English Crime Thrillers

It’s a question everyone asks themselves, but few have to face in real life. English teacher Richard Boyle certainly never thought he would find himself talking down a former student intent on harming others, but when Mark LeDrew shows up at Richard’s school with a bomb strapped to his chest, Richard immediately jumps into action. Thanks to some quick thinking, he averts a major tragedy and is hailed as a hero, but not all the attention focused on him is positive.

Meet Stephanie Plum, a bounty hunter with attitude. In Stephanie’s opinion, toxic waste, rabid drivers, armed schizophrenics, and August heat, humidity, and hydrocarbons are all part of the great adventure of living in Jersey. She’s a product of the “burg,” a blue-collar pocket of Trenton where houses are attached and narrow, cars are American, windows are clean, and (God forbid you should be late) dinner is served at six.

In the winter of 1835, young Charles Dickens is a journalist on the rise at the Evening Chronicle. Invited to dinner at the estate of the newspaper's co-editor, Charles is smitten with his boss' daughter, vivacious 19-year-old Kate Hogarth. They are having the best of times when a scream shatters the pleasant evening. Charles, Kate, and her father rush to the neighbors' home, where Miss Christiana Lugoson lies unconscious on the floor. By morning, the poor young woman will be dead.

At the Great New York Cookie Swap, pastry chefs bake up their very best for charity. Clare is in charge of the beverage service, and her famous Fa-la-la-la Lattes make the gathering even merrier. But her high spirits come crashing down when she discovers the battered body of a hard-working baker's assistant. Police suspect a serial attacker whose escalating crimes have become known as "the Christmas Stalkings". Clare'sboyfriend, NYPD detective Mike Quinn, finds reason to believe even more sinister forces are involved.

Widowed van driver Bob Naylor is prodded into joining the Chichester Writers' Circle by his teenage daughter. Bob writes limericks and jingles, and fears he will be out of his class amongst the literati. But the members of the circle come from all walks of life and practice many forms of writing, from fantasy to household hints. There seems to be nothing about any of them to incite a serial killer. However, there is an arsonist in their midst, burning his victims to death, and Bob becomes a suspect.

Suburban New Jersey Detective Napoleon “Nap” Dumas hasn't been the same since senior year of high school, when his twin brother Leo and Leo’s girlfriend Diana were found dead on the railroad tracks - and Maura, the girl Nap considered the love of his life, broke up with him and disappeared without explanation. For fifteen years, Nap has been searching, both for Maura and for the real reason behind his brother's death. And now, it looks as though he may finally find what he's been looking for.

On a rainy morning, not long after the funeral of his mother, Commissario Brunetti and Ispettore Vianello respond to a 911 call reporting a body floating near the steps in one of Venice's side canals. Reaching down to pull it out, Brunetti's wrist is caught by the silkiness of golden hair, and he sees a small foot - together he and Vianello lift a dead girl from the water.

Poppy Denby is intrigued when she is invited to attend the auction for the death mask of Nefertiti. Held on the country estate of Sir James Maddox, a famous explorer, the auction promises to be a controversial and newsworthy affair. Representatives from the world's leading museums are gathering to bid on the mask, which was discovered in Egypt. Poppy quickly sniffs out that the mask was not the only thing found that night: the underground chamber also contained a dead body.

Delaney Nichols, originally of Kansas but settling happily into her new life as a bookseller in Edinburgh, works at The Cracked Spine in the heart of town. She's recently befriended a few medical school students after they came into the shop to sell some antique medical tomes. But when one of the students' friends is found murdered outside in the alley, Delaney takes it upon herself to help bring the murderer to justice.

When Alex MacLure’s friend and colleague dies he is determined to carry on her research into ancient Egypt. He finds she has left him a coded message, and, as he tries to make sense of it all, he discovers she was murdered. And now the murderer needs to silence him. With only a few clues and a mysterious object, Alex follows a trail from London to Cairo. He must crack the code and expose a shocking and inconceivable truth before the secret is buried for ever.

Commissario Guido Brunetti's hopes for a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are once again dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in Marghera--a body so badly beaten the face is completely unrecognizable. Brunetti searches Venice for someone who can identify the corpse but is met with a wall of silence. He then receives a telephone call from a contact who promises some tantalizing information.

After a violent home invasion in the remote wilds of Glen Coe leaves a family of four dead, DCI Jack Logan and his team are brought in to lead the manhunt. But, when one of the victims is revealed to be one half of legendary 1980s Glasgow-based comedy double act, Neeps & Tatties, Logan is forced to leave the Highlands and head back to his old stomping ground.

Called in to investigate, DCI Evan Warlow’s team are faced with finding out how and why the body of a struck-off doctor ended up on a lonely beach within sight of Laugharne’s famous boathouse. But this is no innocent victim. This is a man with more enemies than friends. A fact that muddies the waters no end as Warlow unearths more and more of the dead man’s sordid history. Not to mention a long line of suspects.

David Burroughs was once a devoted father to his three-year-old son Matthew, living a dream life just a short drive away from the working-class suburb where he and his wife, Cheryl, first fell in love—until one fateful night when David woke suddenly to discover Matthew had been murdered while David was asleep just down the hall.

In the darkening days of autumn, a murdered journalist's body is discovered in a remote region near the Canadian border. Before she was found, Anne Marie Johnson had been writing an article about a canine research program that uses trained dogs to track scientific data. She was last seen with a man named Reeve Landon, whose chocolate Lab was one of the subjects of the piece. Now he's the prime suspect. Back in the FBI's regional office in Montana, investigator Ali Paige is not officially assigned to the case since the crime was committed outside federal land.

With his dying breath, Carl Venable, head of the CIA task force on terrorism and Jude Brandon's final link to terrorist ringleader Max Huber, gives Brandon a mandate: to keep his daughter, Rachel, safe at any cost. But Rachel Venable has a shocking, twisted past of her own, one that comes rushing back after her medical clinic in Guyana is attacked by Huber - the same man who murdered her father and kept her imprisoned for months.

Two skeletons are discovered in Lamentation Tarn, a mountain lake. Talented detective Mike Nash and his team have little evidence with which to work, until a surprising discovery prompts them to contact law enforcement agencies in Eastern Europe.

For US Navy SEAL Bowie "Ruckus" Cooper, going on a mission into the most dangerous place on earth wasn't new, neither were the orders to tag and bag an international criminal, but when Bowie finds a captive American reporter, that wasn't exactly run of the mill. Neither was getting separated from his team, teaming up with her, or protecting her against all odds, while working to keep his hands from around her neck and off her delectable body.

Who could have suspected that the exciting stag party for the groom would be the prelude to the murder of his close friend Charlie Hatton? And Charlie's death was only the first in a string of puzzling murders involving small-time gangsters, cheating husbands, and loose women. Now Chief Inspector Wexford and his assistant join forces with the groom to track down a killer....

The Dark Yorkshire Series - fast-paced crime fiction stories featuring DI Nathaniel Caslin. The first three full-length books in this best-selling series are brought together for the first time in this great value set.