Town Mystery

Luc Verlains delikatester Fall. Hinter dem Glanz der schönen Welt kulinarischer Hochgenüsse entdeckt Luc Verlain eine raue Wirklichkeit voll Neid, Konkurrenz und brutaler Arbeitsbedingungen. Es ist der Höhepunkt der französischen Gourmetsaison: Die Spitzenköche und Restaurantbetreiber fiebern der Vergabe der Sterne des Guide Michelin entgegen. Ausgerechnet in der renommierten "Villa Auguste" wird der berühmteste Restaurantkritiker des Landes noch während der Vorspeise vergiftet. Dabei sollte seine Höchstwertung doch die Karriere des legendären Auguste Fontaine krönen.

The cold, blustery Midwest winters don't exactly agree with Betsy Devonshire, but since moving to Excelsior, Minnestoa, she sure has met a lot of warm, friendly people. So she isn't too surprised when the town's most talented needleworkers volunteer to restore a damaged tapestry that was found in the basement of a local church. Betsy even offers to donate materials for the project, thinking that the free publicity will boost sales at her financially troubled needlecraft shop. But soon Betsy is afraid of losing more than her business....

You're not to disturb, annoy or offend. They're walking on a knife edge out there, anything could tilt the balance.' Missing: one junior diplomat and 43 of the British Embassy's most confidential files. The timing is alarmingly significant: with neo-Nazi riots and radical student demonstrations, the threat to Germany's security is all too apparent. Britain's own Alan Turner is sent in, with instructions to tread carefully at all costs. But will he find the missing man and the files before the political situation erupts?

There's something fishy just below the surface of Scumble River.... School psychologist Skye Denison-Boyd is getting ready to return to work from her maternity leave and hoping for a peaceful year in her job as a school psychologist. But when an elderly woman disappears on her first day back and a disgruntled parent threatens to sue the school, Skye realizes that her return will be anything but quiet. When the parent suing Skye's school is found dead and with the missing woman's case still unsolved, Skye suspects the crimes are somehow linked.

Maud Drennan is a dedicated caretaker, but her sunny, capable disposition and snappy quips mask a deep sadness. A tragic childhood event left her in the company of a cast of patron saints who pop in and out of her life like unwelcome tourists. She tries to find solace in her hard work in London...but then she meets the inimitable Mr. Flood. A menace by all accounts, Cathal Flood is a widower living alone in a Gothic Dorset mansion crawling with collector's items and feral cats.

Jacob Reese enjoys the quiet life, running a coffee shop and renting out his cottage in The Hollows, Vermont. But the calm is shattered when a woman who looks eerily similar to his ex-girlfriend Laura turns up to stay in the cottage, and leaves a mysterious note in the guest book. Now Jacob’s seeing Laura everywhere - a glimpse of her face across the street, her music box left outside his house, a gift he gave her years before hanging from the trees. But it can’t be Laura. Because Laura’s dead.

Black Harbor is a tinderbox. Temperatures and violent crime have both risen to all-time highs, a new drug razes the city, and the scene to which Sergeant Nikolai Kole responds is anything but a rote homicide. In the back of a clubhouse lies a body wrapped in garbage bags and doused in bleach. It isn’t just any body. Tommy Greenlee, the ex-husband of Kole’s former lover, Hazel, has been shot several times and left for dead. What’s more…the killer left what appears to be a calling card.

On a winding mountain road into the town of Denton, Pennsylvania, Detective Josie Quinn finds the body of a local teenage girl, Dina Hale. The sight of plum-colored bruises gathering around the girl’s neck pierces Josie’s heart, but the discovery of a second girl’s empty purse in the dirt nearby gives her a flicker of hope that one person, at least, made a lucky escape. Dina’s parents are grief-stricken as the town rallies together in a desperate search for the second girl, who waitressed with Dina. The two best friends were on their way to a shift when they were attacked.

When the exuberant president of Ng'ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old schoolmate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to persuade him otherwise. Consequently, on the night of the embassy's reception, the house and grounds are stiff with police.

In midwinter in an English village, a teenage girl has gone missing and everyone is called upon to join the search. The villagers fan out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks, and a crowd of news reporters descends on what is usually a place of peace. As the seasons unfold and the search for the missing girl goes on, there are births and deaths, secrets kept and exposed, livelihoods made and lost, small kindnesses, and unanticipated betrayals. Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence.

Father Solomon Lancaster—the town's dry-witted sheriff and priest at the community Catholic church—finds himself on the forefront of an investigation into a series of murders. Soon, he's fighting to match wits with the serial killer terrorizing his town while trying to justify his law-enforcement credentials to the FBI as their analysts and profilers take Crooked Creek, Indiana, by storm. But Father Solomon is hiding secrets of his own. Ones that threaten to rise to the surface as the murders continue and the investigation draws nearer to the truth.

After her mother’s sudden death, Karen finds herself back in her childhood home in Nova Scotia for the first time in a decade, acting as full-time caregiver to Kelli, her older sister. Overwhelmed with grief and the daily needs of Kelli, who was born with a developmental disability, Karen begins to feel consumed by the isolation of her new role. On top of that, she’s weighed down with guilt over her years spent keeping Kelli and their independent-to-a-fault mother, Irene, at arm’s length.

After years of self-exile, Jacinda “Jac” Brodie is back in Brook Haven, South Carolina. But the small cliffside town no longer feels like home. Jac hasn’t been there since the beloved chief of police fell to his death—and all the whispers said she was to blame. That chief was Jac’s father. Racked with guilt, Jac left town with no plans to return. But when her granddad lands in the hospital, she rushes back to her family, bracing herself to confront the past.

Former FBI agent Spenser Song has had to rise from the ashes of tragedy. Attempting to overcome the guilt of her husband’s death, she left the bureau and accepted a position as Sheriff in Sweetwater. Surrounded by breathtaking scenery, and with the aid of Ryker and her four-legged sidekick, Spenser began to recover from her heart-wrenching wounds. Life in Sweetwater is as "serene" as could be. When a young couple is taken from a campsite by what hunters believe to be the Okasha, a Bigfoot-like creature. The entire town is thrown into a panicked frenzy.

Helen Dexter is enjoying the new four-star status of the Seaview Hotel. But she begins to wonder if this accolade is cursed when a series of disasters strike. It starts when a crazy golf team arrive to play in a Scarborough tournament. Their odd behaviour heightens when the rival team captain turns up. Yet, there's worse to come for Helen when one of the guests is murdered playing crazy golf. Then the Seaview's prize-winning cook Jean quits, leaving Helen devastated. And so, as Helen's fiftieth birthday approaches, the last thing she's in the mood for is a celebration.

Everything is shipshape at Jake and Ellie’s new waterfront bakery The Chocolate Moose, especially now that the annual Pirate Festival is dropping anchor in their quaint island village of Eastport, Maine. Jake and Ellie are ready for the bounty of tourists sure to flood their shop. But their plans quickly sink when the body of celebrity foodie Henry Hadlyme is discovered in the Moose’s basement.

There’s deadly trouble in the corn country of Nebraska . . . and Jack Reacher walks right into it. First he falls foul of the Duncans, a local clan that has terrified an entire county into submission. But it’s the unsolved case of a missing child, already decades old, that Reacher can’t let go. The Duncans want Reacher gone—and it’s not just past secrets they’re trying to hide. They’re awaiting a secret shipment that’s already late—and they have the kind of customers no one can afford to annoy.

Bethan Griffiths has returned home for Christmas to unwrap secrets. It's the 1970s and she is back in the village of Foel in the Welsh hills to raise her daughter. They arrive to the open arms of her family and the community, but not all is what it seems, and Beth isn't home for the reason she pretends, either. Vicious notes start appearing that reveal harsh truths about the village inhabitants, stirring up ancient pasts, old loves, and the dead. Not even local dignitary, the elegant and aloof Lady Melling who hides in her manor house, is safe from the accusations.

This time, Sheriff Joanna Brady may expect to see her maternity leave through to completion, but the world has other plans when a serial homicide case surfaces in her beloved Cochise County. Rather than staying home with her newborn and losing herself in the cold cases to be found in her father’s long-unread diaries, Joanna instead finds herself overseeing a complex investigation involving multiple jurisdictions.

Last year at Cherringham High, and for three girls that means facing the School Summer Challenge, a grueling fifty-mile hike across the Cotswolds, through thick woods, over steep hills, camping each night under the stars. But when one of them disappears in the middle of the night and is found dead in the morning, most believe a terrible accident has taken place. Was it really an accident? Jack and Sarah aren't convinced - and soon discover that secrets and lies can have terrible consequences... and always leave a trail.