Detective Mystery Thriller Suspense

Detective Karen Hart is finally getting her life back on track—enjoying her new relationship and dealing with the grief in her past. Then someone from her counselling group asks for help locating a missing friend, Phoebe Woodrow, who went out partying and never came home. Karen wonders if Phoebe’s disappearance might be related to a recent spate of women having their drinks spiked. As she digs deeper, she finds out that Phoebe’s work in medical research involved a shifty alliance with Quentin Chapman, a menacing local gangster—but it was also about to make her a fortune.

Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's premier lady detective, is a little short on help. The codirector of the agency, Grace Makutsi, is busy with her own case, her client none other than their erstwhile assistant, Mr. Polopetsi, who has unwittingly involved himself in a pyramid scheme. The agency's other assistant, Charlie, may also need more help than he can offer, as he is newly embroiled in a romance with a glamorous woman about whom the others have their doubts.

Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she has albinism. She's a terrific athlete but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits in. And then she discovers something amazing - she is a "free agent" with latent mystical power.

A knock on the door late in the evening can only mean trouble for Detective Josie Quinn, but fear chokes her at the news that one of her own team is missing. No one has seen Denton PD’s Press Liaison Amber for days and, as she follows the message scrawled on the frosted windscreen of Amber’s car to a nearby dam, Josie hears a piercing scream that tells her she’s too late. But the body they pull from the freezing water is not Amber....

Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and Sergeant Gemma James are sent to suburban Surrey to investigate the murder of a high-ranking police officer. Alastair Gilbert was bludgeoned to death in his kitchen, and the list of potential suspects is long--the man's arrogance earned him widespread enmity both in the village where he lived, and in police circles. But Duncan and Gemma must put aside their personal feelings--for the victim, as well as for each other--to solve the most troubling case either has faced.

Detective Inspector Nikki Galena's close friend Helen Brook is involved in a serious accident where she is trapped in a collapsed cellar. After her hard-won recovery, Helen is still getting flashbacks to a man she says was down there with her and who confessed to a murder. But no trace of this man can be found. Then Helen tells Nikki that someone is watching her. But is all this in her friend's imagination and part of her post-traumatic stress?

When Dr. Gul Delani receives a call in the middle of the night from the Sindh police, she thinks they may have finally found her niece, Mahnaz—a precocious, politically conscious teenage girl who went missing three years prior. Gul has been racked with grief since Mahnaz’s disappearance, and distracts herself through work: she’s a talented curator at the Museum of Heritage and History in Karachi, one of the country’s leading experts in archaeology and ancient civilizations, a hard-won position for a woman.

The plaintiffs in a sensational breach of promise suit are wealthy social climbers Barton and Delphine Lambert, suing on behalf of their beautiful daughter, Zillah. The defendant is Zillah's alleged fiancé, brilliant young architect Killian Melville, who adamantly declares that he will not, cannot, marry her. Not even to his counsel, distinguished barrister Sir Oliver Rathbone, will Killian explain his rejection of rich and charming Zillah.

Her marriage over and career gone bust, Arly Hanks flees Manhattan for her hometown: Maggody, Arkansas. In a town this size, nothing much ever happens, so Arly figures she's safe as the town's first female chief of police - until the husband of one of the local barmaids escapes from state prison and heads for town. And that's not all. An EPA official with ties to polluting the local fishing hole has suddenly vanished off the face of the earth.

For DI Declan Walsh, life is finally returning to normal. Finding a home at DCI Alexander Monroe's Last Chance Saloon Crime Unit, Declan and his team - DS Anjli Kapoor, DC Billy Fitzwarren, Doctor Rosanna Marcos, and her assistant DC Joanne Davey - are still recovering from the fallout connected to their most recent case, while Declan is cleaning out his late father's home in order to move in.

Award-winning New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith, creator of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels, delivers the fourth tale from his charming Isabel Dalhousie series, featuring the highly ethical and plucky protagonist. She's now a mother, but has an uncertain relationship with her son's father. She must also deal with academic politics and, of course, a mystery: did a Scottish painter drown, commit suicide or fall victim to a murder plot?

A bit of adventure and quick cash is all that good-natured drifter Anthony Cade is looking for when he accepts a messenger job from an old friend. It sounds so simple: deliver the provocative memoirs of a recently deceased European count to a London publisher. Little did Anthony suspect that a simple errand to deliver the manuscript on behalf of his friend would drop him right in the middle of an international conspiracy, and he begins to realize that it has placed him in serious danger.

After her best-friend is murdered in cold blood, to escape her traumas and big city life, Riley moves back to Pine Brooke. There she takes a position as the town’s detective. When she receives a call regarding a young girl in the woods, she never expected the terror of events that would soon unfold. It seems the thin and malnourished girl had fallen to her death. But closer examination of the body reveals new layers to the mystery. Was she running from something?

Precious Ramotswe's comfortable existence as the only detective in Botswana is suddenly rattled when the Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency opens, and its brochure proclaims, "Don't take any chances! Entrust your enquiries to a MAN!" As if the development isn't enough, Mma Ramotswe has also taken on two difficult cases, one of which hits close to home. But with wisdom on her side, Mma Ramotswe figures to crack both cases and upstage her competition.

In the early days of 1924, Mary Russell and her husband, the inimitable Sherlock Holmes, are given an urgent task by his brother, Mycroft: find a British spy gone missing along India's northwest frontier, where men are dying and trouble is brewing. The spy's name? It is one Holmes knows from his sojourn in India long ago, and one Russell knows from a book. It is Kimball O'Hara, known to the world by the name Rudyard Kipling called him - Kim....

Jockey Kit Fielding has been riding the de Brescou’s horses in a succession of triumphs on the race course. But this winning streak is about to end. Kit’s twin sister, Holly, has come to him in desperation. Threatened by financial scandal, she and her husband may lose their training stables. Kit soon finds, though, that a greater danger lurks behind the threat—one that could be fatal.

Dashiell Hammett is best known as both pioneer and master of American hard-boiled detective fiction, but these dozen and a half stories both affirm that reputation and present him in a different light. Along with the full-length treatments On the Make and The Kiss-Off, this collection includes never before and rarely published stories that explore failed romance, courage in the face of uncertainty, hypocrisy, and crass opportunism.

Perhaps it is a blessing when Jasmine Dent dies in her sleep. At last an end has come to the suffering of a body horribly ravaged by disease. It may well have been suicide; she had certainly expressed her willingness to speed the inevitable. But small inconsistencies lead her neighbor, Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, to a startling conclusion: Dent was murdered. But if not for mercy, why would someone destroy a life already doomed?

Late one night, a distraught young man knocks on the door of retired and recently widowed Ally Bright’s remote home on the Cornish coast. But before she can make sense of his confused words, he’s gone—not to be seen again until he’s found the next morning at the foot of the nearby cliffs.

Detective Inspector Jack Dawes and his bride, Corrie, join eight other holidaymakers bound for a tiny Greek island, ready for a bit of sun, sea and sand. Mayhem ensues when a storm destroys the island’s primitive communications, cutting it off from civilisation. It’s a perfect opportunity for murder. First one victim is poisoned, followed swiftly by another. Then a woman is found badly beaten in a quiet cove and a body is found in a grotto to St. Sophia, the island’s patron saint. The island’s visitors are being picked off one by one.