English Private Detectives

An old friend's sister disappears without a trace. There's no sign of foul play, but she'd been acting very peculiarly. Meanwhile, Liz's cousin, Christie, comes to stay. She takes an immediate - and uncharacteristic - dislike to the local bookshop owner, Gina. Why does everyone put up with her awful behavior? Christie is convinced that Gina is manipulating everyone around her. Is she onto something dangerous or just pushing her new friends away? No one believes her suspicions until another friend goes missing late at night on the misty Fen marshes.

As the mists roll over the fens and enigmatic lights twinkle in the distance, only the locals know their way along the hidden paths through the mysterious watery terrain of one of England's most beautiful and sometimes dangerous places. Detective Matt Ballard may have retired but there's still plenty going on in the fens to keep him busy. Someone trashes an old lady's garden and daubs her isolated cottage with hateful graffiti. Emilia Swain seems to be totally harmless, so why is she being targeted?

The most revered detective in Paris puts his skills to the test in three thrilling cases from the creator of Alex Cross and Detective Michael Bennett.

Ex-police officer Sebastian Clifford is quickly finding that life as a private investigator is never quiet. His doors have only been open a few weeks when DCI Whitney Walker approaches him to investigate the brutal attack that left her older brother, Rob, with irreversible brain damage. For nearly twenty-five years, Rob had no memory of that night, but lately things are coming back to him. Whitney's worried that her brother might–once again–be in danger.

Cheverell Manor is a lovely old house in deepest Dorset, now a private clinic belonging to the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell. When investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn arrived there one late autumn afternoon, scheduled to have a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar removed, she had every expectation of a successful operation and a pleasant week recuperating. Two days later she was dead, the victim of murder.

Anthropology Professor Gideon Oliver would prefer to keep his mind on his beautiful new bride, Julie, during their English honeymoon, but one intrusive question will not stop nagging at him: Who would want to steal a 30,000-year-old parieto-occipital calvarial fragment? Yet someone has lifted this chunk of prehistoric human skull from a musty museum in Dorchester. Then, 30 miles away, an archaeology student is murdered, increasing tension and suspicion at a dig that had already seethed with suspicion, rivalry, and mistrust.

Childbirth can be dangerous even for the wealthy. So when opera singer Claire Buchanan shows Prudence and Geoffrey a postmortem cabinet photograph of her deceased twin sister and newborn niece, they express sadness but not surprise. The popular black-bordered portraits are the era's way of coping with the devastating losses that plague every family. What makes this death different is that Claire is convinced Catherine and her child were murdered.

Private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney and her friends are celebrating New Year's Eve at the party of the year, a smashing Winter White Garden party at the newly renovated King Cotton Boutique Hotel. It's a dazzling success, until Frangelica "Sister" McFee walks through the door. Sarah Booth knew Sister in college, before Sister became a best-selling author and moved to New York, and fame and fortune don't seem to have tempered her arrogance and cruelty.

Cops can make mistakes, even when they're not rookies. Deeply traumatized by a shooting incident, Cass Raines resigned from the Chicago PD, leaving one less female African-American on the force. Now she's the head of a one-woman private investigation agency. She also plays chess with the only father figure she's ever known, Father Ray Heaton. When Father Ray asks Cass to look into a recent spate of vandalism at his church, she readily agrees to handle the case. But only hours later she's horrified to discover his murdered body in the church confessional, a dead gangbanger sprawled out nearby.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, he discovers that Quine's disappearance is no coincidence. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published, it would ruin lives - meaning that almost everyone in his life would have motives to silence him.

The story is not your typical murder mystery. The sleuth is not a detective, private eye, or lawyer. He's an ordinary guy with an extraordinary dog. Jacob Martin is trying to make the best of a divorce and mid-life crisis when he gets a call at two o'clock Sunday morning from his mother. His sister has been arrested for the murder of her fourth husband, and his father is near death. Thus begins an adventure that takes Jake and his golden retriever from their Colorado retreat to a backwater town in the Missouri Ozarks.

Maverick sleuth Declan Miller is back at work following the murder of his wife (and amateur ballroom dancing partner) Alex. Working with new partner and heavy metal enthusiast DS Sara Xiu, he is tasked with investigating the double killing of gangland family scion Adrian Cutler and IT consultant Barry Shepherd at the Sands Hotel. Initial evidence suggests a hired gun and a botched job. The search for the hitman begins and Miller begins to reconnect with his old network.

This latest installment of the beloved No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series finds Botswana's premier detective agency as busy as ever, with no shortage of sensitive situations requiring Mma Ramotswe's keen eye and discerning input. Through it all, Mma Ramotswe will demonstrate that there are solutions to all manner of difficulties, there to be discovered as long as one is led by kindness, grace, and logic, and can rely on the wise counsel of close friends and loved ones.

A year has passed since LAPD detective Renée Ballard quit the force in the face of misogyny, demoralization, and endless red tape. But after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her own ticket within the department, Ballard takes back her badge, leaving “the Late Show” to rebuild and lead the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division.

Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has become a worldwide phenomenon thanks to the appeal of endearing protagonist Precious Ramotswe and the author’s charmingly quirky prose. In this 13th installment, Mma Ramotswe’s attention is focused on a pesky disciplinary problem at her adopted daughter’s school - while Grace Makutsi adjusts to wedded bliss and the famed Clovis Andersen arrives in Botswana looking for more than bush tea.

A torso in a suitcase looks like an impossible case, but Sean Duffy isn’t easily deterred, especially when his floundering love life leaves him in need of a distraction. So with detective constables McCrabban and McBride, he goes to work identifying the victim. The torso turns out to be all that’s left of an American tourist who once served in the U.S. military. What was he doing in Northern Ireland in the midst of the 1982 Troubles?

Attorney Rhonda Bird returns home after a long estrangement when she learns her father has died. There she makes two important discoveries: Her father stopped being an accountant and had opened up a private detective agency, and she has a teenage half sister named Baby. Baby brings in a client to the detective agency, a young man who claims he was abducted.

Detective Joe "Preach" Everson, a prison chaplain turned police officer, is coming home. After a decade tracking down killers in Atlanta, and with a reputation as one of the finest homicide detectives in the city, his career derailed when he suffered a mental breakdown during the investigation of a serial killer who was targeting children. No sooner does Preach arrive at home in Creekville, North Carolina - a bohemian community near Chapel Hill - than a local bookstore owner is brutally killed, the first murder in a decade.

Tres has taken a short term teaching job at the University of Texas at Austin. He is living with his brother Garrett, a computer wizard, and enjoying this easy assignment. But when Garrett’s business partner is murdered, Tres must switch from professor to detective. Rick Riordan, teacher, Texan, and multiple award-winner, creates a masterful mixture of local color and mystery in each Tres Navarre mystery.

Bo Blackman is forced to live with her newfound status as a celebrity. She's still determined, however, to solve the mystery of Tobias Renfrew, the daemon billionaire who disappeared over fifty years ago.