Private Investigator Thriller

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.

Not every danger comes in the form of a mega-threat like a Titan. Some predators are a lot cozier...more personal. When one such creature threatens an independent tutor, Harry Dresden must shake off the blood and dirt of his most recent battles and rise to the occasion, even when it turns out that the new predator is far more dangerous and connected than first appearances would suggest.

There are few people Nero Wolfe respects, and Lon Cohen of the New York Gazette is one of them. So when Cohen asks for a favor, the famously brilliant - and notoriously lazy - detective is inclined to listen. According to Cohen, someone wants to kill the Gazette’s gossip columnist, Cameron Clay. Death threats are a regular hazard for Clay, who’s hurled insults and accusations at every boldfaced name in the five boroughs. But the latest threats have carried a more sinister tone.

Anthropology Professor Gideon Oliver would prefer to keep his mind on his beautiful new bride, Julie, during their English honeymoon, but one intrusive question will not stop nagging at him: Who would want to steal a 30,000-year-old parieto-occipital calvarial fragment? Yet someone has lifted this chunk of prehistoric human skull from a musty museum in Dorchester. Then, 30 miles away, an archaeology student is murdered, increasing tension and suspicion at a dig that had already seethed with suspicion, rivalry, and mistrust.

Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Award winner Rick Riordan is a master of Texas crime writing. In Southtown, maniacal convict Will Stirman escapes from the state penitentiary. With his gang of murderous thugs, Stirman pursues Erainya, the boss of college professor turned P.I. Tres Navarre. Erainya’s husband Fred helped put Stirman behind bars, and although Fred is dead, Stirman wants his revenge. Now only Tres can stop him.

After months away, Wilde has returned to the Ramapo Mountains in the wake of a failed bid at domesticity that confirms what he’s known all along: He belongs on his own, free from the comforts and constraints of modern life. Suddenly, a DNA match on an online ancestry database brings Wilde closer to his past than he’s ever dreamed, and finally gives Wilde the opening he needs to track down his father.

Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted to a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, he discovers that Quine's disappearance is no coincidence. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published, it would ruin lives - meaning that almost everyone in his life would have motives to silence him.

Attorney Rhonda Bird returns home after a long estrangement when she learns her father has died. There she makes two important discoveries: Her father stopped being an accountant and had opened up a private detective agency, and she has a teenage half sister named Baby. Baby brings in a client to the detective agency, a young man who claims he was abducted.

Tempted out of his bookstore into the world of horseracing, Janeway accepts an invitation from wealthy horse trainer H.R. Geiger to travel to Idaho and look at some rare first-edition books. The books are stunning, flawless children's classics that render the usually eloquent Janeway speechless.

Adrian Monk has journeyed into the realm of the cult science fiction show Beyond Earth, where he meets fans just as obsessive as he is. Monk is at their convention because there may be a killer lurking in the Beyond Earth community: someone in a starship uniform has very publicly gunned down the show's legendary creator, Conrad Stipe. Could a fan be that furious at him for selling out to an exploitative Hollywood producer? Or is there more going on behind the scenes in Stipe's life?

The husband of Monk's former assistant, Sharona, has been arrested for murder. Now back in San Francisco, she's ready to reclaim her place in Monk's life - much to the chagrin of his current assistant, Natalie. While Monk tries to maintain a delicate balance between the two women, he discovers a few unsettling snags in the case against Sharona's husband, and may be up against a killer who not only understands him, but is one step ahead.

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, is about to have a very bad day.… Because as Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful. He doesn’t know the half of it… Mab has just traded Harry’s skills to pay off one of her debts. And now he must help a group of supernatural villains - led by one of Harry’s most dreaded and despised enemies, Nicodemus Archleone - to break into the highest-security vault in town, so that they can then access the highest-security vault in the Nevernever.

Christmas is just around the corner, and Sarah Booth and Tinkie are preparing for a festive holiday season. After a turbulent season of solving cases, they're ready for some holiday cheer. Sarah Booth and Sheriff Coleman Peters have finally gotten together, and this is the first holiday they're celebrating as a couple. Sarah Booth busies herself with decking the halls and daydreaming about romantic Christmas nights with Coleman. Then her friend Cece Dee Falcon shows up needing Sarah Booth's help.

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, takes on a case as a favor to his friend Thomas - a vampire of dubious integrity - only to become the prime suspect in a series of ghastly murders.

When a troubled young man named Billy asks Cormoran Strike to help him investigate a crime he witnessed as a child, the private eye is left deeply troubled. While Billy is obviously mentally distressed and cannot remember many concrete details, there is something sincere about him and his story. But before Strike can question him further, Billy bolts from his office in a panic.

Kendyl Jordan is a beautiful woman who drives an eye-catching classic car—until the car goes missing, possibly with something of great value hidden inside it. Can Roy Ballard help her find it? Despite Ballard’s budding reputation, Kendyl learns he’s not even a private investigator, he’s a legal videographer with very little experience. Still, he seems to have a knack for the job, and it doesn’t take him long to ID a couple of dangerous suspects. That’s when the case takes more twists and turns than a winding Texas Hill Country road.

When Congressman and DeMarco’s long-time employer John Mahoney gains custody of his 15-year-old goddaughter, Cassie Russell, he sends DeMarco to evaluate the situation. Cassie’s parents have just perished in a plane crash that Cassie survived, and she has now inherited her father’s billions. DeMarco plans to advise Mahoney to leave Erin Kelly, manager of the Russell’s fund, in charge of Cassie’s finances, but he soon learns that Erin may not be as trustworthy as she first appeared.

Staten Island would be forgettable were it not for the gleaming Tabernacle of the Silver Spire, where thousands of congregants come every Sunday to hear the sermons of Barnabas Bay. Millions more tune in on television, giving the good Reverend international fame, and a chance to spread the gospel from New York City’s harbor all the way to South Korea. But threatening notes have been appearing in the collection bag, suggesting that one of the faithful has decided it’s time this good shepherd get the hook.

This quartet of crime stories about deadly books, penned by award-winning contemporary mystery writers, includes The Little Men, What's in a Name?, The Book of the Lion, and From the Queen.