Police Procedural Thriller

The small town of Salem has been quiet for months - or so Bishop and his elite Special Crimes Unit believe. But then Hollis Templeton and Diana Hayes receive a warning in Diana’s eerie “gray time” between the world of the living and the realm of the dead that a twisted killer is stalking Salem, bent on destroying in the most bloody and horrifying way possible the five families that founded the town.

Peter Diamond, head of Bath CID, takes a city break in Vienna, where his favorite film, The Third Man, was set, but everything goes wrong, and his companion, Paloma, calls a halt to their relationship. Meanwhile, strange things are happening to jobbing musician Mel Farran, who finds himself scouted by methods closer to the spy world than the concert platform. The chance of joining a once-famous string quartet in a residency at Bath Spa University is too tempting for Mel to refuse. Then a body is found in the city canal, and the only clue to the dead woman’s identity is the tattoo of a music note on one of her teeth.

The Player is a master in the art of torture and murder. No one had ever gotten close to capturing him until Special Agent Jess Harris targeted him with her relentless determination. Jess's actions may have cost her a job with the bureau, but the Player still wants his vengeance and he'll make Jess pay in ways she never imagined. The first victim is Jess's friend - and the killer won't stop there. With each new death, Jess becomes more certain that the only way to stop the Player is to give him what he really wants: Her.

In the hilarious new novel in the best-selling Detective Varg series, an eminent art historian is framed and the ace investigators of the department of sensitive crimes are on the case.

New Orleans criminal psychologist Kit Franklyn, lately drowning in personal doubts about her life and career, thinks that investigating the corpse she found in the garden of her new home will be the perfect distraction. Together with her boss, chief medical examiner Andy Broussard, she sets out to solve this case that seems plain unsolvable. Though they identify the body as a missing hooker, now dead 27 years, all hope of conviction still seems lost.

Harvard librarian Hester Thursby knows that even in the digital age, people still need help finding things. Using her research skills, Hester runs a side business tracking down the lost. Her new case is finding the handsome and charismatic Sam Blaine. And Sam has no desire to be found.

On Lansdown Hill, near Bath, England, a battle between Roundheads and Cavaliers that took place over 350 years ago is annually reenacted. Two of the reenactors discover a skeleton that is female, headless, and only about twenty years old. One of them, a professor who played a Cavalier, is later found murdered. In the course of his investigation, Peter Diamond butts heads with the group of vigilantes who call themselves the Lansdown Society, discovering in the process that his boss Georgina is a member.

A missing student, a six inch coffin containing a wooden doll, and mysterious role-playing games on the Internet are the intriguing elements of the latest case to challenge Inspector Rebus. The missing student comes from an influential family, and Rebus begins to get a bad feeling about the case in Warsaw. While Rebus follows up a link with the distant past, his DC, Siobhan Clarke, tackles the Internet challenges set by the mysterious Quizmaster.

Gentle by name, gentle by nature. Everyone in the sleepy Scottish town of Lochdubh adores elderly Mrs. Gentle - everyone but Hamish Macbeth, that is. Hamish thinks the gentle lady is quite sly and vicious, and the citizens of Lochdubh think he is overly cranky. Perhaps it's time for him to get married, they say. But who has time for marriage when there's a murder to be solved? When Mrs. Gentle dies under mysterious circumstances, the town is shocked and outraged.

Thinking that she has been summoned by German immigrant Agnes Otto to usher a new life into the world, midwife Sarah Brandt is greeted by the news of an untimely death instead. It seems that Agnes' beautiful younger sister, Gerda, had fallen into the life of a "charity girl". Caught up in the false glamour of the city's nightlife, she would trade her company and her favors for lavish gifts. And now she was dead - victim, no doubt, of one of her "gentlemen friends".

Capitaine Roger Blanc, an investigator with the anticorruption unit of the French Gendarmerie, was a bit too successful in his investigations. He finds himself removed from Paris to the South of France, far away from political power. Or so it would seem. The stress is too much for his marriage, and he attempts to manage the breakup while trying to settle into his new life in Provence in a 200-year-old half-ruined house. At the same time, Blanc is tasked with his first murder case.

When a hostage situation turns deadly, Billy loses everything - his wife, his daughter, and his career. Devastated, he heads to Key West to put down his gun and pick up a rod and reel as a fishing boat captain. But former co-worker Roscoe McAuley isn't ready to let Billy rest. When Roscoe tells Billy that someone murdered his son, Billy sends him away.

When a torched body is found in a country lane, DI Bliss and Chandler are called in to investigate. The detectives are drawn towards recent missing person reports and believe their victim will prove to be one of them. Bliss thinks he knows which and fears the outcome if he is proven right. Soon the body is identified, and Bliss and Chandler discover evidence suggesting this murder might be a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, someone from Bliss’ past needs his help, and soon he is juggling his personal life with the demanding case.

When a celebrity author dies under mysterious circumstances in a small Florida town, a vulnerable young woman is the only witness, and Willow Bay's new chief of police must begin the hunt for a ruthless serial killer who will stop at nothing to hide his true identity. As reporter, Veronica Lee investigates the breaking story: A local woman is brutally killed, exposing a disturbing connection to a dangerous con man who has eluded capture for almost a decade.

Detective Dillon Storm is headed back to Naples for the first time in a dozen years, and the occasion is not a happy one. The illegitimate son of the richest man in America's richest city, Dillon spent his entire life in the shadow of a family that would never accept him. Now, he's come to bury the man who neglected him and, in doing so, put that part of his life behind him forever. But when the lawyer dealing with his father's estate is murdered and Dillon's number is found on his phone, it sets the detective on a path that will unearth family secrets.

Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: He protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull. Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps...but the discovery of the body changes everything.

Judge Dee Renjie, Empress Wu's newly appointed Imperial Circuit Supervisor for the Tang Empire, is visiting provinces surrounding the grand capital of Chang'an. One night a knife is thrown through his window with a cryptic note attached: "A high-flying dragon will have something to regret!"

Stuart Woods, the best-selling author of L.A. Times and Heat, has created a haunting thriller full of ghostly images, murder and old family secrets. Part detective story, part ghost story, part Southern gothic - this absorbing novel will fascinate listeners as a small town’s present, past and future converge.

Shortly after 9.30 in the morning, a young man walks into Surf City, Bondi’s newest shopping complex. He’s wearing a dark grey hoodie - and a bomb around his neck. Just a few minutes later, he is locked in a shop on the upper floor. And trapped with him are four innocent bystanders. For police chaplain Paul Doherty, called to the scene by Senior Sergeant Boehm, it’s a story that will end as tragically as it began. For this is clearly no ordinary siege. The boy, known as Ali Khan, seems as frightened as his hostages and has yet to utter a single word.

When Sergeant Mike West and his partner, Garda Andrews, are called to a suspicious death, they are shocked to find the small body of a child abandoned in a suitcase. Who is she? No child has been reported missing. Their search reaches outside Ireland but without success, and soon another dead body takes their attention. There is a surfeit of suspects this time, but as the case evolves, the two detectives are stunned where it leads.