Suspense Detective

For the Sake of the Game is the latest volume in the award-winning series from New York Times best-selling editors Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, with stories of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and friends in a variety of eras and forms. King and Klinger have a simple formula: Ask some of the world's greatest writers-regardless of genre - to be inspired by the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The results are surprising and joyous.

In a quiet small town in New Brunswick, old Agatha Treadway makes one last cranky complaint to her niece before dying on her kitchen floor. The cause seems to be a jar of contaminated string beans, which sat on Agatha's basement shelf for years before becoming her final meal. The town doctor calls it a tragic accident - and a warning to all who can their own vegetables - but Agatha's neighbor, the intrepid Janet Wadman, knows better. Agatha was an expert canner, which means the beans must have been placed there by someone else. This was murder.

The Guilty Plea finds Toronto detective Ari Greene investigating the murder of an heir to a Canadian food conglomerate. Although the victim's ex-wife swears to her lawyers that she's innocent, evidence to the contrary quickly mounts.

Newly appointed as land agent to the youthful Lord Croft, Matthew Rowsley finds plenty to keep him busy as he attends to his lordship's neglected country estate. But he's distracted from his tasks by the disappearance of a young housemaid. Has Maggie really eloped with a young man, as her mother attests - or is the truth rather more sinister? What's been going on behind the scenes at the grand country estate...and where has his lordship disappeared to?

Damaged, Deceptive, Dangerous, Darling. When a group of teens wake up in the woods, these words are inked onto their skin. Are they labels? A warning? They must find the truth before a killer finds them. While on a mandatory senior field trip, a flash flood cuts off Sera and three classmates from their group with no way to call for help. But they're not as alone as they thought....

Doctor Robert Branch was a university professor, not a secret agent. But his best friend was dead and Branch knew that it couldn't have been suicide. He was also certain that the murder had been arranged by a Nazi espionage group operating on campus. The only trouble was, no one would believe him. Branch knew that the Nazis would have him eliminated as soon as it was convenient.

Adrian Monk is horrified when he learns there's going to be a blue flu in San Francisco. He doesn't understand what the blue flu is - but it sounds terrible. Captain Stottlemeyer explains that it's not really a virus: the police force plan to call in "sick" until they get a better contract. The good news is that the labor dispute will give Monk a chance to get back on the force. The bad news is, it means he'll be a "scab" - and he doesn't like the sound of that, either.

In Midcoast Maine, Jamie Flint and her K-9 team search for the cognitively challenged son of a local animal hoarder, while recently licensed private investigator Jack Juarez looks into a murder related to the case. Unfortunately, each new clue Jack finds in the investigation seems to lead him back to a suspect police already have in their sights: Jamie's son. Meanwhile, Jamie fights to save a critically ill pit bull pulled from the hoarder's home who could hold the key to the woman's dark secrets.

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?

Harley Mason, you may love her or hate her, but never underestimate her. As the Masons settle down to a more normal life following the death of three family members, a shocking discovery of a schoolgirl found dead in nearby woods starts the finger pointing once again. Lewis Sanders, the detective on the case, struggles to believe that a teenage girl is capable of such a horrific crime. Yet the discovery of a second body could put Harley Mason in the frame.

Jack Saxby is trying to keep the farm he thought he’d been given by his mother. His vindictive father wants to take it away, and Jack’s two brothers also have their own agenda. Then there’s a suspicious death, and the family’s dark secrets come to light. Can Eric Ward, representing Jack, find out who’s really guilty? Eric is facing a risky eye operation and he’s still resisting a serious relationship with young heiress Anne Morcombe. Can he solve the case and save his reputation?

Meet Jessica Jones: retired superhero, private investigator, loner. She tried her best to be a shiny spandex crimefighter, but that life only led to unspeakable trauma. Now she avoids that world altogether and works on surviving day-to-day in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. The morning a distraught mother comes into her office, Jessica would prefer to nurse her hangover and try to forget last night’s poor choices. But something about Amber Randall’s story strikes a chord with her. Amber is adamant that something happened to her teenage twins while they were visiting their father in the UK.

Detective Sergeant James Henderson's remarkable gut instincts have put him on a three-year fast track to becoming an inspector. But the advancement of his career has come at a cost. Gay, posh and eager to prove himself in the Metropolitan Police, James has allowed himself few chances for romance. But when the murder of barrister Maria Curzon-Whyte lands in his lap, all that changes. His investigation leads him to a circle of irresistibly charming men. And though he knows better, James finds himself enticed into their company.

It was a horrible death - Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knows that any number of people could have killed him. But who actually did?

In early 1925, the Honorable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher - recent mother of twins - resumes her journalistic career by agreeing to write a piece about the Tower of London - the Bloody Tower - for an American magazine. Invited to observe the centuries-old ritual Ceremony of the Keys, she's spending the night (her first time away from her babies), since the complex is locked and guarded, and the high walls are surrounded by a disused moat.

In late 1926, the newly married Daisy Dalrymple and Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard take an ocean voyage to America for their honeymoon. Daisy and Alec are accompanied by Daisy's childhood friend, Phillip Petrie; his wife, Gloria; and Gloria's father, American millionaire industrialist Caleb P. Arbuckle, and all are looking forward to a pleasant, uneventful trip. But at the last minute they are joined by Arbuckle's new friend, Yorkshire millionaire Jethro Gotobed, and his new wife, Wanda.

It is 1895, and Sherlock Holmes is settling back into life as a consulting detective at 221B Baker Street, when he and Watson learn of strange goings-on amidst the dreaming spires of Oxford. A Professor Quantock has built a wondrous computational device, which he claims is capable of analytical thought to rival the cleverest men alive. Naturally Sherlock Holmes cannot ignore this challenge.

When retired homicide detective Thomas Prescott learns he’s inherited a 250-acre farm in Tarrin, Missouri (pop. 2,100), he can’t get there fast enough. As he slowly acclimates to small-town living, he hears rumblings about a horrific crime in the town’s past. Four years earlier, a recently fired employee of the local grocery store enacted his revenge, shooting and killing the owner of the store, plus four customers, then turning the gun on himself. The crime appears to have been solved, but Prescott has his doubts.

Some years ago, Cyrus Barker matched wits with Sebastian Nightwine, an aristocrat and sociopath, and in exposing his evil, sent Nightwine fleeing to hide from justice somewhere in the far corners of the earth. The last thing Barker ever expected was to encounter Nightwine again - but the British government, believing they need Nightwine's help, has granted him immunity for his past crimes, and brought him back to London.

On the hottest day in living memory, Richard Mallory Tindall, the owner of a patent firm, does not return home to Cleete village. When a man is found crushed to death, Tindall's case goes from missing person to homicide. In the course of solving murder cases, Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan has seen all manner of ugly death. But there's something particularly gruesome about this one, the body crushed beneath the marble and iron of an old Saxon church tower. With rubble blocking off access to the crime scene, no one can get close enough to inspect the body.