Holiday Thriller

This holiday is the first time my husband Jeff and I have been on our own in years, and I want it to be a fresh start. We can walk along the beach, eat ice cream in the bright Spanish sun, and fall in love again.

The white-washed Italian villa is perfect. I thought it might feel odd, living in a stranger’s house for the summer, but as my husband and children swim in the infinity pool, I start to relax. And then, in the back of a wardrobe, I find something that shatters everything.... Sparkling green eyes, square jaw, lopsided smile. A young man with his arm around a beautiful woman. The picture is old and faded, but I’d recognize him anywhere. The man is my husband.

Christmas Eve, and the Lee family's reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture and a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. When Hercule Poirot offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man....

On 1st of December, renowned puzzle setter, loner, and Christmas curmudgeon Edie O'Sullivan finds a hand-delivered present on her doorstep. Unwrapping it, she finds a jigsaw box and, inside, six jigsaw pieces. When fitted together, the pieces show part of a crime scene—blood-spattered black and white tiles and part of an outlined body. Included in the parcel is a message: 'Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.' It's signed Rest In Pieces.

As if a run-in with an old flame and a failed marriage proposal weren't enough to horrify Krissy for one night, a woman is found strangled to death in a room filled with ominous jack-o'-lanterns. All signs suggest a crime of passion - but when the hostess's jewelry disappears, malevolent intentions seem way more likely.

Christmas is not an easy time to sell a house, but in Boston tycoon John Bragdon, Cabot Cove Realtor Eve Simpson has found a buyer for the old Jarvis homestead. Unfortunately, Eve gets a lump of coal in her stocking in the form of Kenny Jarvis, who has been missing for years and presumed dead but has now come back to stop his sister from selling their childhood home. Eve presses on, organizing a welcome dinner for Bragdon and his wife, Marlene, to meet the leading citizens of the town, including Jessica Fletcher.

This Yuletide season, there's no time for Angie Curtis and Patrick West to linger under the mistletoe. Patrick's being needled by his mother - movie star Skye West - to set the stage for a perfect white Christmas as she brings her costar, screenwriters, and director home for the holidays. With his mother's long list of wishes, Patrick's becoming unraveled. To help, the Mainely Needlepointers offer to decorate Skye's Victorian mansion and create needlepoint pillows as gifts for the guests.

For residents of Salem, Massachusetts, the day after Halloween brings empty candy wrappers, sagging pumpkins, and a community-wide identity crisis. That is, until Lee Barrett's TV production class suggests extending the spooky season with the traditional Mexican celebration Dia de Los Muertos. But when the students discover not all of Salem's dead are resting in peace, the post-October blues don't seem so bad after all....

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant.

I'm Halliday Valentine, a psychic witch who's recently moved from New York City back to my very human hometown of Marshmallow Hollow, where I run the family factory that caters to all things Christmas. Digby Dainty (known as Hobbs), the tall drink of water who rents my guest cottage, and I have a lot in common, including a love of true crime. So as macabre as it sounds, when a shady real estate tycoon shows up dead in the middle of the annual ice festival, I'm thrilled to spend time with Hobbs, flexing our amateur sleuthing skills.

It’s Christmas Eve and Stella Hansen is broke. She is so broke that despite working two jobs, she can’t even afford a present for her husband on their first Christmas as man and wife. But then a mysterious storekeeper at a pawn shop offers Stella an intriguing trade. Stella wants more than anything to buy her husband the Christmas gift of his dreams. But will it come at a terrible price?

Christmas is just around the corner, and Sarah Booth and Tinkie are preparing for a festive holiday season. After a turbulent season of solving cases, they're ready for some holiday cheer. Sarah Booth and Sheriff Coleman Peters have finally gotten together, and this is the first holiday they're celebrating as a couple. Sarah Booth busies herself with decking the halls and daydreaming about romantic Christmas nights with Coleman. Then her friend Cece Dee Falcon shows up needing Sarah Booth's help.

Nancy Drew’s dad surprises her with a trip to a beautiful New England ski resort for Christmas break. But no vacation can go smoothly when Nancy is involved. On her very first run down the slopes, Nancy hits a bad patch of ice and takes a serious tumble. A doctor sends her back to the hotel in a cast and mandates 12 days of bed rest. That means no long car trips back to River Heights and 12 days of sitting around. Luckily, there’s still the five-star dining and beautiful views. Just hours into her convalescence, Nancy witnesses something very suspicious.

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me—well, actually, my true love, Darcy O’Mara, is spending a feliz navidad tramping around South America. Meanwhile, Mummy is holed up in a tiny village called Tiddleton-under-Lovey with that droll Noel Coward! And I’m snowed in at Castle Rannoch with my bumbling brother, Binky, and sourpuss sister-in-law, Fig.

The shroud is lifted and truths too disturbing to believe are unveiled when an explosion at the town hall traps TJ under a pile of rubble as the walls of the building rain down around her. When the dust settles, TJ is left wondering if you can ever really know another person or if the armor you see is simply an illusion created to conceal the lies that are buried beneath. While TJ struggles with the duplicity of someone she'd previously held dear, she is also forced to deal with the fact that two popular residents are dead with four others in the hospital clinging to life.

Spending Halloween in a haunted house is nothing out of the ordinary for Danielle and Lily. After all, Marlow House Bed & Breakfast has its own fulltime ghost. But there is another haunted house in Frederickport, Oregon. Yet, its ghost only shows up on Halloween. Why just once a year? And how is this frightening spirit connected to all that's happened to Danielle since she arrived in town?

For innkeeper Holly White, Christmas time in Mistletoe, Maine, is the ultimate holiday gift. Business at the Reindeer Games Inn is booming, her wedding to Sheriff Evan Gray is nearly here, and the annual parade is about to begin. The town is lucky to have another gift this year with the state’s ballet company staying for several performances of The Nutcracker. But disaster strikes when Tiffany, the lead ballerina, shows up dead on a float during the parade, the Rat King’s mask nearby. Holly will have to spruce up her sleuthing skills if she wants to catch the killer before Christmas.

It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation in sweet, sunny Cape Cod—just me and my beloved brother—but discovering a corpse in our rental house really throws a wrench into our tanning schedule. Now a rude, crude bounty hunter has arrived on the back of his motorcycle to catch the killer and refuses to believe I can be helpful, despite countless hours of true crime podcast listening. Not to mention a fulfilling teaching career of wrangling second graders.

New York Times bestselling author Peter Swanson pens a spectacularly spine-chilling novella in which an American art student in London is invited to join a classmate for the holidays at Starvewood Hall, her family’s Cotswold manor house. But behind the holly and pine boughs, secrets are about to unravel, revealing this seemingly charming English village’s grim history.

Siobhán O'Sullivan's hopes for a quiet Irish Christmas are dashed when the local Santa turns up dead in a carnival dunk tank of hot cocoa. Now, instead of hunting down holiday gifts, she's pursuing a heartless killer. Seems the dead Santa was no angel either, stealing neighborhood dogs to guide his sleigh. But was it his holiday antics - or worse - that led to his death by chocolate?