Literary Mystery Thriller

Rare-books expert Brooklyn Wainwright is invited to the 50th birthday party of her neighbor Suzie's aunt Grace. A retired founder of a major video game corporation, Grace is a larger-than-life character who's turned her Lake Tahoe mansion into a fun house. Part of the fun involves a seance, but after the lights flicker, one guest is dead, poisoned by a cocktail intended for Grace. It seems someone is determined to turn Grace's playful palatial estate into a house of horrors.

FBI Agent Laurel Evertson's investigation into a scam targeting the elderly takes an unexpected twist when key evidence leads her to Morton Wilmington, a felon she arrested five years ago on her first undercover assignment. That case has haunted her since, and though she's vowed to forget Wilmington - and what she sacrificed to put him away - he is now her best lead.

Ensconced in a lovely tropical villa on idyllic Triggerfish Lane, Jim Davenport anticipates the good life to come. But this isn't living -- it's Florida, and the neighborhood is not quite what it seems. It's got overly aggressive Little League parents, drug-free Rastafarians, homicidal hookers, unnatural sex and casual violence. Oh, yes, and there's a psychopathic serial killer-cum-Sunshine-State folklorist named Serge A. Storms living directly across the street.

Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China - dubbed the true Shangri-La - and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers.

Tracing a group of ruthless outlaws from its genesis during the American Civil War all the way to a final bloody stand in the Oklahoma territories, The Winter Family is a hyperkinetic Western noir that reads like a full-on assault to the senses.

After the recent death of her mother and the dissolution of her marriage, 30-something Eden Elliott is seriously in need of a fresh start. At the urging of her best friend, best-selling author Ami Pederson, Eden decides to embark on an open-ended trip to the picturesque village of Glenkillen in the Scottish Highlands, to do some hands-on research for a book of her own. But almost as soon as Eden arrives in the quaint town, she gets caught up in a very real drama....

“The name is Jones. Indiana Jones.” He’s back. Everyone’s favorite globe-trotting, tomb-raiding, wisecracking archaeologist is finally at it again. Now it’s 1957, the atomic age is in full swing, and McCarthy-era paranoia has the nation on edge. But for Indiana Jones, the Cold War...

Lisa and Joe Stone, married for 20 years and sole partners in their small law firm in Henry County, Virginia, handle less-than-glamorous cases: domestic disputes, personal injury settlements, or a plethora of complaints from their cantankerous client Lettie VanSandt. When she dies in a freakish incident, the Stones think it's within the realm of possibility that she was cooking meth in her trailer. But details soon emerge that lead them to question how accidental Lettie's demise actually was.

Strange Tales of Scotland all deal with a particular aspect of Scottish mysteries. You'll learn of the ghost that appeared at the wedding of King Alexander II, and of monsters such as the Shellycoat and Water-horse that were thought to inhabit Scotland’s lochs...Finally, we have a look at the legend of the phantom armies of Scotland; soldiers who refuse to fade away even centuries after their wars have been fought, and their causes faded in history. Welcome to the Strange Tales of Scotland.

Hoke Moseley has had enough. Tired of struggling against alimony payments, two teenage daughters, a very pregnant and very single partner, and a low-paying job as a Miami homicide detective, Hoke moves to Singer Island and vows never to set foot on the mainland again. But on the street, career criminal Troy Louden is hatching plans of his own with a gang that includes a disfigured hooker, a talentless artist, and a clueless retiree.

A missing woman leads her twin sister on a twisted scavenger hunt in this clever debut novel with eccentric, dysfunctional characters who will keep you guessing until the end—for readers of Luckiest Girl Alive and The Wife Between Us. Ava has her reasons for running away to Paris. But when...

"Searingly honest, brilliant and disturbing. Brad Phillips peels back the skin and bone and stares right into the human soul." (Anthony Bourdain) Brad Phillips' collection of short stories adeptly walks a very thin line between taboo and propriety, with rigorous self-awareness and generosity. By confusing ideas around fiction and autobiography, Phillips writes with painful sincerity about shame, addiction, trauma, and the more troubling outreaches of sexual desire, with wit that is at odds with the subject matter. Brad Phillips is a well-known Canadian artist.

Dans la nuit, sur les côtes du midi de la France, cent navires à bout de souffle se sont échoués, chargés d'un million d'immigrants. Ils sont l'avant-garde du tiers-monde qui se réfugie en Occident pour y trouver l'espérance. À tous les niveaux, conscience universelle, gouvernements, équilibre des civilisations, et surtout chacun en soi-même, on se pose la question trop tard : que faire ?

When ex-CIA agent Vera Kelly loses her job and her girlfriend in a single day, she reluctantly goes into business as a private detective. Heartbroken and cash-strapped, she takes a case that dredges up dark memories and attracts dangerous characters from across the Cold War landscape. Before it's over, she'll chase a lost child through foster care and follow a trail of Dominican exiles to the Caribbean. Forever looking over her shoulder, she nearly misses what's right in front of her: her own desire for home, connection, and a new romance at the local bar.

Bavaria, 1776. When Albrecht Dürer the Much Much Younger's frog prints go missing, he knows exactly where to turn for help. Gretel (yes, that Gretel), now 35 and still living with her gluttonous brother Hans, is the country's most famous private investigator, and she leaps at the opportunity to travel to cosmopolitan Nuremberg to take on the case. But amid the hubbub of the city's annual sausage festival, Gretel struggles to find any clues that point toward the elusive thief.

He wants to remember. She needs to forget. . . . Memento meets Sharp Objects in a gripping psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Something in the Water and The Disappearing Act. “Twisty . . . highly imaginative . . . deliciously provocative.”—The Washington...

Julie Prentice and her family move across the country to the idyllic Mount Adams district of Cincinnati, hoping to evade the stalker who's been terrorizing them ever since the publication of her bestselling novel, The Murder Game. Since Julie doesn't know anyone in her new town, when she meets her neighbor John Dunbar, their instant connection brings measured hope for a new beginning. But she never imagines that a simple, benign conversation with him could set her life spinning so far off course.

Hugh of Singleton, fourth son of a minor knight, has been educated as a clerk, usually a prelude to taking holy orders. However, feeling no certain calling despite a lively faith, he turns to the profession of surgeon, training in Paris and then hanging out his sign in Oxford. A local lord asks him to track the killer of a young woman whose bones have been found in the castle cesspit. She is identified as the impetuous missing daughter of a local blacksmith, and her young man, whom she had provoked very publicly, is in due course arrested and sentenced at the Oxford assizes.

When police rescue five-year-old Jenna Thompson from the dark closet where she's been held captive for days, they tell her she's a lucky girl. Compared to the rest of her family, it's true. But even with their killer dead of an overdose, Jenna is still trying to find peace 25 years later.

Andy Carpenter isn't sure what to think when he gets a mysterious phone call from a good friend, policeman Pete Stanton, asking him to drop everything, drive to an unfamiliar address, and bring his girlfriend, Laurie Collins. He certainly isn't expecting to show up at a crime scene. But that's exactly where he arrives - at the house where Pete has just discovered the body of ex-convict Danny Balfour. Upstairs are Danny's now orphaned four-year-old son and basset hound. And that, Andy discovers, is why he and Laurie were called to the scene - Pete wants them to take care of the boy and the dog so they won't get thrown into the "system". This is already asking a lot, but soon Pete needs another big favor from Andy. Pete himself has come under suspicion for Danny's murder, and he needs defense attorney Andy to represent him - and to find out what really happened in Danny's house that day!