Crime Mystery Fiction

Evaleen Bechmann is too busy running Human Resources for the billion-dollar company, Mimir, to even consider dating. As for emotions, she refuses to discuss that, too. It doesn't matter anyway. She's invisible to men, especially one man in particular. Evaleen is fine with that. Not everyone gets their happily ever after; that's only for novels.

Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?

After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally. When they receive a call from the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.

When Jaya's old professor dies under eerie circumstances shortly after discovering manuscripts that point to a treasure in Italy's Park of Monsters, Jaya and her brother pick up the trail. From San Francisco to the heart of Italy, Jaya is haunted by a ghost story inexorably linked to the masterpieces of a long-dead artist and the deeds of a modern-day murderer. Untrustworthy colleagues, disappearing boyfriends, and old enemies - who can Jaya trust when the ghost wails?

The last time DCI Jamie Carver involved a would-be victim in his hunt for a serial killer, it ended badly. Now they want him to do it again, only this time the 'victim' is a Dominatrix. As if he hasn't enough on his plate - a brutal killer poised to strike again; shadows of the past that still haunt his dreams; an investigation under mounting pressure to succeed; a beautiful woman whose bizzare lifestyle may be the key to finding the killer. And that's not counting the young girl whose life he's trying to save from ruin or the ambitious colleague scheming to bring him down.

Watching her friend dragged away in handcuffs, Josie couldn't believe for one second that Gretchen had killed that poor boy. Confession or not, someone else was involved. She would find out who... When the body of a young student is found on the driveway of a local Denton home, a photograph pinned to his collar, Detective Josie Quinn is first on the scene. The house belongs to Gretchen Palmer, a dedicated member of Josie’s team, missing for the last 24 hours. Working around the clock, Josie is stopped in her tracks when Gretchen hands herself in to the police.

Three very different women come together at an isolated cottage on the North Pennines to complete an environmental survey. Three women who each know the meaning of betrayal. Rachael is the first to arrive at the cottage, but when she gets there she is shocked to discover an apparent suicide. But then another death occurs, and a fourth woman enters the picture – the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope, who must piece together the truth from these women’s tangled lives.

Kelp has a plan, and John Dortmunder knows that means trouble. His friend Kelp is a jinx, and his schemes, no matter how well intentioned, tend to spiral quickly out of control. But this one, Kelp swears, is airtight. He read it in a book.

In county lock-up for a traffic charge, Kelp came across a library of trashy novels by an author named Richard Stark. The hero is a thief named Parker whose plans, unlike Kelp and Dortmunder's, always work out. In one, Parker orchestrates a kidnapping so brilliant that, Kelp thinks, it would have to work in real life.

Meet Stephanie Plum, a bounty hunter with attitude. In Stephanie’s opinion, toxic waste, rabid drivers, armed schizophrenics, and August heat, humidity, and hydrocarbons are all part of the great adventure of living in Jersey. She’s a product of the “burg,” a blue-collar pocket of Trenton where houses are attached and narrow, cars are American, windows are clean, and (God forbid you should be late) dinner is served at six.

Ice: The fighting cage made me a monster, and that's what came out when they freed me. She thinks I saved her from monsters, but she just fell into the hands of an even bigger one. She also thinks we're falling in love. She's wrong. I forgot how to do that. Besides, love's not what I want from her. She should've run away from me when I told her to do it. Because now it's too late. Barbie: I'm not letting him toss me aside. I'm staying right where I am, in his arms, and in his bed, and on the back of his bike.

'Sara! Remember! Victoria and Albert. All I can say. They're here. They're - ' These are the last words Sara Prior will ever hear from her husband. As DS Nathan Cody struggles to make sense of the enigmatic message and solve the brutal murder, it soon becomes clear that Sara is no ordinary bereaved wife. Taking the investigation into her own hands, Sara is drawn into a world of violence that will lead her in a direction she would never have suspected. For Cody, meanwhile, things are about to get personal in the darkest and most twisted ways imaginable.

In the U.N. building in New York City, a US Ambassador contracts an unknown virus after opening a threatening letter. In a slum near Paris, a rogue geneticist is found dead, tortured and defiled. His last message, a desperate plea for help, was sent to an old friend and fellow outcast, the ex-CIA agent and former mercenary named Hawker. Consumed by thoughts of revenge but fighting to see the truth, Hawker teams up with NRI operative Danielle Laidlaw on a quest to find the killers and track down the secrets his dead friend may have lost or sold.

Luke Fitzwilliam does not believe Miss Pinkerton's wild allegation that a multiple murderer is at work in the quiet English village of Wychwood and that her local doctor is next in line. But within hours, Miss Pinkerton has been killed in a hit-and-run car accident. Mere coincidence? Luke is inclined to think so - until he reads in the Times of the unexpected demise of Wychwood's Dr. Humbleby....

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.

A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.

When Theodora Scott met Connor—wealthy, charming, and a member of the powerful Dalton family—she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he’s brought her to Idlewood, his family’s isolated winter retreat, to win over his skeptical relatives. Stay away from Connor Dalton.Theo has tried to ignore the threatening messages on her phone, but she can’t ignore the footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange sense of familiarity she has about this place. Then, in a disused cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself as a child. A photo taken at Idlewood.

Detective Boone Drake has just masterminded the most massive sting in Chicago history, bringing down the heads of not only the biggest street gangs in the city but also the old crime syndicate. The story is the biggest in decades, and the Chicago Police Department must protect the key witness at all costs. Despite top secret plans to transfer the witness ahead of his testimony before the grand jury, an attempt is made on his life.

Tom Angleberger scored two critical and popular hits with his Star Wars–inspired The Strange Case of Origami Yoda and Darth Paper Strikes Back. In the hilarious Fake Mustache, young Lenny Flem Jr.’s friend Casper disguises himself with a shockingly convincing handlebar mustache and begins robbing banks, quickly amassing a fortune. Setting his sights on the presidency, Casper is working on plans for world domination—and only Lenny stands in his way.

This edition includes books four through seven of the Irish Village Mystery series: Murder in an Irish Pub, Murder in an Irish Cottage, Murder at an Irish Christmas, and Murder in an Irish Bookshop.

Detective Inspector Fenella Sallow is obsessive about her work and driven by her own demons. When the body of a retired artist is discovered atop the blackened embers of the town bonfire, the community is rocked to the core. It falls to DI Fenella Sallow and her team to find out how she came to be there. In her 50s, the veteran detective inspector thought she had seen it all. But behind the curtained windows and closed doors of the idyllic Cumbria coastal setting lurks pure evil.