1872. When a ship carrying cargo belonging to Mycroft's best friend Cyrus Douglas runs aground, Mycroft persuades Sherlock to serve as a tutor at the orphanage that Douglas runs as a charity, so that Douglas might travel to see what can be salvaged. Sherlock finds himself at home among the street urchins, and when a boy dies of a suspected drug overdose, he decides to investigate, following a trail of strange subterranean symbols to the squalid opium dens of the London docks. Meanwhile a meeting with a beautiful Chinese woman leads Mycroft to the very same mystery, one that forces him to examine the underbelly of the opium trade that is enriching his beloved Britain's coffers.

A collection of holiday themed TRASH 'N' TREASURES short stories.

Meg Langslow is trying to be supportive of her husband, who has escalated his one-man show of Dickens' A Christmas Carol into a full-scale production that includes their sons as Tiny Tim and the young Scrooge. Then the real Scrooge comes to town - a famous actor who is known for his personal dramas off-stage. When Scrooge's inner demons and actual enemies catch up with him, it's up to Meg to solve a holiday murder mystery before the curtain comes down.

Besides helping prepare the bread and pastry for Santa Sofia's annual art car parade and ball, apprentice baker Ivy Culpepper is the official photographer. Her brother Billy has been runner-up in the competition more times than she can count - but this is going to be the year he celebrates his win in the victory lane. But after Billy's rival, Max Litman, revs up his bombastic showmanship, Billy is once again set to cruise into second place. Until Max is found dead - positioned as a prop in his own art car.

The church of St. Ethelred in the village of Thirk Magna is renowned for its team of bell-ringers, the troupe led by identical twins Mavis and Millicent Dupin. Mavis and Millicent are lifelong residents of the remote village - or were, until their home is broken into one night, and Millicent is murdered. But who is the killer?

Into the cauldron of vice that is Vienna after World War I comes Inspector August Emmerich, a veteran himself, whose ambitions lead him to break the rules when necessary and whose abiding wish is to join the Viennese major crimes unit. When a corpse is found in the woods outside the city and immediately labeled a suicide, Emmerich, convinced it was nothing of the sort, sees a chance to prove his mettle.

Melanie Travis is presented with an unexpected challenge when her brother and ex-husband make a spontaneous bid on a dilapidated pine tree farm. Although the ten-acre lot had been a popular seasonal destination while the original owner was still alive, it'll take a small miracle or two before the neglected place is in shape for December. But the business venture goes cold when the group discovers a purebred Maltese whimpering in the snow-covered grove - right beside a dead body.

20 years ago college student Axel Wolfe teamed up with his best friend, Billy, and a Mexican stranger in a high-end robbery that went wrong. Now, with 11 years still to serve on his sentence, Axel gets the chance to escape in the company of Cacho, a young Mexican inmate with ties to a major cartel. Axel takes it, and a massive manhunt ensues, taking the pair down the Rio Grande and into a desert inferno.

The mountain of Kinder Scout offers the most incredible views of the Peak District, but when thick fog descends on a walking party led by enigmatic Darius Roth, this spectacular landscape is turned into a death trap that claims a life. For DI Ben Cooper however, something about the way Faith Matthew fell to her death suggests it was no accident, and he quickly discovers more than one of the hikers may have had reason to murder their companion.

Investigator Cassie Dewell has been on a hunt for a serial killer known as the Lizard King whose hunting grounds are the highways and truck stops where runaways and prostitutes are most likely to vanish. Working for the Bakken County, North Dakota sheriff's department, she set a trap that went horribly wrong and lost her job. Now she is a lone wolf, and tracing the disappearance of a troubled teen she had taken under wing, Cassie finds herself again in pursuit of the Lizard King.

Sister Jane takes a scenic drive up the Blue Ridge Mountains for a board meeting at the Museum of Hounds and Hunting. Brimming with colorful stories and mementos from hunts of yore, the mansion is plunged into mystery when a venerable hunting horn is stolen right out of its case.

Since moving to Indigo Gap, North Carolina, Cora Chevalier has been blessed with a great boyfriend, a lovely home, and a booming craft retreat business. But on the eve of her first Crafty Mom's Escape Weekend, tragedy strikes again in Indigo Gap. This time, it's curtains for Stan Herald, the disagreeable director of the local theater group, who is murdered on the opening night of their new production.

When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation. She starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound and dumped in water around London.

In the dead of a swelteringly hot summer's night, London Detective Erika Foster is called to a murder scene. The victim, a doctor, is found suffocated in bed. His wrists are bound and his eyes bulging through a clear plastic bag tied tight over his head. A few days later, another victim is found dead, in exactly the same circumstances.

When New Yorker Alex Nadal inherits his aunt's farm near Barcelona he is more than intrigued. His aunt appears to have died twice - once at the end of the Spanish Civil War and again 60 years later. When he arrives in Spain, he is made to feel very unwelcome. He asks too many questions which are met with either hostility or silence, until Alex begins to understand that in this sun-baked and ancient land the past is not history but merely unfinished business.

A blond-haired, blue-eyed teenager from a prominent family vanishes after teaching English to a group of immigrants. Suspicion falls on the men she was tutoring, inflaming tensions in the close-knit, picturesque community of Lake Holly, NY. For Detective Jimmy Vega, more is at stake than just keeping the peace. His girlfriend, Adele, heads the community center where the girl was last seen. Now all she's worked for is at risk.

Mackinac Island is invaded by a TV crew filming a murder mystery pilot, and handsome Hollywood heartthrob Dirk Benjamin needs Allie's help to prep for his role as local cop Rex Manning. Then, Allie's bichonpoo Mal sniffs out a real murder in the alley behind the historic McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shop, a man shot in the head - with a note challenging amateur sleuth Allie to catch the culprit.

The murder of a young pharmacist at a local drug store takes Bosch into the dangerous, big business world of pill mills and prescription drug abuse. Meanwhile, an old case from Bosch's LAPD days comes back to haunt him when a long-imprisoned killer claims Harry framed him, and seems to have new evidence to prove it. The two unrelated cases wind around each other like strands of barbed wire.

After an elegant new customer has a breakdown in her bookshop, Penelope suspects there is something bogus behind the biggest bestseller of the year. This popular potboiler is so hot that folks in her tiny Rhode Island town are dying to read it - literally. First one customer turns up dead, followed by another mysterious fatality connected to the book, which Pen discovers is more than just fiction.

Vinnie Sannino left Naples to go to America, where he found fame and wealth as a boxer. But that ended when, during a fight, Vinnie killed a man in the ring with a heavy blow to the head. Now, Vinnie's back in Italy, pining for the woman he left behind. Cettina, however, is now a married woman. She was, at least, until recently when her husband was found dead, killed by a single blow to the head.

Erno Oliveri made sure to be on set for his daughter's cook-off appearance on Sunny Side Up with Brett and Carmell. But the important news is that Sherry has bested the competition with her Spicy Toasted Chickpea and Almond appetizer and clinched the spatula-shaped trophy. It's her shining moment - until everything goes dark. A quick-moving storm has knocked out power to the studio - and when the lights come back up, Carmell is at her desk with a sharp object lodged in her neck.

The old Chadwick mansion on the edge of Moosetookalook, Maine, has been shrouded in mystery for generations. But when Scottish Emporium owner Liss MacCrimmon uncovers a treasure map at the mansion's estate sale, she never expected her curiosity would lead to a dead body.

When archaeologist Neil Watson unearths a long-buried mechanical figure in a Dartmoor field, he is determined to discover the truth behind the bizarre find. Soon, however, the sleepy village becomes the focus of press attention for another reason when two people with no apparent connection to each other are found shot dead in nearby Manor Field, seemingly victims of an execution-style double murder.

Professional grave robber and semiprofessional loon Simon Diggery won't let Stephanie take him in until she agrees to care for his boa constrictor, Ethel. Stephanie's main qualification for babysitting an extremely large snake is that she owns a taser - whether that's for use on the wandering serpent or the petrified neighbors remains to be seen. Events take a dark turn when headless bodies start appearing across town.

In the midst of a rock festival, a charity worker is sliced across the stomach. He dies minutes later. In a crowd of thousands, no one saw his attacker. The following week, the body of a primary school teacher is found in a dumpster in an Edinburgh alley, strangled with her own woollen scarf. DI Ava Turner and DI Luc Callanach have no motive and no leads - until around the city, graffitied on buildings, words appear describing each victim. It's only when they realise the words are appearing before rather than after the murders, that they understand the killer is announcing his next victim.

Jessica Fletcher takes up the cause of her good friend Barbara "Babs" Wirth after Babs' husband Hal suffers a fatal heart attack that Jessica has reason to believe was actually murder. At the heart of her suspicions lies a sinister dating site Hal had used while he and Babs were having marital issues - a site that may be complicit in somehow swindling him out of millions.

Bailey King's sugar high plummets when her former boyfriend, New York celebrity chef Eric Sharp, and his TV crew walk into the candy shop she now runs with her Amish grandmother. Eric has arrived to film an authentic Amish Christmas. Bailey's not about to let her beloved town - and Swissmen Sweets - be turned into a sound bite. Unfortunately, she gets more publicity than she bargained for when Eric's executive producer is found strangled to death - and Eric's the prime suspect.

Former chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service Adrian Weston is given shocking news by the Prime Minister. The Pentagon, the NSA, and the CIA have been hacked simultaneously, breached by an unknown enemy known only as "The Fox." Even more surprisingly, the culprit is revealed to be a young British teenager, Luke Jennings. He has no agenda, no secrets, just a blisteringly brilliant mind. Extradition to the U.S. seems likely - until Weston has another idea. If Luke can do this to us, what can he do to our enemies?

Billy, a troubled young man, comes to private eye Cormoran Strike's office to ask for his help investigating a crime he thinks he witnessed as a child, though he cannot remember many concrete details. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic. Trying to get to the bottom of Billy's story, Strike and Robin Ellacott - once his assistant, now a partner in the agency - set off on a twisting trail that leads them through the backstreets of London, into a secretive inner sanctum within Parliament, and to a beautiful but sinister manor house deep in the countryside.

The home of a family of five is now a crime scene: four of them savagely murdered, one - a 16 year old girl - missing. Was she lucky to have escaped? Or is her absence evidence of something sinister? Detective D. D. Warren is on the case - but so is survivor-turned-avenger Flora Dane.

A woman disappears on her twenty-first birthday. The following day her body is found, wrapped neatly like a gift in a crumbling, sun-speckled Birmingham graveyard. No motive, no suspects. Then another victim is discovered in a crematorium parking lot. Again, she was killed on her twenty-first birthday. Again, her body was wrapped like a gift.

In 1360 a deputation from Cambridge ventures to the Suffolk town of Clare in the hope that the wealthy Elizabeth de Burgh has left a legacy to Michaelhouse. Yet when they arrive they discover that the report of her death is false. But they learn that a great many other people in Clare have recently met untimely deaths. One of the victims is a fellow traveller of the Michaelhouse contingent, and Matthew Bartholomew and Brother Michael feel honour-bound to identify his killer.

1986. Ordered to arrange the smooth repatriation of a defector, British intelligence officer Major Tom Fox is smuggled into East Berlin. But it soon becomes clear that there is more to this than an old man wishing to return home to die - a fact cruelly confirmed when Fox's mission is fatally compromised. Trapped in East Berlin, hunted by an army of Stasi agents and wanted for murder by those on both sides of the Wall, Fox must somehow elude capture and get out alive.

When the body of Jamal Cousin, president of the pre-eminent black fraternity at the Florida's flagship university, is discovered hogtied in the Stygian water swamps of the Suwanee River Valley, the death sets off a firestorm that threatens to rage out of control when a fellow student, Mark Towson, the president of a prominent white fraternity, is accused of the crime. Contending with rising political tensions, racial unrest, and a sensational media, Towson's defense attorney, Jack Swyteck, knows that the stakes could not be higher - inside or outside the old Suwanee County Couthouse.

Edward Dell is the almost-boyfriend of Poke's teenage daughter, Miaow. His father, Buddy, a late-middle-aged womanizer who has moved to Bangkok for happy hunting, has disappeared, and money is being siphoned out of his bank and credit card accounts. It soon becomes apparent that Buddy is in the hands of a pair of killers who prey on Bangkok's "sexpats".

Frank Elder's daughter Katherine has been unable to come to terms with the terrible events of her past and Frank has been powerless to help her. Now Katherine has become involved with a controversial artist known as much for his pornographic paintings as the public's suspicion that for him, life imitates art. The breakdown of their relationship has sent Katherine into a self-destructive tailspin, made worse when the artist is found murdered in his studio.

It looks like a regular advent calendar. Until DC Becky Greene starts opening doors ... and discovers a crime scene behind almost every one. The police hope it's a prank. Because if it isn't, a murderer has just surfaced - someone who has been killing for twenty years.

When a young painter approaches IQ for help tracking down her missing mother, it's not just the case Isaiah's looking for, but the human connection. And when his new confidant turns out to be connected to a dangerous paramilitary operation, IQ falls victim to a threat even a genius can't see coming. Waiting for Isaiah around every corner is Seb, the Oxford-educated African gangster who was responsible for the death of his brother, Marcus.

Includes several stories originally published in magazines.

After taking down the man responsible for his best friend's death, Stuart Ramey finds himself left with a multimillion dollar fortune in Bitcoin in a desperate bid by Frigg, a rogue A.I. program created by the killer, to keep itself from being fully deactivated. He enlists the help of Ali Reynolds and the rest of his cyber security colleagues at High Noon Enterprises. But Graciella Miramar, an unassuming accountant to all appearances, is actually the right-hand woman to El Pescado, the leader of a dangerous drug cartel. She'll do anything to get her hands on that program.

Scotland holds a treasure that Jane MacGuire has been hunting for years. But as she scours the Highlands in search of it, she's plagued by dreams of a girl in danger - dreams she can't ignore no matter how hard she tries. Who is this girl, and what is she trying to tell Jane? Will Jane figure it out before it's too late - for her and the mysterious young woman?

Vancouver author. Jeff Nichols, fresh out of the Don Jail, takes a job at Ted Bracey's used car lot, selling cars for commission only. But it's not enough to keep him afloat in mid-80s Toronto, and the lure of easy money soon gets Jeff involved in smuggling guns from upstate New York. As Jeff gets in deeper and deeper, everyone around him learns how many rules he's willing to bend and just how far he'll go to get on the fast track to riches.

Featuring DI Ray Mason and PI Tina Boyd. A house deep in the countryside where the remains of seven unidentified women have just been discovered. A cop ready to risk everything in the hunt for their killers. A man who has seen the murders and is now on the run in fear of his life. So begins the race to track down this witness before the killers do.

Halloween is approaching, and criminal psychologist Audrey Harte has been hired by the prosecution to help prepare for the trial of 19-year-old serial killer Ian "Boy Scout" Monroe. His one surviving victim, Tori Scott, is the star witness, but when someone begins killing with Monroe's M.O., the authorities - and Audrey - begin to wonder if Monroe had a partner.

Jane Hawk thinks her precious five-year-old son is hidden safely away, with vigilant, indomitable friends. But the malice and resources of her powerful adversaries are boundless and their hunters are circling ever closer to the boy, hoping to draw his mother into their trap. Jane's courage, wits, discipline, and skill will be tested as never before, as she searches for a way through an ever-contracting labyrinth of terror.

After footage airs of the resident ghost at Holly's B&B, it seems as if half the state of Louisiana wants to book a room. There's only one small problem. The ghost of her not-so-dearly-departed husband Burl has departed. Then an outspoken debunker challenges the film's credibility, and the TV crew returns to Holly Grove to prove the ghost is real. Following a disastrous seance, Holly is sure she'll be exposed as a charlatan. Surprisingly, the debunker suddenly becomes a believer - after he's pushed off the widow's walk to his death and rises as a ghost.

Basis for an upcoming major motion picture. Dolly, Linda, and Shirley are left devastated when their husbands are killed in a security van heist that goes disastrously wrong. When Dolly discovers her husband's bank deposit box containing a gun, money and detailed plans for the hijack, she has three options. She could hand over the ledgers to the police. She could hand them over to the thugs who want to take over Harry's turf. Or, she and the other widows could finish the job their husbands started.

Movie tie-in. Late one night, Mikael Blomkvist receives a phone call from a trusted source claiming to have information vital to the United States. The source has been in contact with a young female super hacker-a hacker resembling someone Blomkvist knows all too well. The implications are staggering. Blomkvist, in desperate need of a scoop for Millennium, turns to Lisbeth for help. She, as usual, has her own agenda.

Dean Martin, a psychologically damaged former Navy SEAL, is the only person in the world who can identify the terrorist Saladin. But wasn't Martin killed ten years ago? Shepherd must find Martin and take him back to the killing fields on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Revenge on the world's most wanted terrorist is long overdue, and Shepherd is determined to be the one to deliver it.

Bath, England: A wrecking crew is demolishing a row of townhouses in order to build a grocery store when they uncover a skeleton in one of the attics. Was this where, as it seems, the famous Beau Nash, 18th century man about Bath, found his resting place? Peter Diamond must deal with the suspicion that the death was far more recent than it seems.

London 1909. Vernon Kell, head of counterintelligence at the war office, needs an agent who can work undercover in a munitions factory that appears to be leaking secrets to the Germans. The man Kell needs is Wiggins. Trained as a child by Kell's old friend Sherlock Holmes, Wiggins is a survivor: an ex-soldier with a talent for deduction perhaps second only to the Great Detective, as well as a cunning street fighter.

Chiara Berguet, daughter of the owners of a local Aosta construction firm, was kidnapped thanks to the sizeable debt her parents owe. But like many a best-laid plan, a blown tire causes the crime to go haywire as the kidnappers' van skids off the road and crashes into a pair of larch trees. Both the driver and his accomplice die on impact, leaving the girl in the back, gagged and bound and unable to break herself free.

Forensic expert Enzo Macleod is reviewing a cold case. In 1989, a killer dumped the body of twenty-year-old Lucie Martin into a lake in the west of France. Fourteen years later, during a summer heat wave, a drought exposed her remains - bleached bones amid the scorched mud and slime. When Enzo finds a flaw in the original evidence surrounding Lucie's murder, he opens a Pandora's box that not only raises old ghosts but also endangers his entire family.

During the nights between Christmas and New Year's, the witches of New York - Adelaide Thom, Eleanor St. Clair and the youngest, Beatrice Dunn - gather before the fire to tell ghost stories and perform traditional Yuletide divinations. As the witches roast chestnuts and melt lead to see their fate, a series of odd messengers land on their doorstep bearing invitations for a New Year's Eve masquerade hosted by a woman they've never met.

After a devastating virus sweeps the planet, Nico and his father Willem are among the few survivors. Willem brings together the survivors to build a new community. As the community grows, so do the challenges they face--not just from the attacks of biker brigands, but also from within. In this new world, Nico undergoes an extraordinary rite of passage, testing his loyalty to the limits until he faces the greatest rupture of all--the murder of the person he loves most.

At 12 years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man named Herman, secretly takes over his father's job at a silent film theater in New York's East Village. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself - as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman's teachings into the classrooms of his unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. All the while, a hideous crime in the past awaits exposure.

Hoping to scrape together some extra cash, Mak begins working part-time for an infamous Sydney PI. With a knack for investigation and bending the law, she might just have stumbled across her true calling - and the career choice that could finally bust up her relationship once and for all. Then she is hired to investigate the murder of A-list PA Meaghan Wallace. The police believe it's an open and shut case but Mak discovers that it's a lot more complicated...

V.I. Warshawski returns to Chicago to save an old friend's nephew from a murder arrest. The case involves a stolen artifact that could implicate a shadowy network of international criminals. As V.I. investigates, the detective soon finds herself tangling with the Russian mob, ISIS backers, and a shady network of stock scams and stolen art that stretches from Chicago to the East Indies and the Middle East.

While on a trip to track down a baby elephant, wildlife veterinarian Dr. Graham Baird is caught up in a deadly shootout with poachers. Among the fatal casualties of the firefight is the brother of Fidel Costa - corrupt politician and Mozambique's poaching kingpin. Hearing of the death of his younger sibling, Costa unleashes a brutal vendetta to exact his revenge against Baird.

Suspended from the force as he awaits trial for murder, Alex Cross opens a counseling office in the basement of his home to make himself feel useful again. Then his former partner Sampson shows up needing his help. A string of young, blonde women have gone missing, leading Cross and Sampson to the most depraved, darkest corners of the internet.

The best short mystery and crime fiction of the year, selected by the author of the Armand Gamache mysteries.

Otto Penzler gathers the most iconic women of the detective canon over the past 150 years. The 74 handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most determined of gumshoe gals, from debutant detectives like Anna Katharine Green's Violet Strange to spinster sleuths like Mary Roberts Rinehart's Hilda Adams, from groundbreaking female cops like Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly to contemporary crime-fighting P.I.s like Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, and include indelible tales from Agatha Christie, Carolyn Wells, Edgar Wallace, L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Sara Paretsky, Nevada Barr, Linda Barnes, Laura Lippman, and many more.

From the refugee camps of Greece to the mountains of Macedonia, a 13 year old boy is making his way to Germany and to safety. Because he holds details of the plans of an ISIS terror cell, the terrorists are hot on his trail. Luc Samson, an ex-MI6 agent fluent in Arabic, is given the job of finding the boy, winning his trust, and getting him to safety.

Andy's long-time friend Martha "Pups" Boyer takes in stray puppies that the local dog rescue centre can't handle. But, with Christmas just around the corner, one of her neighbours has just reported her to the city for having more than the legal number of pets in her home under the local zoning laws. Things get a lot more complicated when Randy Hennessey, the neighbour who registered the complaint against Pups, turns up dead.

Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, he investigated the corrupt - and as it turned out, homicidal - local school board, and now the town's back in view with more alarming news. A woman's been found dead, frozen in a block of ice. There's a possibility that it might be connected to a high school class of twenty years ago that has a mid-winter reunion coming up, and so, wrapping his coat a little tighter, Virgil begins to dig into twenty years' worth of traumas, feuds, and bad blood. In the process, one thing becomes increasingly clear to him. It's true what they say - High school is murder.

The mayor of Pinion, Minnesota, population 700, and a buddy come up with a scheme to put Pinion on the map. They had heard of a place where a floating image of the Virgin Mary had turned the whole town into a shrine, attracting thousands of pilgrims. And all those pilgrims needed food, shelter, all kinds of crazy things, right? They'd all get rich! What could go wrong? When the dead body shows up, they find out, and that's only the beginning of their troubles - and Virgil Flowers' - as they are all about to discover.

1572. As the Earl of Leicester's chief intelligencer, lawyer Dr Christopher Radcliff is tasked with investigating rumours of treachery at home and the papist threat from abroad. And with heresy and religious unrest simmering beneath the surface of a country on the brink, Radcliff is under pressure to get results. Then two brutal and seemingly motiveless killings alert Radcliff to the whisper of a new plot against the queen.

A powerful banker, gunned down in cold blood. A military family, senselessly slaughtered as they sleep. A key general, kidnapped from his farm near Fort Bragg. Time is running out for Jake Mahegan. Terrorist cells are gathering in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Hackers are emptying the nation's banks. And their final act of vengeance will bring the whole world to its knees. For Mahegan, it's time to kill.

When the estranged wife of Charlotte Holmes' dear friend Lord Ingram is discovered dead on his estate, all signs point to him as the murderer. With Scotland Yard closing in, Charlotte goes under disguise to find out the truth.

Like most women, Elizabeth Miles assumes many roles. Unlike most, hers have made her a woman on the run. Living on the edge of society, Elizabeth uses her guile to relieve so-called respectable men of their ill-gotten gains. But brutal and greedy entrepreneur Oscar Thornton is out for blood. He's lost a great deal of money and is not going to forgive a woman for outwitting him. With his thugs hot on her trail, Elizabeth seizes the moment to blend in with a group of women who have an agenda of their own.

When two Parisian women are shockingly murdered in their homes, the police suspect young accordionist Clement Vauquer, who was seen outside both of the apartments in question. To have a chance of proving his innocence, Clement seeks refuge with old Marthe, a former prostitute and the only mother figure he has known. Marthe calls ex-special investigator Louis Kehlweiler to help Clement.

Local teens out to find some Halloween thrills come across a boot with a dead man's foot bones still inside it. Everyone in Otter Lake knows about the age-old witch who haunts the apple orchard bordering the White Mountains. So when the bones turn out to belong to a long-gone local with a scandalous connection to the orchard, stories of the spooky figure roaming the forests at night once again rise up from the past.

Isa Wilde knows something terrible has happened when she receives this text from an old friend. Why else would Kate summon her and their two friends Thea and Fatima to the seaside town where they briefly attended school together 17 years ago? The four friends bonded at a boarding school with the Lying Game, a risky contest that involved tricking fellow boarders and faculty with their lies. But the game had consequences, and the girls were eventually expelled after Kate's dad, their beloved art teacher, mysteriously disappeared.

A lawyer is found dead in a Peak District cave, his face ribboned with scratches. Amidst rumours of a local curse, DI Meg Dalton is convinced this is cold-blooded murder. There's just one catch - chiselled into the cave wall above the body is an image of the grim reaper and the dead man's initials, and it's been there for over a century.

When the district attorney's daughter is brutally murdered, her boyfriend is immediately arrested. It should be an open-and-shut case, except homicide detectives Ellie Macintosh and her partner Jason Santiago sense something off. Randy Lane maintains his innocence, and his prominent family is at the center of a much larger federal investigation which raises more questions than answers.

When Jose Luis, the larger-than-life owner of the Sunset, a notorious nightclub in the hills above Valencia, suddenly dies, everyone assumes it was a heart-attack. Back in the city, Max Camara's journalist girlfriend Alicia is working on a lead that could turn out to be the story of her career. How her own investigation connects with Max's at Sunset, and an unholy network of drug dealers, priests and shady officials protecting a dark government secret, will place both their lives in jeopardy and push everything to the very edge.

Local author. Lane Winslow spots a gravely injured young man drifting across the lake in a sinking rowboat. Hypothermic, bleeding, and soaked in icy, bloody water, he is unable to speak. Then Angela's young son finds an unsettling clue on the beach - a bright red swastika lapel pin - that points to the National Unity Party of Canada. When the anonymous man succumbs to his injuries, Darling and Lane are thrown headlong into a murder investigation with ties to the old country.

Singapore, 1937. Chen Su Lin is now Chief Inspector Le Froy's secretarial assistant in Singapore's newly formed detective unit. The Hon Victor Glossop announces he is marrying an American widow, Mrs Nicole Covington, in the Colony. Then Glossop is found dead, his body covered in bizarre symbols and soaked in betel nut juice. And investigations into Nicole's past reveal a dead lover, as well as a husband...

Hide. That's all Pippa can do to escape the terror chasing her. But now that she's off the grid in a safe house, she finds plenty of interesting things to watch through the window. Run. Malcolm West is fleeing the hell he unleashed in his last assignment as an undercover cop. A backwoods bungalow sounds like the perfect place to start over. Until he discovers he's been set up...

Atlee Pine is an FBI special agent assigned to the remote wilds of the western United States. Atlee is called in to investigate the mutilated carcass of a mule found in the Grand Canyon - and hopefully, solve the disappearance of its rider. But this isn't the only recent disappearance. In fact, it may be just the first clue, the key to unraveling a rash of other similar missing persons cases in the canyon.

After a tragedy rocks the community of Promise Falls, Cal Weaver is asked to investigate the threats being made to the accused's family. He's heard all about it on the news: the young man who drank too much, stole a Porsche and killed a girl, and who claimed afterwards not to remember a single thing. The whole town is outraged that he got off lightly, but for reasons Cal can't explain, he accepts the job.

A young woman is found strangled in a park, and a male journalist has been killed in the backyard of the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. Detective Louise Rick is put on the case of the young girl, but very soon becomes entangled in solving the other homicide too when it turns out her best friend, journalist Camilla Lind, knew the murdered man.

Copenhagen detective Louise Rick gets a call from her son, Jonas. A school party has ended in terrifying chaos after a group of violent teenagers forced their way into the building in search of alcohol and valuables. Arriving at the scene, Louise discovers that one of the girls, 12 year-old Signe, attempted to run for help, but was struck and killed by a car. Then a carefully planned act of arson renders the already deeply disturbing case a top priority. Louise finds the evidence pulling her in several different directions at once.

London. 1894. Police Chief Macnaghten, to Oscar Wilde, and Arthur Conan Doyle set out to discover the identity of Jack the Ripper.

When a man who appears mentally unstable holds a group of people hostage and dies in a shootout with the FBI, Special Agent Lucy Kincaid is assigned to investigate what happened. Up until two months ago, McMahon was a respected scientist - then his wife left him, he lost his job, and was arrested for assaulting a former colleague. The one person who might have answers - his research assistant - has disappeared.

The revelry of the Christmas Hunt is interrupted by the discovery of a body. "Sister" Jane Arnold and her company of loyal hounds must uncover who has killed a beloved club faithful. It's no help that the meddling, loathsome Victor Harris lurks in the shadows, weaseling his way back into the life of his disinherited daughter.

Jack Taylor is recovering from a mistaken medical diagnosis and a failed suicide attempt. In need of money, and with former cop on his resume, Jack has been hired as a night-shift security guard. But his Ukrainian boss has Jack in mind for a bit of off-the-books work. He wants Jack to find what some claim to be the first true book of heresy, the Red Book, currently in the possession of a rogue priest who is hiding out in Galway after fleeing a position at the Vatican.

Once again, trouble comes to Jack Taylor, this time in the form of a wealthy Frenchman who wants Jack to investigate the murder of his twin sons. The plot is one big chess game and all of the pieces seem to be moving at the behest of one dangerously mysterious player: a vigilante called "Silence," because he's the last thing his victims will ever hear.

Holidaying in an idyllic resort on the island of Reunion, wealthy Parisians Martial and Liane Bellion are enjoying the perfect family moment with their 6 year old daughter. Then Liane Bellion disappears from her hotel room. The door to her room is open, the walls and sheets are spotted with blood. A hotel employee swears he saw Martial in the corridor at the time Liane went missing. And then Martial also disappears, along with his daughter. An all-out manhunt is declared across the island.

Pawns are being moved around a global chessboard: an attack on an oil platform in Africa, a terrorist strike on an American destroyer and a storm tossed American spy ship that may fall into Chinese hands. It seems that Premier Zhao is determined to limit President Ryan's choices in the upcoming negotiations.But there are hints that there's even more going on behind the scene.

Chloe's sister Shannon, co-host of a popular home repair TV show, returns to Lighthouse Cove with her crew co-host to film some segments. But Shannon's handsome co-host is being stalked by someone who turns out to be his estranged wife, Erica - who also happens to be the executive producer of the show. Erica's got a knack for stirring up sticky situations and when she's found dead, the entire crew are under suspicion.

Jack takes a detour to a place he has never been: the town where his father was born. At the same moment, in the same isolated area, a car breaks down. Two young Canadians had been on their way to New York City to sell a treasure. The next morning, in the city clerk's office, Reacher asks about the old family home. He's told no one named Reacher ever lived in town.

We follow TV producer Laurie Moran's investigation of the unsolved Met Gala murder - in which a wealthy widow was pushed to her death from the famous museum's rooftop. As the Under Suspicion crew pries into the lives of a super wealthy real estate family with secrets to hide, danger mounts for several witnesses - and for Laurie.

When a popular high school senior is shot by police following a late night robbery, chaos ensues. The actions of the officer are immediately called into question. Amid community protests, political grandstanding, department leaks, and reluctant witnesses, Byron and his team must work quickly to find the missing pieces. And when an attempt is made on the officer's life, Byron shifts into overdrive.

Rene Ballard comes back to Hollywood Station to find retired detective Harry Bosch working a cold case that has gotten under his skin. Ballard kicks him out, but then checks into the case herself. Bosch is investigating the death of 15 year old Daisy Clayton, a runaway on the streets of Hollywood who was brutally murdered and her body left in a dumpster like so much trash. Now, Ballard joins forces with Bosch to find out what happened to Daisy.

7.15am: Two children are seen on top of a wall in a school. Shortly after, one of them lies fatally injured at the bottom. Did the boy fall or was he pushed? DC Maggie Neville struggles with the questions raised. Why was the boy at the school so early? Why was he with the girl who is now being questioned?

In the early hours of a quiet, weekend morning in Manhattan's Diamond District, a brutal triple murder shocks the city. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs quickly take the case. Curiously, the killer has left behind a half-million dollars' worth of gems at the murder scene, a jewelry store on 47th street. As more crimes follow, it becomes clear that the killer's target is not gems, but engaged couples themselves.

A pair of hit men working a job for a meth kingpin have a very bad day, and the resulting bushfire draws attention to a drug lab and two burned bodies in a Mercedes. With meth-related crime on the rise, interdepartmental tensions mount, and Inspector Hal Challis soon finds himself fighting to keep control of his case.

RCMP operative Jack Taggart discovers sophisticated weapons are being smuggled to BC criminal gangs from the United States. After a fellow officer is murdered in cold blood, Taggart goes undercover to infiltrate a white supremacist faction to track down the killers.

Addie Greyborne opens a bookshop in a small New England town. But there's trouble from day one, and not just from the grumpy woman who runs the bakery next door. A car nearly runs Addie down. Someone steals a copy of Alice in Wonderland. Then, Addie's friend Serena, who owns a nearby tea shop, is arrested - for killing another local merchant.

Even as her father lies dying in a hospital north of New York City, FBI Agent Elsa Myers can't ignore a call for help. A teenage girl has disappeared from Forest Hills, Queens, and during the critical first hours of the case, a series of false leads obscures the fact that she did not go willingly. Elsa's carefully compartmentalized world begins to collapse around her. She can find missing people, but she knows too well how it feels to be lost.

The Blueberry Blow Out festival has begun but unfortunately it is bringing out the worst in Marlee Jacob's fiance Ryan Zeller. Ryan's rivalry with Porter Gale, owner of Blueberry Hill Farm, spills over into a very public and very ugly fight. Then Gale, a diabetic, dies. When authorities discover that someone tampered with his insulin, a tragic accident is looking like murder, with Ryan the key ingredient.

Unknown to DI Luc Callanach and the newly promoted DCI Ava Turner, a serial killer has Edinburgh firmly in his grip. The killer is taking his victims in the coldest, most calculating way possible - engineering slow and painful deaths by poison, with his victims entirely unaware of the drugs flooding their bloodstream until it's too late. But how do you catch a killer who hides in the shadows?

Harrison Foster is a lawyer by training but works as a crisis manager for a London firm that specializes in such matters. Summoned to Newmarket after a fire in the Chadwick Stables slaughters six very valuable horses, including the short-priced favourite for the Derby, Harry (as he is known) finds there is far more to the 'simple' fire than initially meets the eye.

Return to the 1950s as Bertha Cool and Donald Lam investigate an impossible murder in a double-locked room...the theft of two precious jade and ruby Buddhas...and the intertwined fates of a globetrotting explorer, a neglected wife, and a beautiful nude art model.

River, a young US Army veteran suffering from PTSD and drifting around Brazil, who falls in love with Natal, a gangster's mistress. They flee together into the interior of Brazil, where they are pursued by the drug lord, Tio, and his men. When River is forced to kill one of the gangster's men, the Brazilian government joins the chase.

Pete Banning was a returning war hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbor, and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Then one morning in 1946. he rose early, drove into town, walked into the Church, and calmly shot and killed the Reverend Dexter Bell. Pete's only statement about it - to anyone - was "I have nothing to say." And so the murder of the esteemed Reverend Bell became the most mysterious and unforgettable crime Ford County had ever known.

A man sits in a cell on death row, sentenced to die for the murder of the beautiful woman called V. But as we learn the story of her death - and of her troubled, torrid life - one question haunts us: why would any man kill the woman he craves more than life itself?

Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone cafe, he knows he's witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly for MI5, he sets in motion a train of events that will alter lives.

Set in the brutal underworld of the French Riviera, taking readers into the very beginning of James Bond's illustrious career and the formation of his identity.One body. Three bullets. 007 floats in the waters of Marseille, killed by an unknown hand.<br/><br/>It's time for a new agent to step up. Time for a new weapon in the war against organized crime.<br/><br/>It's time for James Bond to earn his license to kill. .

His wife is sick.He needs $200,000 to save her.A mysterious man offers to give him the money with just one catch: he has to murder someone to get it.

Shortly after Kipp Brown and his teenage son, Mungo, arrive at the Amex stadium for their team's biggest-ever football game, Mungo disappears. A short while later Kipp receives a text with a ransom demand and a terrifying warning: We have your son. If you wish to see him alive again you will not contact the police and you will follow our instructions very carefully. But as a massive, covert manhunt for the boy and his kidnappers begins, Detective Superintendent Roy Grace starts to realize that not all is what it seems.

The naked body of a former Swedish politician, excluded from his party for racism but since reformed is found in a ditch. Then sixteen-year-old Nadja Lundin is reported missing, possibly abducted, the same evening, and there are signs that suggest to Malin Fors the two cases might be connected. But what do the victims have in common? And why were they chosen?

One night, while on duty with her four-legged crime-fighting companion, Meg gets an urgent call from her boyfriend Seth, who works for the Fort Worth fire department. A baby girl has turned up at the station with only two clues to her identity. One is a peace-sign symbol stitched into her blanket. The other is the word HELP, written in string. Megan follows the clues that leads to the People of Peace compound, the site of a religious sect on the outskirts of the city.

18 years ago, FBI Agent Rachel Ward's mirror twin, Hannah, was taken by the Gemini killer, a serial killer who delights in sending photos of his victims to their twins. Rachel assumes her sister has been dead for years, but she's never stopped hunting the monster who took her. Now, another twin has been taken, and when the case reopens, Rachel is assigned as an agent. But her relentless hunt for the killer may drive her to her breaking point.

Conman Rowan Petty is flat broke, living out of cheap hotels, and wondering how it all went wrong when his car quits on him in Reno. He takes a job there on the bottom rung of a lousy phone scam, and while not swindling lonely widows, tries to turn nickels into dimes at the poker table. When an old friend of his turns up spreading a rumour about two million dollars in army money smuggled out of Afghanistan and stashed in an apartment in Los Angeles, it seems like a chance at the score of a lifetime.

London, 1958. Chief Superintendent Frederick Troy of Scotland Yard, is accompanying his older brother Rod on a European trip but gets only as far as Vienna. There he finds Guy Burgess, who tells him he wants to come back from Moscow to Britain. Troy knows this news will cause a ruckus in London - but even Troy doesn't expect an MI5 man to be gunned down as a result, and Troy himself suspected of doing the deed.

Abby is delighted to provide her trademark lavender honey for her friend Paola, a truffle maker, who is renewing her vows with her husband Jake, owner of the Country Schoolhouse Winery. But things go sour after the ceremony when Abby discovers Jake shot dead in his car and Paola injured beside him.

Phoebe Siegler first meets Charles Heist in a shabby trailer on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. She's looking for her friend's missing daughter, Arabella, and hires Heist to help. The pair navigate the enclaves of desert-dwelling vagabonds and find that Arabella is in serious trouble - caught in the middle of a violent standoff that only Heist, mysteriously, can end.

Detective Chief Inspector Roberta Steel got caught fitting up Jack Wallace - that's why they demoted her and quashed his sentence. Now he's back on the streets and women are being attacked again. Wallace has to be responsible, but if Detective Sergeant Steel goes anywhere near him, his lawyers will get her thrown off the force for good. But Steel knows Wallace is guilty. And the longer he gets away with it, the more women will suffer. The question is how much is she willing to sacrifice to stop him?

Mike Hodge - veteran of the Great War, big shot of the Chicago Tribune, medium fry - probably shouldn't have fallen in love with Annie Walsh. Then, again, maybe the man who killed Annie Walsh should have known better than to trifle with Mike Hodge.

A woman stumbles onto a dark road in rural Oregon - tortured, battered, and bound. She tells a horrific story about being kidnapped, then tortured, until she finally managed to escape. She was the lucky one - two other women, with similar burns and bruises, were found dead. The surviving victim identifies the house where she was held captive and the owner, Alex Mason - a prominent local attorney - is arrested. Although he loudly insists upon his innocence, his wife's statements about his sexual sadism and the physical evidence found at the scene, his summer home, is damning. Regina Barrister, a legendary criminal defense attorney, has agreed to take on the seemingly impossible task of defending Alex Mason.

Bombay, 1921: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has become one of the first female lawyers in India. She is executing the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen examines the paperwork, she notices something strange. All three of the wives have signed over their full inheritance to a charity.

Besides the annual Turkey Trot 5K on Thanksgiving Day, Lucy expects the approaching holiday to be a relatively uneventful one - until she finds beautiful Alison Franklin dead and frozen in Blueberry Pond.

A Victorian era mystery. Nell Hallam is a determined young pianist who stumbles upon the operations of a notorious - and deadly - crime ring while illicitly working as the piano player in a Soho music hall.

Dr. Dylan Reinhart wrote the book on criminal behavior. Literally - he's a renowned, bestselling Ivy League expert on the subject. When a copy of his book turns up at a gruesome murder scene - along with a threatening message from the killer - it looks like someone has been taking notes. So a NYPD detective recruits Dylan to help investigate another souvenir left at the scene - a playing card.

When Worm, a young orphan boy who works at the local clinic, sees Eloise being kidnapped by two men in the days leading up to Christmas, he immediately recruits Squeaky Robinson to help rescue her. But Eloise does not want to be rescued. She wants to bring the kidnappers, who drew her father into their shady business deals and then murdered him, to justice.

Combat veteran Peter Ash goes to Denver where his good friend Henry Nygaard's daughter runs a Denver security company that protects cash-rich cannabis entrepreneurs from modern-day highwaymen. Henry's son-in-law and the company's operations manager were carrying a large sum of client money when their vehicle vanished without a trace. Then, when Peter is riding shotgun on another cash run, the cargo he's guarding comes under attack from hijackers. What, Peter wonders, makes these attacks worth the risk?

The successes of Capitaine Roger Blanc, an investigator with the anti-corruption unit of the French Gendarmerie, have earned him exile to Provence. His first murder case is a man with no friends and a lot of enemies, an outsider who was found shot and burned. When a second man dies under suspicious circumstances in the quaint French countryside, the Capitaine from Paris has to dig deep into the hidden, dark undersides of the Provence he never expected to see.

A missing private investigator is found, locked in a car hidden deep in the woods. Worse still - both for his family and the police - is that his body was in an area that had already been searched. DI Siobhan Clarke is part of a new inquiry, combing through the mistakes of the original case. Every officer involved must be questioned, and it seems everyone on the case has something to hide. But there is one man who knows where the trail may lead - and that it could be the end of him: John Rebus.

An airplane touches down at a desolate airport in a remote Colorado ski town. Shortly after landing, Dr. Lyle Martin, a world-class infectious disease specialist, is brusquely awakened to shocking news. Everyone not on the plane appears to be dead. While they were in the air, a lethal new kind of virus surfaced, threatening mankind's survival, and now Martin - one of the most sought-after virologists on the planet until his career took a precipitous slide - is at the center of the investigation. Moving at lightning pace from the snowbound Rockies to the secret campus of Google X, where unlimited budgets may be producing wonders beyond our capacity to control.

When a stranger, claiming to be a childhood friend, visits a Russian immigrant who lies dying in a hospice in upstate Vermont, the FBI and MI5 take notice. As Liz Carlyle and her colleague Peggy Kinsolving unravel the events that landed the man in the hospital, Liz learns of a network of Russians and their plot to undermine the German government. Liz and Peggy set out to locate and stop this insidious network, traveling the world from Montreal to Moscow.

Detective Superintendent Alan Banks is called in to lead the investigation after a shocking mass murder occurs during a wedding outside a small church in the Yorkshire Dales. An exhaustive manhunt ensues and the shooter is run to ground as the investigation follows its inevitable course. But Banks, his colleague DI Annie Cabbot, and the newest and youngest team member, DI Gerry Masterson, are plagued by doubts as to exactly what happened in the churchyard that day, and why.

A young, local student has apparently committed suicide, her body found in an abandoned car on a lonely country road. Meanwhile, a man in his sixties, carrying no identification is found dead in a gully up on the wild moorland. As the inconsistencies and mysteries proliferate, Annie's father's new partner, Zelda, comes up with a shocking piece of information that alerts Banks and Annie to the return of an old enemy in a new guise.

Childhood sweethearts William and Mary have been married for sixty years. William is a celebrated surgeon, Mary a devoted wife. Both have a strong sense of right and wrong. This is what their son, Joe O'Loughlin, has always believed. But when Joe is summoned to the hospital with news that his father has been brutally attacked, his world is turned upside down. Who is the strange woman crying at William's bedside, covered in his blood - a friend, a mistress, a fantasist or a killer?

Bernt Lund harbors a sickness. He is a monster in the mind of society, in the minds of his nine-year-old victims' parents, and in the minds of his fellow inmates. Lennart Oscarsson has a situation - the worst scenario imaginable for Aspsas prison's Department for Sexual Crimes. Through these two men's actions, DCI Ewert Grens is about to encounter the most profoundly sickening and impossibly sensitive case in his career, and perhaps in Stockholm's history.

Spring, 1549. Lawyer Matthew Shardlake has been working in the service of Henry VIII's younger daughter, the Lady Elizabeth. The gruesome murder of the wife of John Boleyn, a distant relation of Elizabeth, takes him to Norwich. As he investigates, more murders are committed -- and a peasant rebellion breaks out.

When Mma Ramotswe learns about the proposed construction of the flashy Big Fun Hotel next to a graveyard, she consents to run for city council, her slogan "I can't promise anything - but I shall do my best." To everyone's surprise, she wins. But politics and Mma Ramotswe don't mix, and she resigns, not realizing this will allow the developers to get their way.

On a seemingly ordinary day, 17 year old Lia Haddock hears news that will change her life forever: three hundred men, women, and children living at a research facility in Limetown, Tennessee, have disappeared without a trace. Among the missing is Emile Haddock, Lia's uncle. What happened to the people of Limetown? It's all anyone can talk about. Except Lia's parents, who refuse to discuss what might have happened there.

On a deserted road, late at night, Scotland Yard's Ian Rutledge encounters a frightened woman standing over a body, launching an inquiry that leads him into the lair of a stealthy killer and the dangerous recesses of his own memories.

A mystery novel from the author of EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES. 1957. Famous theatre critic A. S. Crystal has come to the British seaside resort of Brighton. Sitting in the Brighton Royal Theatre with Constable Twitten, Crystal intends to tell the detective the secret he knows about the still-unsolved Aldersgate stick-up case of 1945. And yet, just before Crystal names the criminal mastermind involved, he's shot dead in his seat.

Former Kindle County prosecutor Bill ten Boom is tapped by the International Criminal Court - an organization charged with prosecuting crimes against humanity. Over ten years ago, in the apocalyptic chaos following the Bosnian war, an entire Roma refugee camp vanished. Now a witness has stepped forward with a story of mass murder. Boom's task is to examine the claims and determinine who might have massacred the Roma.

The gang warfare that has been brewing in Goteborg is about to explode. A member of a notorious biker gang has been set on fire - alive. Anticipating a counterattack, Irene's unit and the Organized Crimes Unit team up to patrol the lavish party of a rival gang, but that doesn't stop another murder from occurring just outside the event hall.

Angie's first auction may turn out to be her last - when she bids on a coat of arms that someone would literally kill to possess.

Vancouver authors, Vancouver crimes! Brand-new stories by Linda L. Richards, Timothy Taylor, Sheena Kamal, Robin Spano, Carleigh Baker, Sam Wiebe, Dietrich Kalteis, Nathan Ripley, Yasuko Thanh, Kristi Charish, Don English, Nick Mamatas, S.G. Wong, and R.M. Greenaway.

Heloise Salvatierra, patron of Guatemala's largest cartel, is ready and willing to pay Victor to eliminate the competition, her sister Maria. But Victor's not the only one on the hunt. Someone else has Maria in the crosshairs and will do anything to get the kill. In the middle of cartel territory with enemies closing in from all sides, Victor must decide where to put the bullet before one is placed in his head...

Mississippi sheriff Quinn Colson sees similarities between the raids he led back in Afghanistan and Iraq as an Army Ranger and a series of bank robberies. Are the outlaws former Rangers? If so, and if he stood any chance of catching them, he was going to need the help of old allies, new enemies, and a lot of luck. The enemies, he had plenty of. It was the allies and the luck that were going to be in woefully short supply.

Extremists hijack the conference centre where heads of state have gathered in an attempt to bring society back from the brink of global environmental catastrophe, and the clock starts ticking. Marika, an Australian intelligence officer, Isabella, a treasonous British diplomat, Simon, an airline pilot searching for his missing daughters, and Madoowbe, a mysterious Somali agent, attempt to stave off disaster.

Gunnhildur reluctantly allows herself to be taken off police duties to act as bodyguard to a man with a price on his head. Hidden away in a secure house outside Reykjavik, Gunna and the high-profile stranger, a guest of the interiors minister, are thrown together - too close for comfort. They soon find they are neither as safe nor as carefully hidden as Gunna and her boss had thought.

When the granddaughter of the wealthy Sachs-Smith family is kidnapped, Louise's skills as a trained negotiator are put to work. The kidnappers will only exchange the deathly ill little girl for an infamous glass figure - known as the Angel of Death - that has been in the family for generations. But there's a problem... the Angel, worth millions, was recently stolen from the family home.

Celeste "CeeCee" French, founder of a national chain of pet care franchises, is returning home to Sylvan Creek to announce plans for a bright new flagship store. But not everyone's celebrating CeeCee's homecoming. Daphne's friend Moxie Bloom, owner of Spa and Paw, a unique salon for people and their pets, has plenty to growl about. So when CeeCee is found face down under Sylvan Creek's town Christmas tree, stabbed with a distinctive pair of professional-grade pet shears, suspicion lands squarely on Moxie.

Annie "Halsey" is sitting around the pool in her backyard in Southern California with her best friend Sally and the other ladies of the Rose Avenue Wine Club. But the peaceful pleasure of the afternoon is shattered by a small plane crash at nearby Santa Monica Airport. Sometime later, a sour-faced detective shows up, holding a package of illegal drugs found on the plane - with Sally's address on it! Then a young mechanic who works at the airport is found murdered.

Cat and the members of her writers' retreat have just arrived in Outlaw, Colorado, an "Old West" tourist town complete with inhabitants dressed up as famous figures from history. But this authentic slice of Americana takes a murderous turn when a college student masquerading as a 19th-century saloon girl becomes history herself.

On his last combat deployment, Lieutenant Commander James Reece's entire team was killed in a catastrophic ambush. But when those dearest to him are murdered on the day of his homecoming, Reece discovers that this was not an act of war by a foreign enemy but a conspiracy that runs to the highest levels of government. Reece applies the lessons that he's learned in over a decade of constant warfare toward avenging the deaths of his family and teammates.

Vivian Miller is a dedicated CIA counterintelligence analyst assigned to uncover the leaders of Russian sleeper cells in the United States. Pushing herself for a much-needed promotion, she stumbles on a secret online dossier of deep-cover agents living within America's borders. A few clicks later, everything that matters to her - her job, her husband, even her four children - are threatened.

Mac, a Key West charter fishing boat owner, is offered two million dollars for a ten-day fishing tournament to Cuba. The clients, a beautiful Cuban-American woman named Sara Ortega, and a mysterious older Cuban exile, Eduardo Valazquez, are after $60 million hidden by Sara's grandfather when he fled Castro's revolution. Mac knows that if he accepts this job, he'll walk away rich...or not at all.

Serge A. Storms and his permanently baked sidekick, Coleman, are on a frenzied literary pilgrimage that leads them back to Riviera Beach, the cozy seaside town where the boys spent their formative years. There Serge will delve into the secrets and legends of his distant past.

Florists Britta Johnston and her aunt Elin are building a float for Portland's Rose Festival that's sure to rock the judge's boat - until a gang of angry protestors shows up. The group, who call themselves Dark Fusion, are decidedly not into flower power, and they want to take down the system - including the upcoming extravaganza. Then their leader is strangled with a garland of violets - and Britta finds the body.

London, 1969. After accidentally sinking a barge painted like the Yellow Submarine, Bryant and May are relegated to babysitting one Monty Hatton-Jones, the star prosecution witness in the trial of a disreputable developer whose prefabs are prone to collapse. The job for the demoted detectives? Keep the whistle-blower safe for one weekend. The task proves unexpectedly challenging when their unruly charge insists on attending a party at the vast Tavistock Hall estate.

Former Marine MP Brynn Callahan with her canine partner, Wilco, heads back to Bone Gap, Tennessee, and the insular culture she'd escaped when she enlisted. The Irish Travellers keep to themselves in the mountains, maintaining an uneasy coexistence with the "settled" townspeople of McCreary. But when Wilco's training as a cadaver dog leads Brynn to a body in the woods, long-simmering tensions threaten to boil over.

High on a Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion. Uninhabited except for Blake, a young woman of mysterious background, currently acting as housesitter. The house has a panic room. Cunningly concealed, steel lined, impregnable - and apparently closed from within. Even Blake doesn't know it's there. She's too busy being on the run from life, from a story she thinks she's escaped.

1979: four teenage boys from a private school sexually assault a 14 year old classmate - and film the attack. Not long after, the tape goes missing and the suspected thief, a fellow classmate, is murdered. In the investigation that follows, one boy turns state's evidence and two of his peers are convicted. But the ringleader escapes without a trace. Now, it's 1989 and one of the perpetrators, Fritz McCabe, has been released from prison. And a copy of the missing tape arrives with a ransom demand. That's when the McCabes call Kinsey Millhone for help.

Court Gentry is hired by a group of expats in Paris to kidnap the mistress of Syrian dictator Ahmed Azzam. Court delivers Bianca Medina to the rebels, but she soon reveals that she has given birth to a son, the only heir to Azzam's rule - and a potent threat to the Syrian president's powerful wife. Now, to get Bianca's cooperation, Court must bring her son out of Syria alive.

Ava travels to Beijing for the premiere of her secret lover Pang Fai's latest film, Mao's Daughter. After the screening, a distraught Fai tells Ava that she is being blackmailed by senior officials of the China Movie Syndicate. The Syndicate seeks sexual favours in return for their continued support of Fai's career and films.

26 year old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in London, with no family but an estranged sister, no boyfriend or partner, and not much in the way of friends, Maggie is just the kind of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice. Or just the kind of person MI5 needs to infiltrate the establishment and thwart an international plot that puts all of Britain at risk.

When Simon returns to Lafferton, an arsonist is on the rampage and a woman whose daughter disappeared some years before, is haunting the police station seeking closure. She will not let it rest, and Simon is called in to do a cold-case review.

Secret government forces are busy trying to scrub the remaining assets and traces of the Orphan Program and they have finally tracked down Jack Johns. With little time remaining, and an elusive new enemy on his trail, Jack gives Evan his last assignment: to find and protect his last protege and recruit for the program - or die trying...

Just days after mathematician and family patriarch Isaac Severy dies of an apparent suicide, his adopted granddaughter Hazel, owner of a struggling Seattle bookstore, receives a letter from him by mail. In it, Isaac alludes to a secretive organization that is after his final bombshell equation, and he charges Hazel with safely delivering it to a trusted colleague. But first, she must find where the equation is hidden.

When forensic sculptor Eve Duncan receives a cryptic package containing a skull and a two-sided mirror, she attempts to reconstruct the skull and uncover the mystery of the person's identity. But who is the beautiful woman whose face begins to emerge? As Eve gets closer and closer to finding the answer, she becomes swept up in a lethal chase that spans continents and threatens to destroy the family that she has worked so hard to bring together.

The editors have asked the contributors to be inspired by the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. Some tales are pastiches; others step away in time or place to describe characters and stories influenced by the Holmes world. Peter S. Beagle, Rhys Bowen, Reed Farrel Coleman, Jamie Freveletti, Alan Gordon, Gregg Hurwitz, Toni L. P. Kelner, William Kotzwinkle and Joe Servello, Harley Jane Kozak, D. P. Lyle, Weston Ochse, Zoe Sharp, Duane Swierczynski, and F. Paul Wilson contribute.

Young Trey DeBolt is a Coast Guard rescue swimmer in Alaska. Then, during a harrowing rescue, his helicopter goes down. Severely injured, DeBolt awakens in a seaside cabin in Maine, thousands of miles from where the accident occurred. His lone nurse lets slip that he has been officially declared dead, lost in the crash. Back in Alaska, however, Coast Guard investigator Shannon Lund uncovers evidence that DeBolt might still be alive.

Sunny Randall's ex-husband Richie is shot and nearly killed. Sunny is dragged into the thick of his family's business as she searches for answers and tries to stave off a mob war. But as the bullets start flying in Boston's mean streets, Sunny finds herself targeted by the deranged mastermind of the plot against the Burke family, whose motive may be far more personal than she could have anticipated...

In the north of England, single women are beginning to disappear from weddings. A pattern soon becomes clear. Someone is crashing the festivities and luring the women away - only to leave the victims' bodies in their own burned-out cars in remote locations. Tony Hill and Carol Jordan are called to investigate.

Six feet under in a Highland peat bog lies Alice Somerville's inheritance, buried by her grandfather at the end of World War II. But when Alice finally uncovers it, she finds an unwanted surprise - a body with a bullet hole between the eyes. Meanwhile, DCI Pirie is called in to unravel a case where nothing is quite as it seems.

Psychologist Jessie Flynn finds a connection between two cases. A baby is abandoned in the middle of the night at Royal Surrey County Hospital. The police are seeking the father, believed to be planning to take his own life following the violent suicide of his eldest son Danny a year earlier. The other case is the death of a 16 year old boy, stabbed in the neck and left in the woods. It appears as if someone tried to save his life -- but who?

When Hattie Hoffman is found brutally stabbed to death, the tragedy rips right through the fabric of her small-town community. It soon comes to light that Hattie was engaged in a highly compromising and potentially explosive secret online relationship. The question is: Did anyone else know? And to what lengths might they have gone to end it?

Makedde Vanderwall - beautiful, street-wise daughter of a cop, graduate in forensic psychology, and now PI - is hired by a widowed mother to track down her missing 19 year old son. Has he come to harm? Or has he run off with a bizarre troupe of shady French cabaret artists sweeping through Australia? And what of the rumours of violence and tragedy that have plagued the troupe for the past decade?

Former model turned forensic psychologist and PI Makedde Vanderwall is missing, presumed dead in Paris. By hiring a hit man to kill her, the powerful and corrupt Cavanagh family aimed to silence her for good. But after narrowly escaping death, Mak has taken over her would-be killer's world. She is very much alive. And transformed...

When the head of the world's foremost investigation agency receives at invitation to meet Princess Caroline, third in line to the British throne, he boards his Gulfstream jet and flies straight to London. The Princess needs Jack Morgan's skills, and his discretion. Sophie Edwards, a close friend of the Princess, has gone missing. She needs to be found before the media become aware of it. Morgan knows there is more to this case than he is being told.But what is the Princess hiding?

A peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse. He discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. Gamache soon learns that the other two executors are Myrna Landers, the bookseller from Three Pines, and a young builder. The will is so odd and includes bequests that are so wildly unlikely that Gamache and the others suspect the woman must have been delusional. But when a body is found, the terms of the bizarre will suddenly seem less peculiar and far more menacing.

It begins as a manhunt for Grace Ozmian, the missing daughter of a wealthy tech billionaire. At first, the NYPD assumes Grace, beautiful, reckless, and a regular feature of the local tabloids, has simply sped off on another wild adventure. But the case becomes something altogether different when the young woman's body is discovered in an abandoned warehouse in Queens, the head nowhere to be found.

Tallie Graver's latest job is prepping a renovated bed and breakfast for a grand re-opening. Standing outside on a ladder, wiping off a grimy pane, she spies a man on a bed through the glass. But the B&B isn't open for business yet - and the man's not sleeping. Tallie knows a corpse when she sees one. The victim is a shady building inspector with a reputation for handing out passing grades for a greased palm.

Home stager Caprice De Luca is busy arranging every last detail for a reception at Rambling Vines Winery. But as financial mishaps and unhappy customers put the winery in the red, an unidentified criminal plots to sour the business's already ailing reputation. Then co-owner Michelle Dodd's aloof husband is found stabbed to death on a chaise lounge in the tasting room.

A 737 passenger jet drops from the sky from 34,000 feet. Then another. And another. At the same time, the unthinkable happens in our nuclear power plants. Water pumps fail. Nuclear cores melt. Chemical plants explode. Floodgates burst open. Power grids self-destruct. America's last hope lies with two specially trained FBI agents: Hank Goodnight and computer programmer Paige Randall, who must penetrate the darkest recesses of the web and infiltrate the twisted network of a faceless enemy.

Stone Barrington is enjoying a round of golf in Key West when the game is violently interrupted - and it seems as if the target of the disturbance may have been one of his playing companions, the brilliant businesswoman behind a software startup on the cutting edge of technology. Soon, it becomes clear that this incident is only the first thrust in a deadly scheme to push the beautiful young woman out of the way and put her company's valuable secrets up for grabs.