Urban Mystery Thrillers

Pagan revelry and morris dancing in the middle of a very cold winter set the scene for one of Ngaio Marsh’s most fascinating murder mysteries. When the pesky Anna Bünz arrives at Mardian to investigate the rare survival of folk dancing still practised there, she quickly antagonizes the villagers. But Mrs Bünz is not the only source of friction - two of the other enthusiasts are also spoiling for a fight.

Before Area X, there was Ambergris. Jeff VanderMeer conceived what would become his first cult classic series of speculative works: the Ambergris trilogy. Now, for the first time ever, the story of the sprawling metropolis of Ambergris is collected into a single volume, including City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch.

Once the streets pull you in, they own you. Or at least that's the way it's been for Nautica. Growing up in the hood, all she's ever known is the fast life - fast money illicitly made through scandals and relentless scheming. But when a big scam nearly finishes her off, she decides she wants more out of life than the hustle and tries to make a new life for herself on the East Coast.

I’m Jinx. As a private investigator, being a walking, talking lie detector is a useful skill—but let’s face it, it’s not normal. You’d think it would make my job way too easy, but even with my weird skills, I still haven’t been able to track down my parent’s killers. When I’m hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar—yet my gut tells me there’s more to this case than a party girl gone wild.

Aspiring supervillains (and super nerds) Jonathan and Andrew attempt to hold their own in a town full of monsters, while eleven-hundred-year-old vengeance demon Anya is just looking for something to give her life purpose again, spending her days working at an evil juice bar. But soon word gets out that there's a new Big Bad on the scene, one more powerful and more destructive than anyone who has come before. She, of course, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And she's hell-bent on rooting out all of this reality's evil by any means necessary.

Crispin is a mosaicist, a layer of bright tiles. Still grieving for the family he lost to the plaque, he lives only for his arcane craft. But an imperial summons from Valerius the Trakesian to Sarantium, the most magnificent place in the world, is difficult to resist. In a world half-wild and tangled with magic, a journey to Sarantium means a walk into destiny. Bearing with him a deadly secret and a Queen's seductive promise, guarded only by his own wits and a talisman from an alchemist's treasury, Crispin sets out for the fabled city. Along the way he will encounter a great beast.

The city of Bulikov once wielded the powers of the gods to conquer the world, enslaving and brutalizing millions - until its divine protectors were killed. Now Bulikov has become just another colonial outpost of the world's new geopolitical power, but the surreal landscape of the city itself - first shaped, now shattered, by the thousands of miracles its guardians once worked upon it - stands as a constant, haunting reminder of its former supremacy. Into this broken city steps Shara Thivani.

As the festival of Beltane draws near, mysterious fires are springing up around the magical village of Myrtlewood, and Rosemary Thorn can't help but try to solve the case. Rosemary already has too much on her plate with a hoard of foundling children to house and her own teenager to raise. On top of all this, she has run out of excuses. There's nothing standing between Rosemary and her dream of becoming a magical chocolatier. Well, nothing except her own self-sabotage. Meanwhile, Athena Thorn is yearning for the fae realm and harboring a secret that could put the whole town at risk.

For Roy Mackey—a recovering addict who makes his living as an unlicensed PI and occasional muscle for hire—tracking down a dead writer's final manuscript should be a walk in the park. Too bad his client is a phony, the dead writer is a thief, and shadowy men are watching his every move. All clues lead to a canceled pulp-adventure comic, The Midnight Jury, and its reclusive author.

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling words left behind by a man who had everything to live for - but took his own life. In the void that remains stands his widow, Jane, surrounded by questions destined to go unanswered...unless she does what all the grief, fear, confusion, and fury inside of her demand: find the truth, no matter what. There is no one else to speak for Jane's husband - or the others who have followed him into death at their own hands.

After learning on her sixtieth birthday that she’s one of five Crones destined to save the world, Claire Emerson has been desperately trying to acquire the lifetime of magic she missed out on. But the mages who are out to destroy everything she loves aren’t waiting, and when one of the other Crones ends up on Claire’s doorstep—wounded and unconscious—Claire knows she’s out of time. Leaving the safety of her warded house, she goes in search of the remaining Crones… only to find them under siege by the mages and their nearly indestructible monster.

It is the autumn of 1880, and Dr. John Watson has just returned from Afghanistan. Badly injured and desperate to forget a nightmarish expedition that left him doubting his sanity, Watson is close to destitution when he meets the extraordinary Sherlock Holmes, who is investigating a series of deaths in the Shadwell district of London. Several bodies have been found, the victims appearing to have starved to death over the course of several weeks, and yet they were reported alive and well mere days before.

Rosemary and Athena's lives are thrown as the big Summer Solstice festival brings a series of mysterious events. Rosemary's chocolate shop plans are being waylaid by strange disappearances and uninvited visitors. Meanwhile, Athena is sure the astrological lessons at Myrtlewood Academy hold the key to unlocking the town's latest mystery, even if her mother doesn't want to hear about it. Can Rosemary and Athena manage to work together and cast aside their stubbornness before thousands of festival-goers succumb to a magical catastrophe?

When 17-year-old Laurel Harper decides to go live with her estranged father and step-family, she's unaware of the fact that her fate was already sealed the day she was born. She is now exactly where some higher power wants her to be. But it's not until she meets the proud and mysterious Sam Laurens that she feels something strange is going on. And when she learns the dark truth about her own future, a sinister secret that will change everything as soon as she turns 19, she wants to run and hide, but soon realizes that there is no hiding from fate.

Blue Bell has spent years hiding her mystical talents while running her candy shop, Sucre Bleu. But when a dead body appears outside new neighbor Ethan Moore's office, she finds herself drawn into a baffling murder. With help from her sarcastic talking cat Tiffany, quirky sister Pepper, and Ethan's slick investigating skills, Blue follows the clues. Her supernatural gifts give her an edge, but she risks exposing her secret witchy abilities.

If you thought magic was confined to one country - think again. Trier: famous for wine, Romans, and being Germany's oldest city. When a man is found dead with his body impossibly covered in a fungal rot, the local authorities know they are out of their depth. But fortunately this is Germany, where there are procedures for everything. Enter Tobias Winter, an investigator for the Abteilung KDA, the branch of the German Federal Criminal Police which handles the supernatural.

Constance Campbell learned on her 40th birthday that she comes from a long line of witches. Now, struggling to learn her magic, Constance dives deeper into her family's sordid past. Constance vows to find the truth behind her mother's disappearance. She's determined to seek out the Faction, an order of witches and warlocks vying for power in the supernatural world. But when Constance's father shows up looking a little ghostly pale and see-through, she has other problems to solve.

Wedding fever has come to Bon Temps, Louisiana! Unfortunately, buxom, blonde, beautiful, and telepathic cocktail waitress Sookie is not the bride-to-be, so she takes the opportunity to travel to New Orleans on family business. As heir to the estate of her newly dead cousin Hadley, Sookie unearths a big secret. Soon it becomes clear that more than a few people will do anything to stop Sookie from looking into Hadley's past.

Growing up with telepathic abilities, Sookie Stackhouse realized early on there were things she'd rather not know. And now that she's an adult, she also realizes that some things that she knows about, she'd rather not see—like Eric Northman feeding off another woman. A younger one. There's a thing or two she'd like to say about that, but she has to keep quiet—Felipe de Castro, the Vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), is in town.

Weddings are even better with a touch of magic - and mystery! Enter the magical world of the Seattle Haven, where magic is real and the weddings are over the top. Enjoy the complete Touch of Magic trilogy and the prequel novella in this boxed-set edition.