Dark Mystery

Three years ago, an archaeological expedition led by Vatican scholar Juan Vargas discovered something unusual on the shores of the Dead Sea. Early the next morning, Father Vargas, and the artifact he uncovered, disappeared without a trace. Until now. An injured and badly dehydrated Father Vargas wanders out of the New Mexican desert, telling a wild story about a secret research installation and bloodthirsty demons hunting men through its halls.

The house sits stoic and slightly askew off the coast of Raven's Head. Its off-kilter windows are both charming and disorienting, its walls of overstuffed bookshelves both comforting and claustrophobic. When Leo and Lark Parrish arrive at their vacation home with their parents, their mother's idea of a quintessential Maine getaway seems like both a blessing and a curse.

Seventeen-year-old Anouk envies the human world, where people known as Pretties lavish themselves in fast cars, high fashion, and have the freedom to fall in love. But Anouk can never have those things, because she is not really human. Enchanted from animal to human girl and forbidden to venture beyond her familiar Parisian prison, Anouk is a Beastie: destined for a life surrounded by dust bunnies and cinders serving Mada Vittora, the evil witch who spelled her into existence. That is, until one day she finds her mistress murdered in a pool of blood - and Anouk is accused of the crime.

Two years ago Joseph King was convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison. He was a "fallen" Amish man and, according to local law enforcement, a known drug user with a violent temper. Now King has escaped, and he’s headed for Painters Mill. News of a murderer on the loose travels like wildfire and putting Chief of Police Kate Burkholder and her team of officers on edge. A nightmare scenario becomes reality when King shows up with a gun and kidnaps his five children from their Amish uncle’s house. He’s armed and desperate with nothing left to lose.

Lena's best friend, Allison, is in a panic. On a walk in the woods by her home, Allison discovers the body of her mail carrier, an argumentative man who recently had a falling out with Allison's husband. Lena quickly realizes Allison has nothing to worry about, as the murder weapon points to a different suspect altogether: Lena's embattled boyfriend, Sam West.

I'm a werewolf King who chose to step down out of grief for my mate. For centuries I've been alone, choosing to live a life of modesty despite the wealth surrounding me. I deserve to be punished. I crave things I have no business craving. And it is manifesting itself in a way I'm terrified I won't be able to control any longer. Especially since she arrived: a vampire orphan - beaten beyond recognition. My blood calls to her in a way that makes no sense. I'm a wolf. She's a vampire. The two don't mate.

Drugged and kidnapped from his Edinburgh home, the realisation soon dawns that he’s been locked inside a shipping container - but what Bart doesn’t know is that he’s now heading for France, where his unspeakable fate is already sealed.... DCI Ava Turner and DI Luc Callanach are working on separate cases that soon collide as it becomes clear that the men and women being shipped to France are being traded for women trafficked into Scotland. With so many lives at stake, it seems an impossible task - but there’s no option of failure when Bart and so many others will soon be dead...

Beware what lies beneath.... One fateful, starry night, three friends embark on a secret camping trip, but only two return home. Thirty years later, the body of a teenage boy rises from the depths of England's biggest reservoir and threatens to expose a killer who has lain dormant...until now. Detective Chief Inspector Ryan returns from honeymoon to face danger from all sides. In the depths of Kielder Forest, a murderer has escaped justice before and will do anything to protect the secrets of the past.

Anita Blake is a vampire hunter. But when someone else sets his sights on her prey, she must save them both from the inferno.

Rowan Wolff was five years old when she, her brother, and their babysitter were kidnapped by a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest. The babysitter was murdered. Rowan was saved. Her brother was killed and buried in the forest, his remains never found. The convicted killer refuses to say where he buried the boy. Twenty-five years later, Rowan is committed to search and rescue with her faithful canine and is obsessed with finding her brother’s grave—and closure.

Lisa Power is a tortured ghost of her former self. The author of a bestselling thriller called Thief River Falls, named after her rural Minnesota hometown, Lisa is secluded in her remote house as she struggles with the loss of her entire family: a series of tragedies she calls the “Dark Star.” Then a nameless runaway boy shows up at her door with a terrifying story: He’s just escaped death after witnessing a brutal murder - a crime the police want to cover up. Obsessed with the boy’s safety, Lisa resolves to expose this crime.

Kieran Murphy is an Irish mob boss and one of the most powerful men in Boston. When he walks me home, people step aside out of respect for him. He could have any woman he wants. So why does he have eyes only for me? Is it how he has to lift my chin with his fingers to keep my eyes level with his when he scolds me and how I cover my bottom instinctively when he tells me that I've earned a spanking? Or is it how I quiver at the thought of everything I'm too ashamed to beg him to do to me? Maybe it's all of those, but I'm pretty sure there's something else too.

Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life. At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely. Until the day a violent stranger changed the fate of her family forever. Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined. Then she gets the phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more.

For Alice and her partner Joe, moving to the sleepy village of Penton is a chance to embrace country life and prepare for the birth of their first child. He can take up woodwork; maybe she’ll learn to make jam? But the rural idyll they’d hoped for doesn’t quite pan out when a dead body is discovered at their local prenatal class, and they find themselves suspects in a murder investigation. With a cloud of suspicion hanging over the heads of the whole group, Alice and her new-found pregnant friends set out to solve the mystery and clear their names, with the help of her troublesome dog, Helen.

Dorothy Graham is dead, which is inconvenient, not least for her. Luckily, she has planned for this eventuality. Now, if any of the truly dreadful people she is related to want to get their hands on her money, they’re going to have to do so via a fiendish difficult and frankly bizarre competition of Dorothy’s devising. After all, just because you’re dead, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a last laugh at the expense of people who made your life miserable.

Using a cutting-edge technology called DHI - which stands for both Disney Host Interactive and Daylight Hologram Imaging - Finn Whitman, an Orlando teen, and four other kids are transformed into hologram projections that guide guests through the park. The new technology turns out, however, to have unexpected effects that are both thrilling and scary. Soon Finn finds himself transported in his DHI form into the Magic Kingdom at night. Is it real? Is he dreaming? Finn’s confusion only increases when he encounters Wayne, an elderly Imagineer who tells him that the park is in grave danger.

Special Agent Sadie Price, a 29-year-old rising star in the FBI’s BAU unit, stuns her colleagues by requesting reassignment to the FBI’s remote Alaskan field office. Back in her home state, a place she vowed she would never return, Sadie, running from a secret in her recent past and back into her old one, finds herself facing her demons—including her sister’s unsolved murder—while assigned to hunt down a new serial killer.

DCI Harry Grimm smells trouble brewing. As the chief inspector and his team prepare for a harsh winter storm, a call comes in from an old pal that a remote PI training session in the Dales he is attending has abruptly ended in a suspicious death. And while the gruff detective struggles through a blizzard to reach the crime scene, the residents of a nearby house come to a fatal end.

Bunny McGarry has finally got a lead in his mission to find the Sisters of the Saint, but the lead, one Father Gabriel de Marcos, isn’t willing to play ball. Desperate times call for desperate measures and Bunny has to put the padre under surveillance with a little help from some old friends. Father Gabriel runs a boxing club at the bad end of the Bronx, battling to keep kids out of gangs - noble, thankless work. Thing is, saints don’t typically have assassins sent after them. What sins are hidden in the padre’s mysterious past?

Books four, five and six in the Skulduggery Pleasant series - known collectively as the Death Bringer Trilogy, Derek Landy's fantastically imaginative series about our favourite dead detective.