Literary Mystery

Pirriwee Public is a beautiful little beachside primary school where children are taught that ‘sharing is caring.’ So how has the annual School Trivia Night ended in full-blown riot? Sirens are wailing. People are screaming. The principal is mortified. And one parent is dead. Was it a murder, a tragic accident or just good parents gone bad? As the parents at Pirriwee Public are about to discover, sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal.

The new novel in Bernard Cornwell's number one bestselling series The Warrior Chronicles, on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. In the battle for power, there can be only one ruler.England is fractured, torn apart more by internal fighting than the threat of Viking invasion. The ruler of Mercia is dying, leaving no legitimate heir. His wife is a formidable fighter and great leader, but no woman has ever ruled over an English kingdom.

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

The Mystery of Right and Wrong is a masterwork from one of the country’s most critically acclaimed and beloved writers that is both compulsively listenable and heartstopping in the vital truth it unfolds. In a novel that grapples with sexual abuse, male violence and madness, Wayne Johnston reveals haunting family secrets he’s kept for more than 30 years.

Eat Pray Love meets American Psycho in a seductive and sinister debut literary thriller. Food critic Dorothy Daniels indulges in her homicidal urges by murdering her lovers and devouring their organs in this intense, visceral, and lushly told tale of food, sex, power, and the pursuit of a very particular taste set between New York and Italy. Please Note: A Certain Hunger contains adult language and depictions of violence. Discretion is advised.

Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Moderna and Regio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.

The new novel in Bernard Cornwell's number-one best-selling series on the making of England and the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. BBC2's major autumn 2015 TV show The Last Kingdom is based on the first two books in the series. A fragile peace is about to be broken.... King Alfred's son, Edward, and formidable daughter, Æthelflaed, rule Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia. But all around the restless Northmen, eyeing the rich lands and wealthy churches, are mounting raids.

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.

Ex-Navy SEAL Rock Babineaux is as Cajun as they come - spicy, sexy, and more than a bit wicked. But would he actually betray his country? Even his best friends on the special-ops Black Knights team aren't sure they can trust him. Now the target of a massive manhunt, Rock knows the only way to protect the team - especially his partner, Vanessa - is to run. Rock might think he can outmaneuver them all, but he hasn't counted on how stubborn Vanessa Cordero can be. And she refuses to cut him loose.

Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack - which he titled "Eight Perfect Murders". But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller.

Belfast, 1985. Amid the Troubles, Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in the Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, struggles with burnout as he investigates a brutal double murder and suicide. Did Michael Kelly really shoot his parents at point-blank range and then jump off a nearby cliff? A suicide note points to this conclusion, but Duffy suspects even more sinister circumstances.

The murderee is Nicola Six, a "black hole" of sex and self-loathing who is intent on orchestrating her own extinction. The murderer may be Keith Talent, a violent lowlife whose only passions are pornography and darts; or the rich, honorable, and dimly romantic Guy Clinch. As Nicola leads her suitors towards the precipice, London--and, indeed, the whole world--seems to shamble after them in a corrosively funny novel of complexity and morality.

Stephen King's first full-length solo novel since Dreamcatcher, the long-awaited From a Buick 8 is "nearly flawless and one terrific entertainment," says Publishers Weekly. A strange car acts as a conduit between our world and some other...and the boogeyman of this creepy story is our collective fascination with deadly things.

Australia is one of the last places where life still exists after nuclear war starts in the Northern Hemisphere. A year on, an invisible cloak of radiation has spread almost completely around the world. Darwin is a ghost town, and radiation levels at Ayres Rock are increasing. An American nuclear-powered submarine has found its way to Australia where its captain has placed the boat under the command of the Australian Navy.

We are behind, and below, the scenes of JFK's presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination - in the underworld that connects Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, DC....

My son and I are in danger. The life and death kind. The kind that forces me to make choices no mother should have to. I’ll do anything to keep my son safe and not sacrifice my responsibility to my patients. I’m desperate. Desperate enough to beg broody Special Agent Micah Emmett for help. But he has a job, and it doesn’t include protecting me. Why should he? He doesn’t know me.

Calder Moor is a wild and deadly place: Many have been trapped in the myriad limestone caves, lost in collapsed copper mines, injured on perilous gritstone ridges. This time, two bodies are discovered in the shadow of the ancient circle of stones known as Nine Sisters Henge. The corpses are those of a young man and woman. Each met death in a different fashion. Each died violently. To Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, brought in to investigate by special request, this grisly crime promises to be one of the toughest assignments of his career.

Single mother Kate Reese is on the run. Determined to improve life for her and her son, Christopher, she flees an abusive relationship in the middle of the night with her child. Together, they find themselves drawn to the tight-knit community of Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. It's as far off the beaten track as they can get. Just one highway in, one highway out. At first, it seems like the perfect place to finally settle down. Then Christopher vanishes. For six awful days, no one can find him. Until Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged.

The perfect family. The perfect house. The perfect life. All gone now. What could cause a man, when all the stars of fortune are shining upon him, to suddenly snap and destroy everything he has built? This is the question that haunts Sergeant Ryan DeMarco after the wife and children of beloved college professor and best-selling author Thomas Huston are found slaughtered in their home. Huston himself has disappeared and so is immediately cast as the prime suspect.

Cole Blackwater's life isn't what it used to be. Once a political superstar within Ottawa's environmental movement, he now runs a nearly defunct conservation strategy consulting firm that distinctly lacks a paying client. His ex-wife loathes him for a scandalous affair that ended their marriage, he feels he's failing his eight-year-old daughter as a father, and he's turning far too often to the bottle to solve his problems.