Literature Fiction Thriller Mystery

When 17-year-old Maddy Pruitt vanishes from her sleepy town, word on the street is that she ran away. The daughter of an abusive alcoholic with a quick temper, she had every reason to leave in search of something better, and everyone who knew Maddy knew the type of company she kept wasn't always ideal. But when a second 17-year-old girl from a local, affluent family turns up missing shortly after Maddy's disappearance, the circumstances become suspicious.

A breakneck race against time…and an implacable enemy. An anonymous young woman murdered in a run-down hotel, all identifying characteristics dissolved by acid. A father publicly beheaded in the blistering heat of a Saudi Arabian public square. A notorious Syrian biotech expert found eyeless in a Damascus junkyard. Smoldering human remains on a remote mountainside in Afghanistan. A flawless plot to commit an appalling crime against humanity. One path links them all, and only one man can make the journey. Pilgrim.

Mary Russell is used to dark secrets - her own and those of her famous partner and husband, Sherlock Holmes. Trust is a thing slowly given, but over the course of a decade together, the two have forged an indissoluble bond. And what of the other person to whom Mary Russell has opened her heart: the couple's longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson?

For fans of Louise Penny, C. J. Box, and Nevada Barr comes a haunting crime novel set in Glacier National Park, where one man finds himself on a collision course with the dark heart of the wild and the even darker heart of human nature.

Hollywood has come to Lake Eden and The Cookie Jar is snack central for the movie crew. And when the demanding director turns up dead after someone switches the movie's prop gun with a real gun, there's a baker's dozen worth of suspects.

As the first Axis aircraft streak across English Channel airspace, so begins a battle for the ages; one that will determine the trajectory of the war. Braced for engagement on their individual fronts, the Littlefields plumb the depths of courage and ingenuity to defend their beloved Britain. Fresh from the slaughter of Dunkirk, youngest brother Jeremy is called upon to create a French Resistance network composed of former naval officers. At MI-9 headquarters, Claire Littlefield has devised an intelligence coup that could change the tide of the war.

The Pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, 118 cardinals from all over the globe will cast their votes in the world's most secretive election. They are holy men. But they have ambition. And they have rivals. Over the next 72 hours, one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth.

June 1920. In a house with a red door lies the body of a woman who has been bludgeoned to death. Rumor has it that two years earlier, she'd painted that door to welcome her husband back from the Front - only he never came home. Meanwhile, in London, a man suffering from a mysterious illness first goes missing and then just as suddenly reappears. He is unable to explain his recovery. Inspector Ian Rutledge must solve the cases.

One unbearable mistake at the edge of the forest. In a moment of crisis, Ellis Abbey leaves her daughter, Viola, unattended - for just a few minutes. But when she returns, Viola is gone. A breaking point in an already fractured marriage, Viola’s abduction causes Ellis to disappear as well - into grief, guilt, and addiction. Convinced she can only do more harm to her family, Ellis leaves her husband and young sons, burying her desperate ache for her children deeper with every step into the mountain wildernesses she treks alone.

Frances Wynn, the American-born Countess of Harleigh, enjoys more freedom as a widow than she did as a wife. After an obligatory year spent mourning her philandering husband, Reggie, she puts aside her drab black gowns, leaving the countryside and her money-grubbing in-laws behind. With her young daughter in tow, Frances rents a home in Belgravia and prepares to welcome her sister, Lily, arriving from New York - for her first London season.

Lochdubh, a remote village reached only by a one-track lane, nestles serenely amid Scotland's hills … until well-known TV reporter Crystal French races into town in her bright BMW. And Constable Hamish Macbeth, dourly wed to duty instead of the fiancée who dumped him, promptly gives her a summons for reckless driving. Outraged, Crystal makes Macbeth's life a misery with a TV report on policing in the Highlands.

Mma "Precious" Ramotswe sets up a detective agency in Botswana on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, making her the only female detective in the country. At first, cases are hard to come by. But eventually, troubled people come to Precious with a variety of concerns. Potentially philandering husbands, seemingly schizophrenic doctors, and a missing boy who may have been killed by witch doctors all compel Precious to roam about in her tiny van, searching for clues.

In the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting - a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic rage. But Stella's knowledge of Edgar's crime is no hindrance to the volcanic attraction that ensues -a passion that will consume Stella's sanity and destroy her and the lives of those around her.

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....

Something terrible has finally happened. A nuclear holocaust has destroyed civilization. For one whole year, 16-year-old Ann Burden has lived alone on her family’s farm, somehow sheltered from the radiation in the valley. As she hears the final radio station going off the air, she believes she is the only person left alive. But when Ann sees smoke from a faraway campfire, she knows there is at least one other survivor....

Gifted musician Clemency Thompson is playing for tourists on the streets of Southern France when she receives an urgent text message. Her childhood friend, Lucy, is demanding her immediate return to London. It’s happening, says the message. The baby is back. Libby Jones was only six months old when she became an orphan. Now 25, she’s astounded to learn of an inheritance that will change her life. A gorgeous, dilapidated townhouse in one of London’s poshest neighborhoods has been held in a trust for her all these years. Now, it’s hers.

Though she cannot entirely discount the effects of the head injuries they were both suffering at the time, Mary Russell is delighted by Sherlock Holmes' proposal of marriage. After all, they have become partners in crime, and she has recently come into her inheritance: What remains but to confirm the union with her mentor-turned-partner with the piece of paper?

They came after the Diseray. Some were terrors ripped from our collective imaginations, remnants of every mythology across the world. And some were like nothing anyone had ever dreamed up, even in their worst nightmares. Now, the luckiest Cits live in enclosed communities, behind walls that keep them safe from the hideous monsters fighting to break through.

The Five features a rock band skirting the margins of success while touring the American Southwest. Life on the road, however, takes a strange turn when they encounter an Iraq War veteran. Soon thereafter, violence descends on the group, and their lives are tuned to a terrifying pitch.

The wealthy Agatha Dawson is dead and there are no apparent signs of foul play. Lord Peter Wimsey, however, senses that something is amiss and he refuses to let the case rest - even without any clues or leads. Suddenly, he is faced with another murder - Agatha's maid. Can super-sleuth Wimsey find the murderer and solve the case before he becomes the killer's next victim?