Dark Mystery

My name’s Ernest Cunningham. I used to be a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, until I found myself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones. I’d hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays. I was wrong. So here I am, backstage at the show of world-famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered. My suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection.

Meet Tommy Martini, the monk with an anger management problem. His meditations are interrupted by a legacy from his uncle, a crooked priest. Arriving in a New Age Arizona town to claim his inheritance, Brother Tommy meets a charismatic, smoking-hot cult leader who claims that women are being impregnated by alien beings while they sleep. Tommy’s own sleep is disturbed - by cartel hitmen, Mafia bill collectors, and women intrigued by his vow of chastity.

It's a week before Christmas, but Milwaukee bar owner Mackenzie "Mack" Dalton is hardly in good spirits. Chilled to the core by the murder of bouncer Gary Gunderson, Mack is determined to use her extra-perceptive senses to identify the gunman responsible. Did Gary's patchy past brew up some fatal trouble, or could his death be linked to a series of cryptic letters concocted by Mack's anonymous adversary? With a second case to crack, innocent lives at stake, and a media frenzy in their midst, Mack and her barstool detectives have little time to mull over the grim details.

Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns that a local teenage girl has gone missing.

Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now known as Texoma. A world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted, especially by a young gunslinger named Lizbeth Rose. Battered by a run across the border to Mexico Lizbeth Rose takes a job offer from a pair of Russian wizards to be their local guide and gunnie. For the wizards, Gunnie Rose has already acquired a fearsome reputation and they’re at a desperate crossroad, even if they won’t admit it.

Acclaimed author and historian Alan Furst has written several historical fiction novels, such as Blood of Victory and Kingdom of Shadows. In Dark Star, André Szara is a Polish journalist who becomes a spy for the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. Through Szara’s character, the beginnings of World War II are revealed.

New sheriff Bree Taggert is called to a shooting in a campground shuttered for the winter. But she arrives to find a perplexing crime. There is no shooter, no victim, and no blood. No one but Bree believes the sole witness, Alyssa, a homeless teenager who insists she saw her friend shot. Bree calls in former deputy Matt Flynn and his K-9 to track the killer and search for Alyssa’s friend. They discover the battered corpse of a missing university student under the ice in Grey Lake - but it’s not the victim they were looking for.

Inspector de Silva's back with a new case to solve when the arrival in the hill town of Nuala of the heir to an English earldom leads to a mysterious death. Throw in a mega-rich Romanian count, his glamorous countess and an enigmatic British army officer and the scene is set for another colourful and entertaining mystery.

When the Lords of the Icelandic Elves summon me to use my talents to find a lost dragon's egg, I find it hard to say no. I've seen what a dragon can do, and a young, just-hatched dragon is a being of pure destruction. But word of the egg gets out, and the race to find it begins. Mages from many realms are on the hunt - including a dragon - and they don't always play well together. Unless I want to join the casualties, I need to find that egg and return it to where it belongs. Luckily, I have help, but I wish that damned golden-winged Nephilim would keep his shirt on.

The New York Times best-selling Mortal Instruments continues - and so do the thrills and danger for Jace, Clary, and Simon. Can the lost be reclaimed? What price is too high to pay for love? Who can be trusted when sin and salvation collide? Darkness threatens to claim the Shadowhunters in the harrowing fifth book of the Mortal Instruments series.

A freighter carrying top-secret computers of unparalleled capability disappears in the Western Pacific. While searching for a lost treasure that once belonged to the famous Chinese pirate queen, Ching Shih, Kurt Austin and Joe Zavala are redirected to look for the missing vessel. Discovering that the sinking of the ship is just part of an intricate web of deception, they find themselves in the middle of a cyber-war between rival groups of hackers, both of whom want to control the flow of data around the world.

Chief Inspector Brian Hooley has a plan, and it won't make him popular. He wants to bring back autistic detective Jonathan Roper. Currently suspended on misconduct charges, his condition, coupled with a relentless work ethic, makes Roper a unique investigator with observational skills that allow him to see what others miss. But he is also a complex man who doesn't get social boundaries, and plenty of his colleagues just don't like him. Hooley doesn't care about that. He knows Roper is the one to make a difference.

Zombie, Indiana explores the impact of an invading zombie horde on a trio of Hoosier protagonists…each of whom have some dark secrets to keep. When the governor’s daughter mysteriously disappears on a field trip, IMPD Special Sergeant James Nolan, scholarship student Kesha Washington, and Governor Hank Burleson must all come together not only to find the governor’s daughter, but also to undertake a quest to redeem the very soul of the state itself…all while under constant attack from the living dead.

Twelve years ago, Sarah Baker was abducted by the Watt Lake Killer and sexually assaulted for months before managing to escape. The killer was caught, but Sarah lost everything: her marriage, her child, and the life she loved.

Struggling with PTSD, Sarah changes her name to Olivia West and finds sanctuary working on Broken Bar Ranch. But as her scars finally begin to heal, a cop involved with her horrific case remains convinced the Watt Lake Killer is still out there.

Scottsdale, Arizona, may not be the liveliest place on earth, but it's never been as dead as this. The first annual Old Town Zombie Walk is announced, and Mel, Angie, and the Fairy Tale Cupcake crew are donning their best undead attire to sell some horror-themed desserts to the hungry hordes. But fun turns to fright when Mel finds a real dead body in a prop casket outside of the bakery's truck - and the corpse looks alarmingly like a zombie of their own. Mel worries that someone near and dear was the real target.

James Spencer is hardly the typical troubled youth who ends up at Whisperwood School for Boys. Instead of hating the strict schedules and tight oversight by staff, James blossoms, quickly making friends, indulging in his love of writing, and contemplating the merits of sneaking love poems to the elusive and aloof William Esher. And, when the normally collected William stumbles in one night, shaken and ranting of ghosts, James is the only one who believes him.

In 1903, tensions between Britain and Germany are starting to loom over Europe, something that has not gone unnoticed by Lady Emily and her husband, Colin Hargreaves. An agent of the Crown, Colin carries the weight of the empire, but his focus is drawn to Italy by a series of burglaries at his daughter’s palazzo in Florence - burglaries that might have international ramifications. He and Emily travel to Tuscany where, soon after their arrival, a stranger is thrown to his death from the roof onto the marble palazzo floor.

The Cold Creek Highway stretches close to five hundred miles through British Columbia’s rugged wilderness to the west coast. Isolated and vast, it has become a prime hunting ground for predators. For decades, young women traveling the road have gone missing. Motorists and hitchhikers, those passing through or living in one of the small towns scattered along the region, have fallen prey time and again. And no killer or abductor who has stalked the highway has ever been brought to justice.

Who hasn’t wondered for a split second what the world would be like if a person who is the object of your affliction ceased to exist? But then you’ve probably never heard of The McMasters Conservatory, dedicated to the consummate execution of the homicidal arts. To gain admission, a student must have an ethical reason for erasing someone who deeply deserves a fate no worse (nor better) than death. The campus of this “Poison Ivy League” college—its location unknown to even those who study there—is where you might find yourself the practice target of a classmate.

Reporter Freya Sinclair has always known she was different. While waiting on the outcome of an autism assessment, Freya uproots her life in Glasgow, quitting her job at one of Scotland’s top broadsheets and taking a local beat in her childhood home of Orkney. But her plans for a quiet life are shattered when human remains are exhumed by a winter storm on Orkney’s wild Atlantic coast. The identity of the bones opens old wounds in the islands, and sheds light on a darker truth nobody wants to accept.