C.J. Samson Spring, 1543. King Henry VIII is wooing Lady Catherine Parr, whom he wants for his sixth wife. But this time the object of his affections is resisting. Archbishop Cranmer and the embattled Protestant faction at court are watching keenly, for Lady Catherine is known to have reformist sympathies.
Meanwhile, a teenage boy, a religious maniac, has been placed in the Bedlam hospital for the insane. When an old friend of Matthew Shardlake is murdered, his investigations leads to connections to both, and to the prophecies of the book of Revelation. Shardlake follows a trail of horrific murders that are igniting frenzied talk of witchcraft and demonic possession. For what else would the Tudor mind make of a serial killer…?
James Patterson She destroys the men she loves—and escapes every time. The most dangerous killer James Patterson has ever created is also his most seductive.
On his first night with Detroit PD, Officer Walter O’Brien is called to a murder scene. A terrified twenty-year-old has bludgeoned her kidnapper with skill that shocks even O’Brien’s veteran partner. The young woman is also a brilliant escape artist. Her bold flight from police custody makes the case impossible to solve—and, for Walter, even more impossible to forget.
By the time Walter’s promoted to detective, his fascination with the missing, gray-eyed woman is approaching obsession. And when Walter discovers that he’s not alone in his search, one truth is certain. This deadly string of secrets didn’t begin in his home city—but he’s going to make sure it ends there.
Faye Kellerman When a Manhattan rabbi is brutally murdered, an LAPD officer and his wife begin a dangerous mission to save a young girl from kidnapping — and investigate a deadly new case that puts them both at great peril.
Rina Lazarus has some shocking news for her husband, LAPD Lieutenant Peter Decker. A horrible murder has occurred in the family of his half-brother, Rabbi Jonathan Levin. The rabbi’s brother-in-law was found slain in a seedy hotel room in upper Manhattan, and the victim’s 15-year-old niece, with whom he was spending the day, is missing. Decker, with Rina at his side, immediately heads out to New York to assist in the investigation. But what starts out as simple inquiries soon evolves into a twisted and perilous journey — from the darkened slums of New Jersey and the deserted industrial streets of New York to the recesses of sexual perversity and the hidden meeting places of Hasidic outcasts.
Thrust into a deadly maze of deceit, lies, and danger, the couple can no longer trust anyone — friend or family. And when salvation is finally within Decker’s grasp, it can only be delivered by a depraved lone wolf, hell-bent on his own personal vengeance.
Ann Cleeves The Sleeping and the Dead is a tense psychological crime thriller from CWA Gold Dagger award-winning writer, Ann Cleeves.
Detective Peter Porteous is called to Cranwell Lake where the body of a teenager has been discovered. After trawling through the missing persons files, he deduces that the corpse is Michael Grey, an enigmatic and secretive young man who was reported missing by his foster parents in 1972.
For country prison officer Hannah Morton it is the shock of her life. Michael had been her boyfriend, and she had been with him the night he disappeared. The news report that a body has been found brings back dreaded and long buried memories from her past …
Scott Blade Two murdered cops. A lone policewoman. One suspect—Jack Widow.
A cold night, in the middle-of-nowhere, in a vast county in New Mexico, a lone patrolwoman comes across a pair of dead cops sitting in their cruiser. And who does she find standing over their corpses? A giant, lone drifter with one stark trait; he is menacing like a nightmare. His name? Jack Widow.
To find the real killer, she’ll have to partner with Widow. What seems like an ambush and execution might turn out to be something conspiratorial and far more sinister.
Scott Blade Foreign & Domestic: What does the Secret Service want with Jack Widow? A mistaken arrest puts Widow into the Miami criminal system. A mysterious phone call from the US Secret Service and Widow is on his way to D.C. to face a covert emergency.
The emergency: someone kidnapped the Secret Service Director’s daughter. Their demands: 1: Tell no one. 2: Assassinate the President.
Widow races against time to save an innocent girl and keep the President alive from enemies, both foreign and domestic. Patriot Lies: A dark lie. A darker truth. They killed a homeless veteran. They tried to cover it up. Jack Widow won’t let that stand.
Widow passes through DC. Hanging out, reading the morning paper. He learns about a homeless vet found burned alive on a park bench. The Vet has no known family. No one’s expected to attend his wake. Widow must go.
He meets a lawyer who claims there’s a sizable inheritance at the service: a stock portfolio worth fifty million dollars. What’s a homeless vet doing with that amount of secret money? Widow follows a trail of murder and treason that leads him to a terrifying conspiracy.
The Double Man: A face he recognizes. Is it a wanted murderer? Or is Jack Widow seeing double?
Tired of people, Jack Widow takes a break. He camps out in the Alaskan wilderness on Kodiak Island, relying on nothing but his survival skills. It’s everything he wanted: quiet terrain, plenty of fishing, sleeping out under the stars, and no people. It seemed like the perfect vacation until Widow meets a man with a familiar face.
He recognizes a total stranger, but from where? The stranger goes by one name but has the face of another.
Kate Russo A deeply funny and shrewdly observed debut novel about being lost in the very place you know by heart. Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize-nominated artist who was once a rising star. Now, at age fifty-five, his wife has left him, he hasn’t sold a painting in two years, and his gallery wants to stop selling his work, claiming they’ll have more value retrospectively…when he’s dead.
So, left with a large West London home and no income, he’s forced to move into his artist’s studio in the back garden and list his house on the popular vacation rental site, AirBed.
A stranger now in his own home, with his daughter, Mia, off at art school, and any new relationships fizzling out at best, Bennett struggles to find purpose in his day-to-day. That all changes when three different guests–lonely American Alicia; tortured artist Emma; and cautiously optimistic divorcée Kirstie–unwittingly unlock the pieces of himself that have been lost to him for too long.
Nora Roberts Harry Booth started stealing at nine to keep a roof over his ailing mother’s head, slipping into luxurious, empty homes at night to find items he could trade for precious cash. When his mother finally succumbed to cancer, he left Chicago—but kept up his nightwork.
Wandering from the Outer Banks to Savannah to New Orleans, he dons new identities and stays careful, observant, distant. He can’t afford to attract attention—or get attached. Still, he can’t help letting his guard down when he meets Miranda Emerson. But the powerful bond between them cannot last—because not all thieves follow Harry’s code of honor. Some pay others to take risks so they can hoard more treasures. Some are driven by a desire to own people the way they own paintings and jewels. And after Harry takes a lucrative job commissioned by Carter LaPorte, LaPorte sees a tool he can use, and decides he wants to own Harry.
The man is a predator more frightening than the alligators that haunt the bayou—and when he strongarms Harry into robbing a Baltimore museum, Harry abandons Miranda—cruelly, with no explanation—and disappears. But no matter what name he uses or where he goes, LaPorte casts a shadow over Harry’s life. To truly free himself, he must face down his enemy once and for all. Only then can he hope to possess something more valuable than anything he has ever stolen…
Lynda la Plante Prime Suspect, the enormously successful two-time Emmy Award-winning television series, established its writer and creator, Lynda La Plante, as one of the preeminent originators of realistic crime drama. Turning her talent from the screen to the page, La Plante has crafted an intelligent, hard-hitting thriller featuring a female lead every bit as compelling and complex as her Prime Suspect heroine played by Helen Mirren.
Lorraine is a three-time loser: an ex-LAPD cop, ex-hooker, ex-wife, even an ex-mom, since she has lost custody of her kids. She is recovering from the alcoholism that nearly destroyed her life and, through tremendous force of will, has managed to pull herself back together and set up her own private detective agency in Los Angeles, but she finds that there is scant demand for her services.
Finally she lands the high-profile case that could activate her new career. The eighteen-year-old daughter of a fading movie starlet has disappeared during Mardi Gras, and her parents offer Lorraine $1 million if she finds the girl, dead or alive. As the search for the missing girl becomes a deadly murder hunt involving Hollywood rich kids and New Orleans lowlife, Lorraine is caught in a web of deceit and violence that threatens to drag her back into the murky world she has fought so hard to escape. When she finds herself strongly attracted to Robert Caley, the girl’s father– who, in turn, is sexually drawn to her–she knows she faces a new kind of danger. She begins to spin out of control and turns to her old friend booze for solace.The game gets more dangerous as Lorraine fights demons within and without, but the million-dollar bonus is a powerful incentive not to back off a case that would give her the professional respect she craves but could also kill her. Cold Blood reverberates with realism; its plot is multilayered, its characters vibrantly alive–just what one would expect from Lynda La Plante, a consummate chronicler of the criminal world.
John Grisham “Homecoming” takes us back to Ford County, the fictional setting of many of John Grisham’s unforgettable stories. Jake Brigance is back, but he’s not in the courtroom. He’s called upon to help an old friend, Mack Stafford, a former lawyer in Clanton, who three years earlier became a local legend when he stole money from his clients, divorced his wife, filed for bankruptcy, and left his family in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again—until now.
Now Mack is back, and he’s leaning on his old pals, Jake and Harry Rex, to help him return. His homecoming does not go as planned. In “Strawberry Moon,” we meet Cody Wallace, a young death row inmate only three hours away from execution. His lawyers can’t save him, the courts slam the door, and the governor says no to a last-minute request for clemency. As the clock winds down, Cody has one final request.
The “Sparring Partners” are the Malloy brothers, Kirk and Rusty, two successful young lawyers who inherited a once prosperous firm when its founder, their father, was sent to prison. Kirk and Rusty loathe each other, and speak to each other only when necessary. As the firm disintegrates, the resulting fiasco falls into the lap of Diantha Bradshaw, the only person the partners trust. Can she save the Malloys, or does she take a stand for the first time in her career and try to save herself?
By turns suspenseful, hilarious, powerful, and moving, these are three of the greatest stories John Grisham has ever told.
