First Mystery

War heroes aren't usually called out of semi-retirement and sent to the far reaches of the galaxy for a routine investigation. So when Colonel Carl Butler answers the call from an old and powerful friend, he knows it's something big - and he's not being told the whole story. A high councilor's son has gone MIA out of Cappa Base, the space station orbiting a battle-ravaged planet. The young lieutenant had been wounded and evacuated - but there's no record of him having ever arrived at hospital command.

Hayley Burke has landed a dream job. She is the new curator of Lady Georgiana Fowling's First Edition library. The library is kept at Middlebank House, a lovely Georgian home in Bath, England. Hayley lives on the premises and works with the finicky Glynis Woolgar, Lady Fowling's former secretary. Mrs. Woolgar does not like Hayley's ideas to modernize The First Edition Society and bring in fresh blood. And she is not even aware of the fact that Hayley does not know the first thing about the Golden Age of Mysteries.

Dan Delgado is a private investigator. When it comes to finding cheating spouses, corporate thieves, or runaway teenagers, he’s unenthusiastic, and unmatched. As a former San Francisco detective, he misses more meaningful work, but he hasn’t had the heart for it since his wife’s death five years prior. That is, until a phone call from a distraught mother, an illegal immigrant who can’t go to the police, puts him on the hunt for a missing little girl. By the time he reaches the mother’s small home, she’s missing, too. The circumstances are strange....

In the darkness of a cold December morning, Detective Kim Stone steps through the doors of Halesowen Police Station. She’s about to meet her team for the first time. When the body of a young man is found beheaded and staked to the ground in a secluded area of the Clent Hills, Kim and her new squad rush to the crime scene. This audio edition includes exclusive bonus content.

Sports agent Myron Bolitar is poised on the edge of the big-time. So is Christian Steele, a rookie quarterback and Myron's prized client. But when Christian gets a phone call from a former girlfriend, a woman who everyone, including the police, believes is dead, the deal starts to go sour. Suddenly Myron is plunged into a baffling mystery of sex and blackmail.

Kitty Underhay is looking forward to a week of long lunches and wedding planning with her husband-to-be, Captain Matthew Bryant. But the plan is derailed when he is called on to collect a former comrade-in-arms, arriving on the 15:50 from Paddington. As the train bearing Simon Travers pulls up to the platform, a piercing scream rises over the screech of its brakes. Travers is dead in his seat, a dagger in his heart. Only a few individuals had access to Travers’s compartment, and Kitty must find out which of these seemingly benign passengers is, in fact, a cross-country killer.

From the author of Murder Most Unladylike. Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong are taking a holiday on the world-famous Orient Express - and it's clear that each of their fellow first-class passengers has something to hide. Even more intriguing: there is rumour of a spy in their midst. Then, during dinner, there is a scream from inside one of the cabins. When the door is broken down, a passenger is found murdered, her stunning ruby necklace gone. But the killer has vanished - as if into thin air.

Hannah has done everything to make sure her life is safe and secure. A long way from her unstable childhood growing up in foster care, she’s content with her sweet, little, messy apartment and her satisfying job as a social worker. She quietly worries that, aged 36, she might never fall in love. But otherwise her life is where she wants it to be. Until, encouraged by her best friend to join a dating app, she meets Alex. He’s irresistibly handsome. He loves the same music as her. The same food as well.

A dark and sweeping adventure, Dreamcatcher is set in the haunted city of Derry - the site of Stephen King's It and Insomnia. In it, four young boys stand together and do a brave, good thing, an act that changes them in ways that they hardly understand. A quarter-century later, as grown men who have gone their separate ways, these friends come together once a year to hunt in the woods of Maine.

Meet Stephanie Plum, a bounty hunter with attitude. In Stephanie’s opinion, toxic waste, rabid drivers, armed schizophrenics, and August heat, humidity, and hydrocarbons are all part of the great adventure of living in Jersey. She’s a product of the “burg,” a blue-collar pocket of Trenton where houses are attached and narrow, cars are American, windows are clean, and (God forbid you should be late) dinner is served at six.

Angela's graduate school days at MIT come to an abrupt end when she uses her hacking skills on another student's computer. Yet her mentor, Eve Abajian, arranges a new beginning for her - as an intern in FBI's Boston field office. Her new supervisor, Assistant Special Agent in Charge William Keats, one of only two agents in the Northeast to make his rank before the age of 30, sees in Angela a fellow prodigy. But Angela's skills come with a natural curiosity, which is also a dangerous liability.

When the president of the United States is blackmailed into releasing five detainees from Guantanamo Bay, a sadistic assassin with a vendetta years in the making is reactivated. Suddenly, the people closest to counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath are being targeted and he realizes that somehow, somewhere he has left the wrong person alive. With his life plunged into absolute peril, and the president ordering him to stay out of the investigation, Harvath must mount his own covert plan for revenge.

Chrissie is eight and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling made her belly fizz like soda pop. Her playmates are tearful and their mothers are terrified, keeping them locked indoors. But Chrissie rules the roost - she's the best at wall-walking, she knows how to get free candy, and now she has a feeling of power that she never gets at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer.

Sophie wasn’t expecting to find love in Sicily. But then she sees him: Emilio, a professor who works at the university where she is teaching for the summer. He’s kind, intelligent, funny, exciting and deliriously unpredictable… …maybe perfect. But paradise quickly turns to purgatory as she uncovers the haunting disappearance of Emilio’s first wife. And when she senses a shadowy character following her, watching her every move, Sophie starts to question her grip on reality. Is she being paranoid, or is nothing about her new life really what it seems?

When brokenhearted Georgia Thornton goes looking for romance on reality TV, she has nothing to lose - apart from a good man, a cash prize, and maybe her life.... What was Georgia thinking? Sure, some cad ditched her at the altar, but can she really find love on TV? Her best friend - and producer of the reality show Love or Money - thinks so.

From the bestselling author of the Vera Stanhope series. Introducing Inspector Jimmy Perez. Raven Black is the first book in Ann Cleeves's bestselling Shetland series – now a major BBC One drama starring Douglas Henshall. A remote community with a killer in their midst . . . On New Year’s...

How did Joe Goldberg become Joe Goldberg? What led to his first love…first kiss…first kill? Find out in the highly anticipated prequel to New York Times bestselling author Caroline Kepnes’s hit You series, which inspired the blockbuster Netflix show.

Sisters. Soul mates. Strangers. Molly Raven lives a quiet, structured life in London, finding comfort in security and routine. Her identical twin, Katie, living in New York, is the exact opposite: outgoing, spontaneous, and adventurous. But when Molly hears that Katie has died, possibly murdered, she is thrown into unfamiliar territory. As terrifying as it is, she knows she must travel across the ocean and find out what happened. But as she tracks her twin’s final movements, cracks begin to emerge.

On a balmy June night, Kirsten, a young university student, is strolling home through a moonlit park when she is viciously attacked. When she awakens in the hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night. But then details reveal themselves—dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her; snatches of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand. In another part of the country, Martha Browne arrives in a Yorkshire seaside town posing as an author doing research for a book. But her research is of a particularly macabre variety.

A sparkling new translation of this flashback to the start of Inspector Maigret's career, part of the new Penguin Maigret series. The profession he had always yearned for did not actually exist...he imagined a cross between a doctor and a priest - a man capable of understanding another's destiny at first glance. The very first investigation by eager young police secretary Jules Maigret leads him to a wealthy Paris family's dark secrets.