International Crime

It is 1890, and in the days before Christmas, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are visited at Baker Street by a new client. Eve Allerthorpe, eldest daughter of a grand but somewhat eccentric Yorkshire-based dynasty, is greatly distressed, as she believes she is being haunted by a demonic Christmas spirit. Her late mother told her terrifying tales of the sinister Black Thurrick, and Eve is sure that she has seen the creature from her bedroom window. What is more, she has begun to receive mysterious parcels of birch twigs, the Black Thurrick’s calling card.

It is 1969 and Glasgow is in the grip of the worst winter in decades, yet it is something else that has Glaswegians on edge: a serial killer whose name alone is enough to make them tremble with fear. The Quaker has killed another victim, snatching a young woman from a nightclub and dumping her body like trash in the back of a cold-water tenement. He leaves no clues, and the investigation has led police down one blind alley after another.

The Earl of Wrexford possesses a brilliant scientific mind, but boredom and pride lead him to reckless behavior. He does not suffer fools gladly. So when pompous, pious Reverend Josiah Holworthy publicly condemns him for debauchery, Wrexford unsheathes his rapier-sharp wit and strikes back. As their war of words escalates, London's most popular satirical cartoonist, A. J. Quill, skewers them both.

A week's holiday in a luxurious hotel is just what Scotland Yard's Superintendent Duncan Kincaid needs. But his vacation ends dramatically with the discovery of a dead body in the whirlpool bath. Despite a suspicious lack of cooperation from the local constabulary, Kincaid's keen sense of duty won't allow him to ignore the heinous crime, impelling him to send for his enthusiastic young assistant, Sergeant Gemma James. But the stakes are raised significantly when a second murder occurs....

Tara never imagined her introduction to Ireland like this - carrying her mam's ashes to honor her final request: "Tell Johnny I'm sorry.... Take me home." She's never met her mam's estranged brother, Johnny Meehan, who owns an architectural salvage business in Galway. Although Tara is immediately charmed by the medieval city, the locals seem wary of strangers, and a gypsy warns her that death is all around. When Tara arrives at her uncle's stone cottage, the prophesy seems true. A dead man lies sprawled over the threshold in a pool of blood.

Belfast, 1988. A man is found dead, killed with a bolt from a crossbow in front of his house. This is no hunting accident. But uncovering who is responsible for the murder will take Detective Sean Duffy down his most dangerous road yet, a road that leads to a lonely clearing on a high bog where three masked gunmen will force Duffy to dig his own grave. Hunted by forces unknown, threatened by Internal Affairs, and with his relationship on the rocks, Duffy will need all his wits to get out of this investigation in one piece.

With the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe away in London, Hamish Macbeth, the constable of the small Scottish town of Lochdubh, pines for company during the long Scottish winter. He gets his wish - and more - when a troupe of flashy, urbane filmmakers clamors into the nearby town of Drim. Before long bedlam erupts around their make-believe mystery - and culminates in the sudden appearance of one very real corpse.

A young woman is dumped, injured and unconscious, in a private hospital's parking lot. She is an amnesiac with no memory prior to her discovery by hospital personnel. Detective Inspector Peter Diamond of the Bath homicide squad is unwilling to become involved. He has other, more important cases to solve: a woman has plunged to her death from the roof of a local landmark while half the young people of Bath partied below, and an elderly farmer has shot himself.

Bombay, 1921: Perveen Mistry, the daughter of a respected Zoroastrian family, has just joined her father's law firm, becoming one of the first female lawyers in India. Armed with a law degree from Oxford, Perveen also has a tragic personal history that makes her especially devoted to championing and protecting women's legal rights. Mistry Law has been appointed to execute the will of Mr. Omar Farid, a wealthy Muslim mill owner who has left three widows behind. But as Perveen is going through the paperwork, she notices something strange.

Detective Sara Hirst has moved from London to Norfolk Police's Serious Crimes Unit. She wants to know the truth about her father, who has connections to the area. Her mother won't tell her the real story. A new job. A new place. Same old problems. Sara's first call-out is to a decomposing body discovered in a ditch on a local farm. How does the murder relate to a recent spate of thefts? Who wanted the victim dead? Then the case grows very personal.

When journalist Lily Bigelow is found dead in the courtyard of Carrickfergus castle, it looks like a suicide. Yet there are a few things that bother Duffy just enough to keep the case file open, which is how he finds out that Bigelow was working on a devastating investigation of corruption and abuse at the highest levels of power in the UK and beyond. And so Duffy has two impossible problems on his desk: Who killed Lily Bigelow? And what were they trying to hide?

Cold-blooded murder just isn't Thomas Lang's cup of tea. Offered a bundle to assassinate an American industrialist, he opts to warn the intended victim instead - a good deed that soon takes a bad turn. Quicker than he can down a shot of his favorite whiskey, Lang is bashing heads with a Buddha statue, matching wits with evil billionaires, and putting his life (among other things) in the hands of a bevy of femme fatales. Up against rogue CIA agents, wannabe terrorists, and an arms dealer looking to make a high-tech killing, Lang's out to save the leggy lady he has come to love...and prevent an international bloodbath to boot.

When Lord Wrexford discovers the body of a gifted inventor in a dark London alley, he promptly alerts the watchman and lets the authorities handle the matter. But Wrexford soon finds himself drawn into the murder investigation when the inventor's widow begs for his assistance, claiming the crime was not a random robbery. It seems her husband's designs for a revolutionary steam-powered engine went missing the night of his death. The plans could be worth a fortune and very dangerous in the wrong hands.

On Christmas Eve, DCI Mackenzie Jones is called to a shooting at a remote farmhouse. Ralph Mallender believes his father lies dead inside. When three more bodies are discovered, it's clear a festive family gathering has turned into a gruesome tragedy. At first it seems like an open and shut case: a murder suicide committed by Ralph's volatile brother Cameron. Then new evidence makes Mack suspect the man who reported the crime is in fact the perpetrator. But Mack isn't the only one with a stake in the case.

Delaney Nichols, originally of Kansas but settling happily into her new life as a bookseller in Edinburgh, works at The Cracked Spine in the heart of town. She's recently befriended a few medical school students after they came into the shop to sell some antique medical tomes. But when one of the students' friends is found murdered outside in the alley, Delaney takes it upon herself to help bring the murderer to justice.

When a body is discovered floating in a Thames river lock one dreary morning, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James are summoned from Scotland Yard to Chiltern Hills. The dead man is Connor Swann, son-in-law of two of London's most renowned opera personalities. And prints on the corpse's neck suggest that Swann was strangled.

With marriage, there are things you can and can't live with. Harry, my abusive husband, made that clear enough when he beat me like a dog, forced a miscarriage on me, and tried posing me as a hostage to my father's notorious biker gang, The Reapers. I was lucky enough to get out of my marriage in one piece but it's only a matter of time before he picks up my trail and hunts me down. Blackjack swears he'll kill him the second he steps foot in town. I know he means well but there's something about his stare when he tells me I deserve better.

Sori. Western military generals shudder when they hear the name. It is a remote, inaccessible village in Afghanistan, high up in the Hindu Kush mountains. It is where a dreaded Taliban terrorist hides and from where he conducts his murderous raids. Villagers have a special name for the mountain on which Sori is perched. Mountain of Death. Sori is also where the Taliban hold three American soldiers captive. All attempts to free them have failed. As the terrorists threaten to execute the soldiers, Zeb Carter volunteers to mount a rescue attempt. Alone.

When Scotland Yard superintendent Duncan Kincaid takes Gemma, Kit, and Toby for a holiday visit to his family in Cheshire, Gemma is soon entranced with Nantwich's pretty buildings and the historic winding canal, and young Kit is instantly smitten with his cousin Lally. But their visit is marred by family tensions exacerbated by the unraveling of Duncan's sister Juliet's marriage. And tensions are brought to the breaking point on Christmas Eve with Juliet's discovery of a mummified infant's body interred in the wall of an old dairy barn.

The corpse of a beautiful woman, clad in only a bathing suit, is found strangled to death on a popular Sussex beach. When she is finally identified, it turns out she was a top profiler for the National Crime Faculty who was working on the case of a serial killer. And though she was a Bath resident, the authorities don't want Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond to investigate the murder. How strange. What could they be trying to hide?