First Mystery

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.

Sophie wasn’t expecting to find love in Sicily. But then she sees him: Emilio, a professor who works at the university where she is teaching for the summer. He’s kind, intelligent, funny, exciting and deliriously unpredictable… …maybe perfect. But paradise quickly turns to purgatory as she uncovers the haunting disappearance of Emilio’s first wife. And when she senses a shadowy character following her, watching her every move, Sophie starts to question her grip on reality. Is she being paranoid, or is nothing about her new life really what it seems?

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.

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.

Briar Creek Library director Lindsey Norris and her husband, Sully, are at a popular library conference in Chicago to hear book restoration specialist Brooklyn Wainwright give a keynote address. After the lecture, Lindsey looks under her seat and finds a tote bag containing a first edition of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, inscribed to Alfred Hitchcock. Brooklyn determines the novel is one of a kind and quite valuable, so Lindsey and Sully return the book to the conference director, not wanting to stir up any trouble.

The phone rang, and like a fool I answered. Mistake number one. Then I agreed to do a job for the Hidden Council. Definitely mistake number two. Now I've lost count of my bad choices, same as I have the bodies, as they're piling up faster than a troll after free chalk. As I get to grips with this new magic I've been gifted, the city remains under a spell of violence, and it's down to yours truly to deal with it. But I'm a noob at this job, ill-prepared and with my own personal demons to fight.

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.

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.

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....

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.

A dark and sweeping adventure, Dreamcatcher is set in the haunted city of Derry - the site of Stephen King's It and Insomnia. In it, four young boys stand together and do a brave, good thing, an act that changes them in ways that they hardly understand. A quarter-century later, as grown men who have gone their separate ways, these friends come together once a year to hunt in the woods of Maine.

When Garnet McGee returns to her small Vermont hometown for the holidays, she vows to solve the mystery of the murder which shattered her life 10 years ago. But then the unexpected happens - she dies in an accident and gets brought back to life by paramedics. Now she's hearing words, seeing visions, and experiencing strange sensations. Are these merely symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and an overactive imagination, or is she getting messages from a paranormal presence?

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.

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.

When brokenhearted Georgia Thornton goes looking for romance on reality TV, she has nothing to lose - apart from a good man, a cash prize, and maybe her life.... What was Georgia thinking? Sure, some cad ditched her at the altar, but can she really find love on TV? Her best friend - and producer of the reality show Love or Money - thinks so.

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.

Charley sees dead people. That's right, she sees dead people. And it's her job to convince them to "go into the light." But when these very dead people have died under less than ideal circumstances (i.e., murder), sometimes they want Charley to bring the bad guys to justice. Complicating matters are the intensely hot dreams she's been having about an Entity who has been following her all her life...and it turns out he might not be dead after all. In fact, he might be something else entirely.

It's been nine months since the catastrophe in Tucson sent Mia fleeing from her home. But she’s not running away from the darkness—she’s running toward it, obsessively pursuing the man who gave her mother a thirst for blood and destroyed their lives. But when Mia finds the monsters she’s been hunting and infiltrates a secret network of fugitives, she discovers she might have been their prey all along. To escape their clutches, she’ll have to reckon with her mother’s harrowing past and confront a painful truth: that they might be more alike than she ever imagined.

Tempted out of his bookstore into the world of horseracing, Janeway accepts an invitation from wealthy horse trainer H.R. Geiger to travel to Idaho and look at some rare first-edition books. The books are stunning, flawless children's classics that render the usually eloquent Janeway speechless.

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.