Irish Mystery Fiction

Susan has everything she ever wanted. A loving husband, an angelic daughter and the cottage of her dreams in County Cork. Her picture-perfect life seems too good to be true. And it is. At a housewarming party with their new neighbours, her daughter Amelia goes missing. As friends become suspects, Susan’s life spirals out of control. And when Amelia’s yellow cardigan is dredged from the lake, every parent’s worst nightmare suddenly seems horribly real. In the aftermath of Amelia’s disappearance Susan and her husband Paul are not themselves. Someone is hiding something.

As a widowed mother of three, new love seems impossible for Freya - until she meets Duncan, and suddenly she feels alive again. While Freya’s older children are less than welcoming, six-year-old Sophie helps Duncan find his place in the family - but even Sophie harbours fears that threaten to overshadow any chance of a new start. The past is hard to leave behind when pictures of Freya’s idolised late husband hang in every room, and the more Duncan tries to find the source of Sophie’s anxiety, the more he is convinced that Reuben was not the perfect husband and father Freya remembers.

Devastated by a broken engagement, Stella Jackson leaves her old life behind for a new start in rural Scotland. But when she arrives in the remote coastal village of Arisaig, nothing is what she expected. At the edge of Arisaig sits Munro House; grand, imposing and said to be cursed by a string of tragic deaths. No less intriguing is its eccentric and handsome young owner, Jamie Munro, who hires Stella as his assistant while he pursues a seemingly impossible aim.

Now, Bram Stoker's Dracula - the pinnacle of Gothic horror for generations - rises again. When young English lawyer Jonathan Harker arrives in Transylvania on the eve of Saint George's Day, he cannot shake a strange feeling of uneasiness. The air grows colder as he arrives at his destination: the castle of Count Dracula. Jonathan has been summoned by the count for business, and while he finds his new host obliging and polite, he can't help but notice the man's pallid skin, odd lack of appetite, and long daytime absences.

When Charlotte McKay wakes up in a hospital bed with no memory of how she got there, all she wants is to go back to the perfect London flat she shares with her husband, and the impressive career she’s worked so hard to build. But something’s not right. Her husband David is at her bedside - but so is a three-year-old girl, and she’s calling Charlotte "Mummy"....

The Beetle tells the tale of an evil, ancient Egyptian spirit seeking revenge on an up-and-coming British politician, Paul Lessingham. The shape-shifting creature that pursues Lessingham is possessed of hypnotic powers and takes different forms, both male and female, as well as morphing into a beetle - a figure that induces terror in its victims.

After mom's death, it's just me and my dad running the family pub - and I've got big plans for it once dad retires. But everything changes when he shows up in the middle of the night. Daniel Kelly. When he tells me he's back for good, I have half a mind to throw his arrogantly handsome arse out and send him back to Dublin. But his visit isn't just a coincidence. No, it's very much intentional. Because our parents have been conspiring, and it seems that Daniel is back...for me.

A German advocate of the Kaiser discovers he is a facial/physical match for young Englishman Everard Dominey, who is near death after harrowing experiences in Africa. The remarkable doppelgänger resemblance leads Major-General Baron Leopold Von Ragastein to infiltrate the UK in perfect disguise. He wants to lead his country’s efforts as Europe is racing toward war. Part of the plan is to murder Dominey and have the Baron take his place in English society.

A relaxing sailing trip on his day off becomes anything but for DSI Mick Hays when a body is found at sea. The coastguard pluck the corpse from the ocean with ease, but establishing the dead man's identity won't be straightforward. And when pathology indicates he was murdered, Hays' partner DI Maureen Lyons is put in charge of the investigation. Good forensics and a nose for trouble lead Lyons to a small hamlet in an isolated part of the coast. But the locals, who are running a smooth bootleg liquor operation, are none too forthcoming with information.

The opening story in this collection follows Vinny, Kevin, and a mourning family from Liverpool on a journey to Wales. What should be a simple trip turns into something much darker. A cross between Roddy Doyle and Ken Follett, this political storytelling meets you wherever you are on life’s journey, and stays with you.

In 1846, Valentia McDowell is haunted by dreams of a mystical brooch her grandmother left in Ireland. When she makes the dangerous journey to Ireland, she’s devastated by illness and tragedy. The famine and poverty she encounters force her to reassess her priorities, and she embarks upon a campaign to improve the lives of those she meets.

New York in 1803 is rife with tension as the city expands, and whoever knows where the city will build can control it. And violence builds as a mysterious provocateur pits the city’s black and Irish gangs against each other. When a young black girl is found stabbed to death, both Justy Flanagan, now a city marshal, and Kerry O’Toole, now a school teacher, decide separately to go after the killer. They each find their way to a shadowy community on the fringes of the growing city, where they uncover a craven political conspiracy....

Paddy Buckley is a grieving widower who has worked for years for Gallagher's, a long-established - some say the best - funeral home in Dublin. One night, while driving home after an unexpected encounter with a client, Paddy hits a pedestrian crossing the street. He pulls over and gets out of his car, intending to do the right thing. As he bends over to help the man, he recognizes him. It's Donal Cullen, brother of one of the most notorious mobsters in Dublin. And he's dead.

This Christmas time, things are not all fine. For there's trouble at Devlin's Department Store, and it all seems to centre on the first floor. Where strangely, one can hear a cuckoo chime...T'is the season to be jolly. And Old Tom must crack the case, before he can hang up his holly.

Kate Doyle has spent her life making lists. But her pleasure in planning comes to an abrupt end in the wake of a family tragedy. For the first time in two decades, she is living back in Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood she discovers has not changed nearly as much as reports of hipster Brooklyn had led her to believe. Her discovery of a family heirloom teaches her that the Heights and its surrounding neighborhoods have been sustaining Doyles for well over a century.

At approximately 16:00, this office received a telephonic communication that two journals were recovered near Johnson Village, Colorado, following incident [redacted]. Journal number one contains approximately 200 pages and is leather-bound. Source is a caucasian male: Jack Reynolds, automotive mechanic, 33 years of age. Journal number two contains approximately 200 pages and is hard-bound in red. Source is a caucasian female: Lisa James, doctor of medicine, 31 years of age.

Ariella always looked up to her late father, the famous Captain Red Beard. She tried to make him proud every chance she could get until that dreadful day he passed away. Now it is up to her to take over her late father's ship, the Red Dawn, and prove to her crew that she is more than just a pretty face. In this intriguing story, Captain Ariella fights off orcs while maintaining her reputation as the most wicked female captain anyone has ever known. She is fearless and has never backed down from a fight.

Cynthia, a 12-year-old child, finds herself living alone in a gritty neighborhood of flophouses, bars, and drug dealers. Violence is her path to survival. The cartel recruits her into the underground world of drugs, guns, violence, and betrayal. Cynthia rises in the organization to become the only woman enforcer. She learns to love only to find that her loved ones die a horrible death. Can she survive in her kill or be killed world?

A wave lifts the stern of the boat, rigging groans in protest and a crash comes from down below, as the wails of the cargo rise above the howl of the storm. It's a wild Christmas Day on the rugged Northern Irish coast. But there's no time for turkey and pud with the family for Detectives Harvey and Birch. DS Aaron Birch leans into the wind and driving sleet. Thick, scudding clouds make the streets of Lisburn almost as dark as early evening. Then he gets the tip-off. Smugglers coming into a boatyard in Bangor.

Sue Hearn is planting a herb garden on the site of her grandfather's old greenhouse. She's spent the morning digging up all sorts of odds and ends already. But she doesn't expect this grisly find. A skull. Could it be the remains of her mother, Monica, who went missing thirty years ago? Sue's father, in hospital with dementia, insinuates that a police officer was involved in her mother's disappearance. But can he be trusted?