The police called it an accident. The dead man's wife insisted it was murder. Either way it was maddeningly mysterious. Captain Harold Jeffries, swaddled in his robe, had settled down for a cozy evening with Crime and Punishment when his wife left the house for a bridge party. An hour later he was dead. What could have induced him to dress and go out into the stormy night - much less to walk on the beach, which he hated and never went near?

Lurking in the dark corners of J. P. Beaumont's bizarre case was not just a demented mind obsessed with murder, but secrets so deadly that even a street-tough cop could die guessing.

Griff Burkett has a multimillion-dollar contract with the Dallas Cowboys. But at the end of his football career, deep in debt, a crime kingpin offers him a chance to resolve his loans by throwing a game. Griff agrees, and walks into an FBI sting. After serving time, he finds only closed doors. Then he is summoned by eccentric millionaire Foster Speakman. Speakman, a recluse since a car accident left him crippled, is impotent. Deadly consequences ensue when he hires Burkett to impregnate his wife.

Two pirates do battle on an old junk ship in Singapore Harbor. They leap nimbly from deck to rigging, crossing swords like fencing masters. And then one surprises the other, slicing a rope and sending the unfortunate pirate tumbling into the bay. This is how stuntman Angelo Sacchetti dies. Edward Cauthorne was his opponent, a fellow stuntman whose career died along with Sacchetti. He’s selling used cars when two thugs approach him.

The murder of Paul Wheeler has all the elements of a blockbuster: family rivalries, incalculable wealth, and a prominent man dying in the arms of his beautiful mistress. It's a case that could earn Derek Mitchell even greater star power. When the Wheeler family approaches him about defending Creighton for his uncle's murder -- even before he's charged -- he jumps at the chance.

When she hears that her younger brother, Danny, has committed suicide, Sayre Lynch relinquishes her vow never to return to Destiny, the small Louisiana town in which she grew up. She plans to leave immediately after the funeral but soon finds herself drawn into the web cast by Huff Hoyle, her controlling and tyrannical father. Her father and older brother, Chris, are as devious as ever with their new partner in crime, a disarming lawyer named Beck Merchant. When Sayre is thrown in closer contact with Beck, she senses something more sinister is at play.

Acclaimed author Mary Stanton is highly regarded for both her fantasy and her mystery novels. In Avenging Angels, Bree takes the late banker O’Rourke—who was rumored to have committed suicide—as a client. But as Bree and her team of angels investigate, evidence mounts that O’Rourke was actually murdered. And soon, Bree realizes someone wants her to join her client on the other side.

From the outside, Alix London appears to have it all. Unfortunately for Alix, what you see isn’t exactly what you get. A brilliant, once-promising art student, the daughter of a prominent New York art conservator, Alix and her world were left in ruins when her father went to prison for art forgery. Then she meets Christine Lemay, a novice art collector with deep pockets and a handle on a recently discovered painting by American master Georgia O’Keeffe. Chris needs the painting authenticated....

Tough and demanding LAPD Detective Kate Delafield is the leader of the investigation into a high-rise office building murder. The case is intriguing but routine - until Kate interviews the only witness, Ellen O'Neil. When Ellen O'Neil took her new job over the objections of her lover, she wasn't expecting to become embroiled in murder. The curiosity that Kate Delafield rouses is equally unexpected. But it is never far from Ellen's mind that she is merely a name on an interview sheet to the tight-lipped detective.

At Annie Laurance's Death on Demand bookstore on Broward's Rock Island, South Carolina, murder suddenly isn't confined to the well-stocked shelves. Author Elliot Morgan's abrupt demise during a weekly gathering of famous mystery writers called the Sunday Night Regulars is proof positive that a bloody sword is sometimes mightier than a brilliant pen. With Annie in the unenviable position of primary police suspect, the pretty young mystery maven and her wealthy paramour, Max Darling, embark on an investigation into a classic locked-room mystery with high stakes.

Former Hanover County Sheriff Buck Lawson leaves the mountains of North Carolina to take a job as the police chief of the small South Georgia town of Mercy, and soon finds himself in over his head. For one thing, his predecessor has been murdered...Buck has inherited an unsolved homicide, a house that may well be haunted, and a police department that is almost certainly corrupt. It falls to Buck to free an innocent man and bring the former police chief’s killer to justice while wading through the quagmire of incompetence and dishonesty that permeates his office.

They knew us before we began to walk upright. Shamans called them guardians, mythmakers called them tricksters, pagans called them gods, churchmen called them demons, folklorists called them shape-shifters. They've obligingly taken any role we've assigned them, and, while needing nothing from us, have accepted whatever we thought was their due?

TV journalist Elizabeth “E.M.” Danniher will tell you she committed two sins: She didn’t stay young, and she made an enemy of a powerful news executive - her ex. She used to break national news. Now, her top story as the "Helping Out!" reporter at dinky KWMT-TV in Sherman, Wyoming, is getting a defective toaster repaired.

When Depression-era private eye Maggie Sullivan is invited to dine with a millionaire, she doesn't expect the first course to be a gun in her face. It draws her into a gold-plated web of theft, revenge, double crosses, and murder. A big-time swindle has made fools of some of the city's wealthiest businessmen. The man behind it has vanished. When Maggie begins asking questions, he reappears - dead in the river. But she's already learned too much. Someone's out to silence her too.

She's young. She's beautiful. And her corpse, laid out in the office of Boston medical examiner Cat Novak, betrays no secrets - except for a notebook clutched in one stiff hand, seven numbers scrawled inside. When a second victim is discovered, Cat begins to fear that a serial killer is stalking the city streets: a shadowy madman without mercy or apparent motive. The police are sceptical. The mayor won't listen. And Cat's chief suspect is one of the city's most prominent citizens.

Lurking in the dark corners of J. P. Beaumont's bizarre case was not just a demented mind obsessed with murder, but secrets so deadly that even a street-tough cop could die guessing.

Since she bought her rambling fixer-upper of a house, Jacobia Tiptree has gotten used to finding things broken. But her latest problem isn't so easily repaired. Along with the rotting floor joists and sagging support beams, there's the little matter of the dead man in Jake's storeroom, an ice pick planted firmly in his cranium. Jake's unknown guest turns out to be local boy turned billionaire Threnody McIlwaine.

In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He's left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it's not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal loss - but for the time being, he can always take the edge off with a stiff drink and a round of darts.

At Annie Laurance's Death on Demand bookstore on Broward's Rock Island, South Carolina, murder suddenly isn't confined to the well-stocked shelves. Author Elliot Morgan's abrupt demise during a weekly gathering of famous mystery writers called the Sunday Night Regulars is proof positive that a bloody sword is sometimes mightier than a brilliant pen. With Annie in the unenviable position of primary police suspect, the pretty young mystery maven and her wealthy paramour, Max Darling, embark on an investigation into a classic locked-room mystery with high stakes.

When hardworking attorney Clare Westbrook learns that her ambulance-chasing boss has been murdered, she's shocked - but not exactly surprised. Harvey Kredd was known for his less-than-ethical business dealings, and even his acts of generosity were tinged with greed. Clare, working at Kredd and Associates to pay off the law school loan Harvey had granted her several years before, knows she's got no choice: indentured servitude, twenty-first-century style.

The last thing Katie Bonner wanted was to become the manager of Artisans Alley. But when her business partner Ezra Hilton is found bludgeoned to death, she has no other choice. Business under Ezra had been faltering - but was it enough to provoke someone to murder? Only Katie can find the answer.

Laguna: a place where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence - with a fiery vengeance - and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery. It reaches back across 40 years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past.

Lt. Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont, police force has a serious problem: in a community where a decade could pass without a single murder, the body count is suddenly mounting. Innocent citizens are being killed - and others set up - seemingly orchestrated by a mysterious ski-masked man. Signs suggest that a three-year-old murder trial might lie at the heart of things, but it's a case that many in the department would prefer remained closed. A man of quiet integrity, Lt. Gunther knows that he must pursue the case to its conclusion, wherever it leads.

Tim Hess is a semiretired veteran cop staring at a death sentence - his own. Detective Merci Rayborn, young enough to be his daughter, is brash, impatient, and not someone from whom Hess wants to be taking orders. He certainly isn't planning on falling in love with her. Together, they must track down a psychopathic killer who's been abducting beautiful young women from the malls of Orange County.

When the Damaretion, the prized Greek coin from Archibald Havistock's collection, disappears and appraiser Mary Lou "Dunk" Bateson comes under suspicion, Bateson, a cop, and an insurance investigator set out to solve the crime.

Aaron Elkins, the author of the Edgar-winning Old Bones, teamed up with his wife, Charlotte, to fashion this lighthearted mystery - a fictional look at the less glamorous side of a golf tour. In this first Lee Ofsted mystery, Lee is a "rabbit" golfer in the Pacific-Western Women's Pro-Am. She made it into the tournament by the skin of her teeth and suddenly she can't keep her long drives from slicing - veering sharply to the right. She is hitting the ball perfectly and it simply isn't going where it is supposed to.

A classic novel by John D. MacDonald with an exclusive introduction written and read by Dean Koontz. Ex-cop Cliff Bartells might be the last honest man in Florence City, Florida. After quitting the force over a crisis of conscience, he takes a job at an insurance company buying back stolen jewelry. Cliff is focused on keeping the bottom line down and staying out of the spotlight.But when an affluent tourist from Boston is murdered over a hefty collection of jewelry, Cliff finds himself wrapped up in a case that’s making national headlines.

Successful movie producer Wolf Willett is stunned when he sees his own death reported in a major newspaper. It says he was a victim in a triple homicide during a sordid tryst with his wife and a friend. But who is the unidentified corpse? Why can't Wolf remember anything about the night in question? And who wants him dead?

What’s happening in Acker’s Gap, West Virginia? Three elderly men are gunned down over their coffee at a local diner, and seemingly half the town is there to witness the act. Still, it happened so fast, and no one seems to have gotten a good look at the shooter. Was it random? Was it connected to the spate of drug violence plaguing poor areas of the country just like Acker’s Gap? Or were Dean Streeter, Shorty McClurg, and Lee Rader targeted somehow?

Who exactly is Danziger? He's a writer of letters for illiterate immigrants on Manhattan's Lower East Side - "a steadfast practitioner of concealing and forgetting" for his clients, and perhaps for himself: He hints at a much worldlier past. What and whoever he really is or has been, he has a seemingly boundless knowledge of the city and its denizens. And he knows much more than the mere identity of the floating corpse.