Thriller Fiction

As owner of Coffee, Books, and More, Jill Gardner looks forward to the hustle and bustle of holiday shoppers. But when the mayor ropes her into being the liaison for a new work program, 'tis the season to be wary. Local businesses are afraid that the interns will be delinquents, punks, or worse. For Jill, nothing's worse than Ted Hendricks - the jerk who runs the program. After a few run-ins, Jill's ready to kill the guy. That, however, turns out to be unnecessary when she finds Ted in his car - dead as a doornail.

Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross is renowned for his cutting-edge science fiction. This third entry in his “edgy … spoof of Cold War spy thrillers” ( Booklist) finds covert agent Bob Howard learning about a top-secret dossier that vanishes with his boss. Determined to discover the contents of this memorandum, Howard runs afoul of Russian spies, ancient demons, and apostles of a hideous cult planning to raise the Eater of Souls from the undead.

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.

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides - or are chosen.

Victoria can't wait to start college, but there's a hitch - she can't remember anything before arriving on campus. Her memories finally spark when she sees her ruggedly handsome math professor, but she senses something terrible happened. The shock on his face affirms her fears. Toby is an alpha wolf who never thought he'd see his true love again - not after she died in his arms. Nothing could have prepared him for her walking into his class. But to his dismay, not only has she forgotten the past, she doesn't even know who she is.

What does the tragic death of a 27-year-old Portland beauty have to do with a suburban mother in Houston? Everything. Only Meghan Bishop doesn't know it yet. When the married mother stumbles upon evidence suggesting someone close to her may have ties to the heinous crime the nation can't stop talking about, she's forced to dive headfirst into an ocean of secrets she never knew existed. Unraveling her life one startling piece at a time, Meghan realizes she believed all the pretty lies she'd been told.

During the investigation into the death of a woman on a Liverpool housing estate, DI Tara Grogan encounters Callum, a local recluse who claims to have information. But he won't help her unless she, in turn, helps him find out the truth about the suspicious death of his wife and child. Tara is ready to dismiss his outlandish theories and ravings, until she discovers that, like her, he was a student at Latimer College, Oxford. A place which she has very much buried in the past.

When missing teens begin turning up dead in a small Southern town, the FBI sends in Special Agent Samantha Cash to help crack the case. Her methods are invisible, and she never quits until the case is closed.

After a routine delivery, midwife Sarah Brandt visits her patient in a rooming house and finds that another boarder, a young girl, has been killed. At the request of sergeant Frank Malloy, she searches the girl's room and discovers that the victim is from one of the most prominent families in New York - and the sister of an old friend. The powerful family, fearful of scandal, refuses to permit an investigation. But with Malloy's help, Sarah begins a dangerous quest to bring the killer to justice before death claims another victim.

Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond is the last detective: a genuine gumshoe, committed to door-stopping and deduction rather than fancy computer gadgetry. So when the naked body of a woman is found floating in the weeds in a lake near Bath with no one willing to identify her, no marks, and no murder weapon, his sleuthing abilities are tested to the limit.

Can the feisty Agatha Raisin cut it as a private investigator? She soon learns that running her own detective agency in the Cotswolds is not quite like starring in a Raymond Chandler movie. But then in walks wealthy divorcée Catherine Laggat-Brown, and presents Agatha with her first real case. Death threats, blackmail, and worse quickly follow, and once again Agatha is off scouring the countryside for clues and showing friends and enemies alike what Raisin Investigations can do!

At age 26 Agatha Raisin has already come a long way. She has clawed her way up since leaving the Birmingham slum where she was born. She's lost her Birmingham accent, run away from her drunken husband, and found a job at a public relations office as a secretary. Then her boss asks Agatha to go to the home of Sir Bryce Teller to tell him that he is soon to be arrested for the murder of his wife and that the agency no longer wants to represent him.

Drawing strong comparisons to the work of James Lee Burke and Tony Hillerman, William Kent Krueger’s Cork O’Connor mysteries never fail to please fans. Here Cork joins the search for a country-western singer who has disappeared in the wilderness along the American/Canadian border.

Waking up in a tacky coffin and wearing off-brand shoes, Betsy Taylor can't believe the horrible turn her life has taken; then she discovers she's a vampire. Soon, Betsy becomes a participant in a power struggle between the forces of darkness. With only her friend Jessica and the hunky vampire Sinclair to help her, this new "Queen of Vampires" will have a tough time getting her afterlife straight.

When it comes to heists, Parker believes in some cardinal rules. On this job, he breaks two of them: never bring a dame along - especially not one you like - and never, ever, work with amateurs. Nevertheless, with the help of a creep named Billy, and the lure of a classy widow, he agrees to set up a heist of a coin convention. But Billy’s a rookie with no idea how to pull off a score, and the lady soon becomes a major distraction. The Rare Coin Score marks the first appearance of Claire, who will steal Parker’s heister’s heart - while together they steal two million dollars’ worth of coins.

Buried deep within the consciousness of Sergeant Raymond Shaw is the mechanism of an assassin, a time bomb ticking toward explosion, controlled by the delicate skill of its Communist masters. Shaw returns from the Korean War to an idolizing and unsuspecting country. What follows is at once a spy story, a love story, and a sobering, yet outrageously funny satire on demagoguery in American politics.

The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions - until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself - first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it - stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy. Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani.

An atmospheric debut novel set on the gritty streets of Victorian London, Some Danger Involved introduces detective Cyrus Barker and his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, as they work to solve the gruesome murder of a young scholar in London's Jewish ghetto. When the eccentric and enigmatic Barker takes the case, he must hire an assistant, and out of all who answer an ad for a position with "some danger involved", he chooses downtrodden Llewelyn, a gutsy young man with a murky past.

It's been seven years since the Seattle Strangler terrorized the city. His victims were all young, pretty, their lifeless bodies found wrapped in a home-sewn white dress. But there was one who miraculously escaped death, just before the Strangler disappeared. Lara Church has only hazy memories of her long-ago attack. What she does have is a home in Austin, a job, and a chance at a normal life at last. Then Texas Ranger James Beck arrives on her doorstep with shattering news: The Strangler is back....

Un thriller déroutant porté par un envoûtant duo de comédiennes ! Jeunes mariés, Tricia et Ethan recherchent la maison de leurs rêves. Alors qu'ils visitent un manoir isolé ayant appartenu au docteur Adrienne Hale, une psychiatre renommée disparue sans laisser de trace quatre ans plus tôt, une violente tempête de neige les piège sur place. Et la maison n'a rien d'un cocon rassurant... Il y a ces empreintes de pas récentes sur le parquet, ces bruits à l'étage, comme si quelqu'un vivait là.