First Mystery

When a young girl goes missing on the way to her bus, Maddie Graves-Winters goes searching and finds the sort of mystery she never wanted to uncover. The girl, crying and shaking and talking about a monster, is okay when Maddie finds her. What they discover with the girl isn’t, however. When Maddie and her husband Nick were in high school, three teenagers went missing. Everybody assumed they fled to Detroit for some fun and never came back, but it turns out, they never left Blackstone Bay.

At age 26 Agatha Raisin has already come a long way. She has clawed her way up since leaving the Birmingham slum where she was born. She's lost her Birmingham accent, run away from her drunken husband, and found a job at a public relations office as a secretary. Then her boss asks Agatha to go to the home of Sir Bryce Teller to tell him that he is soon to be arrested for the murder of his wife and that the agency no longer wants to represent him.

The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job. Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn't like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time.

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.

Addie's getting into the spirit for the upcoming Charity Auction - especially since she's got an 1843 copy of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol to donate. Her former colleagues at the Boston Public Library have confirmed that its worth runs toward the high five figures, which should help with the new pediatric wing. Her mood darkens, though, when a visitor from the past appears - Jonathan Hemingway, the father of her late fiance. His presence stirs up sad memories for Addie, but also has her fuming when Jonathan runs off for a lunchtime liaison with Teresa Lang.

Fans of mysteries, thrillers, and suspense will enjoy these fast-moving stories of murder, greed, and treason, the cast of colorful characters, and their setting in and around historic St. Paul, Minnesota. This bundle includes First Case, The St. Paul Conspiracy, and Deadly Stillwater.

The once-utopian Chasm City - a domed human settlement on an otherwise inhospitable planet---has been overrun by a virus known as the Melding Plague, capable of infecting any body, organic or computerized. Now, with the entire city corrupted - from the people to the very buildings they inhabit---only the most wretched sort of existence remains. The stakes are raised when Tanner Mirabel's search brings him face to face with a centuries-old atrocity that history would rather forget.

After Vicky Bliss stumbles over a clue to the existence of a hidden masterpiece by a late Gothic sculptor, she and her then-boyfriend, Tony, embark on a contest of will and wits to find the treasure.

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.

For San Francisco’s newest medical examiner, Dr. Jessie Teska, it was supposed to be a fresh start. A new job in a new city. A way to escape her own dark past. Instead, she faces a chilling discovery when an opioid-overdose case contains hints of something more sinister. Jessie’s superiors urge her to close the case, but as more bodies land on her autopsy table, she uncovers a constellation of deaths that point to an elaborate plot involving drug dealers and Bitcoin brokers.

Captain Arthur Hastings, invalided in the Great War, is recuperating as a guest of John Cavendish at Styles Court, the "country-place" of John's autocratic old aunt, Emily Inglethorpe - she of a sizeable fortune, and so recently remarried to a man 20 years her junior. When Emily's sudden heart attack is found to be attributable to strychnine, Hastings recruits an old friend, now retired, to aid in the local investigation. With impeccable timing, Hercule Poirot, the famous Belgian detective, makes his dramatic entrance into the pages of crime literature.

It’s a smoky autumn morning when Kimber Clark gets the alert: her kindergartner’s school is on lockdown. She’s still drunk when she joins other parents outside the police tape, but not so drunk that she can’t pick up details: Zack Linzy, a high schooler, opened fire in the school cafeteria, killing four people. But that’s not possible. Zack Linzy is a freak, a boy who assaulted Kimber’s daughter, and Kimber killed him with a shovel two days ago.

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.

One of the most significant works on our evolutionary ancestry since Richard Leakey's Origins, The First Signs is the first-ever exploration of the geometric images that accompany most cave art around the world—the first indications of symbolic meaning, intelligence, and language.

Tech millionaire Miles Cookson has more money than he can ever spend and everything he could dream of - except time. He has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and there is a 50 percent chance that it can be passed on to the next generation. For Miles, this means taking a long hard look at his past. Two decades ago, a young, struggling Miles was a sperm donor. Somewhere out there, he has kids - nine of them. And they might be about to inherit both the good and the bad from him - maybe his fortune, or maybe something much worse.

Walt Longmire returns in this twentieth installment of the award-winning and bestselling series that has been a hit on both the page and the screen. Set in the unsoiled countryside of Wyoming, Sheriff Walt Longmire has to navigate his own increasingly complicated personal life with the ever-changing and often violent underworld that encroaches on what was once referred to as the Old West. This time, he is up against a sinister plot that could hurt the people closest to him and forever change the way he sees his beloved Wyoming.

A prestigious job at a top law firm, a beautiful home, and a gorgeous wife all made for an ideal life - but then life gets in the way. For Mac McRyan, a family tragedy meant forgoing a lucrative legal career for one in the family business - the St. Paul Police Department. After four years as a cop, Mac crosses the crime scene tape for the first time as a homicide detective. The back alley murder of a young trial lawyer from a high profile law firm doesn't add up.

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.

The Great War may be over, but for many, there are still obstacles on the home front. Reconciling with her estranged husband makes Verity sympathetic to her friend Ada's marital difficulties. Bourgeois-bred Ada, recently married to the Marquess of Rockham, is overwhelmed trying to navigate the ways of the aristocracy. And when Lord Rockham is discovered shot through the heart with a bullet from Ada's revolver, Verity fears her friend has made a fatal blunder. While striving to prove Ada's innocence, Verity is called upon for another favor.

In this gripping prequel to the blockbuster best seller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick The Last Mrs. Parrish, listeners will discover exactly how Amber Patterson transformed from small-town girl to master manipulator - after all, practice makes perfect.