English Crime Thrillers

With marriage, there are things you can and can't live with. Harry, my abusive husband, made that clear enough when he beat me like a dog, forced a miscarriage on me, and tried posing me as a hostage to my father's notorious biker gang, The Reapers. I was lucky enough to get out of my marriage in one piece but it's only a matter of time before he picks up my trail and hunts me down. Blackjack swears he'll kill him the second he steps foot in town. I know he means well but there's something about his stare when he tells me I deserve better.

Over twenty years ago, the heiress Patricia Lockwood was abducted during a robbery of her family's estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors - and the items stolen from her family were never recovered. Until now. On the Upper West Side, a recluse is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead - with the suitcase and painting both pointing them toward one man.

When a body is found on a lonely cliff top path, the angelic face of a murdered teenager lies facing the rising sun. Strangled by the hands of an unknown killer, it falls to DI Tom Janssen and his fledgling team to find out how she came to be there. Destined for a career in medicine, one to rival that of her parents, Holly Bettany’s future was as bright as it had been privileged. Seemingly, all that could threaten this promising teenager’s life was Holly herself.

Matt Helm, code name Eric, has been recently reactivated as an operative for a secret American government organization after 15 years as a sedentary photographer and family man in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In his first assignment after returning to the service, he is sent to Sweden to eliminate Caselius, a long-time enemy agent. In order to do so, he must leave a trail of bodies in his wake.

Thirty years ago, Wilde was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. Now an adult, he still doesn't know where he comes from, and another child has gone missing. No one seems to take Naomi Pine's disappearance seriously, not even her father - with one exception. Hester Crimstein, a television criminal attorney, knows through her grandson that Naomi was relentlessly bullied at school. Hester asks Wilde - with whom she shares a tragic connection - to use his unique skills to help find Naomi.

Evaleen Bechmann is too busy running Human Resources for the billion-dollar company, Mimir, to even consider dating. As for emotions, she refuses to discuss that, too. It doesn't matter anyway. She's invisible to men, especially one man in particular. Evaleen is fine with that. Not everyone gets their happily ever after; that's only for novels.

To survive the notorious prison IK-2 and assassinate Russian President Vladimir Petrov, John Dempsey had to become rosomakha, the wolverine. Now, back home in America, he’s trying to put the pieces of his life at Ember back together. But which man returned from Russia—Dempsey, or the wolverine? From the way his teammates look at him, it’s obvious they’re not sure, and neither is he. Meanwhile, Vice President Kelso Jarvis has barely had time to mourn the death of his mentor before a devastating attack reveals a new threat.

When Mattie Winston catches her husband, Dr. David Winston, receiving some very special loving care from RN Karen Owenby, she quits her job and moves out. Mattie's best friend, Izzy, offers her a place to stay and suggests she'd be a natural as deputy coroner. Now, instead of taking patients' pulses, Mattie's weighing their hearts and livers. But Mattie's first homicide call turns out to be for none other than Nurse Karen, and even though she saw her ex in a heated argument with the newly deceased the night before, she refuses to believe David could be a killer.

A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it's only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer's twisted work becomes clear. Sara's ex-husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation - a trail of terror that grows increasingly macabre when another local woman is found crucified a few days later.

Matt Helm, one-time special agent for the American government during the Second World War, has left behind his violent past to raise a family in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When a former colleague turns rogue and kidnaps his daughter, Helm is forced to return to his former life as a deadly and relentless assassin.

This follow-up to the national best-seller A Study in Sherlock is a stunning new volume of original stories compiled by award-winning Sherlockians Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger.

While working one afternoon on the Northern Divide, a young tree-marker makes a grisly discovery: in a squatter's cabin near an old mill town, a family has been murdered. An army vet coming off a successful turn leading a task force that took down infamous biker criminals, Detective Frank Yakabuski arrives in Ragged Lake, a nearly abandoned village, to solve the family's murder. But no one is willing to talk. With a winter storm coming, Yakabuski sequesters the locals in a fishing lodge as he investigates the area with his two junior officers.

Detective Sergeant Norman likes the idea of a permanent home in the small Welsh coastal town. With his reinvented career invigorating him, he finds himself enjoying working for his younger female DI. But when she asks him to investigate a puzzling seaside suicide, his first job is to find the corpse belonging to the discarded clothing left on the sand.... With the deceased man’s remains presumed lost at sea, DS Norman believes his case has run up a blind alley...until local builders dig up a female human skull.

Forced to give up her career as a dentist, and still unemployed a year later, Valentina Knight has finally run out of options. With foreclosure looming she acts in desperation, lying to get a position as an assistant to the county medical examiner. Val's relieved. She won't be homeless. But Val didn't count on the lie trapping her in a dangerous game with a killer. Val quickly becomes involved in the case of Francine Donohue, who disappeared from her neighborhood and is discovered dead six months later. The bizarre circumstances surrounding the murder are not the first of their kind.

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.

During the languid days of the Christmas break, a group of 30-something friends from Oxford meets to welcome in the New Year together, a tradition they began as students 10 years ago. For this vacation, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands - the perfect place to get away and unwind by themselves. They arrive on December 30, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world. Two days later, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead.

For more than twenty-five years, Philadelphia homicide detective Bree Taggert has tucked away the nightmarish childhood memories of her parents’ murder-suicide…. Until her younger sister, Erin, is killed in a crime that echoes that tragic night: innocent witnesses and a stormy marriage that ended in gunfire. There’s just one chilling difference. Erin’s husband, Justin, has vanished.

Dark secrets lurk beneath the glamour and glitter of New York's high-society life in this riveting tale of murder, obsession, and revenge. Jo Slater, one of the grandest of New York's grande dames, is knocked off her pedestal when her husband of 20 years dies under strange circumstances and leaves his fortune to a mysterious French countess. When Jo discovers she has been the victim of a plot, she decides to set things straight. And nothing is going to get in her way.

The 20th mystery in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Armand Gamache series.

Thirteen bibliomysteries by best-selling and award-winning authors are contained in this first of volume of a must-listen collection.