Mystery Girl

Alison has never been a fan of Christmas. But with it right around the corner and her husband busily decorating their cozy Vermont home, she has no choice but to face it. Then she gets the call. Mavis, Alison’s estranged mother, has been diagnosed with cancer and has only weeks to live. She wants to spend her remaining days with her daughter’s family. But Alison grew up with her mother’s alcoholism and violent abuse and is reluctant to unearth these traumatic memories.

Ada promised herself she would never go back to the Trace, to her unbearable life on the swamp, and to her harsh father in Mississippi. But now, after running away to Baton Rouge and briefly knowing a different kind of life, she finds herself with nowhere to go but back home. Matilda, daughter of a sharecropper, is from the other side of the Trace. Doing what she can to protect her family from the whims and demands of some particularly callous locals is an ongoing struggle, so she forms a plan to go north.

When Demi Rao, a young woman, is at her wits' end and on the run from escaping her captor, she comes across an employment ad from the Ivory family, looking for someone to help maintain their elaborate estate. Although the ad is strange with meticulous directions to wear all white, no makeup, and speak quietly, Demi applies. With no choices, Demi gets and accepts the job, and when she does, she quickly realizes she's not there to clean; she's there for a purpose.

Justice with a vengeance. Imagine if you were offered a choice: give up your freedom or watch the people closest to you lose theirs. What would you do? When international fugitive Sydney Rye turns herself over to authorities in order to protect the vigilante network she inspired, her freedom depends on helping Homeland Security shift the tide in a war for "hearts and minds". Sydney Rye is tasked with the perfect assignment: recruit female fighters to take on jihadists. Being killed by a woman is the only thing extremists fear because they believe it bars their entrance to Heaven.

Tess has been determined to get revenge for her father, ever since he was falsely accused of misusing company funds and unceremoniously let go from Diamond Enterprises. Applying to be Executive Assistant to the elusive, elderly head of the company, Mr. King, seems the ideal way to get inside the firm and clear his name. But the job interview is not what she expects. Arriving at the company HQ, she is escorted to a helicopter, blindfolded and flown to a secret location. She meets a man whose voice is disguised, but introduces himself as Mr. King and says the job advertisement was a ruse.

FBI Agent Ella Dark, 29, is given her big chance to achieve her life's dream: to join the Behavioral Crimes Unit. Ella's hidden obsession of gaining an encyclopedic knowledge of serial killers has led to her being singled out for her brilliant mind, and invited to join the big leagues. But this time Ella finds herself in a cat and mouse chase with no way out, and she must wonder if she is hunting or the one who is hunted.

All her life, she’s been the girl who survived. Orphaned at age seven after a horrific killing spree at her family’s Oregon cabin, Kara McIntyre is still searching for some kind of normal. But now, twenty years later, the past has come thundering back. Her brother, Jonas, who was convicted of the murders, has unexpectedly been released from prison. The press is in a frenzy again. And suddenly, Kara is receiving cryptic messages from her big sister, Marlie—who hasn’t been seen or heard from since that deadly Christmas Eve.

Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes.

College admissions season at Seattle's Elliott Bay Academy is marked by glowing acceptances from top-tier institutions and students as impressive as their parents are ambitious. But when Stanford alerts the school it's allotting only one spot to EBA for their incoming class, three mothers discover the competition is more cutthroat than they could have imagined.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

She's just watching, thinking about it again, when a big flash car pulls up outside. No one gets out. Then the doors of the bar open and people appear. Two men and a youngish woman, and one of the men has a hold on the woman's arm. It looks as if they're having words. Then this all happens quickly—they push the woman towards the car, one of the back doors opens, and they manhandle her inside. Sarah hears a muffled shout from the woman and the car pulls away. It's all over in a few seconds.

Emma, Aiden and Gina stand on the brink of a new life. After the trauma of Aiden’s abduction and return, they are slowly healing and returning to a fragile normality. Emma is desperate to protect her children, but the world is fascinated by Aiden, the silent child who is finally learning to speak for himself. Against her better judgment, Emma allows her son to attend a talk show. Her worse nightmare comes true when her daughter, Gina, is snatched from the studio and a chilling game begins.

Eighteen-year-old Addie Blackwood regrets nothing more than one horrible, mistake-filled night last summer. Hours after she hurled the worst words she could think of at her sister, Fiona was found dead at the bottom of a ravine. The police ruled her death an accident, but Addie’s never bought it. Her ballet-prodigy sister didn’t slip and fall; she was pushed. And Addie’s number one suspect: Thatcher Montgomery, the rich kid down the street who always had a thing for Fiona. But when Thatcher is found dead in the same ravine, Addie must admit she was wrong.

1426, Joseon (Korea). Hwani's family has never been the same since she and her younger sister went missing and were later found unconscious in the forest near a gruesome crime scene. Years later, Detective Min - Hwani's father - learns that 13 girls have recently disappeared from the same forest that nearly stole his daughters. He travels to their hometown on the island of Jeju to investigate...only to vanish as well.

Change is coming to Sweden’s far north: its untapped natural resources are sparking a gold rush with the criminal underworld leading the charge. But it’s not the prospect of riches that brings Lisbeth Salander to the small town of Gasskas. She has been named guardian to her niece Svala, whose mother has disappeared. Two things soon become clear: Svala is a remarkably gifted teenager—and she’s being watched.

A fashion magazine features editor, Leah McDevitt is haunted by the memory of her cherished younger sister, Melissa, who vanished years ago. Missy, whose extraordinary eyes - one blue, one brown - may have lured her abductor to her. When Leah receives a letter from death-row inmate Raymond Lambert, she eagerly agrees to pay him the long-standing reward for information about Melissa - even if it means coming face-to-face with a notorious serial killer. But before Lambert can impart his secrets, he himself is killed.

In Dressed to Steal, hot young designer Alicia Adams is opening a boutique in her hometown of River Heights. The press is all over the event. When the big day comes, tons of people show up, but when the crowd presses forward, the store window is smashed and people are injured. Later Alicia's most expensive dress is destroyed, and her store is vandalized. Nancy may not be into fashion, but this is one case she's ready to size up.

Her blue eyes wide open, glossed over. A few specks of sand clung to her long, dark lashes. Her beautiful face, immobile, covered in sparkling flecks of sand. Who is the beautiful girl found at dawn, on a deserted stretch of white sand beach? What is her secret? FBI special agent Tess Winnett searches for answers relentlessly. With each step, each new finding, she uncovers unsettling facts leading to a single possible conclusion: Dawn Girl is not the only victim. Her killer has killed before.

New York Times and internationally best-selling author Jussi Adler-Olsen delivers an exhilarating mystery in the Department Q series, featuring Detective Carl Mørck and his enigmatic assistants, Assad and Rose. In the middle of his usual hard-won morning nap in the basement of police headquarters, Carl Mørck, head of Department Q, receives a call from a colleague working on the Danish island of Bornholm. Carl is dismissive when he realizes that a new case is being foisted on him.

Her name is Renee Blackbear, but what most people call the 19-year-old Ojibwe woman is Cash. She lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota’s Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. She has one friend, the Sheriff Wheaton. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three. Since then, Cash navigated through foster homes and at 13 was working farms, driving trucks.