Delaware Mysteries

For three months, the police find no clues in the stabbing death of Hope Devane, the author of a pop-psychology best-seller. So they turn to Dr. Alex Delaware to study the case for insights that might point to a killer. As Alex unlocks the private compartments of Hope's life, the murder looks calculated and vengeful. A study of her childhood reveals that she kept secrets from everyone. It also helps Alex set a trap for the killer.

A pool boy enters a secluded Bel Air property and discovers two bodies floating in the bright blue water: Gio Aggiunta, the playboy heir to an Italian shoe empire, and a gorgeous, even wealthier neighbor named Meagin March. A married neighbor. An illicit affair stoking rage is a perfect motive. But a “double” in this neighborhood of gated estates isn’t something you see every day. The house is untouched. No forced entry, no forensic evidence. The case has “that feeling,” and when that happens, Milo turns to his friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware.

A new patient, 24-year-old Lucy Lowell, has come to the semi-retired psychologist Alex Delaware, straight from the jury of a serial killer's grisly trial. The trial was harrowing enough, but now it's triggered a recurring and haunting dream in which Lucy, as a little girl, watches a gang of men bury a young woman's body in the woods.

Edgar Award winner Jonathan Kellerman once more explores the corruption of California's golden coast and produces a novel of complex characterizations and nonstop suspense. By the time psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware reached the school the damage was done: A sniper had opened fire on a crowded playground, but was gunned down before any children were hurt. While the TV news crews feasted on the scene and Alex began his therapy sessions with the traumatized children, he couldn't escape the image of a slight teenager clutching an oversized rifle.

LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Milo Sturgis is a master detective. He has a near-perfect solve rate, and he’s written his own rule book. Some of those successes - the toughest ones - have involved his best friend, the brilliant Psychologist Alex Delaware. But Milo doesn’t call Alex in unless cases are "different". This murder warrants an immediate call. Milo’s independence has been compromised as never before, as the department pressures him to cater to the demands of a mogul: a hard-to-fathom, megarich young woman who is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases.

Her name is Elise Freeman, and her chilling cry for help to whoever may be listening comes too late to save her. On a DVD found near her lifeless body, the emotionally and physically battered woman chronicles a year-and-a-half-long ordeal of monstrous abuse at the hands of three sadistic tormentors. But even more shocking than the lurid details is the revelation that the offenders, like their victim, are teachers at one of L.A.s most prestigious prep schools.

Lauren Teague is a beautiful, defiant, borderline-delinquent teenager when her parents bring her to Alex Delaware's office. But for all Alex's skill and effort, Lauren resists—angrily, provocatively. Reluctantly, the psychologist chalks Lauren up as one of the inevitable failures of a challenging profession. But years later, when Alex encounters Lauren as a stag party's featured entertainment, both doctor and patient are stricken with shame.

Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware confronts a killer who takes as much pleasure in matching wits with the police as in robbing human life. A diplomat's retarded daughter is murdered on a school field trip. The girl's father denies the possibility of a political motive, leaving LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his longtime friend, Alex Delaware, stymied. When another killing occurs, Alex finds himself ensnared in one of the most menacing cases of his career.

At nearly 100 years old, Thalia Mars is a far cry from the patients that child psychologist Alex Delaware normally treats. But the charming, witty woman convinces Alex to meet with her in a suite at the Aventura, a luxury hotel with a checkered history. What Thalia wants from Alex are answers to unsettling questions - about guilt, patterns of criminal behavior, victim selection. When Alex asks the reason for her morbid fascination, Thalia promises to tell all during their next session. When he shows up the following morning, he is met with silence: Thalia is dead.

Few know the city of Los Angeles the way #1 bestselling author and acclaimed suspense master Jonathan Kellerman does. His thrilling novels of psychological drama and criminal detection make the capital of dreams a living, breathing character in all its glamour and infamy. That storied history of fame, seduction, scandal, and murder looms large in Mystery, as Alex Delaware finds himself drawn into a twisting, shadowy whodunit that’s pure L.A. noir—and vintage Kellerman.

Unraveling the madness behind L.A.’s most baffling and brutal homicides is what sleuthing psychologist Alex Delaware does best. And putting the good doctor through his thrilling paces is what mystery fiction’s #1 bestselling master of psychological suspense Jonathan Kellerman does with incomparable brilliance. Kellerman’s universally acclaimed novels blend the addictive rhythms of the classic police procedural with chilling glimpses into the darkest depths of the human condition. For the compelling proof, look no further than Victims....

It's a story tailor-made for the nightly news: Dylan Meserve and Michaela Brand, young lovers and fellow acting students, vanish on the way home from a rehearsal. Three days later, the two of them are found in the remote mountains of Malibu, battered and terrified after a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a sadistic abductor.

Someone has murdered euthanasia champion Dr. Eldon Mate - a self-styled Dr. Death responsible for scores of assisted suicides. In a burst of bloody irony, the killer chooses to dispatch the doctor in the back of Mate's own suicide van, hooking him up to the killing apparatus dubbed "the Humanitron" - and adding some butchering touches of his own. The case is assigned to veteran LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis, who turns once again to his friend Dr. Alex Delaware.

LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis has solved a lot of murder cases. On many of them - the ones he calls "different" - he taps the brain of brilliant psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware. But neither Alex nor Milo are prepared for what they find on an early morning call to a deserted mansion in Bel Air. This one’s beyond different. This is predation, premeditation, and cruelty on a whole new level. Four people have been slaughtered and left displayed bizarrely and horrifically in a stretch limousine. Confounding the investigation, none of the victims seems to have any connection to any other.

Twenty-one-month-old Cassie Jones is bright, energetic, the picture of health. Yet her parents rush her to the emergency room night after night with medical symptoms no doctor can explain. Cassie's parents seem sympathetic and deeply concerned. Her favorite nurse is a model of devotion. Yet when child psychologist Alex Delaware is called in to investigate, instinct tells him that one of them may be a monster.

Dr. Woodrow Moreland, a respected scientist, has invited Alex Delaware, psychologist/detective, to his home on a tiny Pacific island to help him organize his papers for publication. It's a light workload, leaving plenty of time for Alex and his girlfriend, Robin, to relax. But Alex can't help wondering why Dr. Moreland really invited him to the island. When he probes, he discovers a sour and unwelcome truth, and its discovery comes just in time to save Alex and Robin from the violence that threatens them.

It came in a plain brown wrapper, no return address: an audiocassette of a soul-lacerating scream, followed by an enigmatic, haunting message delivered in a childlike voice: "Bad love. Bad love. Don't give me the bad love." For psychologist-detective Dr. Alex Delaware, the chant, repeated over and over like a twisted nursery rhyme, is the first intimation that he is about to enter a living nightmare. If Alex fails to decipher the twisted logic of the stalker's mind games, he will be the next to die.

Twelve-year-old Billy Straight - precocious, heartbreakingly perceptive, relentlessly moral - has fled the chaos and abuse of his life at home and is fighting to survive on L.A.'s meanest streets. All alone, Billy has fashioned a precarious existence for himself, using principled tricks to nourish his body and his mind. Late one night he watches from his hiding place as a man viciously butchers a woman. Billy becomes the center of terrifying attention - from the media, from violent bounty hunters, and from the murderer himself.

Not since Jack the Ripper has there been such a gruesome crime scene. One look at the victim's apartment turned charnel house is enough for Milo Sturgis to summon The Crime Reader. But even Alex Delaware's skills may be stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion... with no apparent connection between them.

Even having hundreds of closed cases to his credit can't keep LAPD police lieutenant Milo Sturgis from agonizing over the crimes that don't get solved - and the victims who go without justice. Victims like Katherine Hennepin, a young woman strangled and stabbed in her home. A single suspect with a solid alibi leads to a dead end - one even Alex Delaware's expert insight can't explain. The only thing to do is move on to the next murder case - because there's always a next one.