Crime Fiction Suspense

Hunter Holt might be the most stubborn ex-soldier ever born, but when he's called on to help find a lost foster kid, he jumps into action. Even if it means working with the woman who broke his heart five years ago - the woman who still haunts his dreams. Faye Smith has spent five long years trying to get her life back on track. She knows she should've turned toward Hunter and not away from him, but they both had too many demons to destroy. Maybe now they'll get another chance - and save someone else's life too. But first they'll have to stop arguing.

Following a convention in the Scottish Highlands, eight social media influencers vanish without a trace, leaving their followers–and families–in a state of shock, and the police clueless as to their whereabouts. And then, the livestreams begin. Broadcast live from their squalid underground cells, the young influencers are forced into a sadistic battle for survival. With each livestream, their captor pits them against each other in a twisted competition for likes. The influencer with the fewest positive reactions faces a gruesome end–live on camera.

There's a different schemer or slimeball behind every door: cocaine duckpins who have survived only by the dumbest fortune, hard-luck gigolos desperate to score, undercover cops busting undercover cops who are running sting operations on undercover cops.

Lorenzo Gambini is bored. So f--king bored. Most people either annoy him or avoid him, afraid to face him. Figuratively. Literally. With his face partially disfigured, scarred, he looks every bit the monster the stories make him out to be: the notorious Scar. They say he's a sociopath. Maybe he's a psychopath. Whatever path he's on, people tend to stay far away from it. Until one day, a young woman bumps right into him - a woman just as fed up with life, but for much different reasons.

Sixteen delightful holiday short stories by some of your favorite Soho crime authors! This captivating collection of short mysteries and crime capers - which features New York Times best-selling authors, Crime Writers Association Gold and Diamond Dagger winners, and Edgar Award nominees - contains laughs aplenty, the most hardboiled of holiday noir, and heartwarming reminders of the spirit of the season.

Violin prodigy Cara Delaney has finally found peace in her career as a professional musician and stability in her relationship with her guardians, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy SEAL Joe Quinn. If only Jock Gavin, Cara's lifelong friend and a man with his own twisted history, would even talk to her, everything would be perfect. But the carefully constructed life Cara has built for herself is suddenly threatened when she is kidnapped by a mysterious man from her grandfather's past, setting off a violent chain of events that puts everyone Cara loves in danger.

When Scotland Yard superintendent Duncan Kincaid takes Gemma, Kit, and Toby for a holiday visit to his family in Cheshire, Gemma is soon entranced with Nantwich's pretty buildings and the historic winding canal, and young Kit is instantly smitten with his cousin Lally. But their visit is marred by family tensions exacerbated by the unraveling of Duncan's sister Juliet's marriage. And tensions are brought to the breaking point on Christmas Eve with Juliet's discovery of a mummified infant's body interred in the wall of an old dairy barn.

DC Scott Cullen finds himself investigating two decades-old cases when a mangled body is found in a barrel of aged Dunpender Distillery whisky. Two men disappeared around the time the barrel was filled, nearly 20 years ago. As Cullen investigates, he finds himself steeped in twisted tales of family loyalties, lies and professional rivalries. Before he can find the killer, he needs to know whose body is in the barrel...

I know I should be afraid of him. He's huge. Powerful. Cold as ice. But the way he gazes at me makes me weak.... Now we're on the run together. They say he's a monster, but I've glimpsed the person inside. The man sent to kill me is the only one who can save me, and I might be the only one who can save him.

The public labels me a Mafia monster, a man without a soul, and one hated by many. They're not wrong, and I'm not sorry for it. When my father orders me to marry a longtime enemy's daughter to settle a score between our families, she did what any smart woman with a beating heart would do. She ran. So, I hunted her down. She tries to negotiate for her freedom, but despite being inexplicably drawn to the deviant woman, I refuse her pitiful bribes with pleasure. I'll promise her freedom to get the answers I need, but I'll burn this city to the ground before I let her go.

On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, England, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the reenactors discover a skeleton that is female, headless, and only about twenty years old. One of them, a professor who played a Cavalier, is later found murdered. In the course of his investigation, Peter Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member.

When gold is discovered near the little town of No-Name, Colorado, the citizens are overjoyed at their good fortune...until trouble gallops down Maine Street on a horse straight out of Hell. For gold's closest companions are greed and murder, and every two-bit gunslick from the Atlantic to the Rockies is beating a path to the gold strike - which is practically on the doorstep of Smoke Jensen. They're looking to get rich quick...and never mind how it's done. But this legendary mountain man never learned how to back away from a good fight - and this one promises to be a whopper.

In Cara Black’s “accomplished, absorbing debut” ( Kirkus Reviews), PI Aimée Leduc must decrypt a digitized photo from the 1940s. But when Aimée visits the historic Jewish quarter of Paris to deliver the picture, she finds its intended recipient murdered—and with a swastika carved in her aged forehead

Necromancer is such an ugly word, but it's a title Eric Carter is stuck with. He sees ghosts, talks to the dead. He's turned it into a lucrative career, putting troublesome spirits to rest, sometimes taking on even more dangerous things. For a fee, of course. When he left LA 15 years ago, he thought he'd never go back. Too many bad memories. Too many people trying to kill him.

Cambridge, 1924 in early summertime. May Balls, punting, flirting and dancing the tango are the preoccupations of bright young people, but bright young Detective Inspector John Redfyre finds himself mired in multiple murders. One morning, his dog discovers a corpse neatly laid on a tombstone in the graveyard adjoining St. Bede's College. An army greatcoat and well-worn boots suggest the dead man may have been a former soldier, though the empty bottle of brandy and a card bearing the words "An Invitation to Dine" on the victim ring a discordant note.

Emma and Ariella, neighbours in one of Sydney’s most exclusive suburbs, appear to have it all—perfect homes, perfect husbands, perfect lives. But they both know dark secrets lurk beneath the surface and shallow waters can’t hide Ariella’s. Now she has been found murdered. Her daughter filmed the killing. Not knowing what she’s filmed, Emma’s daughter Kiki innocently uploads footage of Ariella’s brutal death. Emma fears the worst—the killer will know what she and Kiki have seen. Their safe suburban lives no longer exist.

Travel back to a small Southern town where, before there was Duncan Motors, there were the Duncan brothers: Louis, aka Sweet Lou, a lover of ladies and life and a man you did not want to cross; Lawrence, aka Larry, a screw-up as attracted to trouble as it was to him; and Lavernius, better known as LC, the soft-spoken college boy who simply wanted to sell cars.

Ned Kelly's name resonates in Australia the same way the name Jesse James does in America. Was he a crusading folk hero or murderous horse thief and bank robber? Who was the real Ned Kelly? As the impoverished son of an Irish convict, Kelly was cheated, lied to, and abused by the English. Committed to fighting back against oppression, Kelly and his gang of outlaws eluded police for nearly two years.

Dover "Collector" Ragnes rides with only five brothers at his back. Nomads with no place to call home, they never stay in one place too long. Together, they are the Devil's Due MC, and their only purpose is to serve justice their way for unsolved crimes everywhere they go. Emerson Flint still remembers the loss of her elementary school best friend. She is all grown up, but the memories still haunt her of the missing girl. Surrounding herself with men at the tattoo shop, she never questions her safety. Her life is her art.

Rampton Farm, Northumberland, has always been a gloomy, godforsaken place. Now it’s earmarked for demolition—to make way for just another tawdry amusement park. It will be progress, and nothing can stand in the way—except perhaps Arnold Landon, the Planning Officer who must glean the lie of the land.