Christmas Thriller

Days before Christmas, CIA Agent Amber Starke is on the run with her murdered best friend's special-needs son. And they're next on his criminal father's hit list. Amber failed her undercover mission to bring down her friend's husband for his crimes, but she won't fail to protect her friend's son. Now that the killer knows she's not just a nanny but an agent, she must rely on her childhood crush, Deputy Lance Goode. The handsome lawman was burned in love by his first wife, who was killed while evading the law. But he'll do everything he can to help Amber, except offer his heart.

Cendrine West is looking forward to a cozy Christmas Eve dinner when a blizzard blows in, bringing with it a flurry of unexpected guests. But tipsy witches and mischievous magic spell a recipe for disaster, especially when a guest turns up dead. Cen’s sleuthing exposes a Santa-size sack of trouble, and everyone’s a suspect, even her hunky sheriff boyfriend. Is it a deadly accident by a drunken witch...or something more sinister? Murder is on the menu, and only magic can uncover the truth in this witchy, wacky Yuletide thrill ride!

Now that Thanksgiving's behind her, vintage cookware enthusiast Jaymie Leighton Müller is excitedly making plans for the upcoming Dickens Days festival - the town's month-long celebration leading up to Christmas. With a hot cider booth on the village green to warm the hearts and bodies of the townsfolk and a diorama featuring a scene from A Christmas Carol, things are shaping up for a festive season - until the town's local Scrooge is found murdered, a vintage pudding mould covering his cracked skull.

Ainsley Holloway had come to Gooseberry Bay to find answers about her past. She’d come to find an explanation for the dreams that haunted her after the death of the cop who’d both rescued and raised her. And she’d come to identify the family she couldn’t remember but knew in her heart she’d once belonged to. Ainsley hoped that by finding these answers, she’d also find healing. She hoped that once she’d resurrected the memories buried deep in her mind, she’d find peace.

It’s Christmas in Salem, and Winter Allen isn’t just playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in the community theater’s production of A Christmas Carol, she’s actually seeing them. And this spirit is worried that the people responsible for her murder are now after her daughter. Somehow the ghost knows Winter is a witch, and her ice magic may be the key to saving the ghost’s daughter. Jackson Walker is a PI in Salem, but he’s also a werewolf, and his heightened senses give him an edge. When a witch from the Coven of Light contacts him asking for help in finding a missing woman, he’s quick to agree.

David Murphy never knew much about kids. But when his brother dies unexpectedly, he is granted custody of his six-year-old nephew, Troy. He already has his hands full running his business, and he has no idea how to help the grieving boy. When Troy runs off one day, David finds him at a park playing with an adorable and rambunctious dog - who leads him to Sophie.

Lonely Charles Latterly arrives at his small hotel hoping that the island's blue skies and gentle breezes will brighten his spirits. Unfortunately, there's no holiday cheer to be found among his fellow guests, who include a pompous novelist, a stuffy colonel, a dangerously ill-matched married couple, and an ailing old man. The one charming exception is orphaned teenager Candace Finbar, who takes Charles under her wing and introduces him to the island's beauty.

Pathologist Toni Day and her husband, Hal, are mystified when she starts receiving grisly Christmas cards depicting murders, each accompanied by a twisted verse from The Twelve Days of Christmas, and she and her partners are suddenly inundated with autopsies on the corresponding bodies. The victims are members of a jury that convicted Toni’s old boyfriend Robbie of kidnapping and sent him to prison.

Emily and Colin Hargreaves make it a rule to spend as little time as possible with her parents in Kent, but are unable to refuse Lady Catherine Bromley’s invitation to join them for a pre-Christmas party that includes the family of Ala Kapur Singh, a powerful Punjabi maharaja who has come to England after receiving the Order of the Star of India.

December 1935. Director Monty Harrison's production of A Christmas Carol has had a troubled run on its tour of regional theatres. With tensions amongst the cast running high, the company reach their final stop—London's Theatre Royale. Catastrophe, however, strikes on opening night: Scrooge dies on stage, the result (it is presumed) of a heart attack. But the show must go on. Until, that is, a leading theatre critic—and old rival of Monty's—is killed backstage.

Life was going well for 25-year-old repo agent Andrea Sloan. She hadn't stumbled across any more naked dead guys at work, and her love life was pretty much wonderful. When she picked up a part-time job working at the mall for some extra cash as an elf, she never imagined she'd witness Santa gunned down in the parking lot. Just like that, Andi became tangled with friends and foes from her past in a race to find Santa's stolen bag of cash before Christmas.

December, 1959: The Korean War rages on. Protesting the bloody conflict, a Korean-American man by the name of William Yang suddenly blows himself up in the middle of a Los Angeles department store just before Christmas, which leads the U.S. government to reopen the internment camps used during World War II. President Joseph McCarthy's America has never been more on edge, paranoid, and above all, dangerous.

After five years of running the Holiday Haven Inn, Carolyn Highcrest thinks she can handle anything. She and her best friend Mercy are determined to make their festive weekend celebrations the best they can possibly be, despite being surrounded by scheming rivals, melodramatic theatre group members and overenthusiastic carollers.

Join Posie Parker, London’s premier female Private Detective, and Chief Inspector Lovelace of New Scotland Yard as they spend Christmas Eve at Rebburn Abbey, home of the Earl and Countess of Cardigeon. Each house guest is invited to share a personal mystery, but what unfolds turns out to be less a cozy cornucopia of fire-side Christmas cheer than a series of curiously interlinked and unsettling mysteries.

Knitting an ugly Christmas jumper at Cardinal Woolsey's knitting shop in Oxford is supposed to be relaxing. Until a knitter keels over. It's soon clear to amateur sleuth Lucy that murder's in the air and that the culprit is one of the knitters. This is a fun take on a classic closed-room mystery. Of course, no room is every closed when vampires live downstairs. But are the undead knitters to blame? Or is there more to this Oxford knitting circle than lumpy Santas and light-up reindeer?

The Christmas trees in Knightsbridge sparkle with festive joy, and there’s nothing more fun than Christmas cocktail parties to ring in the new year of 1922. Camille Divine, known as Lady Camille Divine, has decorated her little house in Birdcage Mews with glistening decorations and a beautiful Christmas tree, but she has more on her mind than the festive season.

When Mrs. Claus is found murdered days before the Annual Heywood Christmas Festival, Sheriff Mallory Richards cancels the beloved event. As the flu takes out the whole sheriff’s department—except for Deputy Jordan Branson—he begs Sam to help him find the killer. She and Annabelle set out to catch the murderer but land themselves in a tangled web of deception and danger.

Tea maven Theodosia Browning and her tea sommelier, Drayton Conneley, are catering a Victorian Christmas party at a swanky mansion in downtown Charleston. Drucilla Heyward, the hostess, is one of the wealthiest women in town. As the champagne flows and the tea steeps, Drucilla is so pleased with the reception by her partygoers that she reveals her secret plan to Theodosia. However, before she can make the announcement, Theodosia finds her crumpled unconscious in the hallway.

It’s a cold and snowy Christmas Eve in the rowdy mining town of Deadwood in the Dakota Territory. Rather than enjoy some drinks in front of a warm fire with her friends, contracted Slayer Clementine Johanssen has her horse saddled and weapons packed to head out into the hills and hunt down some deadly scallywags—alone. When her friends catch wind of her intentions, they set out to waylay her long enough to change her way of thinking...in spite of her mule-headedness.

This holiday season, join two of today’s most popular paranormal authors for a special look into their worlds, where creatures are always stirring and no one sleeps through the night. The Bite Before Christmas: Teddy Brunswick knows about the immortals among us. He’s worked with them, called them friend - but he never counted on being snowed in with one over Christmas. Home for the Holidays by Jeaniene Frost: Cat and Bones are looking forward to a normal holiday - at least as “normal” as it gets for the combustible vampire couple....