Crime Suspense

The wealthy Agatha Dawson is dead and there are no apparent signs of foul play. Lord Peter Wimsey, however, senses that something is amiss and he refuses to let the case rest - even without any clues or leads. Suddenly, he is faced with another murder - Agatha's maid. Can super-sleuth Wimsey find the murderer and solve the case before he becomes the killer's next victim?

The bodies are found in towns and cities around Puget Sound. The young women who are the victims had nothing in common - except the agony of their final moments. But somebody carefully chose them to stalk, capture, and torture...a depraved killer whose cunning is matched only by the depth of his bloodlust. But the dying has only just begun. And the next victim will be the most shocking of all....

When Inspector Peter Glebsky arrives at a remote ski chalet on vacation, the last thing he intends to do is get involved in any police work. He's there to ski, drink brandy, and loaf around in blissful solitude. But he hadn't counted on the other vacationers, an eccentric bunch, including a famous hypnotist, a physicist with a penchant for gymnastic feats, a sulky teenager of indeterminate gender, and the mysterious Mr. and Mrs. Moses.

Commissario Guido Brunetti's career is under threat when his professional and personal lives unexpectedly intersect. In the chill of the Venetian dawn, a sudden act of vandalism shatters the quiet of the deserted city, and Brunetti is shocked to find that the culprit waiting to be apprehended at the scene is a member of his own family. Meanwhile, he is also under pressure from his superiors to solve a daring robbery with connections to a suspicious accidental death. Could the two crimes be connected? And will Brunetti be able to prove his family's innocence before it's too late?

When the treasured 15th century Cherringham Chalice is stolen from St. James, it looks at first like the work of a professional gang, robbing local churches. But Jack and Sarah realise that there must have been someone on the inside, helping the thieves - and they start to investigate. Can it really be possible that a member of the church council is guilty? Soon Jack and Sarah discover that even in this world of trust and faith there can be secrets, lies ... and real danger.

The polluted waters of the canals in Venice are an ever-present issue; but environmental concerns become significant in Commissario Guido Brunetti's work when an investigator from the Carabiniere—looking into the illegal hauling of garbage—asks for a favor. But the investigator is not the only one with a special request. Brunetti's father-in-law needs help and a mysterious woman comes into the picture. And the Commissario soon finds himself in the middle of an investigation into murder and corruption more dangerous than anything he's seen before.

Mike and Callie Simpkins moved north to restart their lives and get their finances back on track. Their son Braxton immerses himself in an online game-world of crime and gangs. When he decides to meet some of the players in the real world, tragedy strikes. Detective John Swift must untangle a web of virtual and real crimes in order to solve this complex mystery. And as the family copes with unimaginable grief, even Braxton’s stepfather, Mike, comes under suspicion.

Ryan and Sophie are a golden couple in Melbourne, the charming, salt-of-the-earth country boy and the charismatic, gorgeous social butterfly. When Ryan’s father dies, leaving them the family farm, it seems like a chance for Ryan to get back to his roots and for Sophie to embrace the bucolic country life she always dreamed of. But reality proves very different, and years spent struggling against an implacable drought have pushed their marriage – and finances – to the absolute limit.

Gus Murphy thought he had the world all figured out. A retired Suffolk County cop, he had everything a man could want: a great marriage, two kids, a nice house, and the rest of his life ahead of him. But when tragedy strikes, his life is thrown into complete disarray. In the course of a single deadly moment, his family is blown apart, and Gus is transformed from a man who believes he understands everything into a man who understands nothing.

Against the romantic backdrop of Edwardian Egypt, the irresistible Amelia Peabody and her charmingly unconventional family prove themselves to be formidable foes of villainy. In The Ape Who Guards the Balance, Amelia must muster all of her considerable skills of detection to unravel a snarled web of stolen archeological treasures, murderous cults, and fallen women.

A truck crashes and spills its dangerous cargo on a treacherous road in the Italian Dolomite mountains. Meanwhile, in Santa Lucia, a prominent international lawyer is found dead aboard an intercity train. Suspecting a connection between the two tragedies, Commissario Guido Brunetti digs deep for an answer, stumbling upon a seedy Venetian bar that holds the key to a crime network that reaches far beyond the laguna.

Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Roger "Butch" Karp has been around New York long enough to realize that the judicial system can be dirty and cynical. But he still believes in justice. So when a vicious sociopath tries to dodge a brutal murder charge by convincing the court he is incompetent to stand trial, Karp teams up with firecracker Assistant DA Marlene Ciampi to unleash the full force of their relentless energy, hardboiled wit, and passion for the truth to put the killer away for good. They will accept no lesser plea.

George Arrow, a good-looking, independently wealthym and single man of 36, has just been diagnosed with a weak heart. A heart so weak, his doctor tells him, he must go to extraordinary lengths to avoid putting the slightest strain upon it. On his doctor's advice, George packs up his life in Dublin and boards a train to the Bay of Galway where he intends to live quietly in a hotel and await the inevitable end. On the train, he meets John Burden, and as they chat, George realizes that his new acquaintance is an odious man.

They call me Ghost for a reason. Silent and in the shadows, I don't make my move until I am absolutely sure of everything. Four years ago I was sure about Jenna. My best friend's kid sister had grown up into a spitfire I couldn't resist. One night we stopped resisting. We promised we'd keep it a secret. It was a one-time mistake, but we'd put it behind us. Jenna tried to get out of our corrupt town, but it pulled her back in again. Now she needs help. I'll do all of that for her, if she'll just shut the hell up and let me. She can even keep all of her secrets, except for one.

On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, England, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the reenactors discover a skeleton that is female, headless, and only about twenty years old. One of them, a professor who played a Cavalier, is later found murdered. In the course of his investigation, Peter Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member.

A drop, in spook parlance, is the passing on of secret information. It's also what happens just before you hit the ground. Old spooks carry the memory of tradecraft in their bones, and when Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from one pair of hands to another in a Marylebone cafe, he knows he's witnessed more than an innocent encounter. But in relaying his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits retired spies like Solly for MI5, he sets in motion a train of events that will alter lives.

In the winter of 1835, young Charles Dickens is a journalist on the rise at the Evening Chronicle. Invited to dinner at the estate of the newspaper's co-editor, Charles is smitten with his boss' daughter, vivacious 19-year-old Kate Hogarth. They are having the best of times when a scream shatters the pleasant evening. Charles, Kate, and her father rush to the neighbors' home, where Miss Christiana Lugoson lies unconscious on the floor. By morning, the poor young woman will be dead.

It is 1884, and when a fellow landlady finds her lodger poisoned, Mrs. Hudson turns to Sherlock Holmes. The police suspect the landlady of murder, but Mrs. Hudson insists that her friend is innocent. Upon investigating, the companions discover that the lodger, a civil servant recently returned from India, was living in almost complete seclusion, and that his last act was to scrawl a mysterious message on a scrap of paper. The riddles pile up as aged big game hunter Allan Quatermain is spotted at the scene of the crime when Holmes and Watson investigate.

A few surgeries and some intensive training later, and Sal Cupertine is gone, having disappeared into the identity of Rabbi David Cohen. Leading his growing congregation in Las Vegas, overseeing the population and the temple and the new cemetery, Rabbi Cohen feels his wicked past slipping away from him, surprising even himself as he spouts quotes from the Torah. But the Mafia isn't quite done with him.

When the last honest citizen of Poisonville was murdered, the Continental Op stayed on to punish the guilty--even if that meant taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain. From the author of The Maltese Falcon.