International Mysteries Fiction

On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, England, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the reenactors discover a skeleton that is female, headless, and only about twenty years old. One of them, a professor who played a Cavalier, is later found murdered. In the course of his investigation, Peter Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member.

When a mysterious walk-in to the US embassy in Vienna claims to have critical information about a Russian intelligence operation, he raises eyebrows. But when he asks for Matt Drake by name and calls himself the Irishman, he gets the DIA’s premier case officer on a one-way flight. Matt arrives to find Austria’s charming capital lousy with intelligence officers, all swirling around Nolan Burke—a onetime member of the real IRA. But before Matt can debrief Nolan, the Irishman is kidnapped by a Russian direct action team.

It's early September in Glenkillen, Scotland, when American expat (and romance novelist) Eden Elliott is recruited by the local inspector to act as a special constable. Fortunately it's in name only, since not much happens in Glenkillen. For now Eden has her hands full with other things: preparing for the sheepdog trial on the MacBride farm, a fundraiser for the hospice, and helping her friend Vicki with her first yarn club skein-of-the-month deliveries. Everything seems to be going well until the head of the welcoming committee is found strangled to death with a club member's yarn.

A year ago a boy was found murdered at a girlsʼ boarding school, and the case was never solved. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublin’s Murder Squad when 16-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of the boy with the caption: “I know who killed him". Stephen joins with Detective Antoinette Conway to reopen the case - beneath the watchful eye of Holly’s father, fellow detective Frank Mackey. The private underworld of teenage girls turns out to be more mysterious and more dangerous than the detectives imagined.

When FBI special agent Luke Kendrick discovers chilling evidence of dozens of victims at a crime scene in London, he recognizes the calling card of the notorious H. H. Holmes Society. Named for the eighteenth-century monster regarded as America’s first serial killer, the society is comprised of a twisted web of killers, working to carry out heinous murders in Holmes’s memory. And now the group’s been linked to a Scottish castle turned B and B—where guests check in but never check out.

No one thinks very much at all about carwash employee Davey Burnet, until one day he takes the wrong customer's motor for a ride. One kidnapping later, he and the carwash are officially part of Glasgow's criminal underworld, working for a psychopath who enjoys playing games like "Keep Yer Kneecaps" with any poor bastard who crosses him. Can Davey escape from the gang's clutches with his kneecaps and life intact? Perhaps this polis Ally McCoist who keeps nosing around the carwash could help. That's if she doesn't get herself killed first.

Newly promoted to Detective Inspector, William Warwick is tasked with a dangerous new line of work, to go undercover and expose crime of another kind: corruption at the heart of the Metropolitan Police Force. Along with detectives Rebecca Pankhurst and Nicky Bailey, his team is focused on following Detective Jerry Summers, a young officer whose lifestyle exceeds his income. But the investigation risks being compromised when Nicky falls for Summers.

Mercy and Lizzie McCarthy are settling in to the charming seaside village of Shamrock Cove on the west coast of Ireland. Lizzie throws herself into organizing a book festival and mystery writer Mercy even agrees to come out of her bookish hidey-hole to do get involved. But then the star author for the event is found dead. James Brandt was killed by a falling bookshelf in his own cottage… The local detective is not convinced by Mercy’s suspicion of murder but when someone else turns up dead, the police cannot ignore it.

Cass is having a hard time since the night she saw the car in the woods and the woman who was killed. Since then she's been forgetting everything: where she left the car, if she took her pills, the alarm code, why she ordered a pram when she doesn't have a baby.... What she can't forget is the woman she might have saved, the terrible nagging guilt, the silent calls she's receiving and the feeling that someone's watching her.

When Dr. Rennie Newton goes to jury duty, she delivers a "not guilty" verdict in the murder case against contract killer Ricky Lozada. She will learn to regret this decision, because Rennie's trial with Lozada doesn't end with his acquittal. A colleague of hers is soon brutally slain and when Lozada begins an earnest courtship, it becomes clear that he is obsessed with having her. In order to defeat Lozada, Rennie forms an uneasy alliance with a detective who has a personal agenda for Lozada.

In 1893 Sherlock Holmes and Henry James come to America together to solve the mystery of the 1885 death of Clover Adams, wife of the esteemed historian Henry Adams--a member of the Adams family that has given the United States two Presidents. Clover's suicide appears to be more than it at first seemed; the suspected foul play may involve matters of national importance.

Delaney Nichols has settled so comfortably into her new life in Edinburgh that she truly feels it's become more home than her once beloved Kansas. Her job at the Cracked Spine, a bookshop that specializes in rare manuscripts as well as other sundry valuable historical objects, is everything she had dreamed. Her latest task includes a trip to Castle Doune to retrieve a hard-to-find edition of an old Scottish comic, an "Oor Wullie", in a cloak-and-dagger transaction that Edwin has orchestrated.

In the early hours of a quiet weekend morning in Manhattan's Diamond District, a brutal triple murder shocks the city. Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs quickly take the case. Curiously, the killer has left behind a half-million dollars' worth of gems at the murder scene, a jewelry store on 47th street. As more crimes follow, it becomes clear that the killer's target is not gems but engaged couples themselves.

As a teenager, Hayley DaSilva walked into a nightmare, discovering the bodies of her mother, twin brother, and friend all brutally slaughtered in her home…and her nine-year-old brother missing. Her father, Leonard DaSilva, confessed to the murders, but Ethan was never seen again. He lied. But why? Now, Hayley has fled her dreadful past in Thamespark—until the call from Detective Sebastian Locke. Little bones uncovered in a shallow grave belong to Ethan…and the investigation reveals holes in the case that prove Leonard’s confession was false. He didn’t kill his family. So why did he say he did?

April 1999. The body of Alaska Sanders is found on the shore of a lake near the quiet town of Mount Pleasant, New Hampshire. The young woman’s death rocks the small community, but the murder is quickly solved. Within days, a suspect is identified and soon convicted. Case closed. Or so it seemed. . . .Eleven years later, Marcus Goldman, celebrity author and amateur sleuth, picks up a thread that will unravel not only the “open and shut” case of Alaska Sanders, but the very fabric of his best friend,–Sergeant Perry Gahalowood–’s life.

1944. Mao Tse-tung signs a secret document that could delay the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong for an additional one hundred years. But all copies of the document disappear in a plane crash. 1993. As Hong Kong prepares to be restored to China in 1997, England’s prime minister learns of the existence of Mao Tse-tung’s lost document. Former terrorist Sean Dillon is given direct orders to keep the document from coming to light – at all costs.

Meet DCI Lesley Clarke. She’s a straight-talking city copper who doesn’t suffer fools gladly… and she’s been transferred to rural Dorset. After being injured in a bomb attack, Lesley is presented with a choice — early retirement, or a period of respite in a calmer location. But things don’t stay calm for long. Before she’s even started her new job, Lesley is dragged into investigating a murder at one of England’s most iconic landmarks, the imposing Corfe Castle.

London, June 1860: When an assassination attempt is made on Queen Victoria, and a petty thief is gruesomely murdered moments later - and only a block away - Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field quickly surmises that these crimes are connected to an even more sinister plot. Was Victoria really the assassin's target? Are those closest to the Crown hiding something? Soon, Field's investigation exposes a shocking conspiracy in which the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species sets off a string of murders, arson, kidnapping, and the pursuit of a diabolical madman.

The Living. Erlendur works nights. He’s a young officer in Traffic, not yet a detective. And Reykjavik’s nights are full of car crashes, robberies, drinkers and fighters. Sometimes an unexplained death. The Lost. A homeless man Erlendur knows is found drowned. But few people care. Or when a young woman on her way home from a club vanishes. Both cases go cold. The Searcher. Two lost people from two different worlds. Erlendur is not an investigator, but his instincts tell him their fates are worth pursuing.

One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: The culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem-- the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn't exist.