Christmas Thriller

The year is 1904. Twenty-three-year-old Jemima Pitt, the daughter of Thomas Pitt, head of Britain's Special Branch, is crossing the Atlantic. She is traveling with an acquaintance, Delphinia Cardew, who is to marry the aristocratic Brent Albright in a high-society New York wedding - a grand affair that will join together two fabulously wealthy families, titans of the international financial world. But Jemima senses a mysterious shadow darkening the occasion.

Christmas Eve, 1925. The Honourable Cressida Fawcett is delighted to attend an exclusive ball at London’s glamorous Mayfair Hotel. When she steps out into the moonlit courtyard with her little pug Ruby wrapped in her furs, she is thrilled to see a dashing man propose to her best pal under the swirling snowflakes. But instead of squealing ‘yes’, Dotty lets out a terrified scream… Because floating in the fountain, with her long blonde hair rippling in the ice-cold water, is the body of their dear friend Lady Victoria Beaumont.

No place is more perfect for the winter holidays than the charming mountain town of Estes Park. As the Cozy Corgi Bookshop and Bakery glistens with lights and garlands, Winifred Page allows the seasonal merriment to brush away all worry and fear. Watson, her grumpy corgi, is about as far from stressed as possible-after all, with the holiday baking, delectable crumbs are everywhere.

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?

Throughout the years, the ladies of the Sisterhood have delivered their own style of vigilante justice to those who most deserve it. But this Christmas, instead of finding and punishing bad guys, all Maggie Spitzer wants is to bring a little more joy to the world - and especially to a beloved teacher from her past. And as the Sisters unite to find her, they learn that no holiday treat is as fulfilling as giving to others....

Meg's husband has decided to escalate his one-man show of Dickens's A Christmas Carol into a full-scale production with a large cast including their sons Jamie and Josh as Tiny Tim and young Scrooge and Meg helping as stage manager. When a famous, although slightly over-the-hill, actor comes to town to play the starring role of Scrooge, no one expects that he's bringing a lot of baggage and enemies with him.

DI James Walker is ready for a quiet family Christmas in the sleepy village of Kirkby Abbey. But when he opens an early Christmas present left on his doorstep, he soon realises it is no gift. Inside is a gruesome surprise and a promise - 12 days, 12 murders. Not long after, the first body is found, half frozen in the snow. As the blizzards descend, panic spreads through the remote Cumbrian village - there’s a killer amongst them, and with 11 more victims to go, anyone could be next.... Can James stop the killer before they strike again?

As December sweeps through South Lick, Indiana, Robbie's life seems merry and bright like the string lights glistening around town. But strange happenings signal a bumpy ride into the holidays. First a man raises eyebrows at Pans 'N Pancakes when he claiming to be the long-lost half-brother of Robbie's assistant. Then a fire destroys the home of a controversial anesthesiologist, exposing skeletal remains in his attic. Helplessly intrigued, all Robbie wants for Christmas is to stop her winter wonderland from becoming a real nightmare.

Although Father Tom Christmas serves his little church in enchanting Thornford Regis with a glad and faithful heart, he never expects to find himself skydiving to raise money for it. Nor, safely back on the ground, to see two of the other divers leap from the plane, then tangle in a midair punch-up and begin falling to the earth.

Vanessa March's husband, Lewis, is meant to be on a business trip in Stockholm - so why does he briefly appear in newsreel footage of a fire at a circus in Vienna, with his arm around another woman? Vanessa flies to Austria to find her husband, inadvertently becoming involved in a mystery that spans three countries...and the famous dancing stallions of the Spanish Riding School. The moonlight flooded the meadow, blanching all colours to its own ghostly silver. The pines were very black.

PECCAVI. The Latin word is scrawled in blood at the scene of a young woman's brutal murder: I HAVE SINNED. It's a chilling Christmas greeting for Boston medical examiner Maura Isles and Detective Jane Rizzoli, who swiftly link the victim to controversial celebrity psychiatrist Joyce O'Donnell, Jane's professional nemesis and member of a sinister cabal called the Mephisto Club.

Charlotte Pitt’s mother, Caroline, travels with her young husband, Joshua Fielding, and his theatrical troupe to Whitby, where Dracula first touched English soil. Joshua has arranged to produce a stage adaptation of Dracula by the daughter of Whitby millionaire Charles Netheridge, but the amateurish script produces a disastrous first read-through. As tempers flare and wind and snow swirl around Netheridge’s lonely hilltop mansion, a black-cloaked stranger emerges from the storm - an eerily opportune arrival, for this enigmatic figure, one Anton Ballin, turns out to be a theatrical genius.

Claudine Burroughs, a volunteer in Hester Monk's clinic for sick and injured prostitutes, no longer expects closeness with her coldly ambitious husband and dreads the holidays. Then, at a glittering Yuletide gala, she meets the attractive poet Dai Tregarron, and suddenly her spirits lift. But an hour later, this fascinating man is enmeshed in a nightmare - accused of killing a young streetwalker who had been smuggled into the party.

Christmas in Serenity is a magical time of year TJ has always looked forward to with happy anticipation. This year her holiday spirit is marred by the impending arrival of two new men in her life. When one of them ends up dead, TJ must juggle community plays, Christmas tree cuttings, sleigh rides, and holiday shopping with a complex murder investigation. As the facts begin to unravel, she realizes she may have to risk everything to save someone she loves.

It's the Fourth of July weekend in Christmas River, and this year's celebration promises to be more explosive than any other for pie baker extraordinaire Cinnamon Peters. In addition to juggling massive crowds at her booming pie shop this July, Cinnamon is also helping her beloved grandfather Warren realize his dream of opening a brewpub in the heart of Christmas River. But when a rival ends up dead on opening night, Cinnamon's life is thrown into turmoil as the murder investigation takes a grim turn.

With Christmas just around the corner, Samantha Moon finds herself taking on a very strange case. A mysterious family treasure has been stolen, something priceless that's been passed down through the generations, something buried in secrets. Samantha's reward is simple: she gets half of whatever it is... if she can find it first. And just as the holidays threaten to consume her, Samantha is approached by a very mysterious man, someone who knows all her secrets, a man who might not be a man at all.

It's autumn in Christmas River, and things in the small Central Oregon town are getting downright spooky this season. When Cinnamon Peters discovers an old class ring hidden behind the wall of her shop's kitchen, the pie baker extraordinaire becomes abruptly entangled in a decades-old unsolved mystery. But shortly after finding the heirloom, Cinnamon is plagued by a series of inexplicable accidents.

Cantankerous and vinegar-tongued Grandmama, from Anne Perry's Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, is the leading character in this Christmas novel, which unfolds in the chilly, windswept Romney Marshes off the English Channel. Grandmama arrives on a holiday visit to the home of Charlotte's parents, where a fellow guest--an outcast from her own family--is subsequently murdered. Like the heroes before her in Anne Perry's Christmas novels, Grandmama is called upon to play the role of amateur detective.

Allen DeShawn believes his monster-hunting days ended five years ago after he killed the werewolf. Now it’s December 1994 and he’s itching for his high school’s Christmas Break and goofing off with his new friends. But when attractive girls go missing and Allen stumbles on the hottest teacher in school half-dead outside her house, he suspects something bad is going around and it isn’t the flu.

Father Tom Christmas, the recently widowed vicar adjusting to life in the English village of Thornford Regis, would do almost anything to avoid attending the annual Robert Burns Supper at the local hotel. But as chaplain to a traditional Scottish pipe band, Father Tom must deliver the grace - and contend with wailing bagpipes, whiskey-laced parishioners reciting poetry, and the culinary abomination that is haggis.