Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

Chloe and Sloane Morgan were only children when their mother was the second victim of the Bayside Strangler. Now, after spending twenty years trying to discover his identity, the sisters have suddenly vanished. Were they getting too close to the truth? The police consider their interest in the crime to be just a coincidence and have little interest in pursuing the cold case.

Three bodies, three different towns. Each victim was a sorority girl - pretty, privileged, and brutally murdered. There are no fingerprints, no clues. He is scrupulously careful, craving those exquisite seconds when the light fades from his victim's eyes. But the rush never lasts, and the killing won't stop - not until one special woman has been made to suffer....

Of the real-life serial killers whose gruesome acts have been splashed across headlines, none has reached the mythical status of Jack the Ripper. In the Ripper's wake, terror swept through the streets of London's East End in the fall of 1888. As quickly as his nightmarish reign came, Saucy Jack vanished without a trace - leaving future generations to speculate upon his identity and whereabouts. He was diabolical in a way never seen before - a killer who taunted the police, came up with his own legendary monikers, and, ultimately, got away with his heinous crimes.

Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father - or so he says.

Eric Ward thinks there is something odd about Arthur Egan’s life and death. But Ward is a former police inspector and trained to be suspicious. Egan left a large sum. But Ward makes no progress tracing the dead man’s offspring. A photograph of an unknown tombstone is his only clue. He discovers Egan served a term for manslaughter and that the evidence against him may have been planted. Why had he accepted his fate so meekly?

FBI special agent Zoe Spencer uses skeletal remains to recreate the faces of murder victims through sculpture. Though highly scientific, the process is also sensitive and intimate; she becomes attached to the individuals she identifies, desperate to find justice for each. As Zoe examines old remains, she sees a teenage girl looking back at her - the victim in a cold case from over a decade ago.

In 1865 Boston, the members of the Dante Club, poets and Harvard professors Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell, along with publisher J. T. Fields, are finishing America's first translation of The Divine Comedy and preparing to unveil Dante's remarkable visions to the New World.

Child psychiatrist Kate Wolfe's world comes crashing down when one of her young patients commits suicide, so when a troubled girl is left at the hospital ward, she doubts her ability to help. But the girl knows things about Kate's past, things she shouldn't know, forcing Kate to face the murky evidence surrounding her own sister's murder 16 years before, bringing Kate face to face with her deepest fear.

DS Kat Ballantyne is still reeling from a revelation that turned life as she knew it upside down. But when a dog walker discovers the body of a woman among the standing stones known locally as the Three Sisters, there’s no time to focus on her own troubles. Kat is drawn back to work to investigate. At first, the death appears to be an accident. But then Kat discovers an infinity symbol branded onto the dead woman’s abdomen.

An airport killer targeting pilots expands his scope. Alex Cross Must Die. “Drop whatever you’re doing, Detective Cross, and head to Reagan Airport,” DC Metro Police dispatch says. “A jet just crashed and exploded on the runway. The chief and the FBI want you and John Sampson there pronto.”

Chicago, 1923: Ten-year-old Dani Flanagan returns home to find police swarming the house, her parents dead. Michael Malone, the young patrolman assigned to the case, discovers there’s more to the situation—and to Dani Flanagan herself—than the authorities care to explore. Malone is told to shut his mouth, and Dani is sent away to live with her spinster aunts in Cleveland.

Though the cat-and-mouse chase between these two lethal adversaries has seemingly ended, the sophisticated, deadly thrill of Eve and Villanelle's relationship is far from over.

The Crystal Killer’s latest casualty was discovered in a sleepy town in the Pacific Northwest, Misted Pines. His years in the FBI, and tracking the Crystal Killer, have taken their toll on Rus. He lost his marriage to the job. And the burdens he carries for the victims was crushing him. Misted Pines has recently survived a killer’s rampage and a town scandal that made global news. The media was primed to devour a new story. So Rus already has his work cut out for him. But it’s more. Something is just not right with this latest victim.

It’s a case unlike anything detective Mina Dabiri has seen before. A woman trapped inside a magician’s box, with swords pierced through. But this time, it’s not a magic trick. It’s murder. Knowing she has a terrifying killer on her hands, Mina enlists the help of celebrity mentalist, Vincent Walder. Only he can give her an insight into the secret world of magic and illusions. Mina and Vincent soon discover that the murder victim has the roman numeral III engraved on her leg. The killer is counting down.

Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke—until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list. First, a well-liked old man is drowned on a beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine. Then, a father is shot in the back while running through his quiet neighborhood in suburban Massachusetts. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common?

A group of friends gather in a country house for a birthday party. At their host’s request, they each write a short mystery. They draw names from a hat: in each story, one of the group is the killer, and another the victim. Of course, when given such a task, it’s only natural to use what you know. Secrets. Grudges. Illicit love. It’s just that once you put it in a story, the secret is out.

Four women - friends, family, rivals - turn to online dating for companionship, only to find themselves in the crosshairs of a tech-savvy killer using an app to target his victims in this harrowing thriller from the New York Times best selling author of See Jane Run and The Bad Daughter.

Decorated homicide Sergeant Natalie Collins arrived home only seconds after her sister was murdered. The killer was still at the house, a man who believed that with each kill he was closer to living forever. He was hunting survivors of certain death - searching for their secrets. He escaped, and the evidence in Natalie's house pointed to her. Now she is on the run, hunted by the police and the killer with unfinished business.

Thomas Brunson followed Ellie Hartley from the airport... he held her captive on a thousand mile journey, showed her his "lovlies", and then he set her free. Ellie knew she was lucky to be alive. She alone witnessed a killer's private world of madness and murder. She alone escaped a fate too terrible to imagine... but why would he let her go? He's not finished with her yet - he's sending her flowers to prove it.

Forty-eight hours until Christmas, Jessica Kane wakes up with blurred vision, ears ringing, and in excruciating pain. A gash in her head and blood running down her face, the last thing she remembers is going for a run and something or someone hitting her in the head. It doesn't take her long to realize she is trapped in an unknown, deserted town with five other strangers who share similar stories of being attacked and stranded there. Unsure why and how they got there, she knows one thing for certain, she has to find a way out.