Serial Killer Mystery Fiction

The Rowling sisters have always been people you can understand–with partners and children, homes and dreams. And secrets, the sisters have those too. But when Kate, the eldest, finally returns to buy her late grandfather’s home, the dark things each sister has kept buried soon rise to the surface. Is Kate having unexplained visions tied to a past she can hardly recall? Is Aurora, the married mother of two, finally acting out in the face of her sisters’ indiscretions? Is Peggy, the youngest and a recovering addict, able to move on from the memories that haunt her?

On a stormy Chicago night, renowned semiotician Dr. Evan Wilding and his brother, River, who’s back from an archaeological dig, reunite in a mystery. A package addressed to both of them contains a hand-drawn maze, an ancient Cretan coin, and a cryptic greeting: Let the game begin. The opening move is murder. In a downtown alley, a man has been found nearly cleaved in two, a symbol drawn on his forehead and a savage rip in his throat. Given the clues, Evan sees a parallel to a fearsome Greek myth. Which means his friend Detective Addie Bisset is on the trail of a legendary flesh-eating monster.

“…at least 60, maybe more.” Beginning in the spring of 1984, a series of letters were sent to the LAPD, wrapped in light blue envelopes with ‘CONFIDENTIAL’ stamped across the back. These letters described multiple gruesome murders that were allegedly committed by the writer. At first the typewritten letters seemed to be the ramblings of a mad man. However, in time, and as more bodies were found, the accuracy of details foretold in the letters made it clear that they were, in fact, written by the prolific killer. This is the story of The Glendale Butcher, one of the most prolific ...

My husband is lying. The minute he came home with alcohol on his breath and unable to look me in the eyes I knew it. We used to be in love–the intense ‘I can’t be without you for a second’ kind. Where it hurts deep to be apart. But now, we’re the couple that keep secrets from each other. We hide the truth. He thought I wouldn’t find out. I’m a detective–it’s literally my job to uncover clues and solve mysteries. I know what he did. And now I’m sitting here, in a police interview, being asked the question ‘did you kill her?’ to which I utter one life-shattering word: ‘yes.’

Spiritualism has captured the public’s imagination. Séances are all the rage, and Detective Ian Hamilton’s otherwise sensible aunt Lillian is not immune to their allure. But for Ian, indulging her superstitions has its limits. When members of Lillian’s circle of séance friends begin turning up dead, Ian doesn’t need a medium to tell him these aren’t freak accidents.

Mickie Lambert creates “digital scrapbooks” for clients, ensuring that precious souvenirs aren’t forgotten or lost. When her latest client, Nadia Denham, a curio shop owner, dies from an apparent suicide, Mickie honors the old woman’s last wish and begins curating her peculiar objets d’art. A music box, a hair clip, a key chain - twelve mementos in all that must have meant so much to Nadia. But these tokens mean a lot to someone else, too. Mickie has been receiving threatening messages to leave Nadia’s past alone.

Colette “Coco” Weber has relocated to her Catalina Island home, where, twenty years before, she was the sole survivor of a deadly home invasion. All Coco wants is to see her aunt Gwen, get as far away from her ex as possible, and get back to her craft—writing obituaries. Thankfully, her college best friend, Maddy, owns the local paper and has a job sure to keep Coco busy, considering the number of elderly folks who are dying on the island. But as Coco learns more about these deaths, she quickly realizes that the circumstances surrounding them are remarkably similar....

Capri Sanzio knows that when you give serial killer walking tours for a living, unexpected situations are more common than San Francisco's famous fog. So, when one of her guests claims to see a woman being attacked during a tour, Capri remains unphased. The police search the apartment in question and find no evidence of anything amiss, so they chalk it up to a false report from a true crime fanatic looking to be a part of a case. And Capri thinks they might be right, since lately her tours have been attracting even more obsessives than usual.

A serial killer is rampaging across the country, tying families to chairs—arranged in puzzling tableaus—then murdering them, without leaving a trace of evidence. FBI Special Agent Lukas Stark has been hunting the Tableau Killer for eighteen months but is always two steps behind in a maze of dead ends. He has no understanding of why the killer stages the scenes so meticulously or chooses entire families. Burning out, Stark is forced to take on a new partner, Gilles Garnier.

It seems like an open-and-shut case for FBI special agent Lucy Thorne when Eliza Cook walks into the field office. The teenage girl confesses to murdering a young boy. Disturbingly composed, she reveals chilling details only the killer could know. Beyond that Eliza doesn't say another word, leaving a vital question met with dead silence: Why did she do it?

There's a serial killer on the loose, working his way through the alphabet and the whole country is in a state of panic. A is for Mrs. Ascher in Andover, B is for Betty Barnard in Bexhill, C is for Sir Carmichael Clarkein Churston. With each murder, the killer is gettingmore confident - but leaving a trail of deliberate clues to taunt the proud Hercule Poirot might just prove to be the first, and fatal, mistake.

Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke—until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list. First, a well-liked old man is drowned on a beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine. Then, a father is shot in the back while running through his quiet neighborhood in suburban Massachusetts. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common?

Portrait of the Medical Student as a Young Body Snatcher. Yet I must insist that in the end, this is not a story about Death. It is perhaps a Life story, or even—yes—a Love story. It is the story of how I clawed my way from the decay of a crumbling legacy into the modern era of Reason and Science. It is the story of how I escaped the prison of archaic superstition to the freedom of enlightenment. It is the story of how a rose can blossom from even the bloodiest soil, of how light can grow from shadow, how love can grow from despair.

It takes an obsessive mind to know one. And Daniel Clark knows the elusive killer he's been stalking. He's devoted every waking minute as a profiler to find the serial killer known only as Eve. He's pored over the crime scenes of 16 young women who died mysterious deaths, all in underground basements or caverns. He's delved into the killer's head and puzzled over the twisted religious overtones of the killings. What Daniel can't possibly know is that he will be Eve's next victim. He will be the killer's first Adam.

At the age of 12, Eve Black was the only member of her family to survive an encounter with serial attacker the Nothing Man. Now an adult, she is obsessed with identifying the man who destroyed her life. Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle has just started reading The Nothing Man - the true-crime memoir Eve has written about her efforts to track down her family’s killer. As he turns each page, his rage grows. Because Jim’s not just interested in reading about the Nothing Man. He is the Nothing Man.

To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his “art” to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his “art” to limits even Compton hadn’t previously imagined.

Damaged Portland detective Archie Sheridan spent ten years tracking Gretchen Lowell, a beautiful serial killer, but in the end she was the one who caught him. Two years ago, Gretchen kidnapped Archie and tortured him for ten days, but instead of killing him, she mysteriously decided to let him go. She turned herself in, and now Gretchen has been locked away for the rest of her life, while Archie is in a prison of another kind---addicted to pain pills, unable to return to his old life, powerless to get those ten horrific days off his mind.

Ten years ago, fifteen-year-old Scarlett Crosby was held captive in a terrifying ordeal with a girl named Della. Scarlett escaped, their predator was killed, and Della simply vanished. Detective Kevin Dawson always wondered if Della even existed. A decade later, Scarlett is a successful artist. As hard as she tries to move on, the mysterious Della remains her inescapable obsession. Then a girl’s body is discovered—a link to Scarlett’s horrific past—and all her old traumas resurface. So does Della.

Forensic anthropologist Christine Prusik has a knack for solving the most unusual cases—and for bending the rules in the process. When the bodies of young women start appearing in the caves of Indiana and Illinois, Christine immediately jumps into action. But her Chicago field office is undergoing a reorganization, and the boys’ club at the top seem more interested in getting all the paperwork in order than solving the murders.

In her masterful new novel, Ivy Pochoda creates a kaleidoscope of loss, power, and hope featuring five very different women whose lives are steeped in danger and anguish. They’re connected by one man and his deadly obsession, though not all of them know that yet. There’s Dorian, still adrift after her daughter’s murder remains unsolved.