Dark Crime Fiction

The newspaper reported the case with relish. Jane (Jinx) Kingsley, fashion photographer and heiress, tried to kill herself after being unceremoniously jilted by her fiance, Leo Wallader. Leo has disappeared - together with Jinx's best friend Meg Harris. But when she wakes from her coma, Jinx can remember nothing about her alleged suicide attempt. Nevertheless, Jinx is convinced that she would never try to kill herself over Leo. Surely it was she who wanted to break the engagement.

Nine long years have passed since the killer last struck - nine years since eight helpless young women were brutally slaughtered by an icepick-wielding maniac. The trail grew cold and the book was unofficially closed on a serial killer who stopped killing. But now "The Icepick Prowler" has confessed - but only to seven of the killings. Not only does he deny the eighth, he has an airtight alibi. Barbara Ettinger's family had almost come to accept that the young woman was the victim of a random killing.

’n Moord by die Kaapse Waterfront. Wat dalk skakel met geheimsinnige briewe wat geskorste luitenante Bennie Griessel en Vaughn Cupido ontvang het. Maar eers moet Bennie-hulle op Stellenbosch soek na ’n verdwene student, en die spoor vat van die eiendomsagent wat die kooptransaksie van Donkerdrif, korporatiewe swendelaar Jasper Boonstra se peperduur wynplaas, behartig het. En al hul ondersoeke het ’n gemene deler: die donkerste drif, gierigheid.

For years, Cinna has been forced to serve her wealthy cousins rather than attend society events alongside them. She has waited for the chance to exact revenge. When a ball at the castle is announced, promising to bring many powerful people to town, she seizes the opportunity to strike. She bets her best friend, Johann, a small-time thief and con man, that she can land a greater score the night of the ball than he can. But as their plots unfold, things begin to unravel. By the end of the night, the castle’s on lockdown, a duchess is dead, a mansion has burned to the ground.

Too quiet. A talented hacker who got caught; Brigid Banaghan is now forced to work with a secret deep ops unit. But she won't reveal any more to these renegade feds than she has to. Especially not to Raider Tanaka, her control freak of a bodyguard and handler. It's enough that his body is tensed for action and his heated gaze is always on her.... Too sharp. Raider knows there's more to his new assignment than he's been told. Why send a deadly agent of his experience to guard a computer genius - even a gorgeous, unpredictable, undisciplined one?

Set in the poorest part of the Missouri Ozarks, in a small town with big secrets, The Familiar Dark opens with a murder. Eve Taggert, desperate with grief over losing her daughter, takes it upon herself to find out the truth about what happened. Eve is no stranger to the dark side of life, having been raised by a hard-edged mother whose lessons Eve tried not to pass on to her own daughter.

Baby’s heart is in the right place, but she’s got problems—namely, a fierce taste for booze and an on-again-off-again boyfriend who can't commit. She’s living and working at Oakwood Hills, a crumbling lakeside resort, with her friends, Crystal Nugget and DJ Overalls, reeling since her adoptive mother died of a stroke. And now, the return of local drug kingpin Bad Mike is about to throw her already unstable summer into full-blown chaos. To make matters worse, the owner of Oakwood Hills announces plans to sell the resort to Amelia, her boyfriend's wealthy twin sister.

The cast and crew of a popular TV crime drama are shooting in the Lake District – but behind the scenes, relationships are as tense as on-screen. The director’s reputation proceeds him, the two lead stars are feuding and rumours swirl. Meanwhile the locals are enjoying the filming. But when on-screen slaughter gets swapped for real-life murder at the concert hall where the TV drama is based, and the genuine police are as baffled as the TV detectives, it falls to the locals to search for the truth.

They call me a playboy. Society’s pretty pet. What they don’t know is I’m so much more. My only directive was to keep her hidden, and safe. After everything she’s been through I’m the last person to offer comfort and care. I have little experience with either. Both of us have been broken by our pasts. But mine is catching up to me, and I would deal with it as I usually do: with total decimation. But that puts her in the crosshairs, and that’s unacceptable.

Anna and Peter desperately need to escape London for a fresh start. And they’ve found just the place: a perfect house on a perfect street in a perfect new development on the Scottish coast. But before they’ve even unpacked, they discover that the community they’ve moved into might be keeping secrets of its own…

Bishop Rider Lives! And for a dead man, he’s been busy. His story and the parts of it yet to be told being what populates Brand New Dark.

Two women are missing. One who has it all. The other, has lost everything.... DI Nathaniel Caslin is in conflict with his inner demons. His career is resurgent but the greater battle, that with his addiction, is still raging...and he is losing. An abandoned car and a desperate call to the police, lead Caslin into the heart of two families where secrets and lies are a way of life. What links the fate of an MP's granddaughter and that of a recovering drug addict, working in the sex trade? Past horrors and personal scandals tag with the present, as the tension mounts.

A man with dark thoughts on his mind is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car. That something turns about to be a highly valuable meteorite. With euro signs lighting up the eyes of the locals, the unexpected treasure is temporarily placed in a neighbourhood museum, under the watchful eye of a priest named Joel.

In the court of the “King”, everyone knows their place. But as the Artist wins hearts and egos with his ballads, uncomfortable truths emerge that shake the Kingdom to its core. Part surreal fable and part narco-lit romance, this prize-winning novel from Yuri Herrera questions the price of keeping your integrity in a world ruled by patronage and power.

No one is more surprised than Lem Altick when it turns out he's actually good at peddling encyclopedias door to door. He hates the predatory world of sales, but he needs the money to pay for college. Then things go horribly wrong. In a sweltering trailer in rural Florida, a couple Lem has spent hours pitching to is shot dead before his eyes, and the unassuming young man is suddenly pulled into the dark world of conspiracy and murder.

In this important and revealing book, Jamie Bartlett takes us deep into the digital underworld and presents an extraordinary look at the Internet we don't know. Beginning with the rise of the Internet and the conflicts and battles that defined its early years, Bartlett reports on trolls, pornographers, drug dealers, hackers, political extremists, Bitcoin programmers, and vigilantes - and puts a human face on those who have many reasons to stay anonymous.

It is 1889 and The Scottish Play is coming home. But before the darling couple of London theatre, Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, take their acclaimed Macbeth to the Edinburgh stage terror treads the boards. A grisly message found smeared across the cobbles in blood, foretelling someone's demise. As the bloody prophecies continue to appear Edinburgh's own beloved pair - Detective 'Nine-Nails' McGray and Inspector Ian Frey - enter the scene.

You won't remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, before you took the plunge and bought it. But all these years later, he still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.

Detective Roger LeCarre. Scourge of crime. Guardian of Exeter. Amateur squash player. And now, party guest at Powderham, the manor house owned by mysterious billionaire tech genius Eli Quartz. It is a small and unconventional gathering: the Bishop, a fading radio star, a desperate aristocrat, the ageing butler and his absurdly beautiful daughter—and Detective Roger LeCarre. Then a snowstorm blows in and the group realise they are trapped. And when, completely against expectations for this kind of situation, someone winds up dead, it's obvious who must solve the crime.

A decade ago 18-year-old Hannah Docherty was arrested for the shocking murder of her family. It was an open-and-shut case, and Hannah has been incarcerated in a secure psychiatric hospital ever since. When psychotherapist Frieda Klein is asked to meet Hannah and give her assessment, she reluctantly agrees. But what she finds horrifies her. Hannah has become a tragic figure, old before her time.