First Mystery

In the autumn of 2020 Ned Boulting (ITV head cycling commentator and Tour de France obsessive) bought a length of Pathé news film from a London auction house. All he knew was it was film from the Tour de France, a long time ago. Once restored it became clear it was a short sequence of shots from stage 4 of the 1923 Tour de France. No longer than 2.5 minutes long, it featured half a dozen sequences, including a lone rider crossing a bridge. Ned set about learning everything he could about the sequence – studying each frame, face and building – until he had squeezed the meaning from it.

A deadly explosion rocks the nation’s capital... Three seemingly unconnected people—a British ex-Special Forces operative, an ex-Navy Seal, and a teenage girl—find themselves under suspicion for the attack. Soon, they’re in the middle of a conspiracy that threatens to unsettle the entire United States. If they have any hope to survive the dangerous situation they’ve found themselves in, these strangers must learn to rely on each other, all while the question remains: Did one of them cause the explosion?

Fourteen years after her last adventure, Thursday Next, literary detective, finds herself in an unusual situation her job policing the fictional characters of the BookWorld has been downgraded since her previous escapades are now themselves in print. However, a pressing threat may call her back into action: first Sherlock Holmes and then Miss Marple are found dead, stopping their series in their tracks.

Multiple murders in a quiet midwestern town had Detective Riley Willoughby's mind constantly spinning. There had not been murders like this in decades in the town of Woodlake. With the help of her partner, Jake Maxwell, they are on the journey of hunting down a killer. All the victims are women, and the killer begins leaving sinister notes with the bodies that are directed at Riley.

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.

London, 2045. Cameron Silvera, a.k.a. the SimCavalier, is a hacker legend in the cybersecurity world. In real life, Cameron leads the Argentum Associates white hat infosec team, known to world governments and global conglomerates for their ability to bring hacked systems back online fast. It’s fun work, and Cameron is at the top of her game. When the City of London Bank calls in the Argentum team, it feels like just another routine job. The Speakeasy Worm has threaded its way into critical systems across the world. Cameron cracks the code easily, but there's trouble ahead.

Humans made a deal with the Stryxian males: Help us defend Earth, and when the war is over, we’ll send you women to help rebuild your dying species. Now, the war appears to be over and Trinity Bentzer’s number has been called in the lottery. Only, instead of winning a boatload of money, she’s getting some badass winged alien she’s never met. Trin’s not thrilled to be shipped off and matched up, until she meets Raig. Maybe she hit the jackpot, after all.

The morbidly monotonous Dullsville has finally become the most exciting place on earth, now that Raven is madly in love with her hot vampire boyfriend, Alexander, and a crew of vampires has taken residence in Dullsville's old mill. Raven discovers Jagger's plan to open a new club, the Crypt, right here in Dullsville. But is it her dream come true or her worst nightmare?

Have you ever said to yourself, "wouldn’t it be nice to be a detective"? This is the story of an African girl who says just that. Her name is Precious. When a piece of cake goes missing from her classroom, a traditionally built young boy is tagged as the culprit. Precious, however, is not convinced. She sets out to find the real thief. Along the way she learns that your first guess isn’t always right. She also learns how to be a detective.

With 99.7 percent of the Earth's population dead and gone, the few who remain struggle to survive in an empty world. The scattered. The leftovers. These are their stories. This collection contains the first four volumes of the Scattered and the Dead series, audiobooks 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0.

A species that has no word for murder, has a murderer aboard their spaceship. Alien. Tristol lives in exile. But he’s built a life for himself aboard a human space station. He’s even begun to understand the complex nuances of human courting rituals. Detective Hastion is finally flirting back! Murder. Except that Tristol’s beloved space station is unexpectedly contacted by the galoi - a xenophobic species with five genders, purple skin, and serious attitude. They need the help of a human detective because there’s a murderer aboard their spaceship.

New Year's Day is a time for new beginnings, but Minneapolis homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are focused on endings: specifically, the tragic end of their latest murder victim, an unidentified young woman discovered on the side of the freeway. Believed to be the victim of a serial killer, Kovac and Liska are determined to do the girl the small justice of returning her body to her family as they investigate her case, but it is no simple task matching the broken corpse to any of the scores of missing persons reports.

A weekend visit to picturesque Newfoundland by a large crew of outlaw bikers leaves behind another mess for Sgt. Windflower to clean up. This time, he’s facing violence, murder, mystery, and intrigue. This adventure has Windflower questioning everything he thought he knew. There are troubles on the home front, cutbacks in the policing budget, old friends leaving, and new ones not quite here yet. Windflower is seeking to find answers in territory that is both dangerous and unfamiliar.

Secret agents are all Jack and his friends ever wanted to be. Spy adventures were the movies they watched, the books they read, and even the games they played. Playtime is over! Kelly, a political refugee and friend of Jack's sister, is targeted for revenge by the man her father sent to prison. Armed with nothing but heroic courage and skills born from their childhood dreams, Jack and his friends fight a battle against an enemy who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. If Jack is to survive, he and his friends must work as a team, and even then, winning comes at a terrible price.

When you're the best at what you do, it's not always easy to walk away. Nathan McBride was retired. The trained Marine sniper and covert CIA operative had put the violence of his former life behind him. But not anymore. A deep-cover FBI agent has disappeared along with one ton of powerful Semtex explosive, enough to unleash a disaster of international proportions. The U.S. government has no choice but to coax Nathan out of retirement.

Jennifer Smythe escapes Earth's invasion by the insidious Kasari race, hijacks an alien starship, and survives the deadly passage through a wormhole. But escape is short-lived.... When Jennifer emerges on the new world of Scion, she is confronted by the same deadly enemy. Now the Kasari have sided with the planet's angel-like elite against the warrior underclass, but with the intent of ultimately ruling both.

Matt 'Mace' Mason is deployed on a deniable SAS mission in war-torn Yemen, becoming embroiled in a hostage rescue that goes terribly wrong. Pulling at the strings of the local political scene is not only the local warlord who is destined to become Mace's nemesis, General Ruak Shahlai, but hardbitten American arms dealer Erica Atkins, who controls a whole international network to her advantage. As well as his own team, Mace has to work, initially unwillingly, with female CIA Agent (and Islamic scholar) Redford.

In debt after her husband's unexpected death, Meg Rosenthal secures a job as a teacher at an upstate New York boarding school. Leaving suburban Long Island, Meg and her teenage daughter, Sally, embark on a new life in Arcadia Falls, a beautiful but isolated small town and the inspiration for a number of magically eerie fairy tales.

The 22nd Century. Dr. Charles Forbin is Earth's most powerful man. As mediator between Colossus, the Super Computer, and the rest of humanity, Forbin holds the key to Earth's fate. When Colossus, an awe-inspiring technological creation, suddenly became self-aware and took upon itself the task of righting humanity's wrongs with no regard for humans themselves, Forbin intervened. He took the decision to turn off his great machine - but could not do it alone. Forbin called upon invaders from Mars.

The year is 2650. Seventy-five years ago, an alien fleet attacked Earth. Without warning. Without mercy. We were not prepared. Hundreds of millions perished. Dozens of cities burned. We nearly lost everything. Then the aliens abruptly left. We rebuilt. We armed ourselves. We swore: never again. But the aliens never came back. Until now. With overwhelming force the aliens have returned, striking deep into our territory, sending Earth into a panic.