Dark Crime Thrillers

Una wants nothing more than to teach, but she has been unable to secure steady employment in Reykjavík. Her savings are depleted, her love life is nonexistent, and she cannot face another winter staring at the four walls of her shabby apartment. Celebrating Christmas and ringing in 1986 in the remote fishing hamlet of Skálar seems like a small price to pay for a chance to earn some teaching credentials and get her life back on track.

“Medic! We need a medic now!” Behind bars, the life of a convict is a brutal game of survival. When Dean Steele receives an invitation from Ashford Prison to speak to the troubled men there. He is hopeful that he’d inspire the men to change for the better. But his arrival is met with commotion and chaos. Riots erupt and bodies start dropping. Now, it’s up to Dean to go undercover and infiltrate the prison to find out the truth amid the murderous anarchy. When the tables are turned with the bloodthirsty prisoner running the prison and taking the guards as hostages. Not even Dean ...

In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and taking care of the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. Then, a neighbor, Big Foot, turns up dead. Soon, other bodies are discovered, in increasingly strange circumstances. As suspicions mount, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind....

One night with a stranger ignited a fire I couldn't extinguish. He was everything forbidden, everything dangerous—wrapped in power and mystery. I didn't know his name, only the way his touch branded me as his, searing his presence into my soul. Years later, I'm back in his world, living in the shadows, hiding the secret that binds us together. He's the ruthless kingpin hunting a card counter who defied him. He doesn't know it's me. He doesn’t know what I’m keeping from him. But the truth is a ticking time bomb, and when it finally explodes, it won’t just expose my secret—it’ll ...

Alessandro D’Angelo. He was my forbidden temptation. My obsession. My ruin. In his arms, I was fire. In his world, I was ash. Then he vanished—without a word, without a trace—leaving my heart and my life in ruins. Now, six years later, he’s back—lethal, relentless, and looking at me like I still belong to him. The masquerade ball was supposed to be just another job—one night, one illusion. I never expected to come face-to-face with the man who shattered me. But I’m not the same woman he left behind. I have secrets of my own—like the son he knows nothing about. His enemies ...

When Chaz Perron's wife discovers that he is running a scam (posing as a marine biologist to doctor water samples so that an agribusiness tycoon can continue illegally dumping fertilizer into the Everglades), he pushes her overboard from a cruise liner. Unlucky for Chaz, Joey survives clutching a bale of Jamaican pot. Rescued from the Atlantic by a former police officer, Mick Stranahan, she decides not to report him but instead haunt and taunt him, with Mick's help, by playing dead.

When the Australian Mystery Writers’ Society invited me to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train between Darwin and Adelaide, I was hoping for some inspiration for my second book. Fiction, this time: I needed a break from real people killing each other. Obviously, that didn’t pan out.

"A rocket ride of action, political intrigue, and suspense."—San Diego Magazine "A sharp thriller. Russell has us in the palm of his hand."—Chicago Tribune "Ingeniously imagined and skillfully told, Political Suicide must be included in any list of this year's best thrillers."—San Diego Union-Tribune Will Travis is an undercover corporate investigator whose job involves low-key assignments like checking out the service at Washington, DC, hotel bars and reporting back to management. But his evening takes an unexpected turn when he interrupts an attempted murder. Soon, Will is on the ...

The death of Old Joe, a homeless man on Darlinghurst Road, seemed inevitable—until the autopsy revealed it was murder. Darlinghurst Road, once the beating heart of Sydney's red-light district, is where the past lingers in the shadows. However, the city's Eastern Suburbs are not known for bloodshed. When a second victim, an affluent woman from exclusive Point Piper, is found with her throat cut, the divide between Sydney's elite and its outcasts grows more sinister. Detective Gary Haddock has seen it all in Homicide, but even he is baffled by the lack of connection between the murders. ...

Samantha Jellicoe, jewel thief extraordinaire, is still adjusting to being engaged to Richard Addison, billionaire entrepreneur and very hot British lord. Complicating that is the entire press corps hounding her for an interview - bad news for a mostly retired cat burglar intent on keeping her private life private. She is ecstatic when Rick suggests they escape to his castle in Scotland; she's less so when the old pile turns out to be dilapidated, full of Rick's resentful relatives, and (possibly) haunted.

After a scandal forces DI Kelly Porter out of the Met, she returns home to the Lake District. Crimes in the Cumbrian constabulary tend to be minor, but Kelly begins work on a cold case that shocked the local community - the abduction and brutal murder of a 10-year-old girl.

The first story ever told left a scar on the skin of the universe, with its characters doomed to an endless cycle of reincarnation and death. Trapped by his enemies, Daniel Faust - magician, mobster, and newly-minted knight of hell - has been cast in the role of the eternal Thief. Now, the story is dead-set on writing his final chapter, the one that ends with a knife in his back. The curse can’t be broken without tracking down the original Thief. The truth is buried beneath the legacy of a long-dead stage magician and a cache of occult relics from the 1940s.

Ex-crime reporter Leonard Blaylock spends his days on an unusual hobby, developing strangers’ forgotten and discarded rolls of film. He loves the small mysteries the photographs reveal to him. Then Leonard finds something no one would ever expect, or want, to see captured on film—the murder of a young woman. But that’s impossible, because the woman is already dead. Leonard was there when it happened five years earlier.

When Dean receives a distraught phone call from his ex-girlfriend. He rushes to her home to find a horrific and dreadful scene... A ransacked house and her bloodied body lying on the floor. As the police and her husband arrive at the scene, Dean learns that his ex's son is also missing. While Dean searches for answers behind her death, a bombing kills a friend from his days in the military. At the memorial service, Dean has to confront people he hasn't seen in years while facing memories of a tragic event that left them all scarred. The situation takes a darker turn as mysterious classified...

When Sienna Walker is nearly fired from the NYPD, the last thing she expects is a second chance in the one place she vowed never to return to. But she can’t afford to turn down the job offer, even if a painful familial past and a broken engagement hardly make Reno, Nevada, home sweet home. It’s made even less sweet by Sienna’s first case—a serial killer with a curious fixation on her. Along with his victims, the killer leaves perplexing clues and chilling journal entries addressed to Sienna detailing the murders he claims his mother committed.

Homicide Detective Ethan Stone’s next case unexpectedly leads him to the beautiful and brave Isabel. He has seen a lot of horrific crimes, but nothing like this. As lead investigator, he is tasked with keeping her safe while tracking down a deranged killer. He isn’t about to mix work with pleasure but the pull towards Isabel starts to blur the lines… Isabel’s life has been shattered with the gruesome discovery of her murdered family. Can she outrun the killer who has his sights firmly set on her? How many more people will die in the process to keep her safe… *contains intimate ...

Harry Grimm views change with a wary eye. But as the usually steadfast boss struggles with upheavals among his team, he answers a call about a suspiciously abandoned camper. And he soon discovers its owners are a newlywed couple whose lottery winnings have earned them an obsessive stalker.

FBI Agent Ella Dark has studied serial killers from the time she could read, devastated by the murder of her own father, and has gained an encyclopedic knowledge of murderers. A victim of a new killer is found dead, an ancient water clock mysteriously dripping on her body—and Ella knows she has precious little time to decode this killer’s riddle, and stop him before he finds his next target…

Homicide Detective Max Rupert never fully accepted his wife's death, even when he believed that a reckless hit and run driver was the cause. But when he learns that in fact she was murdered, he devotes himself to hunting down her killers. Most of his life he had thought of himself as a decent man. But now he's so consumed with thoughts of retribution that he questions whether he will take that last step and enact the vengeance he longs for.

Shopping with her sister, DI Amy Winter is admiring a Valentine’s Day window display of a perfect bride encrusted in diamonds and resplendent in lace - until she notices blood oozing from the mannequin’s mouth. This is no stunt. A post-mortem reveals the victim was left to die on her macabre throne for all to see. When a second victim is found, it emerges that both women were "Sugar Babes" arranging dates with older men online - and Amy finds herself hunting an accomplished psychopath.