1873. Mycroft Holmes is in service to the Crown once again. A distant relative of Queen Victoria has been slain by the Fire Four Eleven killer, a serial murderer who leaves no mark upon his victims. Mycroft allows Sherlock to take the case, as he has been asked to find a missing person - the fiance of the woman he loves. As Sherlock travels the country on the hunt for a murderer, both he and Mycroft will discover that the greed of others is at the root of the evil they are trying to unearth...

Jules invites everyone to celebrate the Christmas holiday at the local Winchester Inn's Dickens Feast, a six-course extravaganza with Yorkshire Pudding, Christmas goose, and all the trimmings. But as the weather outside becomes frightful, things inside turn less delightful when one of the guests ends up as dead as Scrooge's doornail.

When DI Dania Gorska is called to investigate the shooting of a young man on a Dundee street, the nail hammered into his forehead suggests that local gangster, Archie McLellan, has left his calling card. Clues point to his involvement in an illegal replica firearms venture, a scam that may include other members of the infamous McLellan family. The chance discovery of human remains buried in the grounds of Breek House, once owned by the McLellans, convinces Dania the two cases must be related.

Meg, full of holiday spirit, is directing a nativity pageant when she finds a surprise in the manger: a living, breathing baby girl. A note from the mother says it's time for the father to take care of her - and implicates Meg's brother, Rob, as the father. A DNA test can reveal the truth but Rob's afraid that suspicion itself could derail his plan to propose to the woman he loves. So Meg, always up to the task, makes it her merry business to find proof of paternity.

Jean Brash, once a child of the streets, is now Mistress of the Just Land, the best bawdy-hoose in Edinburgh. But the murder of a prominent judge, strangled and left dangling in her bawdy-hoose, could bring her whole life to ruin. Her search for the killers will take Jean back into her own dark past as she uncovers a web of political and sexual corruption in the high reaches of the Edinburgh establishment.

Three Christmas themed food themed Maine themed mystery novellas, one each from Leslie Meier (LUCY STONE mysteries), Lee Hollis (HAYLEY POWELL mysteries) and Barbara Ross (MAINE CLAMBAKE mysteries).

Amos Decker and his FBI partner Alex Jamison are visiting his hometown of Burlington, Ohio, when he's approached by Meryl Hawkins, the first person Decker ever arrested for murder back when he was a young detective. Now out of prison, Hawkins still claims he didn't commit the murders. Decker, second-guessing his younger self, digs into the old case - and finds a startling connection to a new crime that he may be able to prevent, if only he can put the pieces together quickly enough...

This is the tale of a missing child, narrated by the wife of the main suspect, the detective leading the hunt, and the journalist covering the case.

Frank Guidry, loyal lieutenant to New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, knows too much. Within hours of JFK's murder, people with ties to Marcello are turning up dead and Guidry suspects he's next. He knows that the first rule of running is "don't stop," but when he catches sight of a woman on the side of the road with a broken-down car, two young daughters and a dog in the backseat, he sees the perfect disguise, a way to cover his tracks and outrun the hit men on his tail.

Professional wedding planner Mallory's mom wants to use her daughter's connection to snag a job staging homes for the company - and the current stager is not filled with holiday cheer at the news that she might be replaced. When the endangered employee downs some antifreeze-spiked punch at a party, Mallory has a murder to solve.

As wine connoisseur Halsey attempts to savor the bouquet of her Tooth & Nail Cab, a different scent intrudes - smoke. The nearby pizza parlor is going up in flames. As they rush to the scene, Halsey's rescue dog Bardot pulls a body from the burning building - the pizza delivery driver - but it's too late.

DI David Vogel is first on the scene when Melanie Cooke's bruised and strangled body is discovered in Bristol's red-light district. The evidence points to Melanie's father being the killer, but Vogel is on edge. the quick arrest is too easy, too straightforward. When two more murders are reported, Vogel's team broaden the search. New evidence suggests that there are three different, disturbed criminals.

When council officer Chris Buckley is approached by an odd old man demanding help in healing a decades-old family rift, he sends the stranger away. But then the old man is murdered, and the police arrive on Chris's doorstep asking questions to which he has no answers. As Chris begins to look into the circumstances of the murder, he uncovers a deadly secret in the silt and mud of the local canals.

Ruth and Samuel Yoder are being questioned in the death of an elderly Amish couple, found murdered not long after the newlyweds were seen leaving the victims' farm. Ruth, in turn, seeks gift shop owner Claire's help in convincing the police that she and Samuel had nothing to do with what happened. But when Claire comes across a cryptic note tucked inside the wedding gift the victims had given the newlyweds no more than an hour before their murder, she finds herself in dire need of a little convincing as well.

Investigative reporter Max Revere has never investigated her own past. Her mother abandoned her when she was nine, sending her periodic postcards, but never returning to reclaim her daughter. Seven years after the postcards stop coming, Martha Revere is declared legally dead, with no sign of what may have happened to her. Until now. With a single clue - that her mother's car disappeared 16 years ago in a small town on the Chesapeake Bay - Max drops everything to finally seek the truth.

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.

Brynn MacAlister's new beginning as an organic micro-dairy farmer and cheese-maker doesn't begin well. Her dear cow Petunia's bellows set the whole town on edge. But it isn't until Brynn's neighbor, Nancy, dies in a mysterious fire that her feelings about small town life begin to curdle . . . It seems some folks were not happy with Nancy's plan to renovate the Old Glebe Church. And everyone demands she muzzle sweet Petunia!

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 Detective Erika Foster receives a tip off that key evidence for a major narcotics case was stashed in a disused quarry on the outskirts of London, she orders for it to be searched. From the thick sludge the drugs are recovered, but so is the skeleton of a young child. The remains are quickly identified as 7 year old Jessica Collins, who had vanished 26 years ago.

Miss Marple's wit and wisdom. It is a slim volume. With big print. It could have been a pamphlet, really. A bit of editing and it would have been gone altogether.

Detective Matthew Venn returns to North Devon, where the rivers Taw and Torridge converge and run into the sea, for his father's funeral. A body has been found on the beach near to Matthew's new home: a man with the tattoo of an albatross on his neck, stabbed to death. Finding the killer is Venn's only focus, and his team's investigation will take him straight back into the community he left behind, and the deadly secrets that lurk there.

It's late October, off-season for tourists, but locals are up and lurching for the annual zombie walk charity event. Though everyone's living it up, trouble is a just a few pawprints away. Allie's followed the bloody tracks of her calico cat, Carmella, to a body in the alley behind the historic McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shop. Unlike the island's other walking dead, this one's flatlined for good. It seems that someone is using the zombie fest as the perfect backdrop for murder.

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.

Harry Bosch is at the funeral of his mentor, John Jack Thompson, when his widow hands him a murder book that Thompson took with him when he left the LAPD 20 years before - the unsolved killing of a troubled young man in an alley used for drug deals. He brings Renee Ballard into help him investigate. They soon arrive at a worrying question. Did Thompson steal the murder book to work the case in retirement, or to make sure it never got solved?

On a lonely moor in northern England, the body of a young woman is discovered. In the south, a girl lies buried beneath a Saxon mound. To the southeast, the ruins of a priory hide a human skull. Each is a sacrifice, a summons. And something in the darkness has heard the call. PI Charlie Parker has also heard it.

On the eve of a top secret space mission, Captain Calli Chase detects a tripped alarm in the tunnels deep below a NASA research center. A NASA pilot, quantum physicist, and cybercrime investigator, Calli knows that a looming blizzard and government shutdown could provide the perfect cover for sabotage. A spatter of dried blood, a missing security badge, a suspicious suicide - a series of disturbing clues point to Calli's twin sister, Carme, who has been MIA for days.

Duncan, Gemma, and their children are guests at Beck House for a posh charity luncheon catered by up-and-coming chef Viv Holland. Attended by several dozen of the area's well-to-do, as well as national food bloggers and restaurant critics, the event could make Viv a star. But a tragic car accident followed by a series of mysterious deaths could ruin her ascent. Each piece of information that surfaces makes it clear that the killer had a connection with Viv's pub - and perhaps with Beck House itself.

Stockholm, 1793. Watchman Mikel Cardell is awakened from his drunken slumber with reports of a body seen floating in the Larder, once a pristine lake on the Southern Isle, now a rancid bog. Efforts to identify the bizarrely mutilated corpse are entrusted to incorruptible lawyer Cecil Winge, who enlists Cardell's help to solve the case. But time is short. Winge's health is failing, the monarchy is in shambles, and whispered conspiracies and paranoia abound.

Captain Kyle Mercer of the Army's elite Delta Force disappeared from Afghanistan -- and was spotted a year later in Caracas, Venezuela. Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor of the Criminal Investigation Division are sent to bring him back - dead or alive. Brodie knows this is a difficult mission, made more difficult by his new partner's inexperience and by his suspicion that Maggie Taylor is reporting to the CIA.

Naomi seeks a younger sister who has been missing for years. Naomi has no picture, not even a name. Her search takes her to Portland, Oregon, where scores of homeless children wander the streets like ghosts, searching for money, food, and companionship. The sharp-eyed investigator soon discovers that young girls have been going missing for months, many later found in the dirty waters of the river.

Montreal journalist Lou Sabatino, under witness protection from the Mafia, comes upon a conniving Russian dominatrix who has secretly recorded herself putting the whip to the bare bottom of a high-ranking federal cabinet minister. He shows the video to Green Party leader Margaret Blake. The video is leaked, and Margaret is sued by the minister for $50 million. Enter Arthur Beauchamp, Margaret's husband and famed criminal lawyer.

Summoned to Holyrood Abbey, Sir Hugh Corbett finds the fortress in chaos. Brothers Anselm and Richard have been brutally slain by nails driven deep into their skulls. No one knows who could be behind the gruesome killings and the news attracts the attention of two unwanted guests - the sinister Marcher Lord Mortimer and King Philip of France's devious envoy de Craon.

A collection of Golden Age stories exploring the darker side of the festive season.

New England bookseller Addie Greyborne is planning to donate a valuable 1843 printing of A CHRISTMAS CAROL to a charity auction. Then the father of her late fiance shows up. He remains true to his womanizing ways and runs off for a lunchtime liaison with Teresa Lang, who is in charge of the auction. Soon after, Addie heads to Teresa's office at the hospital - and finds the poor woman's dead body. What she doesn't find is her valuable first edition.

Strangefields Farm, once the scene of the serial murders of the artist Jackson Temples, is about to be transformed into a holiday village. But the developer's hopes of its dark history being forgotten are dashed when a skull is found on the site. And when a local florist is found murdered in an echo of Temples' crimes, DI Wesley Peterson fears that a copy-cat killer is at large. Especially when another brutal murder in a nearby village appears to be linked.

It's been five years since Aubrey's husband disappeared, and Aubrey became the prime suspect in the disappearance. Five years of emptiness, solitude, loneliness, questions. Why didn't Josh show up at his best friend's bachelor party? Was he murdered? Did he run away? And now, all this time later, who is the mysterious yet strangely familiar figure suddenly haunting Aubrey's new life?

Meet the Bright Young Things, the rabble-rousing hedonists of the 1920s whose treasure hunts were a media obsession. One such game takes place at the 18th birthday party of Pamela Mitford, but ends in tragedy as cruel, charismatic Adrian Curtis is pushed to his death from the church neighbouring the Mitford home. The police quickly identify the killer as a maid, Dulcie. But Louisa Cannon, chaperone to the Mitford girls and a former criminal herself, believes Dulcie to be innocent, and sets out to clear the girl's name - all while the real killer may only be steps away.

Jessica Fletcher's favorite gin rummy partner, Mimi Van Dorn, checks into the brand-new Clifton Care Partners, a private hospital that's just opened up shop in town, for a simple procedure - and ends up dead. Jessica decides to pursue her own investigation on the hospital and its shadowy business dealings. On the trail of what initially appears to be medical malpractice, Jessica digs deeper and learns her friend was actually a victim of something far more sinister.

Hannah agrees to help recreate a spectacular Christmas Ball from the past in honor of Essie Granger, an elderly local in hospice care. But instead of poring over decadent dessert recipes for the merry festivities, she instantly becomes enthralled by Essie's old notebooks - and the tale of a woman escaping danger on the streets of New York. Hannah's surprised by Essie's secret talent for penning crime fiction. She's even more surprised when the story turns real.

A group of thirty-something friends from Oxford select an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands for their annual New Year get-together. As might be expected, a blizzard seals them in and then, as secret resentments surface, one of their number is found dead.

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?

When Neve Connolly pays a morning-after visit to her lover, Saul, and finds him brutally murdered, all the lies she has so painstakingly stitched together threaten to unravel. After scrubbing clean every trace of her existence from Saul's life - and death - Neve believes she can return to normal. Then Detective Chief Inspector Alastair Hitching, and Neve's worst fears, come to her door. But with every new lie, every new misdirection to save herself, Neve descends further into the darkness of her betrayal. And Hitching isn't the only one watching Neve. So is a determined killer who is about to make the next terrifying move in a deadly affair...

After her unsavory divorce Sarah Blair has somehow managed to hang on to her modest law firm receptionist job and almost has it together more than her enterprising twin, Emily, a professional chef whose efforts to open a gourmet restaurant have hit a real dead end. When the president of the town bank and city council is murdered after icing Emily's business plans, all eyes are on the one person who left the scene with blood on her hands - the Blair girls' sharp-tongued mother, Maybelle.

1370. With the threat of a French invasion and the murder of a French scholar living in town, the Colleges in Cambridge begin to squabble amongst themselves, as well as with the town that never wanted a University in the first place. Physician Matthew Bartholomew is called upon to investigate mysterious deaths in a nearby hospital. He quickly realizes that there is something odd about the inmates and their keepers - something dark and deadly, which seems to be connected to the growing number of murders in the town.

By January 1666, the plague has almost disappeared from London, leaving its surviving population diminished and in poverty. The court and its followers have returned, their licentiousness undiminished. Thomas Chaloner finds common threads in the death of a well-connected physician, the mysterious sinking of a man-of-war in the Thames and the disappearance of a popular courtier. They seem linked to those planning to set a match to the powder keg of rebellion in the city.

Clare Cassidy is no stranger to murder. A high school English teacher specializing in the Gothic writer R. M. Holland, she teaches a course on it every year. But when one of Clare's colleagues and closest friends is found dead, with a line from R. M. Holland's most famous story, "The Stranger," left by her body, Clare is horrified to see her life collide with the storylines of her favorite literature.

Max Mephisto and his daughter Ruby have landed a headlining gig at the Brighton Hippodrome, the biggest theater in the city, an achievement only slightly marred by the less-than-savory supporting act: a tableau show of naked "living statues." But when one of the girls goes missing and turns up dead not long after, Max and Ruby realize there's something far more sinister than obscenity afoot in the theater.

Julia Rodriguez and her teenage daughter Beatriz escaped bloodthirsty gangs, random violence and, Julia's abusive husband back in El Salvador. Life in Miami is safer -- until Julia's rejects her boss's unwanted sexual advances. Suddenly U. S. immigration arrests her, detains her and prepares to deport her. Jack's only viable legal move to save her is asylum - a long shot that's become nearly impossible in today's charged political climate.

In a small north Florida town a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead. Quincy Miller, a young black man who was once a client of Russo's, was framed, convicted, and sent to prison for life. Then, after 22 years, lawyer/minister Cullen Post who travels the south taking innocence cases, agrees to help. But powerful, ruthless people murdered Keith Russo, and they do not want Quincy exonerated.

A nameless woman in an orange wig has offered Junior fifty grand - twenty-five up front - to break into the abandoned house of a recently deceased 97-year-old recluse, Daisy Horton, and steal a doll from her collection. It doesn't take long for Junior to realize he's not the only one looking for the doll. When an old friend ends up murdered, Junior decides he will stop at nothing to figure out who the woman in the orange wig is, and why she wants the doll badly enough to leave a trail of bodies in her wake.

In the sweltering summer of 1915, Pin, the 14 year old daughter of a carnival fortune-teller, dresses as a boy and joins a teenage gang that roams Chicago's famous Riverview amusement park, looking for trouble. Unbeknownst to the well-heeled city-dwellers and visitors who come to enjoy the attractions, the park is also host to a ruthless killer who uses the shadows of the dark carnival attractions to conduct his crimes.

Thanks to Lyndon and Harry, the owners of the brand-new antique shop next door, Josie is busy repurposing a box of vintage crocheted doilies adorned with the most curious needlework. But before Josie can formally welcome her neighbors, she discovers Lyndon on the floor of his shop stabbed to death by a rusty old pair of sheep shears. Police have pinned Harry as the killer, but Josie isn't so sure.

Attorney Keli Milanni is hoping that Mabon, the Wiccan Autumn Equinox, will bring balance back into her life. But then she's asked to consult on an estate case. Elaine Turnbull left everything, including her valuable art and antiques collection, to her granddaughter, Lana. But Lana has been missing for years, ever since a tragedy tore her family apart. Also missing may be Elaine's most recent will. Then there's the not-so-small detail that Elaine's death by natural causes may not have been so natural after all.

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.

When 18 year old Joshua Mayo takes a man's life in a terrible accident, he leaves the scene without reporting the crime to the police. He was doing well in school and was only months away from starting college at his dream school. After hearing his dark confession, his mother is forced to make a choice no parent should have to make. A choice that draws them both into a web of deceit that will change their lives forever - if they can make it out alive.

Former Seattle homicide cop, J. P. Beaumont, is learning to enjoy the new realities of retirement--doing morning crossword puzzles by a roaring fireplace; playing frisbee with his new dog; having quiet lunches with his still working wife. Then a long ago acquaintance, Alan Dale, shows up on Beau's doorstep with a newborn infant in hand. When Alan asks for help locating his missing daughter, Beau finds himself faced with an investigation that will turn his own life upside down.

Blonde, beautiful, and mysterious Dany Longo is trembling with doubt behind her dark glasses and self-assured veneer. As she races south from Paris in a stolen sports car, she has no idea where she is going or why. But throughout the journey, Dany finds traces of herself along the way - even in places she has never been. Is she the killer the police are looking for? The answer lies within four elements: the lady, the car, the glasses, and a gun, each of which holds a clue to Dany's identity and her deadly secret.

The body of a young Russian woman washes up on a remote Icelandic beach. A hasty police investigation rules suicide. When Reykjavik Detective Inspector Hulda Hermannsdottir is forced into early retirement, she is told she can investigate one last cold case of her choice - and she knows which one. The Russian woman whose hope for asylum ended on the dark, cold shore of an unfamiliar country.

After the body of an unidentified young Hispanic woman dressed as Queen Marie Antoinette is dredged from the Detroit River, ex-police detective August Snow shows her photograph around his native Mexicantown and learns she was a local teenager who disappeared during an ICE raid. In a guns-blazing wild ride across Detroit, from its neo-Nazi biker hole-ups to its hip-hop recording studios, its swanky social clubs to its seedy nightclubs, August puts his own life on the line to protect the community he loves.

Vancouver author. Kansas, late 1930s. Sonny and Clara Myers are about to lose their farm when Sonny comes up with an idea, a way to keep his land and even prosper while giving the banks a taste of their own misery. He sets the scheme in motion under the cover of the commotion being caused by a rainmaker hired by the mayor to call down the thunder and wash away everyone's troubles.

When Georgie is persuaded to join two old friends for Ladies' Night, she intends to have fun, to behave like the Georgie she was before marriage and motherhood changed her life. But one drink too many and Georgie's not sure what happened the night before. Now she's starting to wonder just what she's invited in to her life.

Killian Delaney has a skewed moral compass, a high threshold for pain, and has just been released from prison to discover that someone has taken her niece. She quickly discovers her niece was involved with a notorious biker gang who are engaged in everything from drugs to human trafficking. And to make it worse, the man who sent Killian to jail, the one she nearly beat to death, is at the center of it all.

The Parsees are among the oldest, most secretive and most influential communities in Mumbai. When prominent industrialist Cyrus Zorabian is murdered on holy ground, his body dumped inside a Tower of Silence - where the Parsee dead are consumed by vultures - the police dismiss it as a random killing. But his daughter is unconvinced.

It is an Edwardian Christmas, and the Pennyfoot Hotel is all dressed up. But when one of the guests turns up dead, owner Cecily Sinclair Baxter realizes it is not only the Pennyfoot that is back in business - the hotel's Christmas curse is, too...

At the end of Yellow Street, in a ruined junkyard of a house, an angry outcast hatches a scheme to take revenge for all the wrongs he has suffered. With the help of three alienated neighborhood kids, he plans to hide razor blades, poison, drugs, and broken glass in Halloween candy and use the deadly treats to maim or kill dozens of innocent children.

When a Russian oligarch is killed by a single bullet on his yacht off the Isle of Capri, Russian intelligence believes legendary Israeli assassin David Slaton is responsible. Three ships, owned by the group of Russians, deliver a mysterious cargo to the shores of the Arabian Peninsula. In Morocco, a Russian aerospace company begins flight testing an innovative new drone. Slaton gradually uncovers a conspiracy of monumental scope.

One summer Maureen Haddaway comes to Opal Beach, lured by the promise of friendship, love, starry skies, and wild parties. By summer's end she has vanished. Decades later Allison Simpson is offered the opportunity to house-sit in Opal Beach during the off-season and is drawn into the story of Maureen's mysterious disappearance.

47 year-old Nat is to take over the Haven, a defunct substation of London General with a rag-tag band of spies. The only bright light on the team is young Florence, who has her eye on Russia Department and a Ukrainian oligarch with a finger in the Russia pie. But Nat's badminton partner Ed hates Brexit, hates Trump and hates his job at some soulless media agency. And it is Ed who will take Prue, Florence and Nat himself down the path of political anger that will ensnare them all.

SAS trooper Matt Standing flies to Los Angeles when he learns that the former Navy SEAL who saved his life, Billy-Bob Barnes, has been accused of killing the man he was supposed to be bodyguarding. Three other bodyguards were also killed and now Billy-Bob is on the run. The dead client was a Russian oligarch with connections to the Kremlin. But who wanted him dead? And if Billy-Bob wasn't the killer, who carried out the assassination and why is Billy-Bob being framed?

Shepherd is tasked by MI5 with protecting a 15-year-old schoolboy who is being used to gather evidence against violent drug dealers and a right-wing terrorist group. Meanwhile his son Liam has fallen foul of the Serbian Mafia and if Shepherd doesn't intervene, Liam will die.

57 year old former HR executive Alain Delambre is desperate to land a job. That is why he agrees to participate in the ultimate recruitment test: a role-playing game that involves taking hostages. He didn't realize that the odds were stacked against him from the beginning. Now, his fury is limitless, and what began as a role-playing game could become a bloodbath.

A collection of the year's best mystery short fiction.

Taipei, Taiwan. Jing-nan has known Peggy Lee, a bullying frenemy who runs her family's huge corporation, since high school. Peggy's father has been kidnapped, and the ransom the kidnappers are demanding is not money but IP: a high-tech memory chip that they want to sell in China. Jing-nan feels sorry for Peggy until she starts blackmailing him into helping out.

1910. Wiggins grew up on the streets of London, one of the urchins trained in surveillance by Sherlock Holmes and known as the Baker Street Irregulars. He has promised to avenge the death of his best friend, and to track down a missing girl from the East End. His search takes him to an embassy in Belgravia - an embassy that's actually a high-class brothel presided over by the fearsome "Big T," one of his fellow Irregulars.

Nine physicists are dead after drinking coffee laced with rat poison. The owner of the house isn't suspected, but his claim that a piece of the debris from Roswell's 1947 UFO crash was hidden in Flagler might be true. Enter Luther "Luke" Stephens McWhorter, a Yale Divinity School - educated West Texas sheriff with all the right questions. Is the fragment real? If so, who is trying to locate it?

1890. Sherlock Holmes searches for a diabolical villain bent on destroying some of London's most admired public figures in particularly gruesome ways. A further puzzle is that suicide closely attends each of the murders. Holmes battles both an envious Scotland Yard and a critical press as he follows a complex trail from performers to princes, anarchists to aesthetes. Then his brother Mycroft disappears, apparently the victim of murder.

Renovations at an abandoned farm have uncovered two bodies: a man known to be an IRA member missing since the nineties, and a young girl whose identity remains a mystery. As forensic psychologist Paula Maguire attempts to discover who the girl is and why no one is looking for her, an anonymous tip-off claims that her own long-lost mother is also buried on the farm.

An agent of the British Secret Service has been found floating in the Thames, carrying what purport to be the minutes of a meeting of a secret group intent on nothing less than taking over the world. Holmes and Watson, in the company of a bewitching woman, board the Orient Express in Paris for the heart of Tsarist Russia, where they attempt to trace the origins of this explosive document.

A headmistress is found strangled in an East London school, the victim of a ritualistic act of violence. Found at the scene is a single piece of card, upon which is written an ancient Buddhist precept: I SHALL ABSTAIN FROM TAKING THE UNGIVEN. At first, DI Maya Rahman can't help but hope this is a tragic but isolated murder. Then, the second body is found.

A killer elite - six assassins - are on the loose. So is Alex Cross. A leader has fallen, and Alex Cross joins the procession of mourners from Capitol Hill to the White House. Then a sniper's bullet strikes a target in the heart of DC. Alex Cross's wife, Bree Stone, newly elevated chief of DC detectives must solve the case or lose her position.

Field reporter Lee Barrett is volunteering at the main branch of Salem's library when she finds in the stacks a dead man, surrounded by hundreds of scattered books and torn-out pages. Her police detective beau, Pete Mondello, is soon on the scene, and the deceased is identified as a former minor league baseball player - and ex-con - named Wee Willie Wallace, who hasn't been seen in Salem for twenty years.

Capitaine Roger Blanc is called to the Camargue where a black fighting bull has escaped from the pasture and has gored a cyclist. The deceased is a political magazine reporter, a fashion intellectual from Paris, TV personality, in the Camargue to write an article on Vincent van Gogh. A bizarre accident it would seem -- until Blanc discovers evidence that someone left the gate open intentionally.

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.

When the body of a teenage boy is found stuffed into a wheely bin on the East Side Estate, Banks and Annie have a homegrown murder case to solve. But Banks's attention is also on Zelda, who in helping him track down his old enemy, has put herself in danger and alerted the stonecold Eastern European sex traffickers who brought her to the UK.

Six years ago, Evie Cormac was discovered, filthy and half-starved, hiding in a secret room in the aftermath of a shocking crime. Now approaching adulthood, Evie is damaged, self-destructive and has never revealed her true identity. Forensic psychologist Cyrus Haven is investigating the death of champion figure-skater Jodie Sheehan. When Cyrus is called upon to assess Evie, she threatens to disrupt the case and destroy his ordered life.

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?

From her small-town chicken-farming roots through her runaway adolescence, court-ordered Army stint, ill-advised marriage and years slinging scrambled eggs over greasy spoon griddles, Sarah Jane's life takes an unexpected turn when she is named the de facto sheriff of a rural town, investigating the mysterious disappearance of the sheriff whose shoes she's filling - and the even more mysterious realities of the life he was hiding from his own colleagues and closest friends.

At the local state university, two feuding departments have faced off on the battleground of science and medicine. Then a renowned and confrontational scholar winds up dead, and Virgil Flowers is brought in to investigate. As he probes the recent ideological unrest, Virgil soon comes to realize he's dealing with people who, on this one particular issue, are functionally crazy.

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.

Now that Tallie Graver's cleaning business is starting to shine, she's ready to go squeegee to squeegee against Audra McNeal for a major contract at the Astercromb mansion. Tallie has her rubber-gloves full staying one step ahead of her nemesis. Until she finds a well-polished hand poking out of a rolled-up carpet, rendering her competition...dead.

Andrea Cooper knows everything about her mother Laura. She's knows she's spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Gullaway Island; she knows she's never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she's never kept a secret in her life. But all that changes when a Saturday afternoon trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura.

Mma Ramotswe happily reconnects with an old friend when his teaching job brings him back to Gaborone. In the course of their conversations, though, Mma Ramotswe learns that Hope, one of their mutual acquaintances, has fallen on hard times. This initially comes as a shock to her, as the woman came from wealth. But when she learns that Hope has recently separated from her husband, a local politician with a less than stellar reputation, she becomes determined to find out the truth.

Lydia and Bel have been best friends for years, from wild teenage days all the way through to motherhood. Bel becomes pregnant by accident and has a fraught relationship with daughter Freya, while Lydia and love-of-her-life Mac, after failed fertility treatment, choose to adopt. Gorgeous toddler Chloe challenges them more than either of them had ever expected and as a teenager her behaviour escalates increasingly out of control, pushing their marriage, and Lydia and Bel's relationship, to breaking point.

A dark network of hackers launches cyberattacks on U.S. military computers. U.S. missiles strike the wrong targets. Defense systems fail. Power grids shut down. Within hours, America's enemies move in. Jake Mahegan and his team must split up to take out the three hacker headquarters, each hidden deep underground in Russia, Iran, and North Korea, each containing a human biometric nuclear key that the team must capture to shut down imminent nuclear strikes.

Summer 1931 in seedy Bayswater and would-be writer James Ross is reduced to selling carpet-cleaning lotion door-to-door. Then he meets the glamorous Suzi. But who is her boss, the mysterious Mr Rasmussen - whose face bears a startling resemblance to one of the portraits in Police News - and why he so interested in the abandoned premises above the Cornhill jeweller's shop?

Charlotte Holmes has never stolen a priceless artwork - or rather, made away with the secrets hidden behind a much-coveted canvas. But Mrs. Watson is desperate to help an old friend recover those secrets and Charlotte finds herself involved in a fever-paced scheme to infiltrate a glamorous Yuletide ball where the painting is one handshake away from being sold and the secrets a bare breath from exposure.

Elizabeth Miles must help her friend Priscilla Knight, whose second husband Endicott has died in a terrible accident. Priscilla had believed Endicott was wealthy, but her banker tells her she has no money left and her house has been mortgaged. He also hints at a terrible scandal and refuses to help. Elizabeth soon discovers that Endicott's death was anything but accidental.

Summoned to the riverside by the desperate, scribbled note of an old friend, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain find themselves on board the seamen's floating hospital, an old hulk known only as The Blood, where prejudice, ambition and murder seethe beneath a veneer of medical respectability. On shore, a young woman, a known prostitute, is found drowned in a derelict boatyard. A man leaps to his death into the Thames, driven mad by poison and fear. The events are linked - but how?

As representatives from the Allies gather in Paris to draft the Peace Treaty to end the Great War, Sister Bess Crawford is sent there on a personal mission to help Lawrence Minton. A bitter and disturbed officer, he has walked away from his duties at the Peace Conference and is well on his way toward an addiction to opiates. She must find out what is driving this man to a despair so profound it can only end with death.

1957: In the beach town of Brighton, music is playing and guests are sunning themselves, when a young man is found dead, dripping blood, in a deck chair. Constable Twitten of the Brighton Police Force has a hunch that the fiendish murder may be connected to a notorious nightspot, but his captain and his colleagues are - as ever - busy with other more important issues.

Inspector Adamsberg is in the south of France. When a group of local residents are killed by spider venom, his colleagues view it as an open-and-shut case. But Adamsberg is suspicious. He'll have to put everything on the line to convince them that there's a murderer at work...

August 1914. Maisie Dobbs must unravel a case of wartime love and death - an investigation that leads her to a doomed affair between a young cartographer and a mysterious nurse. Over the course of her investigation, Maisie must cope with the approaching loss of her mentor, Maurice Blanche, and her growing awareness that she is once again falling in love.

When Beth Dunning disappeared without a trace, suspicion for her murder-despite the lack of a body or any physical evidence-immediately fell upon Mariah's father. Until Mariah stumbles upon two other recent disappearances from Lakehaven. And all three women had the same name: Beth. Mariah would give anything to find out what happened to her mother, and clear her father's name. But the truth may be more devastating than she could have imagined...

Summer 1942. In the remote English village of Little Buffenden, Poppy Redfern's family house and farmland have been requisitioned by the War Office as a new airfield for the American Air Force. When two young, popular women who were dating American servicemen are found strangled, Poppy quickly realizes that her little town has been divided by murder.

On the fourteenth anniversary of little brother Charlie's disappearance, DI Birch takes part in a raid on one of Scotland's most feared criminal organizations. Two days later, Charlie comes back. It's not a coincidence. When Birch finds out exactly what he's been doing all those years, she faces a terrible choice: save the case, or save her brother.

Two years after Gabby Leggett left Boston with aspirations of making it as a model/actress in Hollywood, she disappears from her apartment. Leggett's mother hires Spenser to find her, with help of Zebulon Sixkill, now an L.A. private eye. Spenser barely has time to unpack before the trail leads to a powerful movie studio boss, the Armenian mob, and a shadowy empowerment group some say might be a dangerous cult.

Three novellas centred on drug-driven crime in Italy, one each from Massimo Carlotto, Gianrico Carofiglio, and Giancarlo De Cataldo.

FBI Agent Atlee Pine heads back to her rural hometown in Georgia to see what she can uncover about the traumatic night her twin sister Mercy was kidnapped and Atlee was almost killed. Mercy has been missing now for three decades. But soon after Atlee begins her investigation, a local woman is found ritualistically murdered, her face covered with a wedding veil - and the first killing is quickly followed by a second bizarre murder.

Poor elderly Mrs. Dunwiddy is found dead in the scrub by the road leading out of Mircester. Agatha digs into the case, facing off with everyone from secretive factory bosses to Russian officials as she wades deeper into the mystery surrounding the killing.

After old remains surface during a Brighton heatwave, a young woman is attacked and left fighting for her life in hospital. 24 hours later she dies and a deadly tattoo is discovered on her body. When another young woman disappears, Detective Francis Sullivan and his team fear that a serial killer walks the streets.

When Daniela Cain returns to her small hometown after seven years' absence, she finds that flooding has left the village all but deserted. She's there to collect something she left in her childhood home, then she plans to leave. But upon entering the old house she discovers her younger sister's body half-submerged in the water.

Ilka Jensen has left Denmark to visit the small town in rural Wisconsin where her father lived. There, she's devastated to discover her father's second family: a stepmother and two half sisters she never knew existed. And who aren't the least bit welcoming, despite Ilka's efforts to reach out. Then a local woman is killed, seemingly the unfortunate victim of a home invasion turned violent. But then Ilka learns that the woman knew her father.

Copenhagen detective inspector Louise Rick investigates a brutal rape attack in the victim's own home. The victim met the rapist via a dating website. A subway video captured a blurry profile of the rapist, but it is enough for Louise to recognize the man's image on a website of images that show people out in the night-time scene and who they are with. She arranges a meeting, using a pseudonym.

Louise Boni drinks too much. The maverick inspector in Germany's Black Forest police squad is haunted by the mistakes she's made and the people she's lost. Now she is given the case of a badly beaten Japanese monk roaming the snowy Freiburg region with little more than sandals and a begging bowl, who appears to be fleeing an unseen danger.

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.

Still reeling from a violent family tragedy, Jack Taylor is busy drowning his grief in Jameson and uppers, as usual, when a high-profile officer in the local Garda is murdered. After another Guard is found dead, and then another, Taylor's old colleagues from the force implore him to take on the case.

President Jack Ryan preaches caution when the prospects for a Persian Spring excite the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the Campus has been trailing a major international arms dealer whose business has waxed as the power of the Ayatollah has waned. Now the change of regimes in Iran has opened up formerly unimagined possibilities to him. Possibilities that may lead to a new balance of power in the region.

Shannon's good friend and retired tech billionaire, Raphael Nash, has started a humanitarian foundation. Then Raphael's old business partner arrives in town with a grudge and a plan to steal him away from his important new passion project. Shannon knows her friend won't give up the foundation. But when his former associate winds up dead, all signs point to Raphael.

Maria is on trial for attempted murder. She has confessed to the crime and wanted her husband dead. Lottie is on the jury, trying to decide her fate. She embarks on an illicit affair with a stranger, and her husband can never find out.

Non-fiction. What makes a hero? Lee Child explores the endurance of heroes from Achilles to Bond, showing us how this age-old myth is a fundamental part of what makes us human.

Reacher steps off the Greyhound to help an old man who is obviously just a victim waiting to happen. Before long he finds himself a wanted man in the middle of a brutal turf war between rival Ukrainian and Albanian gangs, staying one step ahead of the loan sharks, the thugs, and the assassins. He teams up with a fed-up waitress who knows a little more than she's letting on, and sets out to take down the powerful and make the greedy pay.

Some say that casting crusty attorney Allen Sharpe as Scrooge in the Kindred Players production of "A Christmas Carol" is just playing to type. He's not the most beloved man in town. In fact, you'd have a dickens of a time finding someone who liked him. Still it's a shock when the Ghost of Christmas Past stabs him during the first rehearsal.

Television producer Laurie Moran is approached by the parents of Dr. Martin Bell, a physician who was shot dead as he pulled into the driveway of his Greenwich Village carriage house five years ago. The Bells are sure that Martin's wife carried out the murder. As Laurie dives into the case, she learns that Martin wasn't the picture-perfect husband, father, and doctor he appeared to be and was carrying secrets of his own.

You've lost your daughter. She's addicted to drugs and to an abusive boyfriend. And she's made it clear that she doesn't want to be found. Then, by chance, you see her playing guitar in Central Park. But she's not the girl you remember. This woman is living on the edge, frightened, and clearly in trouble.

Quarry, the hitman's hitman, finds out that for the first time someone has taken out a hit on him. And is the mysterious killer assigned to hit the hitman someone from Quarry's past? Maybe even a past lover...?

Taggart goes undercover to catch a team of kidnappers, portraying himself to one of them as a criminal who is owed money, in an elaborate sting to lure the rest of the gang into a trap. He is with the kidnappers on the day the trap is to be sprung, but discovers they've already kidnapped another victim and he and the victim are to be murdered so that the police will pin the kidnapping on him.

Pamela's mother-daughter bonding time with daughter Penny gets cut short when a terrified Penny stumbles upon the dumped body of Millicent Farthingale, a wealthy craft shop owner who was popular for all the wrong reasons. From a scheming business partner to a seedy husband several years her junior, Millicent attracted scammers so in love with her assets, they'd toss her down a chimney to get their paws on them.

Anna Fox lives alone - a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her days drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times...and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble - and its shocking secrets are laid bare.

August, 1723. When a lazy taverner is stabbed to death, one glance at the victim tells Spider John that the pirate life has followed him ashore. The murder weapon he made with his own hands - the knife was a gift to a young man, one who ran off with the notorious Anne Bonny before Spider could drag him into a respectable life.

Sarah Booth's holiday preparations are interrupted when journalist Cece Dee Falcon shows up needing her help. There's been a local kidnapping - a box has been left at Cece's front porch containing a lock of hair, a photograph of a very pretty and very pregnant young woman, and a note demanding ransom. The victim is actually Cece's cousin's daughter, Eve.

1468. A young priest, Christopher Fairfax, arrives in a remote English village to conduct the funeral of his predecessor. The land around is strewn with ancient artefacts - coins, fragments of glass, human bones - which the old parson used to collect. Did his obsession with the past lead to his death? As Fairfax is drawn more deeply into the isolated community, everything he believes - about himself, his faith and the history of his world - is tested to destruction.

Linda Wallheim's friend Gwen has issues with the Mormon power structure that are only reinforced by her work in Draper's local "Spanish ward." When Gabriela Gonzalez, a young mother and Gwen's friend in the Spanish Ward, is found strangled at a gas station, Gwen decides the police aren't doing enough to get justice for Gabriela, who was undocumented. She decides to find the killer herself and elicits Linda's help.

When one of London's best-known literary agents is found dead in strange circumstances, having fallen headlong from his office window, DCI Slider is under pressure from the Borough Commander to confirm a case of accidental death. But when the evidence points to murder, Slider and his team find themselves uncovering some decidedly scandalous secrets in the suave and successful Ed Wiseman's past.

When PI Aaron Gunner's cousin and confidante Del Curry commits suicide after allegedly killing his wife and critically injuring their daughter Zina, Gunner doesn't buy the LAPD's version of the shooting and isn't going to wait for Zina to regain consciousness to disprove it.

A woman is found murdered in her new apartment in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo. Living a quiet life, with nothing remarkable in her past and no known enemies, this newcomer's murder is as baffling as it was unlikely. Tokyo Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga interviews the various local people somehow connected to the victim - seeking the one clue that will lead to the murderer.

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. It's time for a new agent to step up. Time for a new weapon in the war against organized crime. It's time for James Bond to earn his license to kill. .

39 year old actress Enora Andresson is diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour that could kill her. Then investigative journalist Mitch Culligan comes looking for her help. He is writing a book about entrepreneur and one-time drug baron Hayden Prentice - a multi-millionaire who once crossed paths with Enora, and whom Mitch believes has helped fund the push for Brexit. Enora must confront her past while facing a deeply uncertain future. Can she survive near-impossible odds?

Kat and her husband Nick have tried everything to become parents, and are on the point of giving up. Then a chance encounter with Kat's childhood friend Lisa gives Kat and Nick one last chance to achieve their dream. But Kat and Lisa's history hides dark secrets.

Vancouver author. Alana Vaughn, an infectious diseases expert with NATO, is urgently summoned to Genoa by an ex-lover to examine a critically ill patient. She's stunned to discover that the illness is a recurrence of the Black Death. Alana soon suspects bioterrorism, but her WHO counterpart, Byron Menke, disagrees. In their desperate hunt to track down Patient Zero, they stumble across an 800-year-old monastery and a medieval journal that might hold the secret to the present-day outbreak.

CIA desk analyst Aaron Wiley is travelling to Bueno Aires in pursuit of Dr. Otto Schramm, an Auschwitz camp doctor. He ingratiates himself with Otto's alluring but wounded daughter, whom he's convinced is hiding her father. Enlisting the help of a German newspaper reporter, an Israeli agent, and the obliging CIA station chief in Buenos Aires, he hunts for Otto - a complicated monster, unexpectedly human but still capable of murder if cornered.

Summoned to a run-down former strip joint, Delaware and Sturgis find themselves crashing a wild Saints and Sinners themed wedding reception. But they're not the only uninvited guests. A horrified bridesmaid has discovered the body of a young woman, dressed to impress in pricey haute couture and accessorized with a grisly red slash around her neck. What's missing is any means of identification, or a single partygoer who recognizes the victim.

Winnie and her Granny hold the "First Annual Christmas at the Orchard," on their 25 acre farm. It's enough of a good old-fashioned holiday festival to satisfy apple-picking locals and cider-loving tourists alike - until the whole endeavor takes a sour turn when the body of Nadine Cooper, Granny's long-time, grudge-holding nemesis, is found lodged in the apple press.

When Nathaniel Kerner takes up his new position as a mad-doctor at Crakethorne Manor, the proprietor, more interested in phrenology and his growing collection of skulls than his patients' minds, hands over the care of his most interesting case. Mrs Victoria Harleston's husband accuses her of hysteria and says he will pay any price to see her well. But she accuses him of something far more terrible.

Antoine Verlaque, examining magistrate for the beautiful town of Aix-en-Provence, doesn't like Christmas. But his wife and partner Marine Bonnet is determined to make this a Christmas they can both enjoy, beginning with the carol sing at the Cathedral Saint Sauveur, a beautiful service in a packed church. Just as the holiday cheer is in full swing, a man is poisoned, sending the community into a tailspin.

Christmas 1890. Holmes and Watson are visited by Eve Allerthorpe - daughter of an eccentric Yorkshire dynasty - who believes she is being haunted by a demonic Christmas spirit. Her mother had told her terrifying tales of the sinister Black Thurrick, and Eve is sure that she has seen him from her bedroom window. What is more, she has begun to receive parcels of birch twigs, Black Thurrick's calling card...

After a young woman accuses a prominent local college athlete of rape, he is convicted with the help of undisputable DNA evidence and sent to prison. Not long after, there's another rape and the DNA test shows that the same person committed both rapes - a seemingly impossible fact. Now, the convicted athlete, joined by a new lawyer,is granted a new trial and bail. Shortly thereafter, his original lawyer disappears and his law partner is murdered.

In the harsh desert and high mountain country of southwestern New Mexico, a long unsolved missing-person case becomes a homicide investigation when the bones of Kim Ward are unearthed in Las Cruces 45 years after her disappearance. Compelling forensic and anecdotal evidence quickly shifts suspicion to Ward's old college boyfriend: former Santa Fe police chief Kevin Kerney.

Joe Grey and his tabby lady, Dulcie, are frantic when Courtney, their teen kitten, goes missing. Aided by their two- and four-legged friends, they hit the streets of Molena Point in search of their calico girl. Courtney has no idea that everyone is looking for her. Kidnapped, locked in a luxurious upstairs apartment above the local antiques shop, she begins to enjoy her first lone adventure as the shop's owner, Ulrich Seaver, pampers and flatters her.

15 stories and six poems from contributors that include Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood (poems), Edwidge Danticat, S.J. Rozan, Cassandra Khaw, and Jennifer Morales.

As beautiful as it may be, their friends' country home is not where Lady Vespasia wishes to spend Christmas with her new husband, Victor Narraway, former head of the London Special Branch. As tensions grow among the couples, the young and beautiful Iris Watson-Watt becomes the center of several men's focus. Unbeknownst to Vespasia, Iris carries a sensitive package that she must pass to Victor, in the hope of unmasking a British traitor.

Gatlinburg artist Celeste Cabot welcomes the chance to show her paintings at a craft fair, where she and her Chihuahua, Van Gogh, can park her vintage Shasta trailer and sell her creations, too. Unfortunately, sales take a hit when a customer returns a painting, claiming it's haunted. When a fellow vendor discovers images hidden in Celeste's artwork - and a ghost pays her a late-night visit - she's shocked to realize she has psychic abilities. Then the grumpy manager of the craft fair is found with a knife in his neck.

1990. Martin Hepton, an English ground control technician watches as they lose contact with the most advanced satellite in Europe. A colleague of Hepton's who suspects something strange is going on is signed off sick, and never comes back. Hepton decides to investigate his friend's suspicions and his trail leads him to Dreyfuss, MI6, the American military, and back to his former girlfriend, Jill, who is an up-and-coming journalist with the contacts and the courage to cover the story.

Food blogger Hope Early is never too busy to compete in the town's annual scavenger hunt. But as she races with her team to check off the next item, Hope discovers a grisly surprise - the body of shady real estate developer Lionel Whitcomb, shot in a parking lot. His wife Elaine, who is also in the hunt, gasps and nearly faints. But two other women on the scene also cry out that their husband is dead. Did one of them put a bullet in the bigamist?

A mysterious man bursts into Radcot's 600 year old pub, the Swan Inn, sopping and bloodied and carrying an unconscious four-year-old girl. Upriver, two families are searching desperately for their missing daughters. Alice Armstrong has been missing for 24 hours, ever since her mother's suicide. And Amelia Vaughn vanished without a trace two years prior. When the families learn of the girl at the Swan Inn, each wonders if their child has at last been found. But identifying the child may not be as easy as it seems.

Arkady Renko, iconic Moscow investigator and Tatiana's part-time lover, hasn't seen her since she left on assignment over a month ago. He embarks on a dangerous journey to find Tatiana and bring her back. From the banks of Lake Baikal to rundown Chita, Renko slowly learns that Tatiana has been profiling the rise of political dissident Mikhail Kuznetsov, a golden boy of modern oil wealth and the first to pose a true threat to Putin's rule in over a decade.

January 1566: En route to Edo, Master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo spend the night in a rural mountain village whose inhabitants live in terror of a legendary vengeful ghost. When the innkeeper's wife is murdered and Father Mateo's housekeeper, Ana, is blamed for a crime she did not commit, Hiro and Father Mateo are forced to investigate and reveal the truth.

Oxford, 1974. When seventeen-year-old Linda Corbet goes missing, the police dismiss her as an obvious runaway. Only Jennie Redhead, recently driven out of Oxford's police force, is prepared to dig deeper. She suspects that something truly dark and depraved drove Linda from her beloved home and doting parents. Jennie's investigation leads her to a secret Oxford society and a clandestine world of violence, excess and desire, hidden behind the city's dreaming spires.

In this new novella Pike Logan and Jennifer Cahill are set against a Serbian gang that makes the mistake of kidnapping someone they both hold dear.

Visiting the Great Exhibition to view the wax anatomical models of the famous but reclusive Dr Merlin Strangeway, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain find a severed arm, perfectly dissected and laid out amongst the exhibits. Assuming it to be a prank by medical students, they return it to Dr Strangeway, who works at Corvus Hall, a private anatomy school run by Dr James Crowe - one of Edinburgh's most revered surgeons and teachers of anatomy.

Embla Nystrom is Detective Inspector in the mobile unit in Gothenburg, Sweden, and a talented hunter. When Embla arrives at her uncle's cabin in rural Dalsland, there to attend an annual moose hunt she sees a newcomer has joined the group. One longtime member of the hunt doesn't welcome the presence of an outsider and is quick to point out that now the group numbers thirteen, a bad omen for the week. Sure enough, a string of unsettling incidents follow, culminating in the disappearance of two hunters.

Cat groomer Cassie McGlone makes a house call to her best client, millionaire George DeLeuw, and discovers his murdered body next to his newly orphaned Persian, Harpo. A cat whisperer like Cassie might be able to coax out some important clues from Harpo, but she needs to tread lightly and remember she gets one life, not nine...

On her way to Utah college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado. With the roads impassable, she's forced to wait out the storm at a remote highway rest stop. Inside are some vending machines, a coffee maker, and four complete strangers. Desperate to find a signal to call home, Darby goes back out into the storm...and makes a horrifying discovery. In the back of the van parked next to her car, a little girl is locked in an animal crate.

Once a busy hospital, St Jude's now awaits demolition. When a partially mummified corpse is found in the building's loft, forensics expert Dr David Hunter is called in. He can't say how long the body's been there, but he is certain it's that of a pregnant young woman. Then part of the attic floor collapses, revealing another of the hospital's secrets: a bricked-up chamber with beds inside. And some of them are still occupied.

When a young girl is pulled from the watery depths, a piece of concrete tied around her waist and two mysterious circular patches on the back of her neck, Detective Louise Rick is immediately called out to Holbaek Fjord. When the police learn that she was Muslim, they immediately assume it was an honour killing. Yet her mother insists Samra had done nothing dishonourable.

Young William Shakespeare has joined a band of players in London, but greater men have their eye on him. Will soon finds himself dispatched to Venice on a crucial assignment. Dazzled by the city's masques and its beauties, he little realizes his peril. Catholic assassins would stop at nothing to end his mission on the point of their sharpened knives - and lurking in the shadows is a killer as clever as he is cruel.

"Sister" Jane Arnold has long served as the proud Master of Foxhounds for the Jefferson Hunt, but this year she's noticed a new phenomenon. The men in their hunting scarlets are having an amorous effect on the women in the club. Delighted, she sets her mind to playing matchmaker, but the joys of hunting season are cut short when a body is discovered.

A rogue general in the Cuban security services has got his hands on a nuclear weapon left over from the Cold War. He plans to launch it on Miami. Special agent Jericho Quinn and his team have traveled undercover to Cuba to unravel the plot before it ignites a nuclear holocaust.

America's favorite dog comes to pet-friendly Wagtail for some rest and relaxation, but Holly quickly discovers that this perfect pup is a total scamp who takes every opportunity to run off and misbehave. During an outdoor treasure-hunting game, the star dog and Trixie, Holly's beloved Jack Russell terrier, stumble across a dead body.

A series of apparently random murders draws amiable, old-school Detective Mick Matlock into a world of sex, politics, reality TV and a bewildering kaleidoscope of opposing identity groups. Lost in a blizzard of hashtags, his already complex investigation is further impeded by the fact that he simply doesn't 'get' a single thing about anything anymore.

1921. "Nobody" Alice James, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit deal gone wrong, leaves New York City for Portland, Oregon. Max, a black Pullman porter she meets on the train, takes her to the all-black Paragon hotel. The Ku Klux Klan has also arrived in Portland, so the lodgers are not entirely comfortable with a white woman among them. But, when a mulatto child goes missing in the Oregon woods, Alice joins them in the search.

When a man is found hanging upside down inside a willow tree on Hampstead Heath, surrounded by a baffling assortment of occult objects, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to investigate. Was this a botched satanic ritual pulled off by bored teenagers, a gang initiation, or the work of a mastermind with grander intentions? Bryant and May set off in search of answers and are soon reminded that London is a city steeped in blood and magic.

Bill Russell is acting as a volunteer steward at Warwick races when he confronts his worst nightmare - the violent death of his much-loved wife. But worse is to come when he is accused of killing her and hounded mercilessly by the media. His life begins to unravel completely as he loses his job and his home. Even his best friends turn against him, believing him guilty of the heinous crime in spite of the lack of compelling evidence.

Not long after donning the uniform of the McCreary County Sheriff's department in Bone Gap, Tennessee, ex-Marine Brynn Callahan is sent to investigate the remains of a body discovered in a nearby cave. She never expected to recognize the victim - a fellow Traveller, Maura Keene. After Brynn and her K-9, Wilco, find evidence leading her to question those closest to her, solving the case becomes a deeply personal matter.

Occupied Paris in 1942. Just before he dies, a man being chased by the Gestapo hands off to Paul Ricard a strange looking drawing. It looks like a part for a military weapon; Ricard realizes it must be an important document smuggled out of Germany to aid the resistance. As Ricard is drawn deeper and deeper into the French resistance network, his increasingly dangerous assignments lead him to travel to Germany.

Court Gentry is on a CIA transport plane when a security team brings a hooded man aboard. The mystery man is being transported to England where a joint CIA/MI6 team will interrogate him about a mole in Langley. But when they land at an isolated UK airbase, they are attacked by a hostile force who kidnaps the prisoner. Only Gentry escapes. His handlers send him after the attackers, but what can one operative do against a trained team of assassins?

The 1960s. When an investigation into a string of disappearing girls begins, Emma (now Edgar's wife) sees her chance to prove that she's better than the boys. But there's also a new woman on the force, and she's determined to make detective. And when two more girls go missing, both with ties to the group, the stakes climb ever higher, and Max finds himself drawn into his own search. Who will find them first?

When her granddaughter lands a reporting gig at the grand opening of the luxurious Icicle Lodge, Alberta and friends tag along for a week of much-needed R&R amid the snowcapped hills of northeastern Pennsylvania. But the idyllic winter getaway becomes a nightmare after the gang discovers blood on the ice - and the dead body of celebrity guest Pamela Gregory, a frosty Olympic gold medal figure skater who won herself more enemies than fans.

Lafferton is apparently going through a quiet patch, so far as crime is concerned, until one night two local men open their front door to a distressing scene. Simon makes a serious error of judgment when handling the incident. The stress of this, combined with the fact that he refused all offers of counselling after the loss of his arm, takes its toll.

When Poppy goes from complacent retiree to penniless Palm Springs widow in a matter of weeks, she decides to use her obsession with true crime shows to start a career as a private eye. Her daughter's boyfriend Max snags her a client desperate to retrieve priceless jewelry burglarized from an aging actress at the Palm Leaf Retirement Village. But then Poppy stumbles upon the bloodied body of the victim's arch rival.

Someone at the highest level of government has been trying to eliminate every trace of the Program by killing all the remaining Orphans and their trainers. After his mentor was killed, Evan vowed revenge. Now, his target is the man who started the Program and the most heavily guarded person in the world: the US President. But the President has launched a counter-attack using the most powerful weapon he has: the first recruit of the Program, Orphan A.

The last thing Charlie expects is to gain several new additions to his family. He finds a box on his doorstep with five kittens inside and a note begging him to keep them safe. With Diesel's help, Charlie welcomes the tiny felines into the Harris household just as his nosy neighbour Gerry decides it is time to throw a lavish holiday party. Determined to make her mark on the town, Gerry instead winds up dead at her very own party.

Police officer Megan Luz takes her K-9 partner in crime, Brigit, to the Fort Worth Zoo. But what begins as a fun field trip turns serious when a pair of rare hyacinth macaws named Fabiana and Fernando goes missing. Is the new custodian, a gentle soul who happens to be an ex-convict, to blame? Or is something far more sinister afoot?

In the summer of 1999, Kit and Laura travel to a festival in Cornwall to see a total eclipse of the sun. In the hushed moments after the shadow passes, Laura interrupts a man and a woman. She knows that she saw something terrible. The man denies it. It is her word against his. The victim seems grateful, and nonths later turns up on their doorstep. But as her gratitude takes a twisted turn, Laura begins to wonder - did she trust the wrong person?

From the author of the DEXTER series. Master thief Riley Wolfe despises the degenerate and immoral rich and loves stealing their undeserved and unearned valuables. Pursued by a brilliant and relentless cop who is barely a step behind him and assisted by his sometime ally, a beautiful woman who is a master art forger, Riley decides to try to steal the Crown Jewels of Iran.

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...

Construction is suddenly halted on the redevelopment of an orphanage after dozens of skeletons are found buried in the grounds. Then a different set of skeletons are discovered in a far corner, young men from as recent as ten years ago. When newly promoted DI Paula McIntyre discovers that one of the male skeletons is that of a killer who is supposedly alive and behind bars - and the subject of one of Carol's miscarriage investigations - it brings Tony and Carol irresistibly into each other's orbit once again.

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.

Lisa's dreams of a new life in Miami are shattered when a stranger breaks into their house, holding a knife to Lisa's throat before her husband Jeff can chase him off. Now feeling isolated and afraid, she becomes a hostage in her own home. She can't shake the feeling she's being watched. And with Jeff growing increasingly unrecognizable, she's starting to wonder whether their hasty move here was to escape a chilling past that won't be outrun.

Canadian author. Angela is being held in a police interrogation room. Her ex's wife has gone missing and Detective Novak is sure Angela knows something, despite her claim that she's not involved. At Novak's prodding, Angela tells a story going back ten years, explaining how she met and fell in love with her high school friend HP. But as her past unfolds, she reveals a disconcerting love triangle and a dark, tangled web of betrayals.

On an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, Judge Scott Sampson is about to pick up his 6 year old twins when his wife, Alison, texts to say she'll get them instead. It's not until she arrives home later that Scott realizes she doesn't have the kids. And she never sent the text. Then the phone rings, and a voice on the other end tells him he must rule exactly as he is told in a drug case he is about to hear.

Three novellas: The House Next Door (with Susan DiLallo), The Killer's Wife (with Max DiLallo) and We. Are. Not. Alone (with Tim Arnold).

Secret service agent Sally Grissom is asked by the President to take on an investigation surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the First Lady - with strict orders to keep it a secret. Her absence comes in the wake of the scandalous, public revelation of the President's affair. But then the White House receives a ransom note along with the First Lady's finger.

What do a psychiatrist, a mother, and an expert hitman have in common? Their time is running out in these three thrillers.

In a Virginia penitentiary, Alex Cross and his partner, John Sampson, witness the execution of a killer they helped convict. Hours later, they are called to the scene of a copycat crime. A note signed "M" rests on the corpse. "You messed up big time, Dr. Cross." Was an innocent man just put to death?

New FBI leadership at the New York field office forces Pendergast to accept a partner. Pendergast and his new colleague, junior agent Coldmoon, are assigned to investigate a rash of killings in Miami Beach, where a bloodthirsty psychopath is cutting out the hearts of his victims and leaving them with cryptic handwritten letters at local gravestones. The graves are unconnected save in one bizarre way: all belong to women who committed suicide.

When Isabelle Coleman, a beautiful young girl goes missing, everyone from the small town of Denton joins the search. They can find no trace of the town's darling, but Detective Josie Quinn finds another girl they didn't even know was missing. Mute and unresponsive, it's clear this mysterious girl has been damaged beyond repair. All Josie can get from her is the name of a third girl and a flash of a neon tongue piercing that matches Isabelle's.

Courtney Archer is known for hosting the show Cooking with the Farmer's Daughter - despite the fact that she's actually a pediatrician's daughter. Now she's taken a role on the reality show the American Baking Battle and is at a film shoot in the Pocono Mountains. One of the other contestants is Mick, who finds out about her fake farm-girl story. Determined to succeed at her new gig, she whips up a cherry cobbler in a cast-iron fry pan one evening and leaves it out to cool. But the next morning, it's Mick's body that's cooling - right next to Courtney's pan, now classified as a murder weapon.

In 1851, private detective Laetitia Rodd gets an urgent request for her services. Her neighbour Jacob Welland wants Mrs. Rodd to find his brother, a scholar at Oxford, who has been missing for 18 years. Friends claim to have seen him since, in gypsy camps and wandering around the countryside.

Daisy's worried one of her employees at Daisy's Tea Garden may be in a spot of trouble. But it turns out Karina has been helping a down-on-his luck single dad who has been making ends meet - barely - by selling antiques at a place called Pirated Treasures. Then, when an employee at the antiques store is bludgeoned to death with a marble rolling pin, Karina's new friend is suspect number one.

Hot on the trail of a North Korean looking to sell sensitive US intelligence to the Syrian regime, Pike Logan and the Taskforce stumble upon something much graver: the sale of a lethal substance called Red Mercury. Unbeknownst to the Taskforce, the Syrians plan to use the weapon of mass destruction against American and Kurdish forces, and blame the attack on terrorists.

Needlepointers Angie and Sarah are helping with set design for the movie being shot in their little New England hometown. The producer, Hank Stoddard, has been harassing the pretty young female lead, and the two exchanged heated words at a lobster bake. Now someone's lowered the boom on him. After a wayward piece of sound equipment sends him to his death, theories fly about who went off-script.