Valentines Mystery

The new year starts with a bang in Sydney's Chinatown - and not just fireworks. While the rest of the country is celebrating, the biggest bank job in Australia's history is taking place. The press called it 'The Great Chinese Take-Away', but in those missing safety deposit boxes is something much more valuable than money. A gold key with a dragon on it. Why does the Chen family want it back so badly? What starts as a routine case soon leads Claudia Valentine into a world of ancient treasures and modern Triad killings, through the sleazy back streets and exotic oriental temples.

Valentine Pescatore, the dashing ex-US Border Patrol agent, finds himself back on American soil, investigating the merciless killing of a group of women in a motel room. At first, the crime seems to be a straightforward case of gangsters battling for territory. Soon, however, the motive is revealed to be much deeper and more sinister: a single witness who knows too much is being hunted, at any cost.

Detective Chetwyn has a problem. He believes his chief superintendent might be vampire. He believes that mysterious eccentric Freddie Valentine might be one as well, and that he's going to be bumped off by Valentine's Polish hard-man Oneski.

A midwinter bicycle race brings hometown enthusiasts into contact with serious-minded gamblers. When suspicions circulate about the race being fixed, it infects all of Woodland Park.

Winter 1954, and in a dilapidated apartment in Brooklyn, Sam Cooper realises that she has nothing left. Her mother is dead, she has no prospects and she cannot afford the rent. But as she goes through her mother's things, Sam finds a stack of hidden letters that reveal a family and an inheritance that she never knew she had, three thousand miles away in Yorkshire. Begars Abbey is a crumbling pile, inhabited only by Sam's crippled grandmother, Lady Cooper, a housekeeper and a handful of servants. Sam cannot understand why her mother kept its very existence a secret.

London, 1665. Hidden within the growing pile of corpses in his churchyard, Rector Symon Patrick discovers a victim of the pestilence unlike any he has seen before: a young woman with a shorn head, covered in burns, and with pieces of twine delicately tied around each wrist and ankle. Desperate to discover the culprit, Symon joins a society of eccentric medical men who have gathered to find a cure for the plague. Someone is performing terrible experiments upon the dying, hiding their bodies amongst the hundreds that fill the death carts.

Jack Bailey is just a few weeks away from beginning his dream career as Forest Ranger in the upstate New York town of Angel's Bend. Jenny Rudea, veterinarian in training, is madly in love with Jack, and the animals she cares for. On the way home from her house one night, Jack takes an unanticipated detour to Hosner Lake. While there, he encounters something that raises the hair on the back of his neck. What is out there, on the other side of the lake? Is it a shadow, a hunter, a wolf?

It was enough to make her tremble… but whether it was from desire or rage, she wasn’t sure… Ethan Billionaire Ethan White was only in Colorado to support a friend. Without his help, Mia’s fundraiser for the kids could pull in less money. There was no way that he wanted to run into an old flame. Not at all. Well, maybe just a little… Laura Laura Corbett hated a certain billionaire with every fiber of her being. She thought he crushed her heart on purpose. So when he showed up at the same charity fundraiser that she was working, she thought it was the worst thing that could happen ...

On a hot August day in 1994, 76 holidaymakers travel to an island off the North Norfolk coast. Only 75 return alive - a young man is murdered, the case left unsolved. Twenty years later, using state-of-the-art forensics, the DNA results of a blood-soaked towel prompt DI Peter Shaw to summon all 75 original suspects to a mass screening. But one of them is found dead in her bed. Is there a link to the 1994 murder? DI Shaw and DS Valentine become immersed in the secrets of an isolated community.

5 September 1992: Fifteen-year-old Norma Jean Judd disappeared from her home never to be seen again. Exactly 18 years later, Bryan Judd, Norma Jean’s twin, is pulled from the searing heat of a hospital incinerator. When his charred remains are examined, the murder squad confirms that his death was no accident. Could his death be linked to his sister’s disappearance? For DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine, the case proves their most intriguing yet.

Bodies are being exhumed at King's Lynn's cemetery, the bones moved to higher ground to avoid flooding. But when the coffin of murdered pub landlady Nora Tilden is hauled up into the light there's a grim discovery: the twisted corpse of a young black man, dumped in the grave on the night Nora was buried. Who was this young man? Was he the victim of a racist crime?

A serial killer is on the loose, moving up the East Coast, leaving bodies and notes, planting roses in his victims. Leonardo Gibraldi, Baltimore's sexy Assistant DA, is tracking the fiend who's responsible for the grisly murder of his ex-girlfriend. Leo's out for revenge -so is the killer.

It is the start of a long, hot summer, and Madalena Grimaldi has disappeared. Claudia is hired to find the missing schoolgirl, but she's already working on a case - the death of Guy Valentine, her father. As Claudia searches the streets, looking for the ghost of her derelict father and for the mysterious man who can lead her to Madalena, she finds herself sinking into a world where, for many, rock bottom is only the beginning.

Valentine For a Dead Lady, an introduction to Mel D. Ames's classic intrepid and daring Detective Cathy Carruthers. In the male dominated world of hard-boiled detectives, Ames's genre changing Lieutenant Carruthers pioneered a new exciting direction with these fast-paced tales of vice and villainy. Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Ames’s stories evoke the golden era of short crime stories that filled pulp magazines.

Private investigator Geneva Pomolo and her partner Iris Reeves are busier than ever. An old foe has challenged them to a contest to see which pair of friends can take the most one-day courses at the local community college. Never one to shirk from a challenge, Geneva now has her hands full three evenings a week learning the basics of sailing, baking, watercolors, Olympic sports, and mystery writing.

Lorsqu'ils se sont rencontrés, elle était très jeune. Il lui a fait porter un loup noir, il l'a appelée Eva, il lui a appris à jouer avec le feu. Il était le maître de ses émotions, de sa volonté, de sa souffrance. Il l'a perdue. Où qu'elle soit, où qu'elle se cache, il lui manque, il en est persuadé. Il ne cesse de la chercher, son zippo à la main, qu'elle reconnaîtra entre mille. Et comme elle tarde à ressurgir, il décide de lui laisser des messages. Et affole la police.

When Suyana, Face of the United Amazonia Rainforest Confederation, secretly meets Ethan of the United States for a date that can solidify a relationship for the struggling UARC, the last thing she expects is an assassination attempt. Daniel, a teen runaway turned paparazzi out for his big break, witnesses the first shot hit Suyana, and before he can think about it he jumps into the fray, telling himself it's not altruism, it's the scoop. Just like that,Suyana and Daniel are now in the game of Faces.

When DI Bob Valentine returns to duty after a narrow escape with death, he is faced with the discovery of a corpse on a kitchen table with a horrific neck wound and a mystery surrounding the victim's missing partner and her daughter. It's all too close to his own near-fatal stabbing. When the murder investigation begins to reveal a tragic family drama, Bob Valentine struggles to deal with the rapidly unfolding events and the terrifying visions that haunt him.

At 5.15 p.m. Harvey Ellis was trapped – stranded in a line of eight cars by a blizzard on a Norfolk coast road. Three hours later, Harvey Ellis was dead – viciously stabbed at the wheel of his truck. And his killer has achieved the impossible: striking without being seen, and without leaving a single footprint in the snow…For DI Peter Shaw and DS George Valentine it's only the start of an infuriating investigation.

Number 33 Georgiana Street houses many people and yet seems home to none. To runaway Sam it is a place to disappear. To Bohemia, it's just another blip between crises, as her mum ricochets off the latest boyfriend. Old Isobel acts like she owns the place, even though it actually belongs to Steve in the basement, who is always looking to squeeze in yet another tenant. Life there is a kind of ordered chaos.