hc = hardcover, tp = trade (oversized) paperback, [UK ed] = British publication, [CDN ed] = Canadian publication. Default is US publication.
Please note that this listing is not exhaustive; we have many more (several hundred more) titles coming during this period.
[BC author]. Cait and Bud have set sail on a romantic and worry-free Hawaiian honeymoon cruise, but when a man drops dead at their card table, Cait senses foul play, despite the apparently natural causes. With only two days left at sea - and thousands of possible suspects - she and Bud unofficially join the head of security in an investigation.
Angie is helping organize the Rolling Brook Library's annual book sale. She works alongside brash librarian Austina Shaker, a lady who isn't afraid to make waves to get books to her patrons, even the Amish. Unfortunately, this draws the ire of cranky Bartholomew Belier, an Old Order Amish bishop, who publicly vows to ruin Austina. And she certainly might be ruined after Belier is found dead in her bookmobile.
The daughter of a local historian is getting married in a medieval-themed, hand-fasting ceremony, and Audrey is responsible for providing period-accurate blooms. But making sure she gets her roses right turns out to be the least of Audrey's problems. Shortly after the vows are exchanged, the father of the groom suddenly drops dead -- of monkshood poisoning.
Tis the season for tree trimming, mistletoe-dangling, and a cut-throat competition that has everyone in Caerphilly on edge. Meg Langslow's own mother is among those participating in a holiday-themed design extravaganza in which each room in an untenanted show house is decorated for the public to view. All the proceeds go to charity-so why are all the contestants fighting tooth and nail to win first prize?
The body of an unidentified woman is discovered in a local forest. A large, unique scar on one side of her face should have made the identification easy, but nobody has reported her missing. Louise Rick, new commander of Copenhagen's Missing Persons Department, releases a photo of the victim, and an older woman phones to say that she recognizes the woman as Lisemette, a child she once cared for in the state mental institution many years ago. But Louise soon discovers something more disturbing: Lisemette had a twin, and both girls were issued death certificates more than thirty years ago.
Carly isn't exactly eager to attend a costume ball organized by her boyfriend Dylan's mother, Patricia Davis Jackson. But to please Dylan, who wants peace between the two women, Carly reluctantly agrees to go. Gossip around town is that architect Haywood Dodd plans to make a big announcement at the party. But before he can address the crowd, he's found dead with Patricia standing over him, holding the murder weapon
After Joyce Mildmay's husband Charlie is killed in a tragic yachting accident, she is left to raise their three children by herself within Tarrant Park, a secluded gated development set in the rural countryside outside of Bristol. Then, six months later a letter arrives from Charlie, delivered belatedly in the event of his death, and contains a warning that Joyce's father and the family business are not what they seem. Charlie entreats her to leave without looking back, but Joyce decides instead to stay and unearth the truth.
Tawcester Towers, the family seat of the Lyminsters, has suffered an unwelcome injection of distant cousins, so distant that they aren't even British! Count Igor and Countess Lyudmilla Bashusky had to flee Russia after the Revolution and have spent the intervening years building up debts in the hotels of Europe's capitals and sponging off ever more exasperated (and distant) relatives. The Bashuskys' arrival at Tawcester Towers causes a stir, and it's up to Blotto and Twinks, that indefatigable duo, to provide a solution to get them back to Russia. Reversing the Russian Revolution and restoring the Tsar, if necessary.
In London, Detective Chief Inspector Stephen Hay of Scotland Yard heads up the investigation into the puzzling murder of a young Canadian woman travelling alone. In Ottawa, RCMP Inspector Liz Forsyth searches for the murderer of a young Chechen woman, who was shot at the gates of the Russian Embassy. No one knows who would want to kill her, except, perhaps, the Russians.
Sister Jane and the Jefferson Hunt Club are in Kentucky to ride with the members of the Woodford Hounds. After the hunt, Sister Jane and her boyfriend, Gray Lorillard, head to a sumptuous party on a nearby estate, also home to a historic equine graveyard. The revelry is interrupted by jarring news. The grisly remains discovered in the cemetery are decidedly not equine. Now Sister and her hounds are on the case, digging up clues to an old murder that links three well-connected Southern families.
First a dead woman is found in the freezer at Pamela's Pie Palace, and the next day a second woman is found murdered by the river. Reporter Annie Chamovitz learns the victims were sisters and is certain their deaths are linked. Most bizarre of all, both women were found clutching scrapbook pages. As their Saturday night crop quickly becomes an opportunity to puzzle out the murders, the ladies begin to wonder if Pamela is hiding more than her secret recipes for delicious pies - or if the crimes are related to the startling discovery that there are gangs in Cumberland Creek.
Lilah Drake's Covered Dish business discreetly provides the residents of Pine Haven, Illinois, with delicious, fresh-cooked meals they can claim they cooked themselves. But when one of her clandestine concoctions is used to poison a local woman, Lilah finds herself in a pot-load of trouble.
When mild-mannered Kenneth Tenneson is found dead from a fall down the stairs at his home, the coroner's inquest announces a verdict of accidental death. However, Florence Norris, the quietly observant housekeeper at Mullings, suspects there may be more to it than that. Then a second will turns up, revealing details of a dark secret in the Tenneson family s past.
Scrapbook shop owner Carmela Bertrand hears some strange noises coming from Oddities, the neighbouring antiques shop, and decides to investigate. Her evening plans are abruptly put on hold when out of a curio cabinet and into her arms falls the bloody body of Oddities owner Marcus Joubert. While Joubert was known for being an eccentric, Carmela never thought he could inspire the passion required to kill until she learns a priceless death mask was also stolen.
Retitled reissue of THE BROKER (1976). Things go horribly wrong with hitman Quarry's latest assignment, and he now finds himself with a new mission: learn who hired him, and make the bastard pay.
Charlie Parker has retreated to the small Maine town of Boreas to regain his strength. There he befriends a widow named Ruth Winter and her young daughter, Amanda. But Ruth has her secrets. Old atrocities are about to be unearthed, and old sinners will kill to hide their sins. Now Parker is about to risk his life to defend a woman he barely knows, one who fears him almost as much as she fears those who are coming for her.
Ex-con Aaron Eastman has unexpectedly reappeared in his hometown, searching for answers to the tragic fire in his family's past that put him behind bars twenty-five years ago. Moved by his sincerity, orchard owner Meg vows to do everything she can to help him solve the cold case. As she cobbles together the clues, it becomes increasingly clear that Aaron may have been considered the bad seed of the family, but someone else was one bad apple.
One of Serge's old flames, young lawyer Brook Campanella, is a rising legal star thanks to her expertise in the field of foreclosure law. She lands a major class-action lawsuit and looks set to win big, but the opposition is determined to shut her down. Luckily for her, Serge likes nothing better than saving a damsel in distress, especially when it means kicking a bunch of shyster butt.
Weeks after Caitlin Kinnear goes missing on her way home from the pub, the police are unable to break her case. Worse, they are not even certain harm has come to her. But determined to pursue all leads, DI Damen Brook and his team begin to trawl through the murky world of cheap migrant labour. Convinced that the answers lie hidden within its depths, Brook soon begins to realise Caitlin is in terrible danger. When the body of another young girl turns up it becomes clear that Caitlin's abduction might not be an isolated incident and the race is on to save her.
Liss is surprised when an old friend from high school asks her to spend a week at the Christmas tree farm she recently inherited from a great-uncle. Liss and her husand Dan are greeted there by a ramshackle farmhouse and unfriendly townsfolk. It's hardly the idyllic vacation locale they'd hoped for, especially when needling neighbours start raising questions about the farm's dark history. Who was the man whose body was found neatly netted in a shipment of Scotch pine? Why did the owner vanish into thin air? And why are the trees growing so close together, forming a maze more twisted than a Celtic knot?
Taking a short cut home beneath the ruined abbey in the centre of the city, a teenage girl reports stumbling across a body. She also claims to have seen a mysterious nun-like figure watching her from the shadows. But during the subsequent search, no body is found. The girl's inebriated state and her troubled history make the police sceptical of her story, and only Detective Inspector Joe Plantagenet is inclined to believe her. Then a woman is reported missing, and Joe finds himself caught up in a complex investigation involving a production of The Devils at the local Playhouse.
In ancient Ireland, an island ruled by kings and druids, the nuns of Saint Brigid are fighting to keep their monastery alive. When the bones of Brigid go missing from their church, the theft threatens to destroy all they have worked for. No one knows the danger they face better than Sister Deirdre, a young nun torn between two worlds. Trained as a bard and raised by a druid grandmother, she must draw upon all of her skills, both as a bard and as a nun, to find the bones before the convent begins to lose faith.
When a mysterious package is delivered to Robin Ellacott, she is horrified to discover that it contains a woman's severed leg.Her boss, private detective Cormoran Strike, is less surprised but no less alarmed. There are four people from his past who he thinks could be responsible - and Strike knows that any one of them is capable of sustained and unspeakable brutality. With the police focusing on the one suspect Strike is increasingly sure is not the perpetrator, he and Robin take matters into their own hands to investigate the dark and twisted worlds of the other three men.
Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles are summoned to the horrific scene of the murder of renowned big-game hunter and taxidermist Leon Gott. Maura wonders if it the crime might be linked to the slaughter of a group of tourists in Botswana six years earlier. Only one person other than the killer survived. Rizzoli and Isles hope to use the one survivor as bait...
When James Asher is found unconscious in the cemetery of the Church of St. Clare Pieds-Nus with multiple puncture-wounds in his throat and arms, his wife, Lydia, knows of only one person to call: the vampire Don Simon Ysidro. Old friend and old adversary, he is the only one who can help Lydia protect her unconscious, fevered husband from the vampires of Paris.
Draper, Utah. Linda Wallheim is a devout Mormon, the mother of five boys and the wife of a bishop, but increasingly troubled by her church's structure and secrecy. One cold winter night, a young wife and mother named Carrie Helm disappears, leaving behind everything she owns. Carrie's husband, Jared, claims his wife has always been unstable and that she has abandoned the family, but Linda doesn't trust him. As Linda snoops in the Helm family's circumstances, she becomes convinced that Jared has murdered his wife and painted himself as a wronged husband.
Bailey Ruth's supervisor, Wiggins, is worried about a dear old friend, the ghost of elegant Lorraine Marlow, who haunts Adelaide, Oklahoma's college library. Known as the Lady of the Roses, she plays matchmaker, using the fragrant flowers to pair up students. But someone's making mischief after hours, leaving roses strewn about the library and stealing a valuable book. Concerned with Lorraine's reputation among the living, Wiggins dispatches Bailey Ruth to investigate.
June 1904. Aimee Garnier Whitby, a beautiful French artist and wife of one of Maine's richest and most powerful men, is found near death on the Whitby family's private summer island, the letter "A" mysteriously carved into her chest. June 2012.Veronica Aimee Whitby, the eighteen-year-old descendant and virtual double of the first Aimee, becomes the victim of a near perfect copycat murder.
Brigadier Pieter Vos is on duty with his young assistant, Laura Bakker, at the annual Sinterklass parade when the first grenade hits. In the chaos an 8 year old girl is kidnapped, mistaken by the terrorists for the daughter of an Amsterdam aristocrat. She's the daughter of an impoverished Georgian prostitute, friendless and trapped in the web of vice that is Amsterdam's Red Light District. As the security forces and the police clash over the ensuing investigation the perpetrator's horrifying demands become clear.
Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he's planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, another writer, both of whom have rock solid alibis. But as Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga investigates, he eventually uncovers evidence that indicates that the two writers' relationship was very different than they claimed, that they were anything but best friends. But the question before Kaga isn't necessarily who, or how, but why.
After Savannah's father dies unexpectedly of a heart attack, she drops everything to return home to St. Petersburg, Florida, to settle his affairs - including the fate of the beloved, family-owned glass shop. Savannah intends to hand over ownership to her father's trusted assistant and fellow glass expert, Hugh Trevor, but soon discovers the master craftsman also dead of an apparent heart attack.
Ruth wanted to reconnect with her estranged grandfather after her recent divorce. But now Grandpa Thom has been found dead after a break-in at his shop in the small Berkshire town of Orchard, Massachusetts - and the police believe he was murdered. Now Ruth has inherited her grandfather's clock shop, the Cog & Sprocket. As she tries to stay on the good side of Grandpa's bossy gray cat, Bezel, while avoiding the step-grandmother she never wanted, old secrets and grudges start to surface, and Ruth will have to solve the murder.
Angel and Dickce Ducote head to Louisiana to visit relatives. But while their stay there is scorching hot, the atmosphere at the wedding is downright cold, with bride-to-be Sondra Delevan putting her trust fund above little things like love and loyalty. When a violent storm supposedly sweeps Sondra off a balcony to her death, the sisters discover that many of the guests attending the wedding had major reasons to object to Sondra's marriage.
A terrified mobile call, ending with a scream and the phone going dead, are the last words heard from a young woman. The police are on the scene within minutes, but find only the parked car and telephone. That same afternoon, workmen digging up an old asphalt pad in a park in another part of the city, unearth the remains of a young woman in her early twenties, who has been dead for 30 years. Then another woman in Brighton goes missing and Roy Grace makes a connection with a piece of information from an eminent London psychiatrist. Brighton has its first serial killer in over eighty years.
First, there's the death of the former prostitute who helped Catherine when she was still a child. Next, the CIA operative who had known her ever since she was pulled into the agency at the age of fourteen. And now Luke is in the killer's sights. Luke is Catherine's only son. Kidnapped when he was only two years old, Catherine devoted nine years of her life to finding him-and she will not lose him again.
A married couple is found dead in their jacuzzi. Their adopted five-year-old daughter has vanished. Inspector Malin Fors, the troubled but brilliant star of the Linkoping police force, is put in charge of the case. But this is a haunting mystery where the borders have been blurred: those between the living and the dead, between good and evil. Malin is only too aware of her own tendencies towards obsession and addiction. As the investigation takes a darker turn, forcing Malin to confront her own demons, will she hold out long enough to find the killer - and the missing girl - before it's too late?
Vancouver author. Grey Stevens took over the family business after his uncle passed away, and now he grows the best pot in Whistler. Grey just wants to take life easy and snowboard the cold months and bike the hot ones. But everybody wants to get their hands on his pot, including the two rival gangs coming to town, who want to take over the dope trade. When Grey steps in and rescues a girl from a beating at the hands of one of the gang members, he finds himself in the middle of a turf war and a new relationship at the same time.
I told you I was sick, reads the headstone above Mamie Sue Preston's grave. She was the richest woman in Sleepy Hollow, Kentucky, and also the biggest hypochondriac. Ironic, considering someone killed her and covered it up perfectly. And how does Emma Lee, proprietor of the Eternal Slumber Funeral Home, know all this? Because Mamie Sue's ghost told her, that's how. And she's offering big bucks to find the perp.
IRS Special Agent Tara Holloway would love to see local crime boss Giustino "Tino" Fabrizio behind bars. He operates a security business-or so he claims on his tax forms-but his clients don't feel so secure when it's time to pay up. Going undercover, Tara lands a waitress job at Benedetta's Bistro-which is owned and operated by Tino's wife.
The arrival of an art exhibition at the Mayville Heights library has completely disrupted Kathleen's life, thanks to the overbearing curator and high-tech security system that comes with it. Even Owen and Hercules have been affected, since their human doesn't seem to have a spare moment to make their favourite fish crackers or listen to Barry Manilow. But when Kathleen stops by the library late one night and finds the curator sprawled on the floor and the exhibition's most valuable sketch missing it's suddenly time to canvass a crime scene.
Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are aboard a cruising steamer, leaving Bombay, bound for Kobe. Holmes recognizes the famous clubman the Earl of Darley, whom he suspects of being an occasional blackmailer. It's not an unlikely career choice for a man richer in social connections than in pounds sterling. And then there's the lithe, surprisingly fluent young Japanese woman who befriends Russell and quotes haiku. She agrees to tutor the couple in Japanese language and customs, but Russell can't shake the feeling that Haruki Sato is not who she claims to be. Once in Japan, Russell's suspicions are confirmed in a most surprising way.
A body is discovered in the receding waters of a manmade lake, and for Peggy Casey, 23-year-old landlady of The Angler's Rest, nothing will ever be the same. Detective Sergeant Frank Ryan is dispatched from Dublin, and his arrival casts an uneasy spotlight on the damaged history of the valley, and on the difficult relationships that bind Peggy and her three older siblings.
A sea witch has been leaving bodies in her wake up and down the Carolina coast, baffling authorities who are finding drowning victims with no water in their lungs. The finicky female will continue to kill young male witches until she finds her perfect man, the one who survives her mating ritual so she can live for another hundred years. And now coven hopeful Brian Fuller is about to be ensnared in her net. Retired witches Molly and Elsie, along with the ghost of Olivia and her daughter Dorothy, need all the help they can get to stop the sea witch.
When Silas learns that his wife Penelope's death was not accidental, but a violent execution, he embarks on a renegade mission across the Colorado Plateau to hunt down the last person who saw his wife alive. Now he will find the missing pieces in the puzzle of Penelope's disappearance, and uncover the horrible truth about who wanted her dead and why.
Chocolate-whisperer Hayden Mundy Moore has just arrived in Portland, Oregon, for a friend's engagement party. The last thing Hayden wants to do is mix her love of chocolate with criminal mischief again. But then the groom-to-be turns up dead before beginning his renowned Chocolate-After-Dark tour.
When you catch a twisted killer there should be a reward, right? What Acting Detective Inspector Logan McRae gets instead is a "development opportunity" out in the depths of rural Aberdeenshire. Welcome to divisional policing - catching drug dealers, shop lifters, vandals and the odd escaped farm animal. Then a little girl's body washes up just outside the sleepy town of Banff, kicking off a massive manhunt.
Cecile Bellange is a worried mother. Her eighteen-year-old daughter Annabelle and her friend Dorothee left Paris for a summer hitchhiking holiday in England, but it's now September and the only contact from them is a postcard sent from the picturesque setting of Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire three months ago. Arriving in England, Cecile Bellange meets Detective Joanna Piercy, who is looking into the girls disappearance.
Debutante dropout Andrea Kendricks, reluctant attendee at a high society Texas wedding, runs into her old prep-school nemesis, Olivia La Belle, the wedding planner, who's graduated to berating people for a living on her reality TV show. Olivia is lying in a pool of blood, a cake knife in her throat. Cops believe the baker did it, but Andy's not so sure.
The body of an elderly man is hauled out of the rushing water of the River Foyle, cold dead, already embalmed. Confounded and exhausted, Detective Lucy Black is barely back home when a neighbour knocks because his wife's sister has been attacked and they need her help. As a string of strange crimes is unspooled throughout the city, Lucy is pulled in countless different directions until she realizes there may be something dark and dangerous connecting everything.
A week before Christmas, a young photographer discovers a plastic-wrapped corpse amidst the sand dunes north of Cape Town. Police identify the body as that of Ernst Richter, the tech whiz behind MyAlibi, an internet service that provides unfaithful partners with sophisticated cover stories to hide an affair. Benny Griessel has just emerged from a drunken haze, determined to quit the force, but the take-no-sass Major Mbali Kaleni, now his boss, wants Griessel on the Richter case.
DI Alex Morrow and her team have been shadowing a woman suspected of being involved in a large drug-smuggling and money-laundering operation. But then she disappears, leaving her partner and her two children. Meanwhile, in the nearby picturesque town of Helensburgh, Iain Fraser has just killed a woman under orders from the infamous Mark Barratt. As he struggles with the guilt, Miss Grierson, a former scout leader who left the sleepy seaside town decades ago, has returned. Allegedly she's back to sort out her recently deceased mother's estate, but Iain suspects she has an ulterior motive.
Life couldn't be sweeter for Tres Amigas Cafe chef Rita Lafitte, decorating sugar skulls and taste-testing rich, buttery pan de muerto in anticipation of Santa Fe's Day of the Dead bread-baking contest. That is, until her friendly landlord, Victor, is found dead next door. Although the police deem Victor's death a suicide, Rita knows something is amiss.
Victorian England. Over 20 years have past since Dr Ned Courtine and his former university friend, Austin Fickling, last met. Fickling appears anxious and gaunt, ravaged by a strange, existential guilt. In order to deflect Courtine's questions from himself, he recounts the story of Thurchester's ghost, William Burgoyne, once a royalist and treasurer of the cathedral who was murdered in the aftermath of the Civil War. The macabre tale of murder and deception captures Courtine's imagination, and he finds himself unknowningly drawn into a world of haunting evil.
When a Hollywood power broker and his mistress are found dead in the abandoned beachfront estate known as the Murder House, the gruesome crime scene rivals anything Detective Jenna Murphy has ever experienced. And what at first seems like an open and shut case turns out to have as many shocking secrets as the Murder House itself, as Jenna quickly realizes that the mansion's history is much darker than even the town's most salacious gossips could have imagined.
Detective Alex Cross is being stalked by a psychotic genius, forced to play the deadliest game of his career. Cross's family - his loving wife Bree, the wise and lively Nana Mama, and his precious children - have been ripped away. Terrified and desperate, Cross must give this mad man what he wants if he has any chance of saving the most important people in his life. The stakes have never been higher. What will Cross sacrifice to save the ones he loves?
The title says it all.
Isabel Leon, the star of a survival reality show, unwittingly gives an unscrupulous mogul a chance to profit from her murder. She becomes the target of a terrifying killer who makes nature seem tame by comparison. At first left for dead, she is rescued by a medical research team that operates outside the law. She awakens to find she's the living proof of a breakthrough that can change the world -- and the target of those who would pay any price to control it.
Skeleton Sid doesn't mind wearing a full-body dog suit and going as Scooby-Doo along with Georgia Thackery's Velma to the Halloween Howl. Sid can't wait to go through the Haunted House but he gets rattled for real when a genuine dead body is discovered. Trapped inside as the police quickly seal off the crime scene, Sid makes no bones about dropping the dog suit and posing as an actual skeleton.
When Vanessa narrowly escapes a devastating explosion at the Louvre, she suspects the notorious nuclear arms dealer Bhoot was behind the attack. But then a previously unknown militant group claims responsibility for the bombing and promises even greater carnage. Bhoot himself contacts Vanessa to confirm that a miniaturized nuclear device may have fallen into hands more dangerous than his own.
Stage play. 224 pages. It's been 25 years since Alfred Chalmers was convicted of the gruesome murder of four young women in Edinburgh. Isobel McArthur, Scotland's first Chief Superintendent, was the woman responsible for putting him behind bars, but the case has haunted her ever since. Now, with her retirement approaching, McArthur decides the time has come for answers. To uncover the truth, she revisits the case and interviews Chalmers for the first time in decades.
The Danish Ambassador has requested Albert Campion's help. His 18 year old daughter has formed an attachment to a most unsuitable young man. Recruiting his unemployed actor son, Rupert, to keep an eye on Frank Tate, the young man in question, Mr Campion notes some decidedly odd behaviour on the part of the up-and-coming photographer. Before he can act on the matter, however, both the Ambassador's daughter and her beau disappear without trace. Then a body is discovered in a lagoon.
In Southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to an end. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues. "Issues" is correct. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether to authorize the killing of a local reporter. The vote is four to one in favour. Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is helping out a friend by looking into a dognapping, which seems to be turning into something much bigger and uglier--a team of dognappers supplying medical labs--when he gets a call from Lucas Davenport. A murdered body has been found and the victim is a local reporter...
Summer, 1546. Matthew Shardlake is working for Henry VIII's 6th wife, Queen Catherine Parr. She has written a confessional book, Lamentation of a Sinner, so radically Protestant that if it came to the King's attention it could bring both her and her sympathizers crashing down. But, although the book was kept secret and hidden inside a locked chest in the Queen's private chamber, it has - inexplicably - vanished. Only one page has been found, clutched in the hand of a murdered London printer.
88 B.C. A coup has brought a new Pharaoh to power and chaos to the streets of Alexandria. The young Gordianus has been waiting out the chaos with Bethesda, when he gets a cryptic message from his former tutor and friend, Antipater. Now in Ephesus, as part of Mithridates' entourage, Antipater seems to think that his life is in imminent danger. To rescue him, Gordianus concocts a daring, even foolhardy, scheme to go "behind enemy lines" and bring Antipater to safety. But there are powerful, and deadly forces, at work here, which have their own plans for Gordianus.
The victim, one of the richest and most-hated corporate criminals in America has been dubbed The Alligator Man after pieces of his clothing were found in a local swamp. Billy Fuller had every reason to want the victim dead and all the evidence leads right to his doorstep. But legendary lawyer Tom Wylie believes in Billy and he and his long-estranged son reunite to fight for Billy's life.
Aldis is working in a juvenile detention centre in rural Iceland. She witnesses something deeply disturbing in the middle of the night. Soon afterwards, two of the boys at the centre are dead. Decades later, single father Odinn is looking into alleged abuse at the centre following the unexplained death of the colleague who was previously running the investigation. The more he finds out, though, the more it seems the odd events of the 1970s are linked to the accident that killed his ex-wife. Was her death something more sinister?
With a missing girl in the news, Claire Scott can't help but be reminded of her sister, who disappeared twenty years ago in a mystery that was never solved. But when Claire begins to learn the truth about her sister, nothing will ever be the same.
Leaving behind his life of violence in Brazil's darkest shadows, Zico is determined to become a better man. But it seems his old life isn't quite done with him yet when he's tasked with making one last kill. It's one that could get him everything he has ever wanted; a house, some land, cash in his pocket, a future for him and his girlfriend, Daniella. But this one isn't like all the others. This one comes at a much higher price.
When their daughter Lori disappears in China, her separated parents Jo and Tom, reunite to find her. They travel from Manchester to Chengdu, a city in the south-western province of Sichuan. With no knowledge of the customs or language, and receiving scant help from the local authorities, Jo and Tom follow in their daughter's footsteps, tracing the people she mentioned in her blogs, interviewing her friends, colleagues and students. It's an unbearably difficult challenge and, as the days pass, the fear that Lori is lost for good grows ever larger.
Nestled in New York's Hudson Valley, Mundy's Landing is famous for its picturesque setting - and for a century-old string of gruesome unsolved murders. Rowan returned to her hometown years ago, fleeing a momentary mistake that could have destroyed her family. Life is good here. Peaceful. Until an anonymous gift brings Rowan's fears to life again. The town's violent history was just the beginning.
Short stories featuring Ian Rutledge in the trenches in World War I, and Bess Crawford's youth in India.
June, 1914. Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge pays little notice to the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo. To the north a Scottish Highlander shows his dear girl the house he will build for her in September. And back in England, a son awaits the undertaker in the wake of his widowed mother's death. This death will set off a series of murders across England, seemingly unconnected, that Rutledge will race to solve in the weeks before the fateful declaration in August that will forever transform his world.
A collection of 13 short stories spanning two decades in the lives of Van De Wetering's Amsterdam Cops.
Incorporating distinct traditions and styles of crime writing, the three novellas in JUDGES are united by a theme of idealistic judges in an often futile struggle against crime and corruption. Three Italian crimes writers, Andrea Camillieri, Carlo Lucarelli, and Giancarlo de Cataldo, each contribute.
While Phyllis and her friend Carolyn are preparing for a baking contest, her housemate Sam adopts Buck, an adorable Dalmatian who was hit by a car. To thank local veterinarian Hank Baxter for helping the dog, Phyllis and Carolyn bake a batch of doggie treats for his other four-legged patients. But when they arrive at the clinic, the vet is in the process of being arrested for the murder of his wife!
After Olivia and Chief Rawlings enjoy a brief honeymoon on Palmetto Island, they're joined by the rest of the Bayside Book Writers for the Coastal Carolina Crime Festival. The festival's highlight is Silas Black, celebrity screenwriter and television producer. When the body of a woman close to Black is found on the beach, Olivia and her friends must deduce who on the island could resort to murder before the sands of time run out for someone else.
Will Robie is the government's most professional, disciplined, and lethal assassin -- until, sent overseas on a critical mission, he fails, unable to pull the trigger. Absent his talents, Robie is a man without a mission, and without a purpose. Now his father, elected judge for the small Gulf Coast town of Cantrell, Mississippi, has been arrested and charged with murder. And he refuses to do anything to defend himself. Will begins digging into the community's secrets.
FBI Special Agent Ren Bryce takes on a depraved serial killer fueled by a warped sense of justice. A master of evasion, each life he takes ramps up Ren's obsession with finding him. Then one victim changes everything and brings Ren face to face with a detective whose life was destroyed by the same pursuit. Together, can they defeat this monster? Or will he take them both down?
Christmas Eve, 1814: Jane Austen has been invited to spend the holiday at The Vyne, ancestral home of the wealthy and politically prominent Chute family. One of the Yuletide revelers there dies in a tragic accident, which Jane immediately views with suspicion. If the accident was in fact murder, the killer is one of Jane's fellow snow-bound guests.
Three confessions. Two liars. One killer.Three friends have had their lives ripped apart. Their pasts haunt them. They are consumed by guilt. And they don't trust anyone. Not even themselves.But in their small, isolated, island community, trust is the only way to survive. Now a child has gone missing. And no one knows who to believe.
It's almost Fourth of July, and to boost customer traffic in their Brooklyn neighborhood, bookseller Darla Pettistone decides to throw a block party. All the local shop owners are thrilled except the proprietor of Perky's Coffee Shop, who thinks Darla is trying to poach his customers by selling her own caffeinated brew in her new bookshop cafe. But when Hamlet comes upon the owner's not-so-perky wife, it's clear a killer has crashed the party.
When corrupt DEA Agent Nicole Rollins, behind bars for murder, conspiracy, and gunrunning, makes a daring escape-jeopardizing a busload of children and killing five officers-Lucy Kincaid becomes the key to the biggest manhunt in Texas history...and the target of a brilliant killer.
This classic detective story from the publisher's vaults involves a tragic accident during a shooting party. As the story switches between Paris and Hampshire, the possibility of it not being an accident seems to grow more likely.
It's been a month since a complete stranger was accused of murdering Moe Davidson, the miserable shop owner of Clowning Around. Everybody's moving on, including Lee Woodyard. Her chocolate shop, TenHuis Chocolade, is next door to Moe's shuttered tourist trap, and it's giving her ideas to expand. But when Lee tours the building, she finds Moe's widow, Emma, unconscious. Now Lee wonders whether the real killer is still at large and is taking care of unfinished business.
When Mac Sullivan, famous thriller writer and Shannon's new beau, first moved to Lighthouse Cove, California, he bought the historic lighthouse mansion that the town is named after. Mac needs help cleaning up the place, and Shannon is more than happy to get her handywoman hands on the run-down Victorian. But during demolition, a grisly discovery is made among the debris - the bones of a teenage girl who went missing fifteen years ago.
One morning before dawn at her regal country estate, Lady Lavinia Truelove is crushed to death by a horse. Classified as death by misadventure, this appears a gruesome accident, but Scotland Yard Detective Joe Sandilands suspects foul play - a misgiving he is struggling to separate from his personal grievances toward Sir James Truelove, who is Lady Lavinia's widower and the influential academic patron of Dorcas Joliffe, whom Joe one day hopes to marry.
While their house is under construction, Abby and her new husband, Marco, are living with her parents, who are driving her nuts. Not to mention that everyone has babies on the brain, with her cousin Jillian s bundle of joy popping up in every conversation, and Marco s mother dropping hints that she expects a new sprout from Abby and her son as soon as possible! But things get even thornier after a flashy former banker pushes up daisies.
When a man succumbs to complications from being shot by a stray bullet nine years earlier, Bosch catches a case in which the body is still fresh, but any other evidence is virtually nonexistent. Now Bosch and his new partner, rookie Detective Lucia Soto, are tasked with solving what turns out to be a highly charged, politically sensitive case. Starting with the bullet that's been lodged for years in the victim's spine, they must pull new leads from years-old information, which soon reveals that this shooting may have been anything but random.
Detective Harry Bosch has retired from the LAPD, but his half-brother, defense attorney Mickey Haller, needs his help. A woman has been brutally murdered in her bed and all evidence points to Haller's client, a former gang member turned family man. Though the murder rap seems ironclad, Mickey is sure it's a setup. With the secret help of his former LAPD partner Lucy Soto, Harry starts digging. Soon his investigation leads him inside the police department, where he realizes that the killer he's been tracking has also been tracking him.
Dr. Kay Scarpetta is working a suspicious death scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when an emergency alert sounds on her phone. A video link lands in her text messages and seems to be from her computer genius niece, Lucy. But how can it be? It's clearly a surveillance film of Lucy taken almost twenty years ago. As Scarpetta watches, she begins to learn frightening secrets about her niece, whom she has loved and raised like a daughter.
Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are joined by SUSPECT heroes Scott James and his K-9 partner, Maggie. Elvis Cole is hired to locate a missing woman who worked for a defense contractor and was being blackmailed to supply explosives components for a person or persons unknown. Meanwhile, in another part of the city, LAPD officer Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, enter an abandoned building to locate an armed and dangerous thief, only to discover the fugitive dead, the building filled with explosives. A bloodied Joe Pike watches from the shadows.
Savvy sleuths come in small packages. Pepe, aspiring P.I. Geri Sullivan's muy clever Chihuahua, has stopped talking. But why now, with Geri's best friend Brad missing and her ditzy sister in grave danger? Geri's lost without Pepe s dogged detective work, especially when a client of Brad's expires under very murky circumstances. Luckily, Pepe turns out to be an excelente blogger, and his nose for clues soon has the detective duo chasing down leads.
Robbie Jordan buys a rundown country store in South Lick Indiana and puts her skills as a cook and a carpenter to use. Everyone in town shows up for the grand re-opening of Pans'n Pancakes, but when the mayor's disagreeable assistant is found dead, Robbie realizes that not all press is good press.
As the owner of Mrs. Claus's Treasures, Merry Wilkinson thinks her float in the semi-annual Santa Claus parade is a shoe-in for best in show. But then the tractor pulling Merry's float is sabotaged and shortly after she stumbles upon a reporter's body on a late night dog walk. The police suspect he was poisoned by a gingerbread cookie crafted by her best friend.
Ken Globovic (aka Gobbles), hailed as the Supreme Exalted Zookeeper of the animal house known as Zeta fraternity, has been arrested for beating up the dean of students at Kiltman College. Gobbles has missed his court date and gone into hiding. People have seen him on campus, but no one will talk. As much as people love Gobbles, they hate Doug Linken. When Linken is gunned down in his backyard it's good riddance, and the list of possible murder suspects is long.
Cassie Miller decides to return to her small hometown in the Berkshires to become Postmaster. Everything is business as usual until Cassie arrives at work one day to find that someone has broken into the post office building. The only items stolen: stacks of telephone books. Who steals phone books? Two days later, the body of an unidentified man is found in the woods.
Jeff Hinkley, undercover investigator for the British Horseracing Authority, is approached by the multi-time champion jockey, Dave Swinton, to discuss the delicate matter of losing races on purpose. Little does Jeff realise that the call would result in an attempt on his life, locked in a sauna with the temperature well above boiling point. Dave Swinton is then found dead, burnt beyond recognition in his car at a deserted beauty spot. The police think it's a suicide but Jeff is not so sure.
Nicole Frank shouldn't have survived the car accident, much less the crawl up the steep ravine. One thought allows her to defy the odds and flag down help - she must save Vero. Arriving at the scene, Sergeant Wyatt Foster joins the desperate hunt for a missing child, only to learn that Nicky suffers from a rare brain injury that causes delusions. According to her husband, there is no child. Never has been. And yet Nicky remains adamant. She must save Vero.
Is there a link between a young man's leap from a Dorset cliff and a horrific poisoning in Cambridge? After various career-threatening issues with her department, Barbara Havers is desperate to redeem herself. So when a past encounter with a bestselling feminist writer and her pushy personal assistant gives her a connection to the Cambridge murder, Barbara begs Thomas Lynley to let her pursue the crime.
In Seattle's upscale Blueridge neighbourhood, a lawyer and his family are found brutally murdered in their home. Their bodies are carefully laid out: blindfolded, hands tied, and crosses drawn in blood across their foreheads, and the words "thirteen days" scratched above the bedroom door. The same message is delivered to Nathan Quinn, a partner in the lawyer's firm. The homicide detectives, Madison and Brown, determine that the prime suspect is John Cameron, a fugitive long wanted for the infamous "Nostromo" killings. But Cameron's attorney, the same Nathan Quinn, won't reveal his whereabouts.
You're nobody anybody knows. You know pursuing the truth will get you killed. But you refuse to just fade away. So you're designated an enemy of the largest secret national security apparatus in America's history. Good guys or bad guys, it doesn't matter: All assassins' guns are aimed at you. And you run for your life branded with the code name you made iconic: Condor.
A North Korean ICBM crashes into the Sea of Japan. A veteran CIA officer is murdered in Ho Chi Minh City, and a package of forged documents goes missing. The pieces are there, but assembling the puzzle will cost Jack Ryan, Jr. and his fellow Campus agents precious time. Time they don't have.
A woman's body is discovered dumped in the Everglades, and star prosecutor Abe Beckham is called upon to monitor the investigation. The FBI is tracking a killer in South Florida they call "Cutter" because his brutal methods hark back to Florida's dark past, when machete-wielding men cut sugarcane by hand in the blazing sun. But when Angelina, Abe's wife, goes missing, the respected attorney finds himself under suspicion. His closest friends, family, professional colleagues, and the media no longer trust his motives.
The Dickens Days festival means a big turnout for the opening of Queensville Historic Manor and for Jaymie Leighton, food columnist and vintage cookware collector, a chance to promote the manor and give away homemade goodies. At the end of a long day of festival fun, Jaymie discovers the battered body of local woman Shelby Fretter. Shelby predicted her own murder in journal entries and all clues point to Cody Wainwright, the troubled son of Jaymie's beleaguered newspaper editor.
Between her soon-to-be ex-husband Spiro coming out of the closet and her budding romance with Captain Jack Conway, Georgie's life is beginning to feel like a soap opera. And that's before a surprise visit from her estranged mother Shirley, better known as soap star Melanie Ashley. But the dramatic family reunion takes a chilling turn when another long-lost relative turns up dead.
Aged 48, Marcus Cicero, the greatest orator of his time, is to all appearances a broken man. Out of power, exiled to the eastern Mediterranean with his faithful secretary, Tiro, separated from his wife and children, his possessions confiscated, he spends his days tormented by his failure. But, to quote one of his own famous aphorisms: 'while there's life there's hope'. By promising to support his political enemy, Caesar, he manages to win his return to Italy. Once home, he gradually fights his way back: first in the law courts, then in the senate, and finally by the power of his pen, until at last, for one brief and glorious period, he is once again the dominant figure in Rome.
Renowned theater director Cordelia Thorn is working to restore a historic theater in downtown Minneapolis and discovers that there is a present-day body literally buried in a basement wall. She immediately calls on her best friend, P.I. Jane Lawless. Although Jane is already in the thick of another investigation - she's embroiled in a well-known country-western singer's family scandal - she agrees to help Cordelia out on the side.
The annual SoCal Knit Style Show features crochet for the first time, including crochet classes and a crochet competition. The show's organizer is K. D. Kirby, publisher of several knitting magazines and owner of an elite Beverly Hills yarn store. Concern when K. D. doesn t show up for the opening reception turns into shock when she's found dead in her hotel suite.
Twelve Longmire short stories available for the first time in a single volume.
Forensic Instincts' first order of business is to find out who is targeting their client. FI's strength is its members, among them former navy SEAL Marc Devereaux. Madeline's case hits too close to home for Marc. She's the only woman he ever loved, and she's his only weakness. Now a nurse at Manhattan Memorial, she's terrified because someone is trying to kill her. So she turns, reluctantly, to Marc and FI for help and protection.
When the body of a nude man, apparently a suicide, is found deep within the woods, Decker must dig to uncover the man's identity. The investigation takes Decker to Kneed Loft College, where he must penetrate the indecipherable upper echelons of mathematics and mathematical prodigies. There he discovers a sphere of scheming academics, hidden cyphers and most dangerous of all a realm of underworld crime that transforms harmless nerds into cold, calculating evil geniuses.
LAPD detective Jacob Lev is not coping well after learning the truth about his family. Then he comes across the file for a gruesome unsolved murder that brings the two halves of his life into startling collision. Finding the killer will take him halfway around the world, to Paris the city of romance, but also of gritty streets, behind the lights. It's a dangerous search for truth that plunges him into the past. And for Jacob Lev, there is no place more frightening.
After a traumatic car accident wipes out his memory, Matt Barron keeps having a recurring dream of being in a house with a group of dead bodies and a bloody knife in his hand. Then one night, the past comes calling in the most terrifying way imaginable and Matt is forced to flee for his life. There's only one person who can help - ex Met cop, turned private detective, Tina Boyd. But Matt's a hunted man and, as Tina digs into his background, she suddenly finds herself in the firing line too.
Nefarious doings among movers and shakers in Depression-era New York City animate a lively chase for a story - and a murderer-for newspaper nightclub columnist Alexander Brass. It all begins when a furtive tipster promises an explosive story and gives Brass an envelope filled with photographs of several powerful people caught in compromising sexual positions. Intrigued, Brass sends a newspaper stringer to follow the mystery man. When the stringer is murdered, Brass and his team resolve to find the killer, running the gauntlet of blackmailing Nazis, accommodating nymphomaniacs and US senators on the way.
Kay Hamilton, fired by the DEA, now works for a quasi-governmental agency charged with accomplishing special missions for the president - off the grid. But before she's completed her training, she's sent to a hostile province in Afghanistan. There a mission that should have been purely political turns unexpectedly and explosively violent.Barely getting out alive, Kay follows a trail of deception and murder from Washington to West Virginia to England.
The Seven-Year Stitch celebrates its first year of business in Tallulah Falls, Oregon. Marcy's got all sorts of celebratory swag, including Seven-Year Stitch key rings and goodie bags. Unfortunately, an eccentric couple has opened a haunted house next door, and all that screaming will certainly scare off customers. But there's even more to be frightened of after a local waitress is found dead on the sidewalk with mysterious markings on her neck and one of Marcy's key rings beneath her.
The Blanchards are invited to the gala event of the season. Lindy's wealthy friend Eugene Wheatley who is just nuts about his new bride is throwing a party to introduce his wife Jeannie to Riverville, Texas, society. The celebration is in full swing when Eugene is found shot dead. Jeannie and her unscrupulous kin are the prime suspects, but the Blanchards aren't convinced.
When a new murder case hits Camille Verhoeven's desk, the press has a field day, taking particular pleasure in putting Verhoeven under the media spotlight (and revealing uncomfortable details of his personal life). Then Verhoeven makes a breakthrough discovery. The murders are modeled after the exploits of serial killers from classic works of crime fiction. Then his wife Irene is kidnapped. With time running out, Verhoeven realizes that all along he's been the unwitting dupe in The Novelist's plans to create an original work of his own.
Since inheriting her mother's sandwich shop, Nora Charles is more about hot grilled paninis than cold-blooded murder until her sister Lacey is arrested. The victim, an esteemed art collector and Lacey's bullying professor, was stabbed in the heart.
Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Churchill arrives in Washington, D.C., along with special agent Maggie Hope. Posing as his typist, she is accompanying the prime minister as he meets with President Roosevelt to negotiate the United States' entry into World War II. When one of the First Lady's aides is mysteriously murdered, Maggie is quickly drawn into Mrs. Roosevelt's inner circle - as ER herself is implicated in the crime.
A meth-addicted biker shoots a woman during a police siege. An elderly couple commit suicide on the terrace of their favourite cafe. An unidentified white male is stabbed to death in the street. For Sydney homicide detective Harry Belltree these three deaths would be just another day at the office -- until, that is, he identifies the stabbing victim as his own brother-in-law Greg. And journalist Kelly Pool suggests there's a link between the three incidents.
A psychologist is found brutally murdered, an addict jumps to his death and a student is found dead. As DIs Wheeler and Ross weave through the layers of Glasgow's underbelly they find a subculture where truth and lies are interchangeable commodities and violence is the favoured currency, and a web of deceit in which Wheeler's own nephew is entangled.
In Edinburgh a skeleton is discovered in an apparently inaccessible Gothic pinnacle on a derelict school. Cold case detective Karen Pirie is called in when investigations reveal this is no recent death. The stakes rise when unexpected connections to the Balkan wars are uncovered.
Out of the blue, Carrie Cassidy is contacted by a woman whose husband claims to have known Carrie's mother. Luis Meyer is terminally ill and his dying wish is that Carrie comes to visit him at his home in Lake Lucerne, Switzerland.Intrigued and uneasy at the thought of unearthing secrets from the past, Carrie decides to finally take a risk and discover the truth about Luis's relationship with her mother. But little does Carrie realise that she is about to unravel a dangerous web of deceit and betrayal...
For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of Bing Ah Kee. Meanwhile, his partner, Sabina Carpenter, unsure of the dark secrets her suitor might be concealing, searches for the corpse of a millionaire, stolen from a sealed family crypt and currently being held for ransom. With the threat of a tong war hanging over the city (a war perhaps being spurred on by corrupt officials), Carpenter and Quincannon have no time to lose in solving their cases.
Brad Falon, one of Satan's longtime puppets, orchestrated a deadly robbery and set up his old friend Morgan Blake to take the fall. Now, Morgan has been sentenced to life in prison. His young daughter Sammie turns to Misto, the ghost cat. Behind bars, her father Morgan makes friends with an old con named Lee Fontana and the two plan a wily escape to bring the real killer to justice and clear Morgan's name. All it will take is outsmarting the Devil one more time...
September 2011. Carina Dymek, EU Coordinator for the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is handed a USB drive that contains high-level plans for a new pan-European intelligence service to be given extraordinary powers in the name of pre-empting terrorism. After she passes the plans along to her Ministry superiors, she finds herself suspended from her job and under investigation by SAPO, Sweden's Intelligence Agency.
Scrooge considers himself a rational man with a keen sense of deductive reasoning developed from years of business dealings. But that changes one night when he's visited by the ghost of his former boss and friend, Fezziwig, who mysteriously warns him that three more will die, and ultimately Ebenezer himself - if he doesn't get to the bottom of a vast conspiracy. When he wakes the next day, Scrooge discovers that not only is Fezziwig dead, but he's under arrest as all evidence points toward himself: Scrooge's calling card was found in the cold, dead hand of Fezziwig's body, and someone scribbled "HUMBUG" in blood on the floor nearby.
It's time for the annual Brandywine Creek Barbecue Festival. Soon contestants and BBQ aficionados from all over the Southeast will converge on the town. Many of Brandywine Creek's citizens are busily concocting savory rubs and sassy sauces -- among them Becca Dapkins and Maybelle Humphries. The women have been arch enemies ever since Buzz Oliver dumped Maybelle after a thirteen-year courtship and started seeing Becca. When Becca's body is found near one of the festival booths, bludgeoned by a brisket, Maybelle becomes one of Chief Wyatt McBride's top suspects.
It's Christmas Eve and Detective Alex Cross has been called out to catch someone who is robbing his church's poor box. That mission behind him, Alex returns home to celebrate with Bree, Nana, and his children. The tree decorating is barely underway before his phone rings again - a horrific hostage situation is quickly spiraling out of control. Away from his own family on the most precious of days, Alex calls upon every ounce of his training, creativity, and daring to save another family. Alex risks everything - and he may not make it back alive on this most sacred of family days.
The biggest collection of Sherlock Holmes stories ever assembled! 83 stories, published over a span of more than a hundred years. Includes stories from Leslie S. Klinger, Laurie R. King, Lyndsay Faye and Daniel Stashower; pastiches by literary luminaries both classic (P. G. Wodehouse, Dorothy B. Hughes, Kingsley Amis) and current (Anne Perry, Stephen King, Colin Dexter); and parodies by Conan Doyle s contemporaries A. A. Milne, James M. Barrie, and O. Henry, not to mention genre-bending cases by science-fiction greats Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock.
Novella. Lonely Charles Latterly arrives at his small hotel on a Mediterranean island but the finds little holiday cheer among his fellow guests, who include a pompous novelist, a stuffy colonel, a dangerously ill-matched married couple, and an ailing old man. But the tranquility of the holiday is swiftly disrupted by a violent quarrel, an unpleasant gentleman's shocking claims of being stalked, and the ominous stirrings of the local volcano. Then events take an even darker turn and Charles realizes that a killer must be among the group of guests.
A CHRISTMAS HOPE and A NEW YORK CHRISTMAS.
When Lee Barrett spots the same style oak bureau she once had as a child on the WICH-TV show, "Shopping Salem," she rushes to the antiques shop and buys the piece. Just like the beloved bureau she lost in a fire, this one has secret compartments. It also comes with an intriguing history - it was purchased in an estate sale from a home where a famous local murder took place. The day after the bureau is delivered, Lee returns to the antiques shop and finds the owner dead.
A hot-ticket charity fashion show is the perfect chance for Cookie Chanel, proud owner of It's Vintage Y'All, to show off her stylistic savvy for a good cause. But when a famous fashionista is fatally flattened, and the ghost of a former private investigator asks for Cookie's help, she has to scurry to sew up a solution.
Agent Pendergast, together with his ward Constance Greene, travels to the quaint seaside village of Exmouth, Massachusetts, to investigate the theft of a priceless wine collection. But inside the wine cellar, they find something considerably more disturbing: a bricked-up niche that once held a crumbling skeleton. This is the first hint of an ancient transgression, linked to the 1692 Salem witch trials, and a terrible evil lurking beneath the surface of the seaside town.
Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is investigating the death of a senior lawyer during a robbery. A note is discovered that indicates that this may have been no random attack, and when local gangster Big Ger Cafferty receives an identical message, Clarke decides that the recently retired John Rebus may be able to help.
A new client arrives, a young woman whose father was regarded as a hero in the history of Botswana and whose character is now being questioned, just as Mma Ramotswe has been persuaded to take her first holiday ever. Mma Ramotswe wants to cancel, but she is cajoled into going by Mma Makutsi's assurances that she and Charlie have the situation well in hand. Still, she asks Charlie to be her eyes and ears while she is away.
Six years ago in Vienna, terrorists took over a hundred hostages, and the rescue attempt went terribly wrong. Two of the CIA's case officers in Vienna, Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison, were lovers at the time, and on the night of the hostage crisis Celia decided she'd had enough. Now Celia is married, with children, and living an ordinary life in the idyllic town of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Henry is still a case officer in Vienna, and has traveled to California to see her one more time, to relive the past, maybe, or to put it behind him once and for all.
Sophie Kohl is living her worst nightmare. Minutes after she confesses to her husband, a mid-level diplomat at the American embassy in Hungary, that she had an affair while they were in Cairo, he is shot in the head and killed. Stan Bertolli, a Cairo-based CIA agent, has fielded his share of midnight calls. But his heart skips a beat when he hears the voice of the only woman he ever truly loved, calling to ask why her husband has been assassinated.
Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy and Sarah Brandt are not the only ones who have recently tied the knot. Family friend Mrs. O'Neill was delighted when her daughter Una wed the seemingly wealthy and charming Randolph Pollock. She didn't wonder why such an affluent man would want to marry a poor Irish girl, no matter how pretty she was. But now Mrs. O'Neill has a problem. Pollock's servants have found their employer bludgeoned to death with Una cradling his body.
Ireland, AD 671. The Great Fair of Bealtain is almost upon the fortress of Cashel, and a line of painted wagons carries entertainers to mark the occasion. But preparations take a deathly turn when one of the carriages is set alight, and two corpses are found, lying poisoned, within. As Sister Fidelma and her companion, Eadulf, investigate, they are quickly plunged into the menacing marshlands of Osraige - where the bloody origin of the Abbey of Cainnech is still casting a grotesque shadow over the inhabitants and beyond. What is the symbolism of the Golden Stone, and who are the mysterious members of the Fellowship of the Raven?
Undertaker Violet Harper is summoned to Welbeck Abbey by the Fifth Duke of Portland to prepare a body. His Grace is known as the "mad duke," and Violet finds why when she arrives at the grand estate and discovers that the corpse in question is that of the Duke's favourite raven, Aristotle. The Duke hopes to allay his servants superstitious dread at the bird's death with an elaborate funeral. But Aristotle's demise is soon followed by the violent murder of one of the young workers on the estate.
Goteborg, Sweden: the high-speed chase of a stolen BMW takes a chilling turn when the two police officers involved witness a gruesome hit-and-run. When they finally recover the abandoned vehicle, search dogs are unable to trace the thieves, but they do uncover an entirely different horror: the half-naked corpse of a young girl in a nearby root cellar. As Detective Inspector Irene Huss and her colleagues struggle to put the pieces together, they discover the man whose car was stolen - a retired police officer - is none other than the victim in the hit-and-run.
It is 1657 and though Cromwell's joyless grip on power appears immovable, many still plot restoration of the Stuarts. John Grey, a young lawyer with no clients, does not understand why, when the bloody corpse of a Royalist spy is discovered on the dung heap of a small Essex village, the local magistrate is so reluctant to investigate. Grey is drawn into a vortex of plot and counter-plot and into the all-encompassing web of intrigue spun by Cromwell's own spy-master, John Thurloe.
At the annual tree-lighting ceremony in Weatherford Texas, Phyllis Newsom will be serving her much-anticipated candy cane cupcakes. Local rancher Barney McCrory manages to charm one away from her before the ceremony begins. But unfortunately, when the minty confection is finished, so is he. This isn't the first time someone has dropped dead after eating one of Phyllis's treats. But when the paramedics determine the rancher was shot, suspicion swiftly falls on McCrory's daughter and her husband - who both stand to reap some sweet rewards from his death.
After losing her newspaper job in Austin and having her former fiance unfriend her on Facebook, Josie Callahan scoops up her Chihuahua, Lenny, and slinks back to Broken Boot, Texas. Now she's head waitress at Milagro, her aunt and uncle's Tex-Mex restaurant. But when a local jewelry designer is found strangled outside Milagro after a tamale-making party, Josie's reporter instincts kick in.
The FBI calls on Dr. Bill Brockton to identify the charred remains of a maverick millionaire, killed in a fiery plane crash. But his identification of the crash victim is called into question. Then he receives a threatening message from the serial killer who attempted to murder the scientist and his family a decade ago. And from Brockton's beloved wife Kathleen-his lodestone and his source of security-he gets the most shocking news of all.
An angry ghost is hindering the sale of San Francisco millionaire Andrew Stirling's Victorian mansion. A famous psychic informs the Stirlings that it was their multi-million-dollar renovations to update the home that angered the ghost. So contractor Mel Turner is engaged to track down and replace some of the original features of the house. Then the psychic is found stabbed, and Mel must use her ghost whispering gift to uncover the secrets of the haunted house on the hill, and her sleuthing skills to catch a killer.
Pepper's Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market is working with several local restaurants as their chief herb and spice supplier. Business is cooking, until one of Pepper's potential clients, a young chef named Tamara Langston, is found dead, her life extinguished by the dangerously hot ghost chili, a spice Pepper carries in her shop.
From its opening scene in revolutionary Mexico to the Battle of the Marne in 1918, and on to the bordellos and saloons of San Antonio during the reign of the Hole in the Wall Gang, Texas Ranger Hackberry Holland is on an odyssey to reunite with his estranged son, Ishmael, a captain in the United States Army.
Christmas, 1559: Whitehall Palace. Kate, Queen Elizabeth's personal musician, has been given the task of finding the extortionist who has sent the Queen a letter threatening to reveal a scandal involving Queen Catherine's last husband, Thomas Seymour. But Kate has barely begun investigating when one of Spain's visiting lords is found murdered.
Springtime in Chilson, Michigan, this year, is a sad time for librarian Minnie Hamilton. Old Henry Gill has met a sticky end -- the victim of a freak maple syrup accident. But then, on the bookmobile rounds with her trusty rescue cat Eddie, Minnie meets Adam, the old man's friend, who was with him when he died. Adam is convinced Henry's death wasn't an accident, and fears that his own life is in danger.
Getting her hair coloured at Root 66, Suzanne is stunned to witness the County Services office next door suddenly go up in flames. Sadly, the fire claims the life of longtime civil service worker and friend to the Cackleberry Club, Hannah Venable. When it's discovered that an accelerant was used to fan the flames, Suzanne, Petra, and Toni vow to smoke out the culprit.
Reissued re-title of THE BROKER'S WIFE. When the man he worked for abruptly exits the business, Quarry finds himself in the crosshairs as a rival tries to take over. But what does Quarry have that the new man wants? And how did the beautiful blonde in the swimming pool become a target?
It's Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, and food truck chef Zoe Chase must accompany her father to one masquerade ball after another, hobnobbing with the high rollers of the secret cabal known as the Mistics of Time. But the fun turns frightening when Zoe stumbles across Death's dead body. Journalist Jordan Phillips attended the Mistics latest bash in a traditional Death costume, and received a fatal bullet wound for the privilege.
Guesthouse owner, single mother, and reluctant ghost whisperer Alison Kerby is about to sit down to movie night with her family and friends when she sees, floating before her, the ghost of her musical idol, 1960s English rock star Vance McTiernan. He's in desperate need of help from Alison and her resident ghostly gumshoe, Paul Harrison. Reports claim that four months ago, Vance's daughter died from a drug overdose. Vance, however, thinks she was murdered.
When a shadow from the past re-awakens, successful surgeon Axel Glenne's life turns upside down.Soon after, a woman's body is found in Nordmarka, a forest north of Oslo. Items found near the body suggest that the killer is leaving a message , and while this death is being investigated, another woman is murdered. The similarities are too close to be coincidental - and it appears that Axel Glenne has a connection to both victims.
Holly Miller is running the Sugar Maple Inn while her grandmother is finally taking a well-deserved vacation. Wagtail's throwing a weekend-long murder mystery game to draw in tourists during the slow season, the inn has a full house, and a blizzard is on the way. On the night the game begins, the storm blows in and the lights go out. The following morning Holly's Jack Russell terrier, Trixie, discovers a body, one that's actually dead.
When a body is discovered inside a large chest that's about to go under the hammer at the Falco family auction house, Albia throws herself into the investigation. For one thing, it'd be nice to beat her adoptive father at his own game. For another, it'll give her yet another chance to work with Manlius Faustus, the man she just can't quite get enough of. But when Faustus then invites her to get involved in the Roman elections, Albia discovers links between the politician they're working for and the murder she's investigating. And those links implicate none other than Faustus.
David Sarac, the man who recruits and handles secret informants for the Stockholm police, wakes up behind the wheel of a car after suffering a momentary stress-induced stroke. He crashes violently inside a tunnel, and now remembers nothing, including the identity of the top-secret, high level informant named Janus - the man everyone wants to find.
Amy-Faye Johnson's book club, the Readaholics, is engrossed in "Murder on the Orient Express". Then, just as Amy-Faye is planning the grand opening of her brother Derek's pub, his hot-headed partner is murdered. To keep Derek from being railroaded as a suspect, Amy-Faye and the Readaholics take a page from Poirot and investigate.
Samantha Owens wakes to sirens in the night. Though no longer a medical examiner, a routine police investigation in her neighbourhood has her curious. Her homicide detective friend, Darren Fletcher, invites her to look over the evidence, and she immediately realizes the crime scene has been staged and not, as it would seem, a clear case of murder/suicide - a crime of passion. The discovery of toxic substances in hidden vials raises the spectre of bioterrorism.
After surviving a pistol duel, Lord Geoffrey Thraxton boasts his contempt for death and insults the attending physician. It is a mistake he will regret, for Silas Garrette is a deranged sociopath and chloroform-addict whose mind was broken on the battlefields of Crimea. When Thraxton falls in love with a mysterious woman who haunts Highgate Cemetery by night, he unwittingly provides the murderous doctor with the perfect means to punish a man with no fear of death.
Los Angeles 1986. When Deirdre Unger arrived in Beverly Hills to help her bitter, disappointed father sell his dilapidated house, she discovers his lifeless body floating face down in the swimming pool. But was it an accident? The sudden re-surfacing of Deirdre's childhood friend Joelen Nichol seems like more than a coincidence. Back in 1958, Joelen confessed to killing her movie star mother's boyfriend. Deirdre happened to be at the Nichols house the night of the murder which was also the night she suffered a personal tragedy of her own. Could all of these events be connected?
Just before two dueling book clubs are set to square off at Krissy's bookstore cafe, one of the competitors turns up dead bludgeoned with the silver teapot that was to serve as the prize. Suspicion immediately falls on Krissy, who was seen skulking around town in dark clothes on the night of the murder.
In the week before Guy Fawkes Night, London's peaceful streets break out in sudden unrest. Enraged by a scandal involving a corrupt financier accused of insider trading, demonstrators are rioting outside the Findersbury Private Bank, chanting, marching, and growing violent. But when someone hurls a Molotov cocktail at the bank's front door, killing a homeless man on its steps, Bryant, May, and the rest of the Peculiar Crimes Unit team are called in.
First published in 1913. Chief Inspector Foyle was confronted with the most bewildering case of his career when Goldenburg, the crook, was found foully murdered in the flat of Robert Grell, millionaire. Here was what appeared to be a perfect crime without a clue that led anywhere. But Foyle was more than a match for the arch-criminal and his masterly deduction and determination brought him a splendid triumph.
When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were to be published, it would ruin lives - meaning that there are a lot of people who might want him silenced.When Quine is found brutally murdered under bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any Strike has encountered before.
Thomas Chaloner is ordered to investigate the murder of Dick Wheler, one of the few goldsmith-bankers to have survived the losses that have driven others to bankruptcy - or worse.
Thorn receives a plea for help from his son Flynn, who had disappeared into the eco-underground a year ago. But before Thorn gets to North Carolina to save him, he's intercepted by a federal agent who tells him he's too late. Flynn had been executed because he'd been an FBI informant. Thorn agrees to act as bait to catch Flynn's killer, and soon he's among a gang of eco-terrorists planning an attack on a hog-farming operation...only to realize that the trap the FBI's setting is not for Flynn's killer at all. It's for Flynn's partner, a woman who has her own dangerous agenda.
Newly unemployed Josie Blair returns to her hometown, Dorset Falls, to care for her great-uncle, injured in a car accident. Her Aunt Cora didn't survive the crash, so Josie is also tasked with selling the contents of her Aunt Cora's yarn shop. But when one of the town's most persnickety knitters turns up dead in a pile of cashmere yarn, Josie realizes there's something truly twisted lurking beneath the town's decaying facade.
The USS Vicksburg picks up a lifeboat bearing a dead Somali pirate who shows signs of torture. Soon Red Cell analysts Kyra Stryker and Jonathan Burke have traced the dead man back to an Iranian ship bound for Venezuela with dangerous, radioactive cargo on board. The Iranians' plan to build a nuclear bomb in politically unstable Venezuela, away from the UN's prying eyes.
Tom Bettany is working at a meat processing plant in France when he gets a voicemail from an Englishwoman he doesn't know telling him that his estranged 26-year-old son is dead - Liam Bettany fell from his London balcony, where he was smoking dope. Now for the first time since he cut all ties years ago, Bettany returns home to London to find out the truth about his son's death. But more than a few people are interested to hear Bettany is back in town, from incarcerated mob bosses to those in the highest echelons of MI5. He might have thought he'd left it all behind when he first skipped town, but nobody really just walks away.
On a dark summer night, two Chechen mercenaries emerge from the waters off Nantucket to kill a high-value target, the former president of the United States, Jake Cazalet. Unfortunately for them, Cazalet has guests with him, including black ops specialist Sean Dillon and his colleague, Afghan war hero Captain Sara Gideon. The Chechens do not survive the night, but Dillon is curious as to how they even got on the island.
DC Simon Serrailler is called in by Lafferton's new Chief Constable, Kieran Bright, and asked to take the principal role in a difficult, potentially dangerous undercover operation and must leave town immediately, without telling anyone-not even his girlfriend Rachel, who has only just moved in with him. Moreover, to complete his special op, he must inhabit the mind of the worst kind of criminal. This takes its toll on Simon and, as the op unfolds, also on the town and some of its most respected citizens.
Sergeant Jim Chee and his wife, Officer Bernie Manuelito are called back from a vacation to work on separate cases - one near Shiprock, and the other at iconic Monument Valley. Chee follows a series of seemingly random and cryptic clues that lead to a missing woman, a coldblooded thug, and a mysterious mound of dirt and rocks that could be a gravesite. Bernie has her hands full managing the fallout from a drug bust gone wrong, uncovering the origins of a fire in the middle of nowhere, and looking into an ambitious solar energy development with long-ranging consequences for Navajo land.
On Venice's crowded Lido beach, a man is found lying half in and half out of the sea with his throat cut open and his tongue torn out by the roots. On his face is a curious antique mask, a piece of Masonic paraphernalia known as a "hoodwink". The dead man turns out to be a senior partner in a small Catholic bank, currently engaged in negotiations with one of Italy's richest men. Kat Tapo of the Venice Carabinieri soon discovers that money isn't the only motive for murder.
Eve Hardaway, newly single mother of one, is on a rafting and hiking tour through the jungles and mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. Eve wanders off the trail, coming upon a shack among the trees, where she spies a man throwing machetes at a human-shaped target. Later she stumbles upon a digital camera, marked with the name Theresa Hamilton. It contains an image of that same menacing-looking man in the woods. Theresa Hamilton has since disappeared - and now the man in the woods is after whoever was snooping around his house.
Curio shop owner Camryn Brooks and her BFF, coffee shop owner Alice Pinky Nelson, need to hire additional help. Their former high-school classmate, Molly Dalton, is not exactly who they had in mind. Has the rich socialite worked a day in her life? But Molly practically begs for the job.On her first day, Molly seems to be in her own little world, and Cami worries that her new employee may flake out. The problem turns out to be far worse than that when Cami discovers Molly dead in the back of the shop, after drinking a poisoned cup of coffee.
A mysterious suicide and a series of abductions draw Patrick into a web of intrigue involving an international conspiracy where no one is who they appear to be and the stakes have never been higher. Soon, Patrick discovers that the secret to stopping the Piper's current crime spree lies in unlocking answers from an eight-year-old cold case - and the only way to do that is by entering the terrifying world of the conspirators himself.
A gunman is stalking the wards of a local hospital. He's unidentified and dangerous, and has to be located. Urgently. Police Firearms Officer Aden McCarthy is tasked with tracking him down. Still troubled by the shooting of a schoolboy, Aden is determined to make amends by finding the gunman - before it's too late. As time ticks down, no one knows who the gunman's next target will be. But he's there. Hiding in plain sight. Far closer than anyone thinks.
A stellar group of contemporary authors from a variety of genres create new stories inspired by the Holmes canon, with contributions from Michael Connelly, Jeffery Deaver, Michael Dirda, Harlan Ellison, Denise Hamilton, Nancy Holder, John Lescroart, Sara Paretsky, Michael Sims, and more. The game is afoot again!
Struggling antiques dealer Jim Brodie is back in Japan with a new case: a Japanese World War II veteran who spins a dark story connected to the war and a pair of violent home invasions committed in the Tokyo only days earlier. Brodie agrees to provide protection for the old warrior, but soon an unexpected murder shocks him and his crew, and they begin a wild ride through the worlds of war atrocities, Japanese kendo clubs, the backstreets of Yokohama's unfathomable Chinatown, and Chinese spies.
Anne Forestier is trapped in the middle of a bank robbery. Shot three times, she is lucky to survive - and morbidly unlucky to remember the face of her assailant. Followed home from her hospital bed, Anne is in grave danger. But one thing stands in her favor - a dangerously vengeful partner, carrying the scars of devastating loss, who will break all the rules to protect the woman he loves: Commandant Camille Verhoeven.
After a stormy marriage ends, Danielle Cleary, former personal trainer and amateur fighter, jumps down the rabbit hole into a world of crack cocaine and endless game shows. But when Danny's twin sister Ginger is murdered, Danny and her rock musician brother fly to California to find their nephews and the people who killed their sister. Fighting withdrawal, nosy cops and crazy drug dealers, she kicks ass and takes names, embracing her inner vigilante in a quest to avenge her sister and save her family. [Canadian author].
Alice Hyland is an expert on fairy tales - lecturing on the well-known stories and their lesser-known variants - and the natural choice for Police Constable Cate Corbin to consult when a dead girl is found in the woods dressed up as Snow White. Especially when the girl's grieving mother receives a parcel containing a glass bottle of blood stoppered with the dead girl's toe. Cate's boss, Detective Superintendent Heath, isn't convinced of the connection to folklore until a second girl is found, this time dressed as Red Riding Hood and with claw marks gouged into her flesh, like a wolf had been at her.
Izzy is on hiatus from Spellman Inc. But when her boss, Milo, simultaneously cuts her bartending hours and introduces her to a "friend" looking for a private eye, Izzy reluctantly finds herself with a new case - a suspicious husband who wants his wife tailed. But with each passing hour, Izzy finds herself with more questions than hard evidence.
It is a sunny Saturday in county Cork, and an Irish wedding is in full swing. Drunk uncles are toasting the bride. The Ceilidh band have played for hours. But the cutting of the cake will bring the wedding to a horrifying end. For there, grinning gruesomely up from the bottom tier, is the severed head of the local baker. Katie Maguire, of the Irish Garda, does not have any leads until another local businessman goes missing in horrific circumstances.
When telegraph keys across the country begin bursting into flames and chattering ghostly nonsense the terror and turmoil is enough to bring the railways, banks, and news industry to a standstill. Authorities turn to Mrs. Ophelia Wylde, a young widow turned detective who has famously brought murderers to justice by speaking to their victims on the other side. Are the recent telegraph mishaps a message from beyond? Apparently, despite all their table-tapping talents, the spirits have found Morse Code too difficult to master.
For some outspoken women targeted by the increasingly cruel Internet trolls and bullies, the torrents of bile and vicious threats prove too much. They begin to silence themselves in a series of high-profile suicides. Or do they? Tony Hill isn't convinced. But he's the only one. Former cop Carol Jordan is too busy messing up her life to care. Until she gets an unexpected second chance. Now it's game on, and the stakes have never been higher.
Meet PC Donal Casey. Irish runaway. Insomniac. Functioning alcoholic. Donal is working the beat in London, trying his best to forget that night. To ease the guilt that eats away at him. When a beautiful red-headed woman bleeds out in front of him in her London home, he knows it's not the last he's seen of her. Because Donal has started to get visits from the recently murdered. What he doesn't know is if they're just his imagination - or if they're actually trying to tell him something.
Notorious serial killer Brenda Nevins has cajoled, seduced, blackmailed, and left a trail of bodies all across Washington State. Now, after a daring prison escape, she is free to carry out her ultimate act of revenge. The targets are forensic pathologist Birdy Waterman and sheriff's detective Kendall Stark. The pawn is a television psychic hungry for fame, ratings, and blood. There's only way to stop a killer as brutal, brilliant, and twisted as this - beat her at her own game.
The first collection of stories from the author of the Faith Fairchild series.
After a woman is discovered in the Mill House Hotel, strangled with a silver necklace beside a bag filled with faux gems, jeweler Donald Black seems like the obvious suspect. But Lois knows Donald's wife and can't believe her husband is a killer. Plus, Donald has an airtight alibi. Nevertheless, Donald is no angel. He's running a pyramid scheme, and Lois's mother is getting sucked in. Could the murder have anything to do with his unscrupulous business?
Jay Johnson is a 30-something guy with a job in telephone sales, a regular pickup basketball game, and a devoted girlfriend he seems ready to marry. Then he's abducted, tranquilized, interrogated, his life history obliterated, and he is relocated to Catalina Island. He has been forced into witness protection. But what did he witness? His only path back to his life is to somehow piece his role together.
When Carl sells a box of slimming pills to his close friend Stacey, inadvertently causing her death, he sets in train a sequence of catastrophic events which begin with subterfuge, extend to lies, and culminate in murder.
It is July 1881, and a frantic mother comes to 221B Baker Street, begging Sherlock Holmes to find her son. A naval officer posted to HMS "Dido," he was part of the Naval Brigade that joined the Natal Field Force to fight the Boers. But he did not return with his men, and is being denounced as a deserter. So begins a twisting tale of assassination, diamond mines and military cover-ups.
When young social activist Michal Poleg is found dead in her Tel Aviv apartment, her body showing signs of severe violence, Officer Anat Nachmias is given the lead on her first murder investigation. Could one of the asylum seekers Michal worked with be behind this crime? Then a young African man confesses to the murder, and Anat's commanders say the case is closed. But Anat isn't convinced - she believes that Michal, a tiny girl with a gift for irritating people, got involved in something far too big and dangerous for her to handle.
1893. Sherlock Holmes and Henry James come to America together to solve the suspicious suicide of Clover Adams, wife of the esteemed historian Henry Adams. Holmes, convinced by his own ratiocination that he is a fictional character, has faked his death at Reichenbach Falls. This presents a problem for James - for if his fellow investigator is a work of fiction, what does that make him? And what can he do to fight against the sinister power - possibly named Moriarty - that may or may not be controlling them from the shadows?
Hammer finds himself up against a clever serial killer targeting only cops. A killer his old friend Captain Pat Chambers had put away many years ago is suddenly freed on new, seemingly indisputable evidence, and Hammer wonders if this seemingly placid, very odd old man might somehow be engineering cop killings that all seem to be either accidental or by natural causes. At the same time Hammer and Velda are dealing with the fallout - some of it mob, some of it federal government - over the $89 billion dollar cache the detective is (rightly) suspected of finding not long ago.
Winter has come to the city of York, and with it the threat of witchcraft. As women and children sicken and die, midwife Bridget Hodgson is pulled against her will into a full-scale witch-hunt that threatens to devour all in its path, guilty and innocent alike. Bridget, accompanied once again by her deputy Martha Hawkins and her nephew Will Hodgson, finds herself playing a lethal game of cat and mouse against the most dangerous men in York, as well as her sworn enemy Rebecca Hooke.
Maxine "Max" O'Hara went to Germany for her brewmaster certification, and is now preparing to open her own craft brew pub in a newly revitalized section of Pittsburgh. But suspicious acts of sabotage culminate in Max finding her assistant brewmaster and chef Kurt Schmidt strangled in one of the vats.
Stone Barrington is pleasantly surprised when he meets a gorgeous pilot who's soon moving to New York, and available for closer acquaintance. Their travels together lead them from Wichita to Europe, but trailing them is some unwanted baggage: his new lady love's unstable, criminal ex-boyfriend.