Showing results by publisher "Orion Publishing Group" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Over the years, Ian Rankin has amassed an incredible portfolio of short stories. Published in crime magazines, composed for events, broadcast on radio, they all share the best qualities of his phenomenally popular Rebus novels. Brought together for the first time, and including brand-new material, this is the ultimate Rebus short-story collection and a must-have book for crime lovers and for Ian's millions of fans alike. No Rankin aficionado can go without it.

A witness. Such a simple concept - and yet for Dexter Morgan, a perfectly well-disguised serial killer, the possibility of a witness is terrifying. As an upstanding blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Police, Dexter has always managed to keep the darker side of his life out of the spotlight. An expert at finding truly bad people - murderers who've long escaped justice - Dexter has long been giving them his own special brand of attention.

Harry Bosch finds himself yet again in charge of a case that no one else will touch. This time his job is to nail the killer of hot shot black lawyer Howard Elias. Elias has been found murdered on the eve of going to court on behalf of Michael Harris, a man the LAPD believes guilty of the rape and murder of a twelve-year-old girl. Elias had let it be known that the aim of his civil case was not only to reveal the real killer but to target and bring down the racist cops who beat up his client during a violent interrogation.

Mickey Haller is a Lincoln lawyer, a criminal defence attorney who operates out of the back of his car, a Lincoln, taking whatever cases the system throws in his path. He's been in the business a long time, and he knows just how to work it. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years. The evidence mounts on the defence's side, and Haller might even be in the rare position of defending a client who is actually innocent.

Deanna Madden, aka Jessica Reilly, hasn't touched another person in three years. She hasn't left her apartment. She makes money from performing to webcams on a sex site, where her clients pay $6.99 a minute for her time. She's doing all right. The dollars are piling up in the bank. She's the number-three model on cams.com. And she hasn't killed anyone for years. But when Deanna sees on the news that a little girl called Annie has gone missing, the story rattles her carefully ordered world. It's uncomfortably similar to the dark fantasy of one of her most disturbing online clients....

In 1993 Harry Bosch was assigned the case of a missing person, Marie Gesto. The young woman was never found - dead or alive - and the case has haunted Bosch ever since. Thirteen years later Bosch is in the Open Unsolved Unit when he gets a call from the DA's office. A man accused of two killings is willing to confess to several other murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. One of his victims, he says, is Marie Gesto.

Former FBI agent Rachel Walling is working a dead-end stint in South Dakota when she gets the call she's been dreading for four years. The Poet is back. And he has not forgotten Rachel. He has a special present for her. Harry Bosch is adjusting to life in Las Vegas as a private investigator and as a new father. He gets a call, too, from the widow of a friend who died recently. Previously in his FBI career, the friend worked on the famous case tracking the killer known as The Poet.

After the nightmare of Hurricane Katrina, Dru Rayne and her uncle relocated to Los Angeles. Five years later, their struggling restaurant faces a different danger. When Joe Pike witnesses Dru's uncle beaten by a neighbourhood gang, he offers his own brand of protection, but neither Dru nor her uncle want his help. And neither do the federal agents mysteriously watching their store...But Pike is falling for Dru and won't back away whether she wants his help or not.

Libby Day was just seven years old when her older brother massacred her family while she hid in a cupboard. Her evidence helped put him away. Ever since then she has been drifting, surviving for over 20 years on the proceeds of the 'Libby Day fund'. But now the money is running out and Libby is desperate. When she is offered $500 to do a guest appearance, she feels she has to accept. But this is no ordinary gathering.

Welcome to Midnight, Texas. It's a quiet little town, perched at the junction between Davy Road and Witch Light Road, and it's easy to miss. With its boarded-up windows, single traffic light, and sleepy air, there's nothing special about Midnight...which is exactly how the residents like it. So when the news comes that a new owner plans to renovate the run-down, abandoned old hotel in town, it's not met with pleasure.

When quiet Ellen Lang enters Elvis Cole's Disney-deco office, she's lost something very valuable - her husband and young son. The case seems simple enough, but Elvis isn't thrilled. Neither is his enigmatic partner and firepower Joe Pike. Their search down the seamy side of Hollywood's studio lots and sculptured lawns soon leads them deep into a nasty netherworld of drugs and sex - and murder. Now the case is getting interesting, but it's also turned ugly.

Stalking a poisoner at the local zoo, Inspector John Rebus comes across a paedophile taking pictures of children. When the social workers claim he is there for legitimate educational reasons, Rebus is faced with a dilemma—should he be outed to protect local kids or given a chance to start anew? As the locals begin a hate campaign, Rebus gets a call from the past: the son of a friend has gone missing, and no one else will make time to ask the right questions. And then a fragment of Scotland's criminal history is repatriated at the end of a life sentence for murder.

Peter Alan Nelsen is a super-successful movie director who is used to getting what he wants. And what he wants now is to find the wife and infant child he dumped on the road to fame. It's the kind of case that Cole could handle in his sleep, except that when Cole actually finds Nelsen's ex-wife, everything takes on nightmarish proportions - a nightmare which involves Cole with a nasty New York mob family and a psycho killer who is the son of the godfather.

Six years have passed since Jake Sanders watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. Six years of hiding a broken heart by throwing himself into his career as a college professor. Six years of keeping his promise to leave Natalie alone, and six years of tortured dreams of her life with her new husband, Todd. But six years haven't come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd's obituary, he can't keep himself away from the funeral.

Dexter Morgan isn't exactly the kind of man you'd bring home to your mum. At heart he's the perfect gentleman: He has a shy girlfriend and seems to lead a quiet, normal life bordering on the mundane. Despite the fact that he can't stand the sight of blood, he works as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police. But Dexter also has a secret hobby: He is an accomplished serial killer. So far he's killed 36 people and has never been caught because he knows exactly how to hide the evidence.

It wasn't supposed to end this way. In a flash of steel, a flurry of gunshots, a chorus of strangled moans, blending with the wails of sirens, certainly. A properly dramatic ending, with a good body count, a dash of treachery, absolutely. But not with Dexter, serial killer and forensic blood spatter analyst, horribly wronged and unjustly accused of the wrong murder, languishing inside the Guilford Knight Correctional Centre, bound and restrained, getting one hour's exercise a day.

Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is investigating the death of a senior lawyer during a robbery. But the case becomes more complex when a note is discovered, indicating that this may have been no random attack. When local gangster Big Ger Cafferty receives an identical message, Clarke decides that the recently retired John Rebus may be able to help. He's the only man Cafferty will open up to, and together the two old adversaries might just stand a chance of saving Cafferty's skin.

At the end of a long, dark night Detectives Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch cross paths for the very first time. Detective Renée Ballard is working the graveyard shift again and returns to Hollywood Station in the early hours only to find that an older man has snuck in and is rifling through old file cabinets. The intruder is none other than legendary LAPD detective Harry Bosch, working a cold case that has gotten under his skin. Ballard kicks him out, but eventually Bosch persuades her to help, and she relents.

DI Rebus is buried under a pile of paperwork but an escalating dispute between the upstart Tommy Telford and Big Ger Cafferty's gang gives Rebus an escape clause. Telford is known to have close links with a Chechen gangster bringing refugees into Britain as prostitutes. When Rebus takes under his wing a distraught Bosnian call girl, it gives him a personal reason to make sure Telford goes back to Paisley and pronto.

It's a profile, like all the others on the online dating site. But as NYPD Detective Kat Donovan focuses on the accompanying picture, she feels her whole world explode, as emotions she's ignored for decades come crashing down on her. Staring back at her is her ex-fiancé Jeff, the man who shattered her heart 18 years ago. Kat feels a spark, wondering if this might be the moment when past tragedies recede and a new world opens up to her. But when she reaches out to the man in the profile, her reawakened hope quickly darkens into suspicion and then terror as an unspeakable conspiracy comes to light....