Crime Noir

The halls are decked, the deck is stacked, and here comes that jolly old elf. Junior Bender, divorced father of one and burglar extraordinaire, finds himself stuck inside the Edgerton Mall, and not just as a last-minute shopper (though he is that too). Edgerton isn't exactly the epicenter of holiday cheer, despite its two Santas, canned Christmas music, chintzy bows, and festive lights. The mall is a fossil of an industry in decline; many of its stores are closed, and to make matters worse, there is a rampant shoplifting problem.

If you like audiobooks laced with dark, gritty suspense, you won’t be disappointed by this addition to the adventures of Johnny Deal. Set in Miami, each novel in Les Standiford’s gripping series glows with the heat of danger and deception. In the wake of a major hurricane, Johnny Deal, a Miami contractor, is busy with renovations and enjoying new prosperity. But the ambitious plans of a Cuban sugar baron are about to remove the sweet taste of success from Johnny’s life. Hired thugs send Deal’s plans up in flames, but it’s not just the contracting business that is at stake.

When all contact is lost with two Icelanders working in a harsh and sparsely populated area on the northeast coast of Greenland, Thora is hired to investigate. Is there any connection with the woman who vanished from the site some months earlier? Why are the locals so hostile? And could one of the team staying at the site with Thora be responsible for the disappearances?

DI Amy Winter faces her toughest case yet as a serial killer couple kidnap and hunt their prey. After capture, the victims are released from an unknown location each day. But freedom does not come easily, as the victim’s injuries become more severe, and if they haven’t escaped by day four, they won’t live to see the fifth.

As the country bakes under the relentless summer sun, a young doctor is found brutally murdered at his home in a picturesque Cambridgeshire village. Is his death connected to his private life - or his professional one? Dr Joshua Ainsworth worked at an all-female detention centre, one still recovering from a major scandal a few years before. Was he the whistle-blower - or an instigator? As Detective Sergeant Ferreira and Detective Inspector Zigic begin to painstakingly reconstruct Dr Ainsworth’s last days, they uncover yet more secrets and more suspects.

A completely revised edition of the first Henry Rios mystery, The Little Death, Lay Your Sleeping Head introduces Michael Nava’s singular protagonist, gay Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios. Rios, beset by personal and professional problems, begins a passionate affair with the black sheep heir to a great California fortune who tells Rios an improbable tale of murder and sexual predation in his wealthy family. When the young man is found dead of an apparent drug overdose, Rios begins an investigation that ultimately reveals much more than murder.

At the height of World War II, the famous writer Ernest Hemingway sought permission from the U.S. government to operate a spy ring out of his house in the Cuban countryside. This much is true... It is the summer of ’42 and FBI agent Joe Lucas has come to Cuba at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover to keep an eye on Hemingway. The great writer has assembled a ragtag spy ring that he calls the “Crook Factory” to play a dangerous game of amateur espionage. But then Lucas and Hemingway, against all the odds, uncover a critical piece of intelligence - and the game turns deadly.

Sorenson, Wisconsin's deputy coroner, Mattie Winston, is back on the job...in a nursing home examining the body of Bernie Chase - the now former president of the Twilight Home's board of directors - who is covered in a powder used to turn liquids to solids. The home's residents are certain Bernie was offing the patients who cost him too much...and the patient who found him can't remember a thing.

It's Christmas Day in the sleepy town of Sorenson, Wisconsin, but instead of unwrapping presents, deputy coroner Mattie Winston is at the burnt remains of a house, where a charred body has been found. The victim is none other than Jack Allen - a paraplegic who recently won a huge casino jackpot. Upon closer inspection, Mattie and Detective Steve Hurley are convinced Jack was murdered to steal his winnings, giving the phrase Black Jack a whole new meaning....

In recent decades, ostensibly to combat the rising tide of criminality in Mumbai’s underworld, the Indian Police Service has carried out many hundreds of extrajudicial assassinations of suspects. Karan, an expert sharpshooter in an elite branch dispensed with dishing out this vigilante justice, has a difficult choice: Should he continue to blindly follow orders from his superiors, regardless of their moral standing, or take matters into his own hands and do what he believes to be right?

The crime fiction canopy's a broad one, with room to give shelter to writing of all sorts, as editor Lawrence Block shows with At Home in the Dark.

Sam Kelson is a PI like no other. As a consequence of being shot in the head while working undercover as a Chicago cop, he suffers from disinhibition: He cannot keep silent or tell lies when questioned. But truth be told - and Kelson always tells the truth - he still feels compelled to investigate and, despite the odds, he's good at his job.

Private detective Sam Jones’s six-year search for an 8-year-old boy ends with gunshots in a basement and cold bodies that would eventually lead the police straight to him. Jones had never promised Ruth Verne that he would find her son alive, but he knew deep down that she believed he would - worse, he had believed it too. Jones wasn’t ready to look Ruth in the eye and tell her he had failed. He wasn’t ready to admit that he lost everything and had nothing to show for it. But an unsigned note scrawled on a bathroom door gives Jones a second chance - a chance for redemption.

There has never been a woman as beautiful as top model Delora Deanne. But Delora Deanne doesn’t really exist. Unknown to the panting public, Delora is a composite of many women. Her face is played by Gertrude Bragg. Torso and legs by Eula Stolz. Hands, Eva Lou Strauss. Brains, Hazel Swackhammer. But now, Delora is coming apart. Hazel Swackhammer receives the first in what is to be a series of beautifully wrapped presents. Inside, she is surprised to find a pair of pale lavender gloves...containing the hands of Delora Deanne.

Douglas Rigby, attorney-at-law, is bankrupt. He's just sunk his last $200,000 - a clandestine "loan" from his last remaining client, former bigshot TV exec Glenn Haskill - into a cocaine deal gone wrong. The lesson? Never trust anyone else with the dirty work. Desperate to get back on top, Rigby formulates an art forgery scheme involving one of Glenn's priceless paintings, a victimless crime.

Things have gone from bad to worse for T.J. Peterson. The cops have kicked him off the force, his girlfriend called it quits, his best friend and former partner won't speak to him, and his estranged 20-year-old daughter, Katy, continues to torment him with photos of the hellholes she is living in. Add in a shrink's diagnosis of PTSD, and Peterson is barely holding it together. When he receives an anonymous text message with an online link to a video of a young journalist being tortured, Peterson does the only thing he knows how to do - he sets out to save her.

When a neighbor finds a grim discovery in the waterways of Venice Beach, Linx Maxwell gets an unexpected visitor in the form of a new ghost. The only problem? Her new ghost doesn't see eye to eye with her old one. Detective Frank Bogle doesn't know what to make of the young victim. Haunting Linx is his job, and he doesn't want company. All the same, he can hardly deny that the excitement of an unsolved crime intrigues him. The new ghost claims he was murdered - and the trail leads right to the home of Linx's new client.

Wisecracking private detective Sam Rockwell is running for his life, but that doesn't keep him from taking the case of a Return who's slipped past Heaven's radar and overstayed his time on Earth. Together with his fiance, Amelia, Sam brawls and dances his way through San Francisco to unravel a zany mystery where nothing is what it seems at first blush.

Just when DI Tom Mariner seems to be settling down with his new girlfriend...everything kicks off. First, a badly decomposed body of a young woman is found in a Birmingham sewer. The police can't identify her and dub her "Madeleine". Then, an important politician and his wife are shot on an isolated road. "Vengeance is mine" is scrawled in blood at the scene. Finally, a bomb explosion in the busy city kills five people, causing chaos and panic. Can Detective Mariner and his team get to the bottom of crimes that will come very close to home for him and his team?

Two teenagers go missing on the same day. Just a coincidence? They are from very different backgrounds: Yasmin is the talented, grammar-school-educated daughter of devout Muslim professionals. Ricky disappears after storming out of his council house after an argument with his mum's latest boyfriend. The press is convinced Yasmin's disappearance is a racially motivated abduction. Her family has been the target of a far-right group. But DI Mariner soon discovers Yasmin is far from the innocent victim her parents think she is.