Forensic Mystery Fiction

Mayan ruins in the Yucatán...a secret room in a tomb...age-old skeletons. To anthropologist Gideon Oliver, the renowned Skeleton Detective, the invitation to join the archaeological excavation of Tlaloc promises two months of paradise on Earth. That is, until an ancient series of Mayan curses against desecrators of the site is unearthed.

A serendipitous crossing of paths between Lisa Barnes, a down-on-her-luck job seeker, and Julie Forman, a personal trainer to an Olympic hopeful, forever changes the course of both women's lives. One winds up dead, and the other finds herself a fugitive, hiding behind lies as a cold-blooded killer methodically hunts her. Desperately trying to stay alive, the terrified woman enlists the help of Forensic Instincts, a rogue investigative team that clandestinely operates in the gray area between legal and illegal.

It is a case unlike any psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware has ever encountered. Five-year-old Woody Swope is ill, but the real problem is his parents. They refuse to agree to the one treatment that could save this boy's life. Alex sets out to convince Mr. and Mrs. Swope - only to find that the parents have left the hospital and taken their son with them. Worse, the sleazy motel room where the Swopes were staying is empty - except for the ominous bloodstain. The Swopes and their son have vanished into the sordid shadows of the city.

Physically and psychologically bruised by her encounter with the killer Chandonne, Dr. Kay Scarpetta has to leave her home in the hands of the police team investigating the attack. She finds shelter with an old friend, Anna Zenner, but it is not the haven of security she needs when she discovers that Anna has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury that is investigating Scarpetta for murder. Kay knows she is being framed, and she knows she can trust no one.

Three years after her mother’s death, Ruth is finally sorting through her things when she finds a curious relic: a decades-old photograph of her own Norfolk cottage—before she lived there—with a peculiar inscription on the back. Ruth returns to the cot­tage to uncover its meaning as Norfolk’s first cases of Covid-19 make headlines, leaving her and Kate to shelter in place there. They struggle to stave off isolation by clapping for frontline workers each evening and befriending a kind neighbor, Zoe, from a distance.

Officially, Aidan Deveraux is a communications expert for one of the largest financial firms in the world. In his secret life, the former Marine heads the Zermatt Group, a covert team of military and spy agency operatives that searches the data stream for troubling events in an increasingly troubled world. When his artificial intelligence system detects that Lauren Pennington - a college junior studying abroad in Germany - has been kidnapped, Aidan immediately sees the bigger picture.

Fans of Stephen King and Joe Hill that like to listen to audiobooks like The Bird Box and The Haunting and can't get enough stories about serial killers are going to enjoy listening to The Asylum Confessions. The majority of these killers are expert manipulators. I realize they could be playing me and messing with my head. It's a chance I'm willing to take. And now...they might just be playing with yours too.

It's not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It's the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death.

In Aurora, Illinois, Aubrey Wheeler is just trying to get by after her semi-criminal ex-husband split, leaving behind his unruly teenage son. Then the lights go out—not just in Aurora but across the globe. A solar storm has knocked out power almost everywhere. Suddenly, all problems are local, very local, and Aubrey must assume the mantle of fierce protector of her suburban neighborhood.

When the beautiful Kit goes to meet an anonymous stranger - who's been sending her roses - the man drops dead at her feet before she even could even get his name. Game on. Andy Broussard soon learns that the man carried a lethal pathogen similar to the deadly Ebola virus. Soon, another body turns up with the same bug. Panic is imminent as the threat of pandemic is more real than ever before.

Few know the city of Los Angeles the way number one best-selling author and acclaimed suspense master Jonathan Kellerman does. His thrilling novels of psychological drama and criminal detection make the capital of dreams a living, breathing character in all its glamour and infamy. That storied history of fame, seduction, scandal, and murder looms large in Mystery, as Alex Delaware finds himself drawn into a twisting, shadowy whodunit that’s pure LA noir - and vintage Kellerman.

En route to Isle of Palms, a barrier island off the South Carolina coast, forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan receives a call from the Charleston coroner. During the storm, a medical waste container has washed up on the beach. Inside are two decomposed bodies wrapped in plastic sheeting and bound with electrical wire. Chillingly, Tempe recognizes many details as identical to those of an unsolved case she handled in Quebec 15 earlier.

Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles - the crime-solving duo who inspired the smash hit TNT series - return to investigate the gruesome staged murder of a horror film producer in this edge-of-your-seat thriller.

When an Orthodox Jew is found shot to death in Montreal, Temperance Brennan is called in to examine the body and to figure out the puzzling damage to the corpse. Unexpectedly, a stranger slips her a photograph of a skeleton and assures her the picture is the key to the victim's death. Before she knows it, Tempe is involved in an international mystery as old as Jesus, a mystery that could rewrite 2000 years of religious history. that could rewrite 2000 years of religious history. Tempe learns that the stranger's picture shows bones uncovered during an archeological dig.

A string of mutilated bodies sees Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker back in action. But when she discovers the victims have all been grooming young girls, she fears a vigilante is on the loose. And while she understands the motive, no one is above the law. Once again, she turns to forensic psychologist, Dr Georgina Cavendish, to unravel the cryptic clues. But will they be able to save the next victim from a gruesome death?

Former star basketball player Clay Edison is busy. He’s solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother’s fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications. Then the phone rings in the dead of night. A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos. For Clay and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come.

In 17 consecutive best selling novels, Jonathan Kellerman has proven himself the master of the psychological thriller. Now, in Kellerman's most compelling novel yet, LA psychologist-detective Alex Delaware confronts a long-unsolved murder of unspeakable brutality - an ice-cold case whose resolution threatens his survival and that of longtime friend, homicide detective Milo Sturgis.

New Orleans criminal psychologist Kit Franklyn, lately drowning in personal doubts about her life and career, thinks that investigating the corpse she found in the garden of her new home will be the perfect distraction. Together with her boss, chief medical examiner Andy Broussard, she sets out to solve this case that seems plain unsolvable. Though they identify the body as a missing hooker, now dead 27 years, all hope of conviction still seems lost.

Don Donaldson brings us to the famous French Quarter with our favorite dynamic detective duo in this gripping thriller. New Orleans's chief medical examiner, Andy Broussard, and his assistant, criminal psychologist Kit Franklyn, set off to investigate a series of violent serial murders. Examinations of the victims have led them to discover that each one's throat was ripped out with two tools: a garden fork and something unrecognizable.

They called it "minor surgery", but Nancy Greenly, Sean Berman, and a dozen others - all admitted to Boston Memorial Hospital for routine procedures - were victims of the same inexplicable, hideous tragedy on the operating table. They never woke up...