Crime Thriller Suspense

This is collection of 18 crime stories with a diverse range of characters and scenarios, from guilt-ridden fraudsters to lovesick murderers.

They are the most violent, blood-thirsty, and vicious of criminals. While hunting for them, FBI profilers call these monsters UNSUBS, short for "unknown subjects of ongoing investigations". At any given time, in the United States there are more than 50 serial killers at large, preying on vulnerable, unsuspecting victims. Until yesterday, no one knew Florida had another serial killer on the loose. Special Agent Tess Winnett calls this particularly elusive one the "Taker of Lives".

Roman Melnikov is a deadly man in an expensive suit. I know what lies beneath the façade—the scars and tattoos that hint at the man he really is. He came here to find his sister, and his search led him to my dad and his friends. We both want to take them down, and the only way to do that is together. I had no idea how dangerous it would be, or that by the end of it, we'd all be covered in blood. Loving Roman is dangerous, but I can't let him go. His path is leading him straight to hell, and it looks like I'm coming along for the ride.

The year is 1869. A brutal triple murder in a remote community in the Scottish highlands leads to the arrest of a young man by the name of Roderick Macrae. A memoir written by the accused makes it clear that he is guilty, but it falls to the country's finest legal and psychiatric minds to uncover what drove him to commit such merciless acts of violence. Was he mad? Only the persuasive powers of his advocate stand between Macrae and the gallows.

While speaking at a Hong Kong medical conference, neurosurgeon Dr. Lucas McCrae slips the cloth off a cadaver's head during a routine medical demonstration, and is overwhelmed with the shock by what's staring back at him: His best friend, Andy Baer. Stunned, McCrae races back to Seattle to discover that Andy is in fact missing and may have been murdered by a gang of body snatchers who operate a legit funeral business and make a fortune by selling recovered body parts to medical researchers.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the smalltown of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake. Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

Everyone from Wakarusa, Indiana, remembers the infamous case of January Jacobs, who was discovered in a ditch hours after her family awoke to find her gone. Margot Davies was six at the time, the same age as January—and they were next-door neighbors. In the twenty years since, Margot has grown up, moved away, and become a big-city journalist. But she’s always been haunted by the feeling that it could’ve been her. And the worst part is, January’s killer has never been brought to justice.

Attorney Nate Shepherd left a big firm to go out on his own. He sees nothing but opportunity when an out-of-town lawyer wants to hire him as local counsel on a high-profile murder case. Though his family worries that the case hits too close to home, Nate joins the defense team. When circumstances force him to take on a bigger role, Nate ignores his family’s fears and throws himself into his client’s defense.

When Sasha receives a call from her old university friend Gabby inviting her to spend Christmas at Gabby’s remote Scottish lake house, Sasha knows she shouldn’t go. Twelve years ago, on Christmas Eve, when Sasha and her five closest friends were celebrating the festive season, something truly horrific happened that would change the course of their friendship forever. Something that meant Sasha hasn’t spoken to any of them since that night.

An entire family is murdered and, by a quirk, a young girl is left unharmed. For 15 years, she believed the killer had been caught, and he's now on death row, awaiting execution. While trying to be content with her adoptive family, she's living in relentless uncertainty and the fear of remembering what really happened that night when she was five years old. She's The Watson Girl.

Fifteen years ago, Sara Linton’s life changed forever when a celebratory night out ended in a violent attack that tore her world apart. Since then, Sara has remade her life. A successful doctor, engaged to a man she loves, she has finally managed to leave the past behind her. Until one evening, on call in the ER, everything changes. Sara battles to save a broken young woman who’s been brutally attacked. But as the investigation progresses, led by GBI Special Agent Will Trent, it becomes clear that Dani Cooper’s assault is uncannily linked to Sara’s.

Contains books 4-6 of the bestselling, fast-paced Detective Sebastian Clifford series.

It’s Halloween, and when an elderly billionaire is discovered dead in the locked study of his stately Highland home, DCI Jack Logan and his team must race the worsening weather to get to the scene of the crime. There, among the victim’s extended family and staff, Jack finds no shortage of suspects. Everyone, it seems, had reason to want the old man dead, and they all have something to hide.

The hunter has become the hunted. Ten years ago, DCI Jack Logan caught the twisted child killer known as Mister Whisper. Two days ago, Mister Whisper escaped. Now, Jack must track down the most ruthless enemy he has ever faced before he can strike again. But after 10 years behind bars, it isn't just murder that Mister Whisper has in mind. It's revenge. A Whisper of Sorrows is the sixth book in the DCI Jack Logan crime thriller series, all based in the Highlands of Scotland, and it's perfect for fans of Tartan Noir crime fiction.

While eleven-year-old Nora Davis was up in her bedroom doing homework, she had no idea her father was killing women in the basement. Until the day the police arrived at their front door. Decades later, Nora's father is spending his life behind bars, and Nora is a successful surgeon with a quiet, solitary existence. Nobody knows her father was a notorious serial killer. And she intends to keep it that way. `Then Nora discovers one of her young female patients has been murdered. In the same unique and horrific manner that her father used to kill his victims.

Sometimes work can be murder. Detective Sergeant Kiara Lui has just broken up a loud brawl between two blokes in front of the Warrigal Public Library. But just as she's about to leave the scene, a man plummets from the sky and slams into the bike rack right in front of her, dead. Head of Library Services, Neville Adams, was hated by staff, borrowers, and in fact anybody who had ever met him. What might have tipped that hatred into outright murder? The building is quickly sealed, trapping all the suspects inside.

Skilled, stealthy, and anonymous, Jack Reacher is the perfect man for the job: to assassinate the vice president of the United States. Theoretically. The head of a high-level Secret Service security detail wants Reacher to find the holes in her system - and fast. A group of desperate men already has the vice president in its sights. And it will stop at nothing to realize its objective.

In 1985, Edward Shank famously gunned down the Beacon Hill Butcher, ending the serial killer’s reign of terror over the city of Seattle. But now in his eighties, Edward’s action-packed glory days are long behind him. The decorated former Seattle police chief has given up his high-maintenance Victorian home to his grandson Matt for a quiet life at the nearby Sweetbay Village Retirement Residence, where mac-n-cheese Wednesdays have become the highlight of his week.

When Jenna Blake starts her freshman year at Somerset University, she's not only living on her own for the first time, she's moving closer to the father she never really knew. It's an exciting time, filled with new faces and new challenges, not to mention parties and boys and … corpses? Jenna is torn about her future. She'd like to be a doctor like her mother, but she can't stand the sight of blood. Her father, a criminology professor, thinks he has the answer—and sends her to interview for a job with the Medical Examiner—an interview that takes place in the middle of an autopsy!

The Dollmaker was the name of the serial killer who had stalked Los Angeles ruthlessly, leaving grisly calling cards on the faces of his victims. Now, with a single faultless shot, Harry Bosch thinks he has ended the city's nightmare.