Dark Mystery

This latest book - a love letter to listeners young and old about the vagaries of real life - longtime fans and new listeners alike will experience Snicket's distinctive voice in a new way. This true story - as true as Lemony Snicket himself - begins with a puzzling note under his door: You had poison for breakfast. Following a winding trail of clues to solve the mystery of his own demise, Snicket takes us on a thought-provoking tour of his predilections.

Dark State ups the ante on the already volatile situations laid out in the sleek techno-thriller Empire Games, the start to Stross' new story-line and a perfect entry point for new listeners, in The Merchant Princes series . In the near-future, the collision of two nuclear superpowers across timelines, one in the midst of a technological revolution and the other a hyper-police state, is imminent. In Commissioner Miriam Burgeson's timeline, her top level agents run a high risk extraction of a major political player.

Violin prodigy Cara Delaney has finally found peace in her career as a professional musician and stability in her relationship with her guardians, forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy SEAL Joe Quinn. If only Jock Gavin, Cara's lifelong friend and a man with his own twisted history, would even talk to her, everything would be perfect. But the carefully constructed life Cara has built for herself is suddenly threatened when she is kidnapped by a mysterious man from her grandfather's past, setting off a violent chain of events that puts everyone Cara loves in danger.

As if the last few months haven't been hard enough--complete with threats on her life and the return of her first love, Jon--Annie has to figure out whether or not to believe a woman who claims to be her sister, Sarah, who was abducted twenty-four years ago at age five. Annie's eight-year-old daughter, Kylie, has plenty of questions about what's going on in her mother's life--but there are some stories Annie doesn't want uncovered.

Michael Gallatin is a British spy with a peculiar talent: the ability to transform himself into a wolf. Although his work in North Africa helped the Allies win the continent in the early days of World War II, he quit the service when a German spy shot his lover in her bed. Now, three years later, the army asks him to end his retirement and parachute into occupied Paris. A mysterious German plan called the Iron Fist threatens the D-Day invasion, and the Nazi in charge is the spy who betrayed Michael’s lover. The werewolf goes to France for king and country, hoping for a chance at bloody vengeance.

Liv knows what kind of boy her grandson is. She knows Seb would never do anything to hurt his girlfriend, Izzy. But could the shadow cast by his father be influencing the boy she loves? Caitlyn, Izzy’s mother, is desperate to reach her daughter, but she only seems to push her further away. Can she help her daughter or are Caitlyn's own demons standing in the way? When an inappropriate photo of Izzy is shared online, no one is prepared for the ripples that threaten to tear their lives apart. Will the truth come out before it's too late? Or is the damage already done?

All Bunny McGarry wants is a spot of breakfast and a decent cup of tea. So imagine how annoyed he gets when two masked men attempt to rob the New York diner he is in. Unfortunately, dealing with that problem just leads to a whole lot more. One of the diner’s other customers isn’t who she appears to be, and the odds aren’t great that she is going to live to see another breakfast.

It all begins with a call to the police. A 16-year-old boy, Roger Eriksson, has gone missing in the town of Västerås. A search is organized and a group of young scouts makes an awful discovery in a marsh: Roger is dead. Meanwhile, Sebastian Bergman, psychologist, criminal profiler, and one of Sweden's top experts on serial killers, is in Västerås to settle his mother's estate following her death. Sebastian has withdrawn from police work after the death of his wife and daughter in the 2004 tsunami.

Having been abandoned on the steps of an orphanage as an infant, lovable car thief and Dublin charmer Mahony assumed all his life that his mother had simply given him up. But when he receives an anonymous note suggesting that foul play may have led to his mother's disappearance, he sees only one option: to return to the rural Irish village where he was born and find out what really happened 26 years ago.

US Marshal Regan Merritt never bought the FBI’s theory that her ten-year-old son’s murder was tied to her job. Yet as leads went cold, she’d had to walk away from the marshals, the case and her now ex-husband, Grant, who blamed her for Chase’s death.

Although it is autumn in the small English town of Bishop’s Lacey, the chapel is decked with exotic flowers. Yes, Flavia de Luce’s sister, Ophelia, is at last getting hitched, like a mule to a wagon. “A church is a wonderful place for a wedding”, muses Flavia, “surrounded as it is by the legions of the dead, whose listening bones bear silent witness to every promise made at the altar.”

After receiving an unexpected gift following her college graduation, aspiring journalist Adele Plank returns to the Pacific Northwest’s beautiful and isolated sea and shores landscape of the San Juan Islands, where she soon finds herself immersed in the shocking mystery of a young woman’s brutal murder. The deathly discovery rocks the island community, stirring doubts about their new sheriff and turning old friends into new rivals. Adele must determine who she can trust and who she cannot, even as a mysterious stranger provides her a critical clue.

Cassandra Palmer can see the future and communicate with spirits - talents that make her attractive to the dead and the undead alike. The ghosts of the dead aren't usually dangerous; they just like to talk...a lot. The undead are another matter. Like any sensible girl, Cassie tries to avoid vampires, but when the bloodsucking mafioso she escaped three years ago finds Cassie again with vengeance on his mind, she's forced to turn to the vampire Senate for protection.

Although her childhood was haunted by a famous crime, Rhinannon’s life is normal now that her celebrity has dwindled. By day her job as an editorial assistant is demeaning and unsatisfying. By evening she dutifully listens to her friend’s plans for marriage and babies whilst secretly making a list. A kill list. From the man on the Lidl checkout who always mishandles her apples, to the driver who cuts her off on her way to work, to the people who have got it coming, Rhiannon’s ready to get her revenge. Because the girl everyone overlooks might be able to get away with murder.

FBI Agent Ella Dark, 29, is given her big chance to achieve her life’s dream: to join the Behavioral Crimes Unit. Ella’s hidden obsession of gaining an encyclopedic knowledge of serial killers has led to her being singled out for her brilliant mind and invited to join the big leagues. But this killer defies all Ella’s expectations. What message is he trying to send? Has Ella finally met her match?

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.

On the shores of a tranquil fjord in northern Iceland, a man is brutally beaten to death on a bright summer's night. As the 24-hour light of the arctic summer is transformed into darkness by an ash cloud from a recent volcanic eruption, a young reporter leaves Reykajvik to investigate on her own, unaware that an innocent person's life hangs in the balance. Ari Thor Arason and his colleagues on the tiny police force in Siglufjordur struggle with an increasingly perplexing case, while their own serious personal problems push them to the limit.

FBI Agent Ella Dark has studied serial killers from the time she could read, devastated by the murder of her own sister, and has gained an encyclopedic knowledge of murderers. A murderer obsessed with past serial killers seems to be copycatting their work—but with one curious difference. Can Ella piece together what he is hinting at? Or will this diabolical killer outsmart her?

When Chaz Perron's wife discovers that he is running a scam (posing as a marine biologist to doctor water samples so that an agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the Everglades), he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner. Unlucky for Chaz, Joey survives clutching a bale of Jamaican pot. Rescued from the Atlantic by a former police officer, Mick Stranahan, she decides not to report him but instead haunt and taunt him, with Mick's help, by playing dead.

New Year's Eve should be a time for celebrating. A chance to spend time with loved ones and look forward to the year ahead. For DSI William Lorimer, however, this New Year's Eve will be one that he will never forget. Called to a house after gunshots are reported, the carnage he finds there will have a powerful impact on his life - leaving him questioning his future with Police Scotland.