Crime Mystery

Peter Diamond is tasked to run security for a wedding. Seems a bit beneath his extraordinary detective talents, as well as his title as head of Bath's CID, but this isn't your run-of-the-mill ceremony: the bride and groom belong to families on opposite ends of the law - and someone is trying to sabotage the nuptials by taking out a hit on the father of the bride.

Enne Salta was raised as a proper young lady, and no lady would willingly visit New Reynes, the so-called City of Sin. But when her mother goes missing, Enne must leave her finishing school - and her reputation - behind to follow her mother's trail to the city where no one survives uncorrupted.

Thirteen bibliomysteries by best-selling and award-winning authors are contained in this first of volume of a must-listen collection.

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.”

As private eye Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the megarich to jazz joints where you can get beaten up between sets, The Moving Target blends sex, greed, misdirected love, and family hatred into an explosive crime novel.

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.

Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer....

The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country's finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.

Sori. Western military generals shudder when they hear the name. It is a remote, inaccessible village in Afghanistan, high up in the Hindu Kush mountains. It is where a dreaded Taliban terrorist hides and from where he conducts his murderous raids. Villagers have a special name for the mountain on which Sori is perched. Mountain of Death. Sori is also where the Taliban hold three American soldiers captive. All attempts to free them have failed. As the terrorists threaten to execute the soldiers, Zeb Carter volunteers to mount a rescue attempt. Alone.

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.

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.

In the jungles of Southeast Asia, American sniper Mack Bolan honed his skills. After 12 years, with 95 confirmed hits, he returns home to Massachusetts. But it's not to reunite with his family, it's to bury them - victims in a mass murder/suicide. Even though Bolan's own father pulled the trigger, he knows the old man was no killer. He was driven to madness by Mafia thugs who have turned his idyllic hometown into a new kind of war zone.

I know all about being afraid of the dark. Like my uncle, in my thirties I found my way into my own dark forest, face-to-face with the big bad wolf. He was so close to me the whole time, I could taste the blood on his breath. Meeting him felt like a fairytale. I fact, I met him at a bar called the Wolf's Lair. A sensational trial for an historic serial murder. A missing woman with a trail of secrets. A top lawyer famous for defending notorious criminals. A retired homicide cop hunting for the truth.

Matt Helm, code name Eric, has been recently reactivated as an operative for a secret American government organization after 15 years as a sedentary photographer and family man in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In his first assignment after returning to the service, he is sent to Sweden to eliminate Caselius, a long-time enemy agent. In order to do so, he must leave a trail of bodies in his wake.

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.

Fenner burned Rosenfeld’s message, reminding himself wryly that he was behaving in the very best tradition. This was a game not too difficult to learn, he thought. A game? A game in deadly earnest. A vacation in Venice that was grim business. A girl constantly beside him who wasn’t his. How the hell had he walked into this upside-down world? Where, he wondered suddenly, would Venice lead?

As a member of a New York Mafia family, Levi Yoder's role is unique: He's a fixer, a solver of problems, a man whose code puts loyalty above all else, yet he's a man with a conscience. In the Inside Man, Levi's search for the kidnapped grandchild of a Japanese mob boss plunges him into a world filled with chaos. When he's falsely accused of a heinous series of crimes, the FBI makes Levi an offer he can't refuse: use his mob connections to help investigate the murders of several undercover agents or find himself in jail awaiting trial, without a way to clear his name.

Newly minted San Francisco police detective Manhattan Sloane lets no one get close. Especially lovers. Sloane has her reasons for keeping the world at arm's length. But then her first childhood crush, DEA Agent Finn Harper, reappears and changes everything. Harper has arrived in San Francisco to investigate a new street drug weaving its way into the city - a drug that has personal ties for Sloane. The two find themselves thrown together as they team up to take down a ruthless cartel lord. Soon, sparks fly as old feelings surface.

When a dispute among the fellows of St. Severin's College, Oxford University, reaches a stalemate, Lord Peter Wimsey discovers that as the Duke of Denver he is "the Visitor" - charged with the task of resolving the issue. It is time for Lord Peter and his detective novelist wife Harriet to revisit their beloved Oxford, where their long and literate courtship finally culminated in their engagement and marriage.

After a whirlwind romance, Taryn Young is preparing to board a plane at Houston International Airport, bound for a dream honeymoon, when a bomb decimates the terminal. Injured but still alive, she awakens to discover her husband is missing, and they're both considered prime suspects in the attack. Further, the FBI is convinced her husband isn't who he appears to be. Agent Grayson Hall's number-one priority is to catch those responsible for the day's act of terror.