Crime Mystery Fiction

On a bitterly cold winter's night, Liverpool is left stunned by a brutal murder in the grounds of the city's Anglican Cathedral. A killer is on the loose, driven by a chilling rage. Put on the case, DS Nathan Cody is quickly stumped. Wherever he digs, the victim seems to be almost angelic - no one has a bad word to say, let alone a motive for such a violent murder. And Cody has other things on his mind, too.

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.

Detective Joseph Easter's daughter discovers a cottage hidden in some trees on a large fenland farm. Someone has been living there. The farm owner's wife has been receiving sinister pagan artifacts, including a witch's knife. Are they some sort of warning or message? Joseph and his daughter search the cottage and find an old satchel. Inside are photos of a beautiful girl, Jennifer Cowley. She went missing 15 years ago. She'd been stalked by a young man, who was convicted of her murder, even though her body was never found.

We all have a façade, a concealed mask we wear to portray ourselves to the world. Fallon has never had to wear a mask. She grew up with two loving parents in Chicago, graduated from college and is now working a job she loves. But her untarnished world is shaken when Luca crosses her path.

With his dying breath, Carl Venable, head of the CIA task force on terrorism and Jude Brandon's final link to terrorist ringleader Max Huber, gives Brandon a mandate: to keep his daughter, Rachel, safe at any cost. But Rachel Venable has a shocking, twisted past of her own, one that comes rushing back after her medical clinic in Guyana is attacked by Huber - the same man who murdered her father and kept her imprisoned for months.

Five weeks ago Carly Drake stood at her grandfather's grave. Now she's burying Drake Trucking's top driver, and the cops have no leads on the hijacking or murder. Faced with bankruptcy, phone threats, and the fear of failure, Carly has to team up with the last man she wants to owe - Lincoln Cain. Cain is magnetic, powerful, controlling - and hiding more than one secret. He promised Carly's granddad he'd protect her.

King David was determined to claw his way out of the mean streets of New York City any way he could. It didn't matter if that meant battering and robbing old people, conning the innocent, or even killing a kid's mother. Lacing cocaine with battery acid for revenge was acceptable, too. Ultimately, it meant leaving town. Now King's made it big and made his way back, flush with cash and a Cadillac. But he hasn't been forgotten - or forgiven. And when payback time hits, he's only got one wish - not to die alone.

A sweltering summer day on the Hobfield housing estate. New tenant Lisa Woodley is horrified when her cat comes home with a human foot in its mouth. The foot belongs to 16-year-old Noah Crosby, whose decomposing remains are found in a rubbish-strewn alleyway. It’s not a robbery, as the teen has an expensive gold watch, high-end trainers and a top-of-the-range mobile phone on him. Where did he get such expensive gear? A letter X is carved into Noah’s flesh. Twenty years ago this was the hallmark of a serial killer who was never caught.

On an ordinary morning, Maria Colson takes her baby son, Dylan, to the corner store. She turns her back for only a few seconds. When she looks again, she sees his empty stroller as Dylan is being abducted into a waiting van. Maria climbs into the van but is violently thrown to the road, where she is left for dead as the vehicle vanishes without a trace. As Maria fights for her life and her anguished young husband keeps a bedside vigil, the FBI and police across metro Sea-Tac and Washington State search for Dylan.

Quill has lived on the Red Pine reservation in Minnesota her whole life. She knows what happens to women who look like her. Just a girl when Jimmy Sky jumped off the railway bridge and she ran for help, Quill realizes now that she’s never stopped running. As she trains for the Boston Marathon early one morning in the woods, she hears a scream. When she returns to search the area, all she finds are tire tracks and a single beaded earring.

Plans for a town pantomime are thrown in the air after one of the actors is murdered. The victim is local gossip, nosy parker and aspiring manipulator Ivor Gladwin. Reviled by many and ignored by more, the list of people who could have wanted rid of him seems to grow by the minute. Despite having overstepped the mark in past cases, because of her familiarity with the individuals involved, ex police officer Fabia Havard is actually tasked by her boyfriend, and serving DCI, to look into the matter on the side.

Detective Sergeant Norman likes the idea of a permanent home in the small Welsh coastal town. With his reinvented career invigorating him, he finds himself enjoying working for his younger female DI. But when she asks him to investigate a puzzling seaside suicide, his first job is to find the corpse belonging to the discarded clothing left on the sand.... With the deceased man’s remains presumed lost at sea, DS Norman believes his case has run up a blind alley...until local builders dig up a female human skull.

Over twenty years ago, the heiress Patricia Lockwood was abducted during a robbery of her family's estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors - and the items stolen from her family were never recovered. Until now. On the Upper West Side, a recluse is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead - with the suitcase and painting both pointing them toward one man.

When anthropology professor Gideon Oliver is offered a teaching fellowship at US military bases in Germany, Sicily, Spain, and Holland, he wastes no time accepting. On his first night, he is forced to fend off two desperate, black-clad men who have invaded his Heidelberg hotel room with intent to kill. And then there are a few trivial details that the recruiting agency forgot to mention - such as the fact that the two previous holders of the fellowship both met with mysterious ends.

Ben Ripley may only be in middle school, but he's already pegged his dream job: CIA or bust. Unfortunately for him, his personality doesn't exactly scream "secret agent". In fact Ben is so awkward, he can barely get to school and back without a mishap. Because of his innate nerdiness, Ben is not surprised when he is recruited for a magnet school with a focus on science - but he's entirely shocked to discover that the school is actually a front for a junior CIA academy.

From its launch in 1920 until its demise in 1951, the magazine Black Mask published pulp crime fiction. The first hard-boiled detective stories appeared on its pages. Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner and John D. MacDonald got their start in Black Mask. The urban crime stories that appeared in Black Mask helped to shape American culture. Modern computer games, films, and television are rooted in the fiction popularized by "the seminal and venerated mystery pulp magazine" ( Booklist).

Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town. But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer?

Meet Jessica Jones: retired superhero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night’s poor choices. But something about Amber Randall’s story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK.

As the youngest bureau chief and head of the Chicago Police Department's Major Case Squad, Boone Drake seems to have it all under control. Only those closest to him know that just a few short years ago, he lost everything that mattered to him in a tragic accident. After years of healing, his life is back on track. He recently married a wonderful woman named Haeley, adopted her son, bought a beautiful home, and rediscovered his faith. But Boone can't fight the feeling that something is about to go terribly wrong...again.

For 18 years Jack has been a “transplant tourism director,” sending wealthy Americans and Europeans in need of kidneys and other organs to third-world countries where they would buy them from transplant centers on the take. The death of a client and a newfound relationship lead to a crisis of conscience as he is forced to choose between a $2 million commission - and participating in a murder.