and discover who sent her to kill him and why.

Jack Taylor wakes up from a coma to discover that much of the world has changed since he last walked the streets of Galway. The pandemic had hit while he was under. Now, as Jack tries to recover from the attack that put him in the hospital and absorb the incredible changes in the world around him, a woman approaches him with the distressing case of two local nuns bludgeoned by a mysterious man wielding a hammer.

When a street brawl abroad turns deadly, Danny Maik faces a charge of manslaughter, but when evidence emerges that he may have planned the victim's murder, he is looking at the death penalty. His only hope is reaching out to those he can trust back in the UK. In Norfolk, Maik's replacement is trying to resurrect his career after a catastrophic error caused injury to a fellow officer. DCI Jejeune should be monitoring his new charge's progress closely, but he is distracted by Danny's plight.

After a farmhouse burns to the ground in the rural Swedish village of Marback, a young woman is found inside murdered. After a quick investigation, the woman's boyfriend Edvard is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. But as time goes on, evidence begins to cast doubt on Edvar's guilt.

Lambert Ramkin aka Imperium Dart, techno trickster and ambient music wizard of the 1990s, has gone walkabout, disappearing from his rather palatial home in Kent. His wife - wives, actually; it's complicated - are worried and hire the Vinyl Detective to find the old rascal. They theorize that wherever the missing man is, he won't be able to resist turning up at a record fair somewhere in search of 12-inch white label acid house singles, which he collects compulsively. They're not wrong -- but that is when the trouble really begins.

Jenn wants to have her baby on the island, so she's lined up a midwife and a doula. But she's two weeks overdue - and if one more person tells her she looks ready to pop, she's going to go bananas. If there was a list of what not to expect when you're expecting, right at the top would be coming upon your doula holding a gun over the body of her fiance. Clearly in shock, Hannah Riversbend claims not to have shot him. Jenn asks Ally to prove the doula's innocence before her special delivery arrives.

Raised in a secluded island mansion deep in the woods and kept isolated by her true crime-obsessed parents, 26 year old Dahlia Lighthouse is still haunted by her twin brother Andy's disappearance a decade ago. After several years away and following her father's death, Dahlia returns home, where the family makes a gruesome discovery. Buried in their father's plot is another body - Andy's, his skull split open with an ax.

For years, Harry Bosch has been working a case that haunts him but that he hasn't been able to crack - the murder of an entire family by a psychopath who still walks free. Renee Ballard makes Bosch an offer. Come work with her as a volunteer investigator in the new Open-Unsolved Unit, and he can pursue his "white whale" with the resources of the LAPD behind him. The two must put aside old resentments to work together again and close in on a dangerous killer.

The long-awaited final chapter of the Rocksburg Police Department saga. With jobs and industry moving away from the small city outside Pittsburgh, Detective Ruggiero "Rugs" Carlucci's greatest adversaries are his negligent vacation-prone fellow officers and an older divorcee who has a habit of dancing naked on her back porch when she stops taking her medication. But before he can neatly wrap up his career, Rugs will face a mad shooter, a vengeful city councilman, and, most perilously, his own mother.

Mia's first husband, Adam, was a philandering grifter, assumed lost-at-sea after a boating disaster. But while working a huge wedding expo in Manhattan, Mia is shocked to spot the man who nearly destroyed her life. The one who is supposed to be sleeping with the fishes. But she loses him in the crowd. And when it happens again the next day, it's time for an emergency meeting with the family - and the Family. Because if Adam is alive, Mia is still married...

1953. John Russell and his family - his long-time partner, Effi Koenen, a burgeoning star on an American sitcom, and their daughter, Rosa, a young artist on the cusp of adulthood - live a life of relative comfort in Los Angeles. Then he notices someone is tailing him around Los Angeles. Could it be that the deal Russell struck all those years ago to leave the espionage game has left him with unfinished business? The answer may lie in Berlin, where John and Effi decide to return for the Third Annual Berlin International Film Festival.

Literary fame beckons for Olga Pushkin, Railway Engineer (Second Class), when her self-help manual for hard-working women is published at last. In the meantime, Olga's scheming superior, Boris Andreyev, forces her to babysit a special Romanov-themed murder mystery steam train doing the rounds of the local towns. Parked in a siding near Roslazny, the players deliver the first of several intended performances - only for a staged murder to become very real.

It's 1941, and the Mitford household is splintered by the vicissitudes of war. To bring the clan together - maybe for one last time, Deborah invites them to Chatsworth for Christmas, along with a selection of society's most impressive and glamorous guests, as well as old family friend Louisa Cannon, a private detective. One night, a psychic arrives, and to liven things up Deborah agrees she may host a seance. But entertainment turns to dark mystery as the psychic reveals that a maid was murdered in this very same house - and she can prove it.

The festive atmosphere at a farm market takes a dark turn when a man entered in the famous cherry pit-spitting competition chokes and dies right in front of Shiloh, who is standing near the sidelines as a spectator. When the death turns out to be more suspicious than a cherry pit down the wrong pipe, Shiloh finds herself under local law enforcement's microscope.

Following their daughter's mysterious disappearance, Ryan and Elsie Delaney have taken the LAPD forensic lab hostage, and have given law enforcement an ultimatum. Find their daughter, Tilly, or they will destroy all the evidence they can find to other cold cases. Detective Charlie Hoskins has been undercover in a deadly motorcycle gang for five years. With his cover blown, he has no choice but to find Tilly himself, or lose everything he's worked for as the lab burns.

Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland. He's built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he's gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey's long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn't want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

Sunny Randall's newest client, Blake, seems to have it all. He is an Instagram influencer, with all the perks the lifestyle entails - a beautiful girlfriend, wealth, and adoring fans. But one of those fans has turned ugly, and Sunny is brought on board by Blake's manager, Bethany, to protect him and to uncover who is out to kill him.

Umiko Wada chooses the cases she takes very carefully. But her interest is gripped by a mysterious businessman who wants her to track down his estranged son. But soon she finds herself pulled into a labyrinthine conspiracy with links to a twenty year old investigation and to the chaos and trauma of the dying days of the Second World War.

New York, 1915. RMS Lusitania, one of the world's most luxurious ocean liners, departs for war-torn Europe. Among those on board is Patrick Gallagher, a civil servant in Her Majesty's government tasked with escorting a British diplomat back to England. When a fellow passenger is believed to have shot himself in his cabin, Gallagher is asked by the captain to investigate the scene, but one crucial detail doesn't fit. The man's body was discovered in a locked cabin with the key inside and no gun to be found.

When DC Rose Gifford is called to investigate the death of a woman in Elford Country Park, she knows there is more to the case than meets the eye. Suzette's broken body was found at the foot of a climbing centre after a terrible storm - but this was no accident. The park has claimed three other young lives - and there must be a connection. And when the police discover that Elford is situated on an ancient plague pit, things take an even darker turn...

Natalka and Edwin are perfect if improbable partners in a detective agency. Edwin is 84 and a master at surveillance, deploying his age as a cloak of invisibility. Natalka, Ukrainian-born and more than fifty years his junior, is a math whizz. But Natalka is frustrated. She loves a murder, as she's fond of saying, and none have come the agency's way. That is until local writer Melody Chambers dies. Edwin and Benedict go undercover to investigate and are on a creative writing weekend at isolated Battle House when another murder occurs.

June 1815. As London awaits news from Waterloo, the mutilated corpse of Major Miles Sedgewick surfaces from the murky waters of the Thames. Sebastian is drawn into the investigation of a murder that threatens one of his oldest and dearest friends, Irish surgeon Paul Gibson. Gibson's lover, Alexi Sauvage, was tricked into a bigamous marriage with the victim. But there are other women who may have wanted the cruel, faithless Major dead.

July 1815. The Prince Regent's grandiose plans to celebrate Napoleon's recent defeat at Waterloo are thrown into turmoil when Lady McInnis and her daughter Emma are found brutally murdered in Richmond Park, their bodies posed in a chilling imitation of the stone effigies once found atop medieval tombs. Bow Street magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy immediately turns to his friend Sebastian St. Cyr for help with the investigation. For as St. Cyr discovers, Lovejoy's own wife and daughter were also murdered in Richmond Park, their bodies posed in the same bizarre postures.

Joe Leaphorn may be long retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, but his detective skills are still sharp, honed by his work as a private detective. Now he must find the birth parents of a woman who was raised by a bilagaana family but believes she is Dine based on one solid clue, an old photograph with a classic Navajo child's blanket. Leaphorn discovers that his client's adoption was questionable,and her adoptive family not what they seem. His quest for answers takes him to an old trading post and leads him to a deadly cache of long-buried family secrets.

First pocketbook edition. A woman crosses a London street. It is just after 11am on a bright spring morning, and she is going into a funeral parlor to plan her own service. Six hours later the woman is dead, strangled with a crimson curtain cord in her own home. Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric man as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. And Hawthorne has a partner, the celebrated novelist Anthony Horowitz, curious about the case and looking for new material.

Riverside Close is the picture-perfect exclusive community -- until the Kentworthy family arrives, with their four giant, gas-guzzling cars, a gaggle of shrieking children and plans for a garish swimming pool in the backyard. The Kentworthys quickly offend every last one of their neighbours. When Charles Kentworthy is found dead on his own doorstep, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest, Detective Hawthorne is the only investigator that can be called on to solve the case.

First pocketbook edition. Editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway's latest Atticus Pund detective mystery. His formula of mysteries set in sleepy English villages has proved hugely successful, so successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behaviour if she wants to keep her job. The latest has Atticus Pund investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she's convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder.

When DI Adam Fawley is assigned a sexual assault case filed by an Oxford student against a tenured professor, he expects the facts to match up with the far too many previous reports he's investigated time and again. But neither he nor anyone on his team imagined the victim would turn out to be a male rugby player accusing one of the university's most respected female professors. As the detectives try to unravel the truth behind the he said/she said crime, another threat arises - someone with a personal grudge against Fawley.

Charlie Harris remembers Wil as one of the outsiders during high school in Athena, though his friend Melba Gilley had a crush on Wil. Wil, now fronting a band and writing award-winning songs, returns to Athena to work with students in the college music department. But he and his entourage have become the targets of several acts of petty harassment, the incidents escalating until one of the band members is killed. Charlie worries that Melba, now deeply involved with the man at the center of the attacks, could be in deadly danger.

When human remains are found in Joanna Brady's Cochise County, the victim turns out to be a missing young woman of Apache descent. As part of a newly formed Missing and Murdered Indigenous People's Task Force, Dan Pardee, a former Border Patrol Shadow Wolf and Brandon Walker's son-in-law, catches the case and ends up in Sheriff Joanna Brady's jurisdiction. Will Dan find out what led to this young woman's death?

Carpenter Whitney Whitaker and her cousin Buck are renovating a historic Nashville fire station when Joanna Hartzell, who lives in a townhouse around the corner, comes by with a plea for help. Joanna owns and maintains half of her building, but the other half, inherited by seven adult children, has fallen into disrepair. Never one to turn down a challenge, Whitney and Buck manage to acquire the rundown townhouse--though it turns out Joanna is only one of the many neighbors interested in buying the property once they've worked their magic. Then Joanna shows up at the fire station confused and rambling, then collapses, never to recover.

Boston, 1974. Mary Pat Fennessey, who has lived her entire life in the housing projects of the Irish American enclave "Southie", is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. One night Mary Pat's teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn't come home. That same evening, a young black man is found dead, struck by a subway train. In searching for her missing daughter Mary Pat begins asking questions that bother Marty Butler, chieftain of the Irish mob.

The body of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant is found in one of Venice's canals. Following gossip and memories of people who knew the victim, Brunetti finds that he had been living in a small house on the grounds of a palazzo owned by a university professor. Brunetti and his colleagues attempt to fit together random information about real estate and land use, books and university friendships that appear to have little in common.

The Bewitched knockoff I Married a Zombie may have flopped in its day, but it's got a devoted cult following. Jaine is delighted when one of those rabid fans hires her as script doctor for his new play based on the show - until she reads the awful script and meets Misty, the actress who'll be playing Cryptessa's role. Misty has Audrey Hepburn's doe eyes but not a smidgen of her ability. Yet she can certainly act the diva, demanding a special smoothie every day at 3 p.m. When someone spikes Misty's signature drink with a fatal shot of rat poison, the cast of suspects extends far beyond the theater.

Retired spy Tomas Nevinson - once an agent for the British Secret Service, now living a quiet life in his hometown, Madrid - is approached by his former handler, Bertram Tupra, with an offer to bring him back in from the cold for one last assignment. He is to go undercover in a small Spanish town, to find out which of three women who moved there a decade ago is in fact a terrorist trained by the IRA, on the run after masterminding several deadly attacks. Nevinson soon becomes intimately involved with each of the three women. How - or whom - to choose among them? Under increasing pressure, he must choose, and then act...

A four-year-old girl goes missing in plain sight outside her nursery in Oxford, a middle-class, affluent area, her mother only a stones-throw away. Ryan Wilkins, one of the youngest ever Detective Inspectors in the Thames Valley force, dishonourably discharged three months ago, watches his former partner and namesake DI Ray Wilkins deliver a press conference, confirming a lead. But while Ray's investigation stalls Ryan brings his unique talents to unofficial and quite illegal inquiries which will bring him into a confrontation with the very officials who have thrown him out of the force.

India, 1922: Perveen Mistry is the only female lawyer in Bombay, a city where child mortality is high, birth control is unavailable and very few women have ever seen a doctor. Perveen is attending a lavish fundraiser for a new women's hospital specializing in maternal health issues when she witnesses an accident. The grandson of an influential Gujarati business man catches fire - but his young ayah, Sunanda, rushes to save him. Later, Perveen learns that Sunanda, who is still ailing from her burns, has been arrested on trumped-up charges made by a man who doesn't seem to exist.

When Lucy Stone arrives at a sprawling French chateau with the whole family, it should be the trip of a lifetime - especially because she's about to watch her oldest daughter marry the man of her dreams. But while navigating the vast countryside estate owned by her impenetrably wealthy in-laws-to-be, the jet-lagged mother of the bride has a creepy feeling. Her maternal instincts are validated the moment a body is pulled from a centuries-old moat on the property.

Richard is a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in the Val de Follet. In the nearby town of Saint-Sauver, a scandal erupts when its famous restaurant is downgraded from three Michelin stars to two. The restaurant is shamed, the town is in shock, and the leading goat cheese supplier drowns himself in one of his own pasteurization tanks. Or does he? Valerie d'Orocay, who is staying at the B&B while house-hunting in the area, isn't convinced that it's a suicide, and Richard is drawn into Valerie's investigation.

St. Andrews, Scotland: Renovation works on the famous Old Course golf course uncovers the remains of a body in a shallow grave - two bullet holes in the skull. DNA confirms the victim as Rab Shepherd, the missing brother of Scotland's late crime patriarch, Jock Shepherd. DCI Andy Gilchrist and his associate, DS Jessie Janes, are assigned the murder investigation, and soon uncover a trail of executions and torture, treachery and betrayal, and ultimately a gangland secret so powerful it could shake the UK government to its core.

San Francisco is home to more than 200 privately owned streets.Most are alleyways, but a select few look torn straight from the pages of a magazine. When several such streets are targeted in a series of so-called pranks, Sharon is hired by a coalition of concerned owners to investigate. But as things escalate - an attempt on Sharon's life, an explosion at a meth lab, and a shocking murder - Sharon realizes far more is at play than a few misdemeanors gone wrong.

In the dead of night, 72-year-old Miriam Narracott is found wandering on Exmoor, holding a knife and covered in blood. Inside the family farmhouse lies the body of her adult son, Gabe. CSI Ally Dymond is on compassionate leave, but when approached by the new DI, recently arrived from London and eager to have Ally's keen eye and local knowledge on the case, she finds herself being drawn back in.

One dead body - then two, then three, then four. All knotted up in Japan's underground BDSM scene and kinbaku, a form of rope bondage which bears a complex cultural history of spirituality, torture, cleansing, and sacrifice. As Togashi, a junior member of the police force, investigates the murder of a kinbaku instructor, he finds himself unable to resist his own private transgressive desires. In contrast, Togashi's Sherlock Holmesian colleague Hayama is morally upright to a fault, with a stalwart commitment to the truth and nearly superhuman powers of deduction.

When a case ends with a father killing the child V.I. Warshawski had been hired to find, she begins second-guessing herself, forgetting to eat, forgetting her workout. Her worried friends send her down to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball, where Angela, one of her proteges, is a Northwestern star. Then Sabrina, one of Angela's roommates, disappears and when V.I. finds Sabrina close to death in a drug house, the mother's gratitude quickly turns to suspicion. V.I. finds herself in the FBI's crosshairs, and the young men running the county's opioid distribution are not happy.

In New York City, three intriguing, smart, and stylish private investigators open Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations.Who are these detectives with famous names and mysterious, untraceable pasts? Brendan Holmes - The Brain: Identifies suspects via deduction and logic. Margaret Marple - The Eyes: Possesses powers of observation too often underestimated. Auguste Poe - The Muscle: Chases down every lead no matter how dangerous or dark.

On a cold January morning, Jack Morgan, head of Private, stands inside the New York Stock Exchange with his former US Marine comrade whose company is being launched onto the market, eagerly awaiting the opening bell. But before the bell rings, a bullet rips through the air and finds its mark. In the aftermath of the murder, the victim's wife hires Jack to find the killer, and he identifies another murder in Moscow that appears to be linked.

It's 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends, when a fortune-teller predicts that one day, Frances will be murdered. In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder.

Morrow Island is a perfect spot for a wedding - and a Snowden Family Clambake. Julia Snowden is busy organizing both. At the rehearsal, when a guest falls to the floor dead, it turns out that no one seems to know who he is, despite the fact that he's been actively mingling and handing out business cards. And when an injection mark is spotted on his neck, it's clear this wasn't caused by a shellfish allergy.

Dr. Lionel Scott, a renowned expert in tropical and infectious diseases, has come to understand that it is truly humanity itself that will destroy Gaia. It's only by removing the threat that the planet can continue to prosper, and luckily, Scott is just the right man for the job... When Scott then disappears without a trace, Letty Davenport is tasked with tracking down any and all leads. As the web around Scott becomes more tangled, Letty calls in her father, Lucas, to help her lead a group of specialists and to find Scott as soon as possible.

BC author. When an attempt to destroy a Pakistani jail alerts intelligence services that the predatory cybercriminal Dantalion has emerged from hiding, FBI Special Agent Ericka Blackwood and her old FBI team are hot on the criminal mastermind's trail. Which is exactly what he wants...

Terrorists have detonated a bomb in London. Assigned to root out the source of the terrorists' funding, Joseph Dryden, 004, and Conrad Harthrop-Vane, 000, enter the field. Tracing clues from Sotheby's auction house to Crete to Venice, they uncover a money laundering scheme involving diamonds, black market antiquities, and human trafficking. Once a major sale is made, a six-day countdown to the next terror attack begins. As the Double O's follow the twisting trail, they find themselves unexpectedly inching closer to the missing Bond...

A woman awakes in an unfamiliar hospital bed. Bright lights, nurses...and handcuffs. She is told her name is Reeta Doe, and that she's been in an accident. She is in Florida. The FBI have been following her since Mississippi. And she has brutally murdered two women - college girls, who look just like her. Two more are missing, and one survived. But Reeta remembers nothing. Her only hope is a journalist named Carol, who can follow the trail of devastation Reeta left in her wake...all the way back to Pine Ranch and the only family she ever knew.

After an ultra-romantic honeymoon across Europe, Meddy Chan and her husband Nathan have landed in Jakarta to spend Chinese New Year with her entire extended family. Then a former beau of Second Aunt's shows up at the Chan residence bearing extravagant gifts - one of which was actually intended for a business rival to cement their alliance and included by accident. But returning the gift turns disastrous and suddenly Meddy and the Aunties are helpless pawns in a decades-long war between Jakarta's most powerful business factions.

London, 1893 - a volunteer at the British Museum makes a startling discovery. When examining a mummy in the museum's collection, he discovers there is a giant ruby in the shape of a heart buried in the chest of the mummy. Even more startling, the mummy might well be Cleopatra. The following morning, the volunteer is found floating in the Thames and the ruby has gone missing. Hired by the victim's wife to learn the truth behind his death, Barker and Llewelyn find themselves in the crosshairs - now they must avoid a violent street gang, a ruthless collector, and the British Museum itself in order to find the killer and safeguard the gem.

Hugh Breedlove's young niece, Julia, has been wrongfully committed to an insane asylum by her cruel and unfaithful husband, Chet Longly. Though Breedlove and his wife seem more interested in protecting the family reputation than their niece's safety, Frank and Sarah agree to help for the sake of Julia and the young son she left behind. Frank and Sarah's investigation reveals a dark secret - a maid at the Longly home died suspiciously under Chet's watch, and now it seems Julia's son might also be in danger.

In the Ukranian borderlands a Russian mercenary unit has gone rogue. With all attention focused on the frontlines, they have pushed deeper into the interior to wage a campaign of unspeakable barbarity. As they move from village to village, committing horrific war crimes, they meet little resistance as all able-bodied men are off fighting the war. When multiple American aid workers are killed, America's top spy is sent in to settle the score.

AD 381. Five years have gone by since a Roman governor ordered the deaths of a Gothic king and his attendants at a feast in their honour. The powerful brother of the murdered king has sworn revenge on the regicides, and will not rest until they are hunted down. For the eight legionaries who carried out the killings, the bloodshed is only just beginning. Flavius Focalis is one of those legionaries. After narrowly surviving an attempt on his life, Focalis seeks to warn his former comrades, for he knows their enemy is implacable.

Lucia Gomez, the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, has maintained a spotless reputation - until now. Three male police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. Chief Gomez turns to an old friend, Rik Dudek, to act as her attorney in the federal grand jury investigation, insisting to Rik that the accusations against her are part of an ugly smear campaign.

The night after her father's funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn't know it, but it's not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink - even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces - something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire, someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby.

Hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems, Jack and her husband, Gabe, are the best penetration specialists in the business. But after a routine assignment goes horribly wrong, Jack arrives home to find her husband dead. To add to her horror, the police are closing in on their suspect - her. Suddenly on the run and quickly running out of options, Jack must decide who she can trust as she circles closer to the real killer.

The Flowers were the perfect family. Until the day 15 year old Joseph shot dead his parents and baby brother whilst his younger sister Eve hid. No one knows why Joseph murdered his family. The following day he crashed his car and has been in a coma for two decades. Eve's always known he did it; she saw the crime, after all. Now an adult, Eve is forced to re-examine her memories when disturbing new evidence about the case comes to light.

Against all odds, Jim Brennan is a big man at the university, tipped for the head job and an office at the top of the ivory tower. But when his son Elliot is arrested on drugs charges, Jim is approached by men he thought he had left safely in his past. Their demands threaten his family, students and reputation. As the pressure mounts, Jim discovers he is more like his hardman father than he thought. The question is, how far will Professor Jim Brennan go to save the life he built?

Paroled killer Cameron Shaw and small-town cop Staff Sgt. Meghan Quick find themselves on a collision course when the murder-by-arson of a college student sparks off gang violence along the forty-ninth parallel. In his masterful new crime novel, award-winning author Sam Wiebe juxtaposes small town life with multinational criminal operations. With the threat of a gang war looming, and long-buried secrets coming to light, Ocean Drive is a riveting exploration of the shadows cast by development and the harrowing choices individuals make when faced with the allure of easy money.

Finally, Danny has it all: a beautiful house, a child he adores, a woman he might even fall in love with. Life is good. But then Danny reaches too far. When he tries to buy an old hotel on a prime piece of real estate with plans to build his dream resort, he triggers a war against Las Vegas power brokers, a powerful FBI agent bent on revenge and a rival casino owner with dark connections of his own.

Helen Dexter is enjoying the new four-star status of the Seaview Hotel. But she begins to wonder if this accolade is cursed when a series of disasters strike. It starts when a crazy golf team arrive to play in a Scarborough tournament. Their odd behaviour heightens when the rival team captain turns up. Yet, there's worse to come for Helen when one of the guests is murdered playing crazy golf. Then the Seaview's prize-winning cook Jean quits, leaving Helen devastated.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Center convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. Kajii refuses to speak with the press - until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can't resist writing back. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body...

During a break at a Saint-Malo police seminar, Dupin goes wandering through the market halls in the old city, and a murder takes place right before his eyes. The perpetrator flees. She is the victim's sister; the women used to be competing chefs from the region. It soon becomes clear that this is just the beginning of an insidious series of homicides. In a race against time, Dupin begins to investigate, together with the commissioners from the other departements who are attending the seminar.

English teacher Richard Boyle certainly never thought he would find himself talking down a former student intent on harming others, but when Mark LeDrew shows up at Richard's school with a bomb strapped to his chest, Richard immediately jumps into action. He averts a major tragedy but it puts him in the sights of a deranged blackmailer with a score to settle. Richard begins to discover that there's something deeply wrong in the town - something that ties together Mark, the blackmailer, and a gang of ruthless drug dealers.

Contractor Jim Stark is in great demand. He is overseeing a number of projects, including Angelica Miles's newly constructed building on Main Street, finishing up the new brew pub, and gutting a stone mansion off Main Street that Angelica bought to be the world headquarters for Nigela Ricita Asssociates. Tricia Miles and Angelica arrive at the mansion before their workday to see how the construction is going. They find the place unlocked and Stark's right-hand man, Sanjay Arya, dead - bludgeoned to death.

Jesse Braddock is trapped in a tiny cabin deep in the Everglades with her infant daughter and her ex-boyfriend, a wannabe reality TV star who turned out to be a lot prettier on the outside than on the inside. Broke and desperate for a way out, Jesse stumbles across a long-lost treasure, which could solve all her problems - if she can figure out how to keep it. The problem is, some very bad men are also looking for the treasure, and they know Jesse has it.

When Peg attempts online dating at Rose's strong urging, the experience plays out like an embarrassing mistake. At least, until she matches with Nolan Abercrombie - intelligent, attractive, and a self-proclaimed dog lover. The two share an instant connection that has Peg cautiously excited to finally bring someone special into her busy world of Standard Poodles and conformation shows. But before Peg can admit that Rose was right, a terrible accident claims Nolan's life.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was an enigmatic figure who was deposed in 1886, mysteriously drowning three days later. Before he died, though, he engaged in a worldwide search for a new kingdom.One separate from Bavaria, a place he could retreat to and rule as he wished. Now Luke Daniels, Cotton Malone's Magellan Billet protege, has managed to infiltrate a renegade group on the trail of a 19th century deed that proves Ludwig's long-rumored search bore fruit.

Something bad happened last night. I've woken up with the hangover from hell, a stranger in my bed, and I've gone viral for the worst reasons. But I can't remember a thing... My best friend Posey is dead. The police think it was a tragic accident. I know she was murdered. There's only one thing stopping me from dying of shame. I need to find a killer.

Jaleh Swann, a business journalist hot on the trail of an auditor who was mugged and killed, lands in the hospital just one day after her Portland apartment is ransacked. When Jaleh's sister, Raziah, reaches out to an old friend for help, Dez has no choice but to answer. The Swann sisters have been pulled into a dizzying web of cover-ups and danger. At the center lies an insidious Oregon-based tech corporation, Clockjack, which has enough money and hired guns to silence just about anyone - including this rag-tag trio.

On a crisp autumn day in Painters Mill, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder responds to a call to discover a victim violently killed with a crossbow. Aden Karn was just twenty years old, well liked, and from an upstanding Amish family. Who would commit such a heinous crime against a young man whose life was just beginning? As Kate delves into Karn's past, she begins to hear whispers about a darker side.

Along with too much cheap wine and bad reality TV, Gwen turns to a dating app to help fill the void in her life. Swiping through the few eligible bachelors left in town, she spends her evenings out on one disastrous date after another. But when a string of murders suddenly occurs in her small coastal English city, she's shocked to find that each of the victims had been on a date with her. Gwen finds herself the main suspect in a serial killer's murderous spree, and the only way she can clear her name is to track down her former dates (even those that have ghosted her) and unmask a killer before it's too late.

When Jem Rosco - sailor, adventurer and local legend - blows into town in the middle of an autumn gale, the residents of Greystone, Devon, are delighted to have a celebrity in their midst. As abruptly as he arrived, Rosco disappears again. No one thinks anything of it - that's the sort of man he is. Until the lifeboat is launched to a hoax call-out and Rosco's body is found in a dinghy, anchored off Scully Cove.

After an attack on Queen Elizabeth I's carriage in Waltham Forest, her Private Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham, begins a search for the mystery assailants. Meanwhile Elizabeth has ordered her friend John Dee - scientist, philosopher, and spy - to rediscover the secret of Greek Fire, for use against her enemies.

Myron Bolitar has every reason to think his ex-client, basketball coach Greg Downing, dead. In fact, he gave a eulogy at the funeral. But now two federal agents are in his office, demanding to know where Greg Downing is. According to the agents, Greg is still alive - and has been placed at the scene of a double homicide, making him their main suspect. Shocked, Myron needs answers.

When a years-long case against a powerful mobster finally cracks and an unimpeachable witness takes the stand, federal prosecutor Nora Carleton is looking forward to putting the defendant away for good. The mobster, though, has other plans. As the witness's testimony concludes, a note is passed to the prosecution offering up information into the assassination of a disgraced former New York governor, murdered in his penthouse apartment just days before.

In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the abduction and possible murder of her child. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is PI Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist, one involving a husband too eager to accept his wife's guilt, a group of fascists arming for war, a disgraced psychic seeking redemption, and an old, twisted house deep in the Maine woods, a house that should never have been built. A house, and what dwells beneath.

Pearl Gorham arrives in 1965, one of a string of young women sent to Lichen Hall to give birth. And she soon suspects the proprietors are hiding something. Then she meets the mysterious mother and young boy who live in the grounds - and together they begin to unpick the secrets of this place. As the truth comes to the surface and the darkness moves in, Pearl must rethink everything she knew - and risk what she holds most dear.

[BC author]. While recovering from a professional setback, documentary maker Jane Duvall stays at a remote hotel during the off season with her new contractor husband, Dom, and his daughter, Sienna. Surrounded by an immense forest and the mighty Fraser River, Jane wants nothing more than to bond with her new family. But she's unsettled by the cold, quiet presence of the hotel's owner, Peter, who is overseeing Dom's renovations. Jane uncovers secrets that make her question exactly who she married, including a series of strange disappearances at the hotel in previous seasons.

Prosecutor Justine Boucher has only asked for the death penalty once, in a brutal murder case. In doing so, she put her own life on the line. Because, if the convicted are later found innocent, the lawyer who requested the execution will be sentenced to death. Justine had no doubt that the man she sent to the chair was guilty. Until now. Presented with evidence that could prove his innocence, Justine must find out the truth before anyone else does. Her life depends on it.

When Addie's dear friend Tony presents his fiance with a special copy of Wuthering Heights as an engagement gift, the lord of the Milton Manor insists the book was stolen from his library . . .Things go from troubling to tragic when Addie takes her Yorkipoo, Pippi, out for a walk on the moors and stumbles across the body of a young woman. When the police suspect Tony of foul play, Addie vows to get to the bottom of what's going on.

William Benson knows what it's like to be accused of something you didn't do - the fear, the vulnerability and the nightmare of watching your life unravel. Now he speaks on behalf of those who have no voice, defending anyone who claims to be innocent. This time, it's Karmen Naylor, estranged daughter of a south London crime boss, fighting a murder charge and desperate to be believed. But Benson becomes trapped into a grudge match between two rival clans, endangering himself and those he loves.

On a locked ward in the world's highest-security prison hospital, a scream shatters the night. The next morning, a nurse's body is found and her daughter has been taken. A ransom must be paid, and the clock is ticking. Forensic profiler Dr Connie Woolwine is renowned for her ability to get inside the mind of a murderer. Now, she must go deep undercover among the most deranged and dangerous men on earth and use her unique skills to find the baby - before it's too late.

First he kills the mother, then he kidnaps the child. The grieving father is given 45 hours to search. If the child isn't found, they die, never leaving the place they have been imprisoned. Every body discovered has had the left eye removed. When evidence implicates police officer turned journalist Alexander Zorbach, who has championed the case against the Eye Collector, he becomes the main suspect .Meanwhile, Alina Gregoriev, a blind physiotherapist, claims to be able to see into the past of her patients simply by touching their body. She says she treated the Eye Collector yesterday...

Around the world, Treadstone agents are being hunted down and murdered. Someone high up in the U.S. government is erasing all evidence of a shocking mission from Jason Bourne's past known as Defiance - including Bourne himself. Staying one step ahead of a team of killers, Bourne follows a global trail that leads him to one of the government's darkest secrets. But exposing the truth about the Defiance mission will also bring Bourne face-to-face with his archenemy, the assassin known as Lennon, for a final deadly confrontation.

Summer, 1871. Scotland Yard's Inspector Ben Ross pays a visit to Jacob Jacobus, the old rogue of Limehouse: infamous antiquarian, friend to villains and informer to the police. He hopes to get advance notice of any burglaries for the Season. But one theft has already occurred, an emerald necklace stolen from a dressing table. Then Ross learns that Jacob Jacobus has been found dead, his throat slit.

1920s Vancouver. Miss Dora Decker doesn't look like the sort of young woman capable of stabbing her employer, stockbroker Ralph M. Tucker, twenty-five times with her high-heeled shoe but the police have arrested her for the crime. Meanwhile, Ed McCurdy, former muckraking journalist, has taken a job reading radio news as Mr. Good-Evening. And so Inspector Calvin Hook scours the wet, boozy streets of gritty 1920s Vancouver, piecing together a mystery that somehow connects Al Capone, Winston Churchill and Brother Osiris, the leader of a mystical cult on DeCourcy Island.

For the first six families moving into the exclusive new housing development known as Black Thorn, it was a chance to live a peaceful life on the cliffs overlooking the Cornish sea, safe in the knowledge that it had been created just for them. But six weeks later, six people are dead and the development left abandoned and unfinished. One of its surviving residents, Agnes Gale, is determined to find out the truth about what happened.

Twelve-year-old Rocco Fanelli is a spelling bee champ in the making. He's the odds-on favourite to win the local middle-school bee and go on to the regionals, the state, and ultimately the nationals. Which is why someone is trying to intimidate him to drop out with a threatening note in his locker. Rocco's concerned parents hire Maya and Sandra to uncover the culprit and ensure their son's safety. But the competition turns killer when a high school teacher who's running the bee, clearly favouring certain students, is found dead in the school supply closet.

December, 1940. When a daylight air raid hits the Prince Albert Theatre in Drury Lane, rescuers find a man dying in the wreckage. But it wasn't the bomb that's ending his life - he's been stabbed, and with his dying breath he whispers what sounds like a fragmented confession. As Detective Inspector John Jago begins to investigate, there's an underlying question he must grapple with: was the murdered man himself a killer?

The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts is a luxurious, clandestine college dedicated to the fine art of murder where earnest students study how best to "delete" their most deserving victim. The campus of this "Poison Ivy League" college - its location unknown to even those who study there - is where you might find yourself the practice target of a classmate...and where one's mandatory graduation thesis is getting away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place to live.

Annie Wrenne, working at Lord Mountbatten's cloak-and-dagger Combined Operations headquarters, is privy to the top secret plans for the daring cross-Channel raid. Young Canadian journalist George Hogan, protege of influential Lord Beaverbrook, faces a crucial assignment that will test him to the breaking point. And Abwehr intelligence officer Wilhelm Schultz is baiting a trap to lure thousands of Allied troops to their deaths...Three lives linked by Operation Jubilee: the Dieppe Raid, 19 August 1942.

AD 406. Roman cavalry commander Marcus Flavius Victor and a small band of loyal warriors know that the time has come to leave an increasingly fractured Britannia and go across the bleak, pirate-infested seas of the Mare Germanicum to Saxonia and on into the dark heart of barbarism. It seems the Britons' only salvation lies with an old comrade, General Stilicho. But battling toward that safe haven, they stumble across a secret which could decide the fate of the Empire. But who can they really trust, and can Marcus reach Stilicho in time - because his every step is dogged by a son who wants him dead...

Her name is Sandy. You might know her as the loving wife of Detective Superintendent Roy Grace. But there's more to her than meets the eye. A woman with a dubious past, a complicated present and an uncertain future. Then she was gone, her disappearance causing a fruitless, nationwide search. Where did she go? Why did she run? What would cause a woman to leave her whole life behind and simply vanish?

Are you on a date that doesn't feel right? Can't shake that creepy guy at the bar? Worried you're being followed home? Message M. Millie Masters sets up a hotline for women who feel unsafe walking home alone at night: Message M. But very quickly she realises that there's much more to be done to help the women who call in. Because the men just do it again the next night, and the next, and the next. And when her own sister is assaulted on a night out, the temptation to take the law into her own hands becomes too much to resist. Because M can also stand for murder...

On Memorial Day, 1958 as the people of Jewel, Minnesota gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of so many sons in the wars of the past, the half-clothed body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. But even before Sheriff Brody Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife.

Identical and brutal assaults on three women. One woman survives to give a detailed description of her attacker. The police arrest a suspect, Damon Morton, confident he is their man. But three of his employees admit to the crimes, and Morton's wife and girlfriend provide him with an alibi. They all declare Damon Morton innocent. The police know he did it. But if people lie under oath in a court of law - who can the jury believe?

Charlie Leigh-Hunt has been posted to Washington as a replacement for the traitorous Guy Burgess. Charlie is soon shocked to cross paths with British expatriate Charlotte, an old flame of his, who, thanks to all her gossipy parties, has a packed pocketbook full of secrets she is eager to share. Two decades or so later, in 1969, Joe Wilderness is stuck on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, held captive by the KGB, a chip in a game way above his pay grade - but his old friends Frank and Eddie are going to try to spring him out of the toughest prison in the world. All roads lead back to Berlin, and to the famous Bridge of Spies...

All that bestselling author Eleanor Dash wants is to get through her book tour in Italy and kill off her main character, Connor Smith, in the next in her Vacation Mysteries series - is that too much to ask? Clearly, because when an attempt is made on the real Connor's life - the handsome but infuriating con man she got mixed up with ten years ago and now can't get out of her life - Eleanor is enlisted to help solve the case.

Having travelled the length and breadth of the country compiling his masterpiece, The Science of Cooking and The Art of Eating Well, Pellegrino Artusi relishes the prospect of a few quiet days and a boar hunt in the Tuscan hills. But his peace is short-lived. A body is found in the castle cellar, and the local inspector finds himself baffled by an eccentric array of aristocratic suspects. When the baron himself becomes the target of a second murder attempt, Artusi realises he may need to follow his infallible nose to help find the culprit.

In 1855, Britain and France are fighting to keep the Russians from snatching the Crimean Peninsula from the Ottoman Empire, and Florence Nightingale has made it her mission to improve the wretched conditions in the British military hospitals in Turkey - despite fierce objections from the male doctors around her. When young women start turning up dead, their mouths sewn shut with embroidered fabric roses, Inspector Charles Field is sent from England to find the killer among the doctors, military men, journalists, and others swarming Turkey's famous Barrack Hospital. 12 years later the killer -- or a copycat -- reappears in London.

The daughter of celebrity pop star Trist Jones goes missing and his ex-wife, Katie, is charged with kidnapping. Everyone from the police to the media believe Katie is guilty - her reputation was ripped to shreds in the tabloids during their divorce and subsequent custody battle. Call it mother's intuition, but Jilly has her doubts and takes the case.

In Victorian London, two children with mysterious powers are hunted by a figure of darkness - a man made of smoke. Sixteen-year-old Charlie Ovid, despite a brutal childhood in Mississippi, doesn't have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When a jaded female detective is recruited to escort them to safety, all three begin a journey into the nature of difference, and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous.

Harry has gone to Los Angeles to drink himself to death, in the wake of his life back in Oslo falling to pieces. He's nearly managed to, but then Harry decides to help an older film actress, Lucille, free herself from the grip of a drug cartel she owes a million dollars. But the cartel has taken Lucille hostage. To get the kind of money needed to free her, he will have to clear a well-known Oslo real estate magnate of the suspicion of murder.

Faith Fairchild joins the rest of the world in lockdown mode when reality flips in March 2020. As the pandemic spreads, Faith and her family readjust to life together in Aleford, Massachusetts. Aleford town halls remain lively and well-attended, despite residents joining from their living rooms. But in the midst of a Zoom meeting, damaging images suddenly flash upon everyone's screens. Claudia, local art teacher and Faith's dear friend, is immediately recognized as the woman who has been targeted. When Claudia is later discovered dead, Faith, with the help of her friends, journeys deep into the dark web.

While reporting on a Tijuana animal shelter, journalist Bettina Blazak falls in love with an adorable Mexican street dog who is being treated for a mysterious gunshot wound. She impulsively adopts the dog, and names it Felix. Soon she discovers that Felix is not a street dog at all, but a former DEA drug-sniffing dog. Her story of his life brings some interesting people out looking for Felix, making him a target - again.

The serial killer who targets entire families is precise, always moving under the cover of darkness, flawlessly triggering no alarms, leaving no physical evidence. And Cross and Sampson aren't the only ones investigating. Also in on this case is the world's bestselling true-crime author, who sees patterns everyone else misses. The writer believes the killer may never be caught. But Cross is going to hunt down the Family Man no matter what it takes.

One early morning on a Norfolk, Virginia beach Arman Bajalan discovers a dead body while taking his daily swim. Bajalan was formerly an interpreter in Iraq. After narrowly surviving an assassination attempt that killed his wife and child, Arman has been given lonely sanctuary in the US as a maintenance worker at the Sea Breeze Motel. Now, convinced that the body is connected to his past, he knows he is still not safe. But seasoned detective Catherine Wheel and her newly minted partner have little to go on beyond a bus ticket in the dead man's pocket.

1914, Fiji: Akal Singh, 25, would rather be anywhere but this tropical paradise - or, as he calls it, "this godforsaken island." After a promising start to his police career in Hong Kong, Akal has been sent to Fiji as punishment for a humiliating professional mistake. Lonely and grumpy, Akal plods through his work and dreams of getting back to Hong Kong or his native India. When an indentured Indian woman goes missing from a sugarcane plantation and Fiji's newspapers scream "kidnapping," the inspector-general reluctantly assigns Akal the case.

Letty Davenport's days working at a desk job are behind her. Her previous actions at a gunfight in Texas - and her incredible skills with firearms - draw the attention of several branches of the US government, and make her a perfect fit for even more dangerous work. The Department of Homeland Security and the NSA have tasked her with infiltrating a hacker group, known only as Ordinary People, that is intent on wreaking havoc.

Peter and his family are at a remote fishing lodge in northern Manitoba for a canoeing trip. But a series of incidents colour their plans. The lodge's sled team of huskies has been poisoned and, at the same time, a floatplane crashes into the lake, killing the pilot and both passengers. While Peter works to save the huskies, it is discovered that the plane crash wasn't an accident. It was murder.

Beatrice Steele will never meet the Swampshire definition of a true lady - she is terrible at needlework, has absolutely no musical ability, and her artwork is so bad it frightens people. However, she has vowed to put her obsession with true crime behind her. Because eligible bachelor Edmund Croaksworth is set to attend the approaching autumnal ball, and the Steele family hopes that Louisa will steal his heart. If not, Martin Grub, their disgusting cousin, will inherit the family's estate, and they will be ruined or, even worse, forced to move to France. Beatrice is just holding things together when Croaksworth drops dead in the middle of a minuet.

Someone wants Morgan Shaw dead - or so the popular Chicago TV news anchor believes. - and she turns to PI Ashe Cayne for protection. Though he sympathizes, Ashe turns her down - he's not a bodyguard. But when Morgan's car tires are slashed and she's threatened again, Ashe agrees to help her. Meanwhile, in an effort to win the overnight ratings against a crosstown rival, Morgan will risk everything to stay on top - including an audacious investigation into the suspicious shooting of an unarmed African American man by a white cop.

When a group of neighbourhood women gathers, wine in hand, around a fire pit where their backyards meet one Saturday night, most of them are just ecstatic to have discovered that their baby monitors reach that far. It's a rare kid-free night, and they're giddy with it. They drink too much, and the conversation turns personal. By Monday morning, one of them is gone. Everyone knows something about everyone else in the quirky small Ohio town of Yellow Springs, but no one can make sense of the disappearance.

Ex-child star Posy Starling is finally filming her dream role - Dahlia Lively in The Lady Detective movie. But things take a nightmare turn when a prop weapon is replaced with the real thing - with almost fatal consequences for her fellow Dahlia, Rosalind King. There's something very wrong on the set of The Lady Detective - which means it's time to call in Caro Hooper, so the three Dahlias can investigate.

By day, AWOL Navy SEAL Finn is hiding out on Vieques, a tiny island paradise off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, living in a spare room behind a seafood restaurant owned by a blind local. But Finn's world is about to be turned upside down by a new nightmare, when his employer's two grandchildren go missing. To find them, he'll have to infiltrate the island's dangerous criminal underbelly and expose a shadowy crime network known as La Empresa - even if it means exposing himself in the process.

Lyft driver Adam Zantz is still struggling to make ends meet, when his beloved former piano teacher makes a deathbed request. He wants Zantz to prove his son's innocence in a decades-earlier murder case. Zantz stumbles onto a test pressing of a never-released vinyl LP, of a high school garage band lost to the tides of the Paisley Underground, the acid-fueled early '80s music scene that spawned the Bangles and the Three O'Clock. Down the psychedelic rabbit hole Adam falls, tracing the band's journey from the middle class garage to the precipice of fame - a twisted tale marked by crooked DJs, elder-scammers, wellness hucksters, a teen cult, and the woman who held the key to the band's triumph and ruin.

A warm June afternoon in King's Cove is interrupted by an explosion. Following the sound up a steep path, Lane discovers a secluded cabin and, hiding nearby, a young Japanese girl injured and mute, but very much alive. At the Nelson Police Station, Inspector Darling and Sergeant Ames, following up on a report of a nighttime heist at the local jeweller's, discover the jeweller himself dead in his office, apparently bludgeoned, and a live wire hanging off the back of the building.

A mysterious former South African commando, Lucas Van Groot, is taking wealthy hostages to manipulate stock markets. Kali Kent, a Nigerian born and Bronxite Chameleon (an operative who can transform himself into many different characters) in the CIA's Black Box program, leads the hunt for Van Groot. Tracking this ringleader and his cadre of international criminals, the team discovers the South African mastermind is after a much larger prize and the race is on to prevent a worldwide tragedy. Along the way, Kali will have to face the demons from his childhood and reflect on his emotional path that made him the Chameleon that he is today.

When forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod is brought in to analyze a shallow grave on Scotland's west coast, she is disturbed by a bundle of twigs crafted into a stickman and left in the victim's mouth.Then, when a young woman is reported missing from a nearby campsite with another sinister figurine left in her van, it seems that someone is targeting wild campers.

THE TOWER OF LONDON... Impenetrable. Well protected. Secure. Home to the most valuable jewels on earth. But once a year, the Metropolitan Police must execute the most secret operation in their armoury when they transport the Crown Jewels across London. For four years William Warwick and Ross Hogan have been in charge of the operation. And for four years it's run like clockwork. But now Miles Faulkner has set his heart on those jewels.

Manhattan investment analyst Travis Devine learns that Sara Ewes, his coworker and former girlfriend, has been found hanging in a storage room of his office building--presumably a suicide, at least for now--prompting the NYPD to come calling on him. If that wasn't enough, before the day is out, Devine receives another ominous visit, a confrontation that threatens to dredge up grim secrets from his past in the army unless he participates in a clandestine investigation into his firm.

A double murder in a Blackpool seaside hotel sees a grieving Detective Declan Miller return to work to solve what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. Just why were two completely unconnected men taken out? Despite a somewhat dubious relationship with both reality and his new partner, can the eccentric, offbeat Miller find answers where his colleagues have found only an impossible puzzle?

It has been a year since Tess had to trade the hustle and bustle of London life for pulling pints and moonlighting as a Cher impersonator in a backwater country pub. She was beginning to settle into the slower pace of the sleepy Yorkshire village - until Clemmie Ackroyd, a stalwart member of the community, is brutally murdered. Ruled a robbery gone wrong, it's an open-and-shut case for the police, but something isn't quite adding up for Tess. Then an unexpected face from the past shows up in the village, pointing fingers, and Tess finds herself resolving to get to the bottom of Clemmie's death - even if that means getting up to her neck in jam, Jerusalem and deadly secrets at the Women's Guild.

After PI Clete Purcel leaves his car at the local car wash, he returns to find it ransacked by a group of thugs tied to the drug trade from Mexican cartels to Louisiana. Just as Clete starts to trail the culprits, Clara Bow, a woman with a dark past hires Clete as a detective to investigate her scheming, slippery ex-husband, and a string of brutal deaths all link back to a heavily tattooed man who seems to lurk around every corner.

The Dales Detective Agency is on the brink of closure. Samson O'Brien has returned to his position as an undercover operative for the Met in London, and his relationship with Delilah is under pressure. Their troubles are only multiplied when an ecologist is found dead and the finger of blame is pointed firmly at Delilah's older brother, Will Metcalfe. Dropping everything, Samson returns to Bruncliffe to help prove Will's innocence. But as the two detectives start digging, they unearth more than they bargained for and soon realize that the price of justice can be very costly indeed.

In Parson, Texas, a small town ravaged by a devastating hurricane and the Vietnam War, 29-year-old Lou is diligently renovating a decaying old mansion for Miss Kate, the elderly neighbour who has always been like a mother to her. When Miss Kate is murdered no one but Lou seems to care about finding the killer. The situation becomes complicated when Joanna, Miss Kate's long-estranged daughter and Lou's first love, arrives in Parson - not to learn more about her mother's death but for the house.

Defense attorney Mickey Haller agrees to represent a woman in prison for killing her husband, a sheriff's deputy. She still maintains her innocence. Haller enlists his half brother, retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, as investigator. Reviewing the case, Bosch sees something that doesn't add up, and a sheriff's department intent on bringing a quick search for justice in the killing of one of its own.

Arthur Beauchamp takes a break from the courtroom to write a memoir so he can set the record straight about a headline murder case he fought as a young lawyer in 1966. The trial would either mark him as a pathetic loser or thrust him into the top ranks of criminal counsel. A young housemaid was raped by her employer, a callous and vindictive millionaire. She shot him point blank, so it seemed an open-and-shut case of first-degree murder. Enter Arthur Beauchamp, a young lawyer haunted by having bungled his only previous murder case. He is now called upon to defend a case that he is almost certain can't be won.

Victorian Hastings. At 28, Violet's father is beginning to worry she will never find a husband. But every suitor he presents, Violet finds a new and inventive means of rebuffing.Because Violet does not want to marry. She wants to work, and make her own way in the world. But more than anything, she wants to find her mother Lily, who disappeared from Hastings Pier 10 years earlier. Finding the missing is no job for a lady, but when Violet hires a seaside detective to help, she sets off a chain of events that will put more than just her reputation at risk.

When a brilliant emigre scientist is killed by a hit-and-run driver and the body of an American embassy employee is washed up in the Thames, DCI Frank Merlin and his team are called to investigate. Is this related to American ambassador Joseph Kennedy's support for appeasement of Hitler? The death of yet another embassy employee leads Merlin deep into the seedier quarters of wartime London, until his investigations are hampered by interfering superiors fearful of disrupting international relations.

As the Battle of Britain rages above, DCI Frank Merlin and his officers investigate the sudden disappearance of Polish RAF pilot Ziggy Kilinski - while battling the looting unleashed by the chaos and destruction of the Blitz. Unbeknownst to Merlin and his team, Russian spies have also been set loose on the city - instructed to retrieve Stalin's lost gold.

The lives of the people of Scarborough have always been tied to the sea. Often their deaths too. And when the body of a young man is pulled from the harbour, the police investigation has to dive into the tightly knit fishing community there. But DC Donna Morris, halfway through her probationary period in the town, finds very little is at it seems. Is the killing to do with old rivalries or more contemporary enmities, or is it somehow linked with a shocking murder which took place in the town twenty years ago?

Olga is being forced overseas by her jealous superior, and now faces two years in exile from her beloved railside hut, her white breasted hedgehog Dmitri, and Vassily Marushkin, sergeant-in-charge at the tiny Roslazny police station. Fate seems to intervene when Olga's train crashes outside Roslazny, shutting the line and killing two on board. But Vassily soon discovers that the Trans-Siberian locomotive was derailed on purpose.

Welcome to the opening weekend of The Manor - A luxury resort built on top of old secrets in an ancient wood. The Founder, the Husband, the Mystery Guest, the Kitchen Help, the Detective -- all have an agenda. All have a past. But not everyone will survive the Midnight Feast...

Kit Pelham is a professional fan, interviewer, host of the podcast 'The First Cult is the Deepest', and occasional obituary writer. Except this time the obituary is for her friend, maverick podcaster Wolf Tyler, who is murdered in his shed during a live broadcast, moments before revealing a huge secret about the cult TV show 'Vixens from the Void'. Kit and her group of friends and fellow superfans - Victor, Robbie, Freya and the irrepressible loon Binfire - soon realise Wolf had discovered something about the disappearance of Lily Sparkes, an extra on 'Vixens from the Void', back in 1986. And it was a secret worth killing for...

This tight-knit, four-person unit has worked together to save countless lives and stop out of control fires before they cause major destruction. They've also stolen millions from banks, jewelry stores, and art galleries. Under the cover of saving the city, they've used their knowledge and specialist equipment to become the most successful heist crew on the East Coast. But their new member is an undercover operative whose position among them grows ever more dangerous.

Emma Knightley and her husband are throwing a house party, bringing together many who will be well known to Jane Austen fans. Very much not invited is Mr. Wickham, whose latest financial scheme has netted him newfound wealth - and a broadening array of enemies. His unexpected arrival at the party triggers animosity and, eventually, murder.

Remie Yorke has one shift left at the Mackinnon Hotel in the remote Scottish Highlands before she leaves for good. Then Storm Ezra hits. As temperatures plummet and phone lines go down, an injured man stumbles inside. PC Don Gaines was in a terrible accident on the mountain road. The only other survivor is the prisoner his team was transporting. When a second stranger arrives, Remie reluctantly lets him in from the blizzard. He, too, is hurt. He claims to be a police officer. His name is also Don Gaines. Someone is lying and, with no means of escape, Remie must work out who.

Bookseller Bruce Cable tells Mercer Mann an irresistible tale that might be her next novel. A giant resort developer is using its political muscle and deep pockets to claim ownership of a deserted island between Florida and Georgia. Only the last living inhabitant of the island, Lovely Jackson, stands in its way. What the developer doesn't know is that the island has a remarkable history, and locals believe it is cursed...and the past is never the past...

Retired schoolteachers and amateur sleuths Liz, Pat and Thelma are giving up their coffee, cake and chat at the Thirsk Garden Centre cafe for a brand-new mystery. When their good friend tells them about an unsettling experience she had in a sinister-feeling charity shop, they simply can't resist investigating. Because the entire shop has vanished into thin air.

London 1815. Jenny's father is dead. She needs to marry immediately to save her and her mother's livelihood. A chance meeting presents the perfect candidate in the form of the enigmatic Erasmus Black. Gentleman, merchant, and if the rumours are to be believed, captain... But where does Erasmus slip away to in the dead of night? What secrets about her father's business has he discovered? And was their meeting really just a convenient coincidence?

Mrs. Kingis no ordinary housekeeper. Born into a world of con artists and thieves, she's made herself respectable, running the grandest home in Mayfair. When she is suddenly dismissed from her position, she recruits an eclectic group of women to join her in revenge. On the night of the house's highly anticipated costume ball - set to be the most illustrious of the year - they will rob it of its every possession, right under the noses of the distinguished guests and their elusive heiress host.

When Clarice Beech finds her friend Peter Ramsey dead in his kitchen, she believes he's succumbed to a fatal heart attack. Peter, who lived in one of the five cottages on Magpie Row in the Lincolnshire Wolds, was a keen supporter of stray cats - which made him very unpopular with the neighbours. Then Chris Morris, an alcoholic neighbour, disrupts Peter's funeral, insisting Peter was murdered - and he knows who the murderer is. Clarice discovers there's no shortage of possible suspects among the Magpie Row inhabitants.

On an isolated farm on the outskirts of Oxford a man lies dead in the kitchen - shot point blank. The farm's elderly owners claim the shooting was self-defense against a burglar. But something about the crime scene doesn't sit right with DI Adam Fawley, whose gut tells him there's more to their story. Digging deeper, the police realize there's an unmistakable link to an infamous case from years earlier involving a child's murder and an alleged miscarriage of justice.

Eve Duncan teams up with archaeologist Riley Smith to traipse through the remote jungle of Laos in search of an endangered animal species so rare that it has an almost mythical status. With corrupt treasure hunters on their tail, these two kick-ass women will need to risk it all to save this creature from extinction...as well as to save their own lives.

On the night before graduation, seven students gather in the basement of their university's rare books library for the ritual they want to perform - one borrowed from the Greeks, said to free those who take part in it from the fear of death. But just a few minutes into their celebration, the lights go out - and one of them drops dead. As the body count rises, with nothing but the books to protect them, the group must figure out how to survive the night while trapped with a murderer.

At sixteen, Holly Danvers barely survived the car accident that killed her father. While she has no memory of the crash, it took an ayahuasca treatment, a native plant-based psychedelic therapy, in the jungles of Peru for her to emotionally recover. Twenty years later, Holly is now a psychiatrist who employs psychedelics to treat patients suffering from addictions. But when one celebrity client goes public with his recovery and another overdoses after accusing Holly of improprieties, her world is turned upside down.

On her 15th birthday, trafficking victim Affi Smith goes for a run and never returns. With a new identity and secure home in the Scottish Highlands, she was supposed to be safe... DS Max Craigie discovers other trafficking victims have disappeared in exactly the same circumstances -- there's a leak somewhere within law-enforcement. Max must catch Affi's kidnappers and expose the mole before anyone else goes missing.

Six years ago, Beata Dabrowski arranged to meet her lover in Glasgow and was never seen again. There were no leads - until now. Imprisoned gang boss Davie Hardie knows exactly where Beata is buried, and he's prepared to take the police to her grave. But when the mission to locate Beata's body is hijacked, DS Max Craigie is drafted on to the case, and he will stop at nothing to expose police corruption and uncover Beata's murderer.

Terrorists have shot down a British helicopter in West Africa and taken the crew hostage. Their lives are on the line and the British government is refusing to negotiate. The pilot is Liam Shepherd, and only his father - Dan 'Spider' Shepherd of MI5 - can help. Shepherd and an SAS team fly out to the badlands of Mali to rescue the kidnapped Brits.

Everybody knows that in 1938, runaway heiress artist Juliette Willoughby perished in an accidental studio fire in Paris, alongside her masterpiece Self Portrait As Sphinx. Fifty years later, two Cambridge art history students are confounded when they stumble across proof that the fire was no accident but something more sinister. What they uncover threatens the very foundation of Juliette's aristocratic family and revives rumors of the infamous curse that has haunted the Willoughbys for generations.

Professional football players Keogh Graham and Tyler Matthewswant to open a Fairy Tale Cupcakes franchise. Everyone's excited the athletes are pursuing their dream of owning a bakery - except for those who fear the players will ditch football for fondant and retire early from professional sports. The angry naysayers include their team owner and Keogh's sports agent, along with some very vocal fans.When the owner of their team, the Arizona Scorpions, is found dead on the floor of their new bakery following an argument with Keogh, the pros become prime suspects.

Wealthy socialite Chrissie Montgomery is missing. Young, naive, and set to inherit an enormous fortune, she's a walking target, ripe for someone to get their claws into. Her dying father and his sultry bottle-blonde girlfriend want her found before that happens. To make sure, they've got both Philip Marlowe and Anne Riordan - now head of her own all-female detective agency - on the case, too. The search will takes the two investigators from the Montgomery mansion to the roughest neighborhoods of LA, through dive bars and boarding houses and out to Skid Row. And that's all before they find the body at the Brody Hotel.

Glasgow, 1933. Murder is nothing new in the Depression-era city, especially to war veterans Inspector Jimmy Dreghorn and his partner 'Bonnie' Archie McDaid. But the dead man found in a narrowboat on the Forth and Clyde Canal, executed with a single shot to the back of the head, is no ordinary killing. The razor-gangs that stalk the streets settle scores with knives and fists -- firearms suggest something more sinister, especially when the killer strikes again.

January 1970 finds Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, LA's premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations. He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency. Then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But the missing ex, a young white man named Curt Fields, is found dead.

Faces from the past appear from nowhere at a family funeral, and Will Flemyng, spy-turned-ambassador, is drawn into twin mysteries that threaten all he holds dear. From Washington, he's pitched back into the Troubles in Northern Ireland. And while he confronts shadowy adversaries in American streets, and looks for solace at home in the Scottish Highlands, he discovers that his government's most precious Cold War agent is in mortal danger.

A woman enters a Glasgow police station to report her son missing, but no record can be found of the boy. When Detective Harry McCoy, seconded from the cop shop across town, discovers the family is part of the cultish Church of Christ's Suffering, he suspects there is more to Michael's disappearance than meets the eye. Meanwhile reports arrive of a string of poisonings of down-and-outs across the city.

A delicious, and somewhat drunken, dinner party segues into a murder mystery game created by the hostess. However, the parlour game may hold clues about the dark truths hiding just under the surface of this genteel gathering...As suspects, clues and red herrings are sifted - it seems one of the guests has an unfair advantage: John Rebus, an ex-detective who used to do this for a living.

San Francisco, 1952. Ex-cop Evander "Andy" Mills has started a new life for himself as a PI - but no one in the queer community trusts him. Then James, an old flame from the war who had mysteriously disappeared, arrives in his offices above the Ruby with a simple case of blackmail. The case will take him back to the shadowy, closeted world of the Navy, and then out into the gay bars of the city, where the past rises up to meet him.

Sherlock Holmes and his cousin, Vernier, have been hired by the Baron of Creuse to find the legendary lost treasure of the kings of France. Trekking from La Belle Epoque Paris to a chateau in the rural center of France, Holmes, Vernier and a new companion must employ all their wit to solve the fiendishly difficult puzzle of the Hollow Needle.

Martha Ratliff meets and marries Alan, a charming and sweet-natured divorcee with a job that took him on the road for half the year. A year in and the marriage was good, except for that strange blood streak on the back of one of his shirts he'd worn to a conference in Denver. Her curiosity turning to suspicion, Martha investigates the cities Alan visited over the past year and uncovers a disturbing pattern - five unsolved cases of murdered women. Is she married to a serial killer?

A Russian diplomat disappears while Doc is tagging great white sharks in South Africa, and members of a criminal brotherhood, Bratva, don't think it's a coincidence. They track the biologist to Dinkin's Bay Marina on the west coast of Florida, where Brotherhood mercenaries have already deployed, prepared to pillage and kill in the wake of an approaching hurricane.

The cast and crew of a popular TV crime drama are shooting in the Lake District - but behind the scenes, relationships are as tense as on-screen. The director's reputation proceeds him, the two lead stars are feuding and rumours swirl. But when on-screen slaughter gets swapped for real-life murder at the concert hall where the TV drama is based, and the genuine police are as baffled as the TV detectives, it falls to Amita Kahtri and her friends from Penrith Bingo Club to search for the truth.