Serial Killer Thrillers Fiction

The X and O Killings A novel by Logan Carter Brooklyn, 1997. The borough is caught in the grip of terror. Bodies are turning up across the city—marked with cryptic symbols: an X... an O. At first, the police dismiss the deaths as random violence. But Dispatch reporter Frankie Moretti sees a pattern emerging: a deadly game of Tic-Tac-Toe being played out in blood across the map of a gritty, pre-digital New York. As the victims pile up, two killers—one brutal and impulsive, the other cold and calculating—race to complete the board. With pagers buzzing, payphones ringing, and the streets...

My name is Jack Steen, and for those who arrive on my 'death' ward at the Asylum, I'm the last face many will see before they die. I am the night nurse at an Asylum for the Criminally Insane, and most of my patients know me as their Angel of Death. I know them as mass murderers, rapists, and serial killers - among other things. Here's what happens: they come on my floor, they give me their deathbed confession, and I help to make their death less painful. There's a catch, though: I want the real story, the one they haven't told anyone else.

Clayton Deese looks like a small-time criminal, muscle for hire when his loan shark boss needs to teach someone a lesson. Now, seven months after a job that went south and landed him in jail, Deese has skipped out on bail, and the US Marshals come looking for him. They don't much care about a low-level guy - it's his boss they want - but Deese might be their best chance to bring down the whole operation. Then, they step onto a dirt trail behind Deese's rural Louisiana cabin and find a jungle full of graves.

Amaia Salazar, a young detective from the north of Spain, has joined a group of trainees at the FBI Academy in Virginia. Haunted by her past and having already tracked down a predator on her own, Amaia is no typical rookie. And this is no ordinary student lecture at Quantico. FBI agent Aloisius Dupree is already well acquainted with Amaia’s skills, her intuition, and her ability to understand evil. He now needs her help in hunting an elusive serial killer dubbed “the Composer,” and in solving another case that’s been following him his whole life.

Just your average father-son story. But with abduction, torture, and murder. Out of nowhere, a retired 60-year old handyman goes on a murder-spree, abducting healthy young people and torturing them with hand-tools. After he's caught, a media fascination in The Handyman swells. People want to know why he snapped. They want to hear all the grisly details. But he'll only tell his gruesome story to one person - his estranged son.

When the skeleton of a young girl, not yet a teenager, is discovered in Acadia, Canada, Tempe Brennan is reminded of Evangelina, her best friend in her preteen years, who was mysteriously taken away when she was 12. Evangelina was from strange and faraway Acadia. She was named after Evangeline in the Longfellow poem, and loved poetry. Tempe found her exotic and glamorous, and then suddenly she was gone, and Tempe was told not to try to find her, that she was "dangerous".

Women are turning up dead on the rural outskirts of Virginia, killed in grotesque ways, and when the FBI is called in they are stumped. A serial killer is out there, his frequency increasing, and they know there is only one agent good enough to crack this case: Special Agent Riley Paige. Riley is on paid leave, recovering from her encounter with her last serial killer, and, fragile as she is, the FBI is reluctant to tap her brilliant mind. Yet Riley, needing to battle her own demons, comes onboard.

Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf. Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he’s received and the disappearance of Jonas’s mother - and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn....

Five years ago Elizabeth Piccioni's husband was arrested for being a serial killer. Her life suddenly turned upside down, she did what she thought was best for her newborn baby: she took her son and ran away to start a new life. Now, living in a quiet part of the Midwest with a new identity, Elizabeth is ready to start over. But one day she receives a phone call from a person calling himself Cain. Cain somehow knows about her past life. He has abducted her son, and if Elizabeth wants to save him she must retrieve her husband's trophies - the fingers he cut off each of his victims.

The Crystal Killer’s latest casualty was discovered in a sleepy town in the Pacific Northwest, Misted Pines. His years in the FBI, and tracking the Crystal Killer, have taken their toll on Rus. He lost his marriage to the job. And the burdens he carries for the victims was crushing him. Misted Pines has recently survived a killer’s rampage and a town scandal that made global news. The media was primed to devour a new story. So Rus already has his work cut out for him. But it’s more. Something is just not right with this latest victim.

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.

In their isolated country house, a mother and her two children prepare to wait out a blinding snowstorm. Two violent predators walk through the door. Nothing will ever be the same. When the two strangers turn up at Rowena Cooper's isolated Colorado farmhouse, she knows instantly that it's the end of everything. For the two haunted and driven men, on the other hand, it's just another stop on a long and bloody journey. And they still have many miles to go, and victims to sacrifice, before their work is done.

Winner in 2023 Global Book Awards competition Dark Matter: A fast-paced psychological thriller and emotional roller-coaster Personal tragedy gives D.S. Ross the daunting prospect of caring for his twelve-year-old autistic nephew, something he is ill-equipped to handle. As he learns and adapts, the killing doesn’t stop. Racked by grief and loneliness, enraged by those he believes responsible for the death of his wife, one man thirsts for revenge. The Press labels him the BBQ Killer. After being rejected and humiliated, another Killer hides in plain sight, cloaked in kindness and compassion...

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.

Psychologist Arles Shepherd treats troubled children, struggling with each case to recover from her own traumatic past, much of which she’s lost to the shadows of memory. Having just set up a new kind of treatment center in the remote Adirondack wilderness, Arles longs to heal one patient in particular: a ten-year-old boy who has never spoken a word—or so his mother, Louise, believes.

My name is Jack Steen, and for those who arrive on my "death" ward at the Asylum, I'm the last face many will see before they die. I am the night nurse at an Asylum for the Criminally Insane, and most of my patients know me as their Angel of Death. I know them as mass murderers, rapists, and serial killers—among other things.

When the body of a bookseller is discovered, collapsed in a pool of blood in his Bristolian bookshop, it is immediately clear that he has been murdered. What is unclear is how someone could have met such a violent end in this quiet, peaceful place. DS Cross is adept at dismissing red-herrings but a worrying development in his personal life has left him hopelessly distracted, leaving his usual means of deciphering evidence challenged.

When eight-year-old Kathy Stone turns up on the side of the road a year after her abduction, the world awaits her harrowing story. But Kathy doesn’t say a word. Traumatized by her ordeal, she doesn’t speak at all, not even to her own parents. Child therapist Robin Hart is the only one who’s had success connecting with the girl. Robin has been using play therapy to help Kathy process her memories. But as their work continues, Kathy’s playtime takes a grim turn: a doll stabs another doll, a tiny figurine is chained to a plastic toy couch.

Dr Nell Ward is delighted when her childhood friend Percy announces she's engaged to handsome businessman Hawke McAnstruther - and rashly offers to host the wedding at Finchmere, her family's estate. But she hadn't anticipated Percy's parents' fiery disapproval of the groom. The ceremony is barely over before Hawke's shady personal and professional life starts to unravel, and tension ripples through the assembled guests.

A decade ago, Emily Carlino vanished after her car broke down on a California highway. She was presumed to be one of serial killer Ronny Lee Jessup’s victims whose remains were never found. Writer David Thorne still hasn’t recovered from losing the love of his life, or from the guilt of not being there to save her. Then David meets Maddison Sutton, beguiling, playful, and keenly aware of all David has lost. But what really takes his breath away is that everything about Maddison, down to her kisses, is just like Emily.