Crime Mystery Fiction

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.

Former soldier. Ex-copper. Current man on the edge. Shunned by his old colleagues, and dividing his time between a dead-end job and the bottom of a whisky bottle, former Police Scotland detective superintendent Bob Hoon’s life is a mess. Then an old face from Hoon’s Special Forces days turns up asking for help: His teenage daughter has been missing for months, the police have drawn a blank, and he needs the kind of help that only Hoon can provide. And besides, Hoon owes him one.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Stilwell has been "exiled" to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island, after department politics drove him off a homicide desk on the mainland. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Detective Stilwell gets a report of a body found wrapped in plastic and weighed down at the bottom of the harbor. Crossing all lines of protocol and jurisdiction, he starts doggedly working the case.

A twisted tale of murder in the world of big-stakes bass fishing tournaments. Filled with ex-wives, evangelists, and an armed pit-bull, this is a story that could only be concocted by Carl Hiaasen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author, and czar of Florida noir fiction.

Hamish Macbeth, the laid-back constable of Lochdubh, Scotland, has a new Land Rover to drive and a Highland summer to savor, but as fast as rain rolls in from the loch, his happy life goes to hell in a hand basket. The trouble begins when his beloved Priscilla Halburton-Smythe returns from London - with a fiancé on her arm. His miseries multiply when clouds of midges, the diabolical Scottish mosquito, descend on the town. Then a paragon of housewifery named Trixie Thomas moves into Lochdubh with her lapdog husband in tow.

When a body is discovered floating in a Thames river lock one dreary morning, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James are summoned from Scotland Yard to Chiltern Hills. The dead man is Connor Swann, son-in-law of two of London's most renowned opera personalities. And prints on the corpse's neck suggest that Swann was strangled.

Eric Ward thinks there is something odd about Arthur Egan’s life and death. But Ward is a former police inspector and trained to be suspicious. Egan left a large sum. But Ward makes no progress tracing the dead man’s offspring. A photograph of an unknown tombstone is his only clue. He discovers Egan served a term for manslaughter and that the evidence against him may have been planted. Why had he accepted his fate so meekly?

Born blind, Kendra Michaels spent the first 20 years of her life living in the darkness. Then, thanks to a revolutionary medical procedure developed by England's Night Watch Project, she was given the gift of sight. Her highly-developed senses (honed during her years in the dark), combined with her newfound vision, have made her a remarkable investigator, sought after by law-enforcement agencies all over the country. But her newest case finds her uncovering a deadly truth about the shadowy organization that has given her so much.

The lights are on at the Singleton vacation home on Lopez Island, Washington, illuminating the horror within. The family is found dead, and the police's main suspect - the property caretaker - has disappeared. In her secluded vineyard home two hours away, Laura Gretchell is on edge. Her husband is out of town on business, and the children are understandably shaken. Laura tries to tell herself there's no reason to fear. Then the door handle rattles, and the real terror begins.

Andrea Boyle moved to Seattle to give her 17-year-old nephew, Spencer, a fresh start after the death of his parents. Andrea has found her own new beginning with Luke, a successful playwright and father of a teenage son, Damon. The boys appear to have little in common, but in truth they share a private torment....

Ryan and Sophie are a golden couple in Melbourne, the charming, salt-of-the-earth country boy and the charismatic, gorgeous social butterfly. When Ryan’s father dies, leaving them the family farm, it seems like a chance for Ryan to get back to his roots and for Sophie to embrace the bucolic country life she always dreamed of. But reality proves very different, and years spent struggling against an implacable drought have pushed their marriage – and finances – to the absolute limit.

When a teenage girl is found dead in the woods, her body posed like an angel, Stockholm holds its breath. The kill bears a chilling resemblance to those of the Angel Maker, a serial killer caught two decades ago.... One who just died in prison. Detective Inspector Jamie Johansson is taking some much-needed time away from the London Met when the call comes in. Her father, one of Stockholm's most notorious detectives, caught the Angel Maker when she was just a girl, and Jamie has long since closed the door to that part of her life.

Paige Barrett was living her dream as a journalist in New York City, racking up bylines as a staff writer at The Razor, a cutting-edge online magazine. But when she’s suddenly fired from her job and dumped by her boyfriend, she finds herself back home in the quaint seaside town of Shoreham, Florida, waiting tables and living in her sister’s guesthouse. Restless and itching for something meaningful to occupy her time, she decides to launch a true-crime podcast about the death of Jessica Cady, a beloved teacher who died mysteriously 20 years earlier.

A serial killer is on the loose in San Diego, and he has a most unusual M.O.: with each kill, he leaves behind objects with unclear meanings. Most of the recent killings are centered near Kendra Michaels' home and office, so it comes as no great surprise when the FBI shows up at her door. The investigators soon make a startling discovery: the left-behind objects are actually souvenirs of other unsolved serial murder cases in various US cities.

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed.

Bunny McGarry is back – and he’d really like a nice holiday. Somewhere with hot weather and cold drinks that come with little umbrellas for reasons he never understood. A certain nun has other ideas though and instead, he finds himself dispatched to London to find Sean Malone, a runaway teenager who doesn’t know his mother hasn’t got long left to live. The only leads Bunny has are a last-known address for the deadbeat dad Sean had gone in search of, and some letters the teenager had sent to his mum, one of which included a picture of him with the current heavyweight champion of the world.

Before leaving prison, having served 12 years, Harper Kane makes a promise - to find out what happened to an inmate’s missing teenage daughter. But first, she must secure a well-paid job and a place of her own to take back custody of her son. What she falls into is a frightening discovery of human trafficking. Forced to make an inconceivable decision, Harper will use everything she has learned inside to protect her family, even if that means resorting to murder.

During the investigation into the death of a woman on a Liverpool housing estate, DI Tara Grogan encounters Callum, a local recluse who claims to have information. But he won't help her unless she, in turn, helps him find out the truth about the suspicious death of his wife and child. Tara is ready to dismiss his outlandish theories and ravings, until she discovers that, like her, he was a student at Latimer College, Oxford. A place which she has very much buried in the past.

When a landslip on Pembrokeshire’s stunning coastal path reveals the harrowing remains of two bodies, ex-DCI Evan Warlow’s quiet retirement is shattered.

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.