International Crime

A young "national model worker," renowned for her adherence to the principles of the Communist Party, turns up dead in a Shanghai canal. As Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Special Cases Bureau struggles to trace the hidden threads of her past, he finds himself challenging the very political forces that have guided his life since birth. Chen must tiptoe around his superiors if he wants to get to the bottom of this crime, and risk his career-perhaps even his life-to see justice done.

To survive the notorious prison IK-2 and assassinate Russian President Vladimir Petrov, John Dempsey had to become rosomakha, the wolverine. Now, back home in America, he’s trying to put the pieces of his life at Ember back together. But which man returned from Russia—Dempsey, or the wolverine? From the way his teammates look at him, it’s obvious they’re not sure, and neither is he. Meanwhile, Vice President Kelso Jarvis has barely had time to mourn the death of his mentor before a devastating attack reveals a new threat.

This is collection of 18 crime stories with a diverse range of characters and scenarios, from guilt-ridden fraudsters to lovesick murderers.

In a quiet London pub, Bob Renwick, founder of counter-terrorist agency Interintell, is handed a list of names. The Minus List has been compiled by the ruthless executive of an international munitions firm, engaged in training terrorists and arms dealing, and he intends to remove anyone who might get in his way. To be on the list means death for the target, their friends and family, and Renwick’s name is third. On a desperate mission that takes him from New York to Paris, from Zurich to Djibouti, Renwick must unmask his nemesis to save all that he holds dear.

Former soldier. Ex-copper. Current man on the edge. Shunned by his old colleagues, and dividing his time between a dead-end job and the bottom of a whisky bottle, former Police Scotland detective superintendent Bob Hoon’s life is a mess. Then an old face from Hoon’s Special Forces days turns up asking for help: His teenage daughter has been missing for months, the police have drawn a blank, and he needs the kind of help that only Hoon can provide. And besides, Hoon owes him one.

When Jonathan Argyll is arrested for breaking into an obscure church in Rome, he claims that it contains a long-lost Raphael hidden under a painting by Mantini. The painting disappears - then reappears in the hands of the top British art dealer, Edward Byrnes. How has Byrnes found out about the hidden masterpiece, and whom is he acting for? There is also the curious matter of the safe deposit box full of sketches closely resembling features of the newly discovered painting.

In a small Lao village, a very strange thing has happened. A woman was shot and killed in her bed during a burglary; she was given a funeral and everyone in the village saw her body burned. Then, three days later, she was back in her house as if she'd never been dead at all. But now she's clairvoyant and can speak to the dead. That's why the long-dead brother of a Lao general has enlisted her to help his brother uncover his remains, which have been lost at the bottom of a river for many years.

Stefan Lindman, a young police officer recently diagnosed with mouth cancer, decides to investigate the murder of his former colleague, but is soon enmeshed in a mystifying case with no witnesses and no apparent motives. Terrified of the disease that could take his life, Lindman becomes more and more reckless as he unearths the chilling links between Molin's death and an underground neo-Nazi network that runs further and deeper than he could ever have imagined.

Detective Ulf Varg from the Department of Sensitive Crimes is often called upon to investigate unusual matters. But rarely is he asked to conduct an inquiry on behalf of his own family. Is such a thing ethical? Adding to Ulf's moral discomfort is the fact that he does not exactly see eye to eye with his younger brother Bjorn - a leading player in one of Sweden's right-wing parties, the Moderate Extremists. Still, family is family, so Ulf finds himself working to uncover the mole leaking secrets to a rival party, the Extreme Moderates.

Amos Decker is a former professional football player whose career was ended by a terrible hit. Now a police detective, Amos is still haunted by a side effect from the accident he can never forget. One night Decker comes home from a stakeout to find his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law horrifically murdered. Obviously scarred and nearly broken, Decker has to use his skills as a detective and his unusual brain capacity to try to catch the monster who killed his family.

Inspector Montalbano enjoys simple pleasures - delicious food, walks along the water, the occasional smoke - yet these are just the backdrop to his duties as a detective. His latest case is the killing of the wealthy Cosimo Barletta. Thought to be a widower living out a quiet life by the sea, Cosimo's sudden death by gunshot to the neck opens up his past to scrutiny. What Montalbano uncovers is Cosimo's trove of salacious photographs, used to extort young women, and a history full of greed and corruption.

Great Britain, 1923: When Detective Inspector John Redfyre is invited to attend the annual St. Barnabas College Christmas concert in his Aunt Henrietta's stead, he is expecting a quiet evening. But he arrives to witness a minor scandal: Juno Proudfoot, the trumpeter of the headlining musical duo, is a woman, and a young one at that - practically unheard of in conservative academic circles. When she suffers a near-fatal fall after the close of the show, Redfyre must consider whether someone was trying to kill her.

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is contacted by a worried father whose son, Will, has gone to join a religious cult in the depths of the Norfolk countryside. The Universal Humanitarian Church is, on the surface, a peaceable organization that campaigns for a better world. Yet Strike discovers that beneath the surface there are deeply sinister undertones, and unexplained deaths.

Tom Keeler finds himself in the town of Promise, Indiana. He just needs to drop off a package, then he can get back to the Florida sunshine. But nothing’s ever that simple. The package gets stolen; things get complicated. Linda Cartwright’s a happily married woman, and then someone tried to kill her on her own front lawn. Why would they do that? Good question. Keeler’s interested, but Cartwright won’t talk about it. When Cartwright’s attacked a second time, Keeler begins to suspect that she’s in over her head. She’s a tough lady, but even tough nuts crack.

For Nina O’Connell, a trip round the world was the holiday of a lifetime. Traveling in a group led by the attractive James Kiley and his friend Tony Shawfield, she is surprised when she runs into an old flame on a sunny Amsterdam street. But Robert Renwick, ex-army major attached to NATO, is not there by chance. He is on the hunt for two terrorists who have left a trail of bombings and murder in their wake, and now he must keep Nina safe while trying to discover their next target. Soon Nina is caught up in a grim game of life or death.

The complete BBC Radio collection bringing together two full-cast dramatisations of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently novels. In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Dirk Gently has an unshakable belief in the interconnectedness of all things, but his Holistic Detective Agency mainly succeeds in tracking down missing cats for old ladies. Then Dirk stumbles upon an old friend behaving bizarrely - and he's drawn into a four-billion-year-old mystery that must be solved if the human race is to avoid immediate extinction....

From the brilliant pen of Agatha Christie comes two novels featuring the beloved sleuthing duo: In the The Secret Adversary, Tommy and Tuppence decide to embark on a daring business scheme: Young Adventurers Ltd. But they get more than they bargained for when their first assignment for the sinister Mr. Whittington draws them into a diabolical conspiracy. Set during the dark days of World War II, Agatha Christie’s N or M? puts two most unlikely espionage agents, Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, on the trail of a pair of Nazi spies who have murdered Britain’s top agent.

No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world-famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is so profound it is known as “the beautiful mystery.”

My dog once took a bullet that was intended for me. A bullet that ripped through his chest, narrowly missing his heart, and exited through his shoulder blade. This left him unconscious on the floor of my home. Amazingly, this bullet did not kill him. Ten years ago, I adopted Blue after I broke up with my boyfriend one hot, early summer night with the windows open and the neighborhood listening. The next morning I went straight to the pound in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Articles on buying your first dog tell you never to buy a dog on impulse.

Court Gentry's flight on a CIA transport plane is interrupted when a security team brings a hooded man aboard. They want to kick Gentry off the flight but are overruled by CIA headquarters. The mystery man is being transported to England where a joint CIA/MI6 team will interrogate him about a mole in Langley. When they land in an isolated airbase in the UK, they are attacked by a hostile force who kidnaps the prisoner. Only Gentry escapes. His handlers send him after the attackers, but what can one operative do against a trained team of assassins?