Police Fiction

Stuart Woods, the best-selling author of L.A. Times and Heat, has created a haunting thriller full of ghostly images, murder and old family secrets. Part detective story, part ghost story, part Southern gothic - this absorbing novel will fascinate listeners as a small town’s present, past and future converge.

Detective Joe "Preach" Everson, a prison chaplain turned police officer, is coming home. After a decade tracking down killers in Atlanta, and with a reputation as one of the finest homicide detectives in the city, his career derailed when he suffered a mental breakdown during the investigation of a serial killer who was targeting children. No sooner does Preach arrive at home in Creekville, North Carolina - a bohemian community near Chapel Hill - than a local bookstore owner is brutally killed, the first murder in a decade.

In Los Angeles in 1988, a 16-year-old girl disappeared from her home and was later found dead of a gunshot wound to the chest. The death appeared at first to be a suicide, but some of the evidence contradicted that scenario, and detectives came to believe this was in fact a murder. Despite a by-the-book investigation, no one was ever charged.

Two novellas from award-winning author Hortense Calisher offering very different journeys: the first looking hopefully forward, and the second, into a painful past. The characters in these two novellas take introspective, poignant excursions both to where they want to be (The Railway Police) and where they have been (The Last Trolley Ride).

New sheriff Bree Taggert is called to a shooting in a campground shuttered for the winter. But she arrives to find a perplexing crime. There is no shooter, no victim, and no blood. No one but Bree believes the sole witness, Alyssa, a homeless teenager who insists she saw her friend shot. Bree calls in former deputy Matt Flynn and his K-9 to track the killer and search for Alyssa’s friend. They discover the battered corpse of a missing university student under the ice in Grey Lake - but it’s not the victim they were looking for.

Against all odds, Constance has found a way back to the place of her origins, New York City in the late 1800s, and sets off on a quest to prevent the events that lead to the deaths of her sister and brother, and stop Manhattan’s most infamous serial killer, Dr. Enoch Leng of the seminal Pendergast novel The Cabinet of Curiosities, before his nefarious experiments come to fruition.

When the body of a young woman is found in her own backyard, a week after her disappearance, evidence leads investigators to a chilling conclusion. She is not the first victim of a serial killer no one knew existed. She most definitely is not the last. FBI Special Agent Tess Winnett joins the local detectives assigned to the case and searches for answers in the intriguing investigation that offers a plethora of forensic evidence, yet no viable leads. When another body is found, the search intensifies, and details about the killer's unusual signature emerge.

Phoenix detective Veranda Cruz is dead set on taking down the Villalobos crime family, but the ruthlessness of her quarry demands a ruthless edge of her own. Targeted by an increasingly unstable foe, Veranda must protect her family and navigate adversaries within the force while she sets a trap for Bartolo. As the action heats up, Veranda and her new Homicide team - along with an arson investigator who kindles a flame of his own - are all drawn into a deadly gambit.

A British journalist is invited to Malmö to interview an old university friend who is now one of Sweden's leading film directors. When he discovers the director's glamorous film-star wife dead in her apartment, the Skåne County Police are called in to solve the high-profile case.

When the body of a journalist is found in a traditional Shetland boat, Detective Inspector Willow Reeves is drafted in to head up the investigation. Jimmy Perez has been out of the loop, but his local knowledge is needed, and he decides to help the inquiry. Originally a Shetlander, the journalist had left the islands years before to make a name for himself in London, leaving a scandal in his wake. He had few friends in Shetland, so why was he back?

When a badly mutilated body washes up on the shores of Loch Ness, DCI Jack Logan's dream of a quiet life in the Highlands is shattered. While the media speculates wildly about monster attacks, Jack and the Major Investigations Team must act fast to catch the killer before they can strike again. But with Nessie-hunters descending on the area in their dozens, and an old enemy rearing his ugly head, the case could well turn out to be the most challenging of Jack's career. And, if he isn't careful, the last.

When Skye married into the wealthy Turner family, she thought she was entering paradise. But now, several years later, she remains uneasy amid the opulence of her husband's world, struggling with her own secrets and working to maintain a normal life for their young daughter, Tilly. Skye's delicate balance is undone when the family patriarch, Sir Campbell Turner, dies suddenly and an illegitimate heir comes forward to stake his claim in the luxury goods empire the old man leaves behind.

A small Georgia town erupts in panic when a young college professor is found brutally mutilated in the local diner. But it's only when town pediatrician and coroner Sara Linton does the autopsy that the full extent of the killer's twisted work becomes clear. Sara's ex-husband, Police Chief Jeffrey Tolliver, leads the investigation - a trail of terror that grows increasingly macabre when another local woman is found crucified a few days later.

While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request. He’s asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university.

Fear prickles her skin. “Noah?” Photos and trinkets from their simple but perfect life together litter the carpet. The coffee table is cracked, blood along its edges. She should be taking in details, but her heart is racing too fast. A strangled cry works its way from Josie’s chest. Where is her husband? Detective Josie Quinn’s world shatters when she returns home to find her house ransacked, and her husband, Noah, missing.

Fifteen year old Marilyn turns up alone and frightened on Inspector Ramsay’s doorstep so he takes the young girl home to the isolated coastal community known as the Headland. And in the Howes’ dark and cluttered kitchen they find Kathleen safe and apparently well, though acting rather mysteriously. Six months later, Ramsay has more or less forgotten the strange incident, busy as he is on the trail of a local child abductor. Until he receives news that Mrs Howe has disappeared once more.

When an elderly local woman is found poisoned, Sheriff Walt Longmire begins an investigation that soon has him ensnared in a deadly spider's web. From Craig Johnson, author of the acclaimed novel The Cold Dish, comes this enthralling Sheriff Longmire mystery. With a distinctive literary flair, Johnson leads us into the wide open space of Absaroka County, Wyoming.

When challenged by a new notorious killer, FBI Agent Maya Gray is tasked with catching a murderer preying on college seniors steps away from commencement. With her career—and life—on the line, Maya must decode the twisted envy poisoning campus life before the next cap and gown adorns a coffin.

Fifteen years ago, the Rookie Club began as a tight-knit band of female cops struggling for respect. Jamie Vail was one of them. So was Natasha Devlin, the woman Jamie caught in bed with her husband. When Natasha Devlin turns up dead, Jamie can't bring herself to care. She's got enough on her plate, hunting a sexual predator who preys on female officers. He leaves them alive, but brutalized. But when the MO of the Devlin murder matches the MO of the perp in Jamie's case, she's brought in on the homicide investigation and back into the Rookie Club she has been avoiding.

New Orleans criminal psychologist Kit Franklyn, lately drowning in personal doubts about her life and career, thinks that investigating the corpse she found in the garden of her new home will be the perfect distraction. Together with her boss, chief medical examiner Andy Broussard, she sets out to solve this case that seems plain unsolvable. Though they identify the body as a missing hooker, now dead 27 years, all hope of conviction still seems lost.