Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

Kennedy Farmer, an experienced athlete, never returns after leaving for her usual running route through the dusty mountain trails of New Mexico. While the search for Kennedy begins, Detective Alyssa Wyatt and her squad face a terrifying new case when the body of a young woman, Rheagan Pembroke, is discovered in the desert terrain surrounding Albuquerque. Her wounds horrify even the hardened squad of the Albuquerque P.D.—and the case takes an even darker turn when they discover a polaroid stuffed into the victim's mouth, showing the body of Gunner Galveston, a murder victim from years ago.

Dexter Morgan has been under considerable pressure. It’s just not easy being an ethical serial killer - especially while trying to avoid the unshakable suspicions of the dangerous Sergeant Doakes (who believes Dexter is a homicidal maniac... which, of course, he is). In an attempt to throw Doakes off his trail, Dexter has had to slip deep into his foolproof disguise. While not working as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, he now spends nearly all his time with his cheerful girlfriend, Rita....

The Dollmaker was the name of the serial killer who had stalked Los Angeles ruthlessly, leaving grisly calling cards on the faces of his victims. Now, with a single faultless shot, Harry Bosch thinks he has ended the city's nightmare.

Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be. Vic doesn't tell anyone about her unusual ability, because she knows no one will believe her. She has trouble understanding it herself.

Florida journalism undergrad Rebecca Sorley is like any other college student. She tries to keep up with her studies, her friends, and her hot-tempered roommate, Ellie, who regularly courts trouble with the law. When a male student's remains are found in alligator-infested waters, the university warns students to stay away from the reptiles. But then a second body shows up, and the link is undeniable. Both men belonged to the same fraternity and had a reputation for preying on and hurting women.

DS Kat Ballantyne came to the crime-writing festival for an escape. Instead she’s walked straight into a murder scene. Moments before he’s due on stage, a famous novelist is found dead in a locked room. It looks like natural causes, but Kat sees tiny clues that suggest murder. As she investigates, she uncovers literary rivalries, personal vendettas and hidden agendas. Is there anyone who didn’t have a motive to murder Mark Swift?

Special Agent Constant Marlowe is tasked with taking over the investigation of an obsessed serial killer trolling the small town of Clark Valley in the quiet—and eerie—plains of the Midwest. Two female victims in quick succession, the same brutal MO, and every indication that victim number three is only days away. Also in the killer’s scope is Constant herself. When she interviews a local family who may be potential witnesses, she leads the devil to their doorstep, throwing their lives into chaos.

Eight-year-old Brooklyn Mercer has gone missing. And as accustomed as FBI agents Eliza Sterling and Brandon Eddison are to such harrowing cases, this one has struck a nerve. It marks the anniversary of the disappearance of Eddison’s own little sister. Disturbing, too, is the girl’s resemblance to Eliza - so uncanny they could be mother and daughter. With Eddison’s unsettled past rising again with rage and pain, Eliza is determined to solve this case at any cost. But the closer she looks, the more reluctant she is to divulge to her increasingly shaken partner what she finds.

Invite Hannibal Lecter into the palace of your mind and be invited into his mind palace in turn. Note the similarities in yours and his, the high vaulted chambers of your dreams, the shadowed halls, the locked storerooms where you dare not go, the scrap of half-forgotten music, the muffled cries from behind a wall. In one of the most eagerly anticipated literary events of the decade, Thomas Harris takes us once again into the mind of a killer, crafting a chilling portrait of insidiously evolving evil - a tour de force of psychological suspense.

A murderer is on the loose on the streets of New York City: nicknamed the Doomsday Killer, he's claimed six victims in just two weeks, and the city is terrified. Even worse, the police are mystified: the victims have nothing in common, defying all profiling, and all that connects them is that each received a sick postcard in the mail before they died - a postcard that announced their date of death. In desperation, the FBI assigns the case to maverick agent Will Piper, once the most accomplished serial-killing expert in the bureau's history, now on a dissolute spiral to retirement.

Twenty miles across the North Dakota border, where the scenery goes from rolling grass prairie to pipeline fields, detective Cassie Dewell has been assigned as the new deputy sheriff of Grimstad - a place people used to be from but were never headed to. Grimstad is now the oil capital of North Dakota. With oil comes money, with money comes drugs, and with drugs come the dirtiest criminals hustling to corner the market.

A car submerged in a remote pond. The bodies of two girls strapped into their seats. The mystery of their mother, vanished without a trace, leads Gwen Proctor and Kezia Claremont into dangerous territory. On the surface, Gwen’s life is good - two children approaching adulthood, a committed partner, and a harrowing past dead and gone. That past is attracting the attention of someone invisible and unstoppable. Trouble’s just beginning. So is the body count in this backwoods Tennessee town. As threats mount and Gwen’s hunted by an enemy who pulls all the strings, Kezia has her back.

Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck. He seems utterly alone, but he has brought his demons with him. Hannibal’s uncle, a noted painter, finds him in a Soviet orphanage and brings him to France, where Hannibal will live with his uncle and his uncle’s beautiful and exotic wife, Lady Murasaki. But Hannibal’s demons visit him and torment him. When he is old enough, he visits them in turn. He discovers he has gifts beyond the academic, and in that epiphany, Hannibal Lecter becomes death’s prodigy.

Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it’s guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it’s to help care for his sick father - or so he says.

Psychiatrist Dr. Gwen Moore is an expert on killers. She’s spent a decade treating California’s most depraved predators and unlocking their motives - predators much like the notorious Bloody Heart serial killer, whose latest teenage victim escaped and then identified local high school teacher Randall Thompson as his captor. The case against Thompson as the Bloody Heart Killer is damning - and closed, as far as Gwen and the media are concerned. If not for one new development.

He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won't stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn't talking. Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still.

Carmen Sanchez is a tough Homeland Security agent who plays by the rules. But when her sister is attacked, revealing a connection to a series of murders across Southern California, she realizes a conventional investigation will not be enough to stop the ruthless perpetrator. With nowhere else to turn, Sanchez enlists the aid of Professor Jake Heron, a brilliant and quirky private security expert who, unlike Sanchez, believes rules are merely suggestions. The two have a troubled past, but he owes her a favor and she’s cashing in.

Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

Paul Sheldon is a best-selling novelist who has finally met his number-one fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes, and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also furious that the author has killed off her favorite character in his latest book. Annie becomes his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house. Annie wants Paul to write a book that brings Misery back to life - just for her. She has a lot of ways to spur him on.

A Murderous Enemy Makes an Evil Bargain When an aspiring actress meets a violent end after attending a party at the exclusive Bliss Cove Resort, her death sparks a desperate manhunt for an evil predator who will stop at nothing to hide his deadly past. As reporter Veronica Lee investigates the link between the homicide victim and a prominent billionaire, a woman on the run exposes the ugly truth behind his powerful circle of friends, becoming the heartless killer’s next target. And when a bitter adversary from Veronica’s past enlists the help of an unlikely accomplice, Veronica must ...