Crime Mystery Fiction

Cotton Malone is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th century Pledge of Christ—a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican, still valid after five centuries—now worth in the trillions of dollars. But collecting that debt centers around what happened to the famed Medici of Florence—a family that history says died out, without heirs, centuries ago. Who will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope? Finding answers proves difficult until Cotton realizes that everything hinges on when, and if, the Medici return.

Three young girls have been abducted from their homes. The body of one has been found in a shallow grave. The other two are still missing. The murder has shocked everyone in the peaceful city of Delft, and the mayor is desperate to catch the perpetrator before panic can spread any further. With the bitterly cold January weather intensifying, it is doubtful that the other two girls are still alive. But whoever took them is still at large.

1920. Poppy Denby, an aspiring journalist, arrives in London to look after her ailing Aunt. She encourages Poppy to apply for a job at The Daily Globe, but on her first day, a senior reporter is killed and Poppy is tasked with finishing his story. It involves the mysterious death of a suffragette seven years earlier - an event some powerful people would prefer forgotten....

Covert government operative Danielle Laidlaw leads an expedition into the deepest reaches of the Amazon in search of a legendary Mayan city. Assisted by a renowned university professor and protected by a mercenary named Hawker, her team journeys into the tangled rain forest - unaware that they are replacements for a group that vanished weeks before, and that the treasure they are seeking is no mere artifact but a breakthrough discovery that could transform the world.

Will Robie may have just made the first - and last - mistake of his career.... It begins with a hit gone wrong. Robie is dispatched to eliminate a target unusually close to home in Washington, D.C. But something about this mission doesn't seem right to Robie, and he does the unthinkable: He refuses to kill. Now, Robie becomes a target himself and must escape from his own people.

Fleeing the scene, Robie crosses paths with a wayward teenage girl, a 14-year-old runaway from a foster home. But she isn't an ordinary runaway....

No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world-famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is so profound it is known as “the beautiful mystery.”

Laura Swallow is dead. A life cut tragically short, says the newspaper obituary. But that's a lie. Estate agent Laura did not die in a car accident. She is alive and well. At first, Laura thinks it's a sick joke. But multiple announcements of her death are followed by increasingly sinister real-life events. Already fragile, struggling to recover from a recent divorce, Laura is plunged into a living nightmare. Who can she trust? Her new lover? Her clients and work colleagues? What about her ex-husband and his smug fiancee? Can Laura even rely on her best friends?

One September morning, Doug accidentally runs right into another surfer on the beach. There are rules about these things. The other guy should call Doug a jerk, Doug should say, "my bad", and they should both paddle back out and move on. Problem is, the other surfer doesn't want to move on. He wants to fight. And for once in his life, Doug wants to fight back.

Thinking that she has been summoned by German immigrant Agnes Otto to usher a new life into the world, midwife Sarah Brandt is greeted by the news of an untimely death instead. It seems that Agnes' beautiful younger sister, Gerda, had fallen into the life of a "charity girl". Caught up in the false glamour of the city's nightlife, she would trade her company and her favors for lavish gifts. And now she was dead - victim, no doubt, of one of her "gentlemen friends".

She doesn't remember that night. But she will never be the same. One moment, Dahlia is a successful Harvard student; the next, she wakes up from a party, the victim of a brutal assault. Her life veers into a tailspin, and what's worse - her memory of the attack has been ripped away, leaving a cold rage in its wake. Now, years later, Dahlia is a tattooed paralegal suffering from PTSD and still haunted by that night. Until one day, a video surfaces online, and Dahlia sees her attack for the first time. Now she knows what happened to her. And she knows who is to blame.

Warlock Holmes may have demons in his head, but now Dr. John Watson has a mummy in his bloodstream. Specifically that of the sorcerer Xantharaxes, who when shredded and dissolved in an 8 percent solution, results in some extremely odd but useful prophetic dreams. There's also the small matter of Watson falling for yet another damsel-du-jour, and Warlock deciding that his companion needs some domestic bliss....

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.

Shocking news reaches them—an old friend has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing. The gang's search leads them into the antiques business, where the tricks of the trade are as old as the objects themselves. As they encounter drug dealers, art forgers, and online fraudsters—as well as heartache close to home—Elizabeth, Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim have no idea whom to trust.

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.

A year has passed since LAPD detective Renée Ballard quit the force in the face of misogyny, demoralization, and endless red tape. But after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her own ticket within the department, Ballard takes back her badge, leaving “the Late Show” to rebuild and lead the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division.

When Adeline Bertrand-Verdon, the haughty, conniving president of the Proust Association, is murdered, Inspector Jean-Pierre Foucheroux is called on to lead the investigation. Soon Inspector Foucheroux is overwhelmed by a seemingly endless list of suspects: from her assistant to her colleagues, her fiancé to her lover, almost everyone Adeline knew had motive to kill her.

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.

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.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, he discovers that Quine's disappearance is no coincidence. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published, it would ruin lives - meaning that almost everyone in his life would have motives to silence him.

Al Engel had worked his way up to being Nick Rovito’s right-hand man, near the top of the syndicate. And this was a delicate job that Rovito had given him: retrieving a very important jacket, loaded with heroin, from the fresh grave of the drug mule who was accidentally buried wearing it. There was just one problem (at least - just one to begin with): It turned out the grave was empty. Suddenly Engel was the one finding himself “in deep”.