Crime Genre

It's everyday business when Wattles, the San Fernando Valley's top "executive crook", sets up a hit. He establishes a chain of criminals to pass along the instructions and the money, thereby ensuring that the hitter doesn't know who hired him. Then one day Wattles finds his office safe open and a single item missing: the piece of paper listing the crooks in the chain. When people associated with the chain begin to pop up dead, the only person Wattles can turn to for help is Junior Bender, professional burglar and begrudging private eye for crooks.

When a top secret program of implanting harrowing memories into innocent people comes to light, neurosurgeon Tom McCarthy is literally caught in the crossfire. While McCarthy looks forward to a three day weekend, his office is suddenly raided by two Department of Defense investigators bent on arresting him for a crime he didn’t commit.

The most ruthless ride-or-die women of Memphis saved their empire by nearly destroying the streets. But as unexpected new rivals rise and brutal secrets shatter lives, betrayal means winner rules all. Putting out chaos with gasoline is one play that even the women of the Dirty South can't control. One merciless kill vaults good-girl-gone-bad Ta'Shara into gangland's power elite - but an enemy she doesn't see is targeting everything she can't afford to lose.

In Southeast Minnesota, a school board meeting is coming to an end. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed due to personnel issues. Issues is correct. The proposal up for a vote is whether to authorise the killing of a local reporter. Meanwhile, Virgil Flowers is helping out a friend by looking into a dognapping when he gets a call from Lucas Davenport. A murdered body has been found, and the victim is a local reporter....

The untimely death of St. Louis kingpin King David has left a vacuum in the underworld. He leaves behind his vast empire to his surviving heirs, David Jr. and Davita. Born barely one year apart, they were raised in very different worlds. Will the family ties that bind keep the families together, or will sex, greed, drugs, and their mothers' divisive ways tear it all to hell, bringing St. Louis down with them? David Jr. and Davita have decisions to make!

I Am Liu Yuejin, by prize-winning Chinese novelist Liu Zhenyun, is a novel of Beijing that paints a microcosm of contemporary China, dealing with classes at the two extremes: the super rich and the migrant workers who make them rich through deceit and corruption. The protagonist, Liu Yuejin, is a work site cook and small-time thief whose bag is stolen. While searching for it, he stumbles upon another bag, which contains a flash disk that chronicles high-level corruption, and sets off a convoluted chase.

The CEO of a promising start-up company is found dead in a luxurious hotel room. Two men who underwent what were supposed to be simple surgical procedures died on the operating table in two different hospitals. Are the deaths related? Ronnie Saar, a newly promoted partner in a leading venture-capital fund, is unexpectedly nominated to chair the board of a successful pharmaceutical start-up company. But before he can reap the rewards of his promotion, he must deal with these unexpected deaths and other ominous developments that threaten his and his soon-to-be bride's lives.

There’s deadly trouble in the corn country of Nebraska . . . and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved case of a missing child, already decades old, that Reacher can’t let go. The Duncans want Reacher gone—and it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. They’re awaiting a secret shipment that’s already late—and they have the kind of customers no one can afford to annoy.

Nicholas “Foxy” Foxton, a former jockey who suffered a career-ending injury, is out for a day at the Grand National races when his friend and coworker Herb Kovak is murdered, execution style, right in front of him—and 60,000 other potential witnesses. Foxton and Kovak were both independent financial advisers at Lyall Black, a firm specializing in extreme-risk investments.

When defence barrister Geoffrey Mason hears the judge’s verdict, he quietly hopes that a long and arduous custodial sentence will be handed down to his arrogant young client. That Julian Trent only receives eight years seems all too lenient. Little does Mason expect that he’ll be looking Trent in the eyes again much sooner than he’d ever imagined.

The Neptune Grand has always been the seaside town's ritziest hotel, despite the shady dealings and high-profile scandals that seem to follow its elite guests. When a woman claims that she was brutally assaulted in one of its rooms and left for dead by a staff member, the owners know that they have a potential powder keg on their hands. They turn to Veronica to disprove - or prove - the woman's story.

Six years ago, Lucy Kincaid was attacked and nearly killed by an online predator. She survived. Her attacker did not. Now Lucy’s goal is to join the FBI and fight cyber-crime, but in the meantime, she’s volunteering with a victim’s rights group, surfing the Web undercover to lure sex offenders into the hands of the law. But when the predators she hunts start turning up as murder victims, the FBI takes a whole new interest in Lucy.

What drives someone to murder? Logan McRae's personal history is hardly squeaky clean, but now that he works for Professional Standards he's policing his fellow officers. When Detective Inspector Bell turns up dead in the drivers seat of a crashed car, it's a shock to everyone. Because Bell died two years ago. They buried him. Or they thought they did. As an investigation is launched into Bell's stabbing, Logan digs into his past. Where has he been all this time? Why did he disappear? And what's so important that he felt the need to come back from the dead?

Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men - employees at the resort - are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives.

All around Albuquerque, New Mexico, young women are going missing, seemingly vanished into thin air. With no link between the victims, Detective Alyssa Wyatt is quickly plunged into a horrifying case with no obvious clues. And when Jersey Andrews, the best friend of Alyssa's teenage daughter, Holly, joins the list of vanished girls, the case becomes personal. But this investigation will lead Alyssa and partner Cord into the most sinister depths of humanity; an evil place where life is expendable and where the depraved can fulfill their darkest desires - if they have the money.

Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China - dubbed the true Shangri-La - and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers.

Texas Ranger Rory Yates is not keen for hero status. But it's unavoidable once his girlfriend, country singer Willow Dawes, writes a song about his bravery. Rory escapes his newfound fame when he's sent to the remote West Texas town of Rio Lobo, a municipality with two stoplights. And now, according to the chief of police, it has one too many Texas Rangers. Rio Lobo Detective Ariana Delgado is the one who requested Rory and the only person who believes a local councilwoman's seemingly accidental death is a murder. Then, Rory begins to uncover a tangle of small-town secrets.

The first book in an original mystery series featuring 28-year-old Veronica Mars, back in action after the events of Veronica Mars: The Movie. With the help of old friends - Logan Echolls, Mac Mackenzie, Wallace Fennel, and even Dick Casablancas - Veronica is ready to take on Neptune's darkest cases with her trademark sass and smarts.

Still reeling from a brutal dismemberment, detective Kline is forcibly recruited to solve a murder inside a religious cult that takes literally the New Testament idea that you should cut off your hand if it offends you. Armed only with his gun, his wits, and a gift for self-preservation, Kline must navigate a gauntlet of lies, threats, and misinformation. All too soon he discovers that the stakes are higher than he thought and that his survival depends on an act of sheer will.

On its surface, life in Houston in the 1950s is as you'd expect: stoic fathers, restless teens, drive-in movies, and souped-up Cadillacs. But underneath lies a world shifting under high school junior Aaron Broussard's feet. There's a class war between the "haves" and the "have-nots" as well as a real war, Korea, happening on the other side of the world. It is against this backdrop that Aaron comes of age, trying to understand how first loves, friendship, violence, and power can alter what "traditional America" means for the people trying to find their way in a changing world.