Art Crime

The Professor and the Madman is an extraordinary tale of madness, genius, and the incredible obsessions of two remarkable men that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary - and literary history. The making of the OED was one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken. As definitions were collected, the overseeing committee, led by Professor James Murray, was stunned to discover that one man, Dr. W. C. Minor, had submitted more than 10,000.

Claude Monet, basking in the glow of his first success as a private eye (Claude Monet, Private Eye: The Pilfered Paintings), celebrates by taking a two-day cruise down the Seine to Le Havre with wife Alice and dog Toulouse. All goes well until another passenger’s dog, a Maltese named Chloe, goes missing. Everyone assumes the dog simply wandered off somewhere to take a nap. But then a ransom note appears, and the boat becomes a crime scene. That’s when the captain asks Claude to look into the matter. Claude begins questioning the passengers and crew, and to his dismay finds more than a ...

For twenty years, the Taliban was the number one enemy of Western forces in Afghanistan. But it was an enemy that they knew little about, and about whose founder and leader, Mullah Omar, they knew even less.

She makes her dream come true. Not realizing it’s the villain’s worst nightmare. Kate's idyllic Caribbean paradise shatters in an instant when she witnesses her boyfriend's brutal murder. Spirited away into protective custody, she sheds her past, embracing a new identity in the high-stakes art world of Washington, DC. As the curator of a renowned art collection, Kate appears to have it all—but beneath her polished exterior, memories of that horrific night linger, fueling her thirst for justice. Determined to track down her boyfriend's killers, Kate teams up with the razor-sharp crime ...

Five strangers entangled in the forger’s wicked web, each with a dangerous secret, and an apocalyptic flood threatening to reveal all. "A pulsating, breathless journey." --Historical Novel Society A wife on the run, a student searching for stolen art, a cleaner who has lined more than his pockets, a policeman whose career is almost over, and a guest who should never have received a wedding invite. In a race against time, and desperate to save themselves and all they hold dear, will their secrets prove more treacherous than the ominous floodwaters swallowing the historic city of Florence? ...

What if a villain believes they are a hero? Our addiction to social media has created a new version of fame. And lurking beneath the surface of beautiful, polished social media accounts is a community being targeted by a killer. Ela's life is falling apart after she experiences a miscarriage. Her marriage dissolves while the rest of her life feels on hold. In order to deal with the grief and guilt from losing the pregnancy, Ela spends a lot of time on her phone. And the more time she spends online, the more her new identity begins to take shape.

This 21st Century thriller may be just up your street if you are already a fan of Patterson, Clancy or Larsson and like a storyline with more twists and turns than a sun bathing rattlesnake. For example, did greed ridden Atlanta billionaire Levi Goldman really understand that once he made a contract with the ‘Yegg’ man … he was committed? A secret vault nearly 200 feet below London’s Bryanston Street, built by the controversial wartime British Special Operations Executive to protect the names of its spies, is now the resting place for other priceless WWII memorabilia … billions of...

Mark Sullivan, the co-author of James Patterson’s Private Games, has, in Robin Monarch, created a compelling new hero. Monarch is a world-class thief and a highly skilled operative - a man with skills, a rigid code of honor, powerful friends, and implacable enemies. In The Art of Rendition, Monarch is an agent for the CIA, called upon to use his unique skills to kidnap and interrogate a Russian nuclear scientist suspected of selling technology to the Iranians. But that’s only part of the challenge....

A vicious serial killer is terrifying boaters on the serene waterways of Upstate New York. Young women are disappearing, and their weighted bodies are being pulled out of the canals and rivers. Did an innocent young artist capture something suspicious in one of her paintings of the area? Can her painting provide the critical clue, allowing homicide detective Chris Taylor and blonde attorney Kate Johnson to track down the murderous villain? This suspenseful whodunnit is fast-paced and riveting. It is a classic Jimmy Ray Conner page-turner that will keep you on the edge of your seat, guessing...

In researching his acclaimed true-crime books, Philip Carlo interviewed some of the most infamous criminals and killers of our times in prisons and on death rows throughout the country. He was able to forge trusting relationships with his subjects, enabling him to extract the facts behind their monstrous acts and identify what motivated them to commit their horrific crimes.

Sam Ross is a psychotherapist - she spends her days helping people, but she can barely help herself. She’s still grieving over the recent death of her sister, her mother Barbara offers little support and she’s professionally challenged. One of her clients is Keith, a man whose life story changes with every session. And Keith has a secret - one that will rock Sam’s world to the core and place her in the most terrible danger.

After a wealthy woman was brutally murdered in her Glasgow home in 1908, the police found a convenient suspect in Oscar Slater, an immigrant Jewish cardsharp. Though he was known to be innocent, Slater was tried, convicted, and consigned to life at hard labor. Outraged by this injustice, Arthur Conan Doyle, already world famous as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, used the methods of his most famous character to reinvestigate the case, ultimately winning Slater’s freedom.

In a Europe on the verge of collapse, the Nazi organisation Ahnenerbe is pillaging sacred landmarks across the world. Their aim is to collect treasures with occult powers, which will help them establish the Third Reich. The organisation's head, Himmler, has sent SS officers to search a forgotten sanctuary in the Himalayas, whilst he tries to track down a mysterious painting. Which ancient power do the Nazis believe they hold the key to?

In 1994, director Peter Jackson released the film Heavenly Creatures, based on a famous 1950s matricide committed in New Zealand by two teenage girls embroiled in an obsessive relationship. This film launched Jackson's international career. It also forever changed the life of Anne Perry, an award-winning, best-selling crime writer, who at the time of the film's release was publicly outed as Juliet Hulme, one of the murderers. A new light was now cast, not only on Anne's life, but also her novels, which feature gruesome and violent deaths.

A master thief who steals from the corrupt elite. A detective haunted by his past. One deadly game that could cost them everything—all set against the glittering backdrop of Christmas in Evergreen City. They call her the Phantom—the most elusive thief in Evergreen City. For years, she's targeted the wealthy and powerful, using their own greed against them. But when her latest heist brings her face-to-face with Detective Leo Salvatore, everything changes. Leo has his own demons to fight. Still reeling from his fiancée's unsolved murder and growing suspicions of corruption within his own...

Idiosyncratic detective duo Max Matthews and Sean Armitage are back for three more series, in which they expertly extract confessions from their suspects during the course of one interview. Their relationship has evolved since they were first paired up, back when Armitage was a rookie constable, but their interrogation technique is as incisive as ever. These 11 compelling dramas all shine the spotlight on a different suspect, each with their own tale to tell - and their own selective version of events.

For the truly well-rounded "intellectual," nothing fascinates so much as the subversive, the contrarian, the suppressed, and the bizarre. Richard Zacks has unloosed his admittedly strange mind and astonishing research abilities upon the entire spectrum of human knowledge, ferreting out endlessly fascinating facts, and stories guaranteed to make you laugh, gasp in wonder, and occasionally shudder at the depths of human depravity. The result of his labors is this quasi-encyclopedia that provides alternative takes on art, business, crime, science, medicine, sex (lots of that), and many other facets of human experience.

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds.

Blood Shadows in Madrid A haunting mystery of betrayal, obsession, and the dark secrets that linger in Madrid’s shadowy corners When Diego Doria, a troubled detective from Málaga, receives a desperate call from his estranged girlfriend, Macarena, he can’t ignore it. She’s being hunted by figures from her past—women who claim to be Tlahuelpuchi, vampiresses from Mexican folklore. Driven by a mix of loyalty and unresolved feelings, Diego heads to Madrid, where the city’s glittering streets hide shadows deeper than he imagined. Madrid becomes a character in its own right: from the ...

Enzi meets an enigmatic artist at a party. When he drives her home, she gives him a mysterious and damaged painting. Later, when she leaves a message that she has been arrested and is in jail, Enzi makes a mistake that has fatal consequences. 'Paper Targets' is a wild ride of a story about gifted and flawed misfits. Both riveting and heartbreaking, with memorable characters encountered along the way, the novel is based on the true events of one of the world's largest criminal frauds and the far-reaching implications of love and greed.