First Mystery

The harsh, unforgiving frontier is no place for innocents. And when an old friend of the Preacher's asks him to guide a gaggle of wide-eyed Easterners through the Rockies, Preacher responds with a polite: "Hell no." But the pilgrims are pursued by a gang of outlaws...and then ambushed by angry Indians. With his friend caught up in the melee, Preacher has no choice but to try to rescue him...and anyone else who happens to be within reach.

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.

From the author of Murder Most Unladylike. Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are taking a holiday on the world-famous Orient Express - and it's clear that each of their fellow first-class passengers has something to hide. Even more intriguing: there is rumour of a spy in their midst. Then, during dinner, there is a scream from inside one of the cabins. When the door is broken down, a passenger is found murdered, her stunning ruby necklace gone. But the killer has vanished - as if into thin air.

Max - an elderly Paris bookstall owner - is abducted at gunpoint. His friend Hugo Marston, head of security at the U.S. embassy, launches a search. His investigation reveals that Max was a Holocaust survivor and later became a Nazi hunter. Is his disappearance somehow tied to his grim history, or even to the mysterious old books he sold? Before long, other booksellers start to disappear, their bodies found floating in the Seine. Then Marston himself becomes a target of the unknown assassins.

Kitty Underhay is looking forward to a week of long lunches and wedding planning with her husband-to-be, Captain Matthew Bryant. But the plan is derailed when he is called on to collect a former comrade-in-arms, arriving on the 15:50 from Paddington. As the train bearing Simon Travers pulls up to the platform, a piercing scream rises over the screech of its brakes. Travers is dead in his seat, a dagger in his heart. Only a few individuals had access to Travers’s compartment, and Kitty must find out which of these seemingly benign passengers is, in fact, a cross-country killer.

Commander David Bryce is scheduled to lead a routine re-supply run for the Orbital Development Group (ORB) to the fledgling colony on Mars. Without warning, he’s taken away by government agents and told the mission parameters have changed. They’ve discovered something. And it’s drifting closer to Earth. Atlas Donovan tirelessly hunts for an artifact, and tracks the piece to Lake Como, Italy. After the recent news from ORB, Atlas is more drawn to the trail than ever.

Before I Wake is a thriller fan's dream, a rich, resonant collection that reminds us, once again, of its author's enduring and unmistakable importance. This is popular fiction as it should be written. It doesn't get better than this.

The president of the United States...is missing." With these words, New York Times journalist J. B. Collins, reporting from the scene of a devastating attack by ISIS terrorists in Amman, Jordan, puts the entire world on high alert. The leaders of Israel and Palestine are critically injured, Jordan's king is fighting for his life, and the U.S. president is missing and presumed captured.

Maddie and Logan were torn apart by a kidnapping attempt when they were young. They were only kids - Logan's dad was POTUS and Maddie's father was the Secret Service agent meant to guard him. The kidnappers were stopped - but Maddie was whisked off to Alaska with her father, for safety. Maddie and Logan had been inseparable...but then she never heard from him again. Now it's a few years later. Maggie's a teenager, used to living a solitary life with her father. It's quiet - until Logan is sent to join them.

Zack Lightman has never much cared for reality. He vastly prefers the countless science-fiction movies, books, and videogames he's spent his life consuming. And too often, he catches himself wishing that some fantastic, impossible, world-altering event could arrive to whisk him off on a grand spacefaring adventure.

After years of exhaustive negotiations, North Korea's Kim Jong Il abruptly agrees to surrender all of his nuclear weapons. This sudden change in policy has the US suspicious, and the Team is dispatched to uncover the truth. Newest Team operative, the young and beautiful Thera Majed, goes undercover during the preliminary inspections of the entire Korean peninsula, on a mission so sensitive that she will be disavowed if discovered.

Dan Delgado is a private investigator. When it comes to finding cheating spouses, corporate thieves, or runaway teenagers, he’s unenthusiastic, and unmatched. As a former San Francisco detective, he misses more meaningful work, but he hasn’t had the heart for it since his wife’s death five years prior. That is, until a phone call from a distraught mother, an illegal immigrant who can’t go to the police, puts him on the hunt for a missing little girl. By the time he reaches the mother’s small home, she’s missing, too. The circumstances are strange....

Rowan Wolff was five years old when she, her brother, and their babysitter were kidnapped by a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest. The babysitter was murdered. Rowan was saved. Her brother was killed and buried in the forest, his remains never found. The convicted killer refuses to say where he buried the boy. Twenty-five years later, Rowan is committed to search and rescue with her faithful canine and is obsessed with finding her brother’s grave—and closure.

It’s 5 November, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in – she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this? Rewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own deadly secret – and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors.

Following his mission on Cappa, Colonel Carl Butler returns to a mixed reception. To some, he is a do-or-die war hero. To the other half of the galaxy, he’s a pariah. Forced into retirement, he has resettled on Talca Four where he’s now Deputy VP of Corporate Security, protecting a high-tech military company on the corporate battlefield - at least, that’s what the job description says. Really, he’s just there to impress clients and investors. It’s all relatively low risk - until he’s entrusted with new orders.

This set includes the first two books in the Hamish Macbeth cozy mystery series set in the Scottish Highlands. Death of a Gossip: When society widow and gossip columnist Lady Jane Winters joined the fishing class, she wasted no time in ruffling the feathers—or was it the fins?—of those around her. Death of a Cad: When Priscilla Halburton-Smythe brings her London playwright fiancé home to Lochdubh, everybody in town is delighted…except for love-smitten Constable Hamish Macbeth. Yet his affairs of the heart will have to wait.

A writer in California. A doctor in Boston. A motel owner and his employee in Nevada. A priest in Chicago. A robber in New York. A little girl in Las Vegas. They’re a handful of people from across the country, living through eerie variations of the same nightmare.

When a cop's body is found burned and decapitated, the last thing Andy Carpenter expected is for a stranger to waltz into his office and admit to the crime. For the wise-cracking millionaire defense attorney suffering from "lawyer's block", the case looks like a no-brainer...until the cops pick up another suspect: Andy's lead P.I., Laurie Collins, who happens to be the love of his life.

Light years from Earth, an alien planet forced their queen from power and cast her into space. For millions of years, the queen's ship wandered the cosmos, until it crashed on Earth. As a child, Michael Hems first lost his mother to cancer, and then his father to the bottom of a bottle. Growing up in a small town, Michael's friends became his life. The only one he knew. The only one he wanted. But the night he found the ship, everything he loved was thrown into jeopardy.

Meet the Chicken Squad: four fuzzy little chicks who should fill their days pecking chicken feed and chasing bugs, but instead spend most of their time looking for trouble, and finding it.