Crime Mystery

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he’s living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry - known to her friends as the Cuckoo - famously fell to her death a few months earlier.

Three unsolved murders spanning 70 years have befallen the same French family, each taking place two nights before Christmas at their Paris mansion - and blamed on the family ghost. When Jaya realizes the truth hits closer to home than she realized, she must risk everything as she flees San Francisco for France and Cambodia to find a missing sculpture known as the Serpent King and stop a flesh and blood killer.

Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U.N. Owen". At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead. Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one...one by one they begin to die. Who among them is the killer? And will any of them survive?

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.

Doing Time: For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide.

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. Two more things also hang in the balance. Who will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope.

During a vicious heat wave, a county maintenance worker stumbles upon two suspicious suitcases abandoned by the side of the road. Sheriff Bree Taggert responds to find two bodies stuffed inside the luggage. The press demands action. The community is on edge. Suddenly, Bree is at the center of a media firestorm. In Oregon, a senator’s daughter goes missing. FBI Special Agent Mercy Kilpatrick agrees to keep the politically sensitive case on the down-low.

A girl with a secret. Longbill Beach, 1982. Emily Vaughn gets ready for the prom. For an athlete, who is smart, pretty and well-liked, this night that should be the highlight of her high school career. But Emily has a secret. And by the end of the evening, that secret will be silenced forever. Forty years later, Emily’s murder remains a mystery. Her tight-knit group of friends closed ranks; her respected, wealthy family retreated inwards; the small town moved on from her grisly attack. But all that’s about to change.

Quinn Roberts is dead and she wants to know how it happened. She's angry, confused and disappointed that her life is over. Most of her friends have moved on and it seems like no one cares who was responsible. Her adult children are in shock but their mother's death is too painful, so they do nothing. Soon after her murder, Quinn's husband, Alec, acquires a new wife and Quinn becomes a distant memory. Only her sister, Erin, and Detective John McQuillan continue to search for answers.

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but it is the truth. Some of us are good, others are bad, and some just unfortunate. I’m Ernest Cunningham. Call me Ern or Ernie. I wish I’d killed whoever decided our family reunion should be at a ski resort, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

DI Fenella Sallow has retreated to her work, escaping the trauma of the last case, when a strange man is found dead in the ruins of an ancient castle. There are no clues, the police investigation stalled, and Fenella is reluctant to take on a case which will toss her into dark memories she'd rather forget. She soon finds herself in conflict with the locals and is stunned by the ripples of shock spreading outward from the ancient past to the killer's front door.

It's AD 123, and the sun is shining on southern Gaul. Ex-military medic Ruso and his British wife, Tilla, are back after a long absence - but it's not the reunion anyone had hoped for. Ruso's brother has left him in charge of a farm he has no idea how to manage, a chronic debt problem, and a gaggle of accident-prone small children. Meanwhile his sister Flora has run away to rescue her boyfriend, who's accused of murdering a wealthy guest at a party.

The adventures of Donald J. Sobol’s amateur detective Encyclopedia Brown have been delighting puzzle and mystery lovers for over four decades - earning a special Edgar Award in the process. Here are 10 more devilishly clever noggin scratchers for young listeners to try and solve. Join Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown as he keeps the streets of tiny Idaville free from petty crooks, ruffians, and altogether no-goodniks - all for 25 cents a day, plus expenses.

Sixteen-year-old Diamond "Ray-Ray" Jenkins has it made in the shade, until one wrong move by her parents turns their lives upside down. Their secret of taking from the wrong street King in the Trap, Damien Orlando, has now put her in peril. The death of her parents signals an end to Diamond's semi-perfect life, putting her in the hands of evil. Her only salvation is to learn the game, and to put her trust in a kid wearing a hoodie.

The Byzantine Fire is much more than a flawless ninety-carat ruby. As a stone it's worth over a million dollars, a value vastly increased by its pure gold band - but its history is what makes it priceless. A ring that has been fought for with sword and pen and passed from nation to nation by all manner of theft and trickery, has finally made its way to the United States. The US agrees to return it to Turkey, but it's about to be stolen twice more.

Success has come quickly to Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations. The New York City agency led by three detectives—Brendan Holmes, “the brain,” Margaret Marple, “the eyes,” and Auguste Poe, the “muscle”—with famous names and mysterious pasts is one major case away from cementing its professional reputation. But as a series of child abductions tests the PIs’ legendary skills, the cerebral Holmes’s absence leaves a gaping hole in the agency roster. Only by closing ranks and solving the mystery within can they recover all that’s been lost.

Keshav has set up an investigation agency with his best friend, Saurabh. Can the two amateur detectives successfully solve another murder case that affects them personally? And where will it leave their friendship?

When college professor Ellie McKay walks into the Maverick Bar in Farmington, New Mexico, late one evening, she plans to get drunk, not engaged. But within 30 minutes, she’s met cowboy Al Robison, he’s proposed to her, and she’s accepted. Al only knows that Ellie is attractive, vulnerable, and single; he doesn’t know that she has been on the run for weeks from a sociopath who killed her surgeon boyfriend in Pennsylvania and raped and tortured her.

Former Army brat Morgan Albright has finally planted roots in a friendly neighborhood near Baltimore. Her friend and roommate Nina helps her make the mortgage payments, as does Morgan's job as a bartender. But after she and Nina host their first dinner party—attended by Luke, the flirtatious IT guy who'd been chatting her up at the bar—her carefully built world is shattered. The back door glass is broken, cash and jewelry are missing, her car is gone, and Nina lies dead on the floor.

Exit Wounds is a thrilling anthology of crime stories written by masters of the genre, including Dean Koontz, Val McDermid, Lee Child, Jeffery Deaver, Elly Griffiths, Dennis Lehane, Joe R. Lansdale, and others.