Showing results by publisher "Scribd Audio" in Crime Fiction

A house on a quiet street on the south side of Glasgow. Neat, terraced homes with manicured lawns and pruned trees. Not the sort of place that reeks of decay or where dead bluebottles pile up on a windowsill. When the police break in, there’s a surprise in store for them. They find Julie Campbell’s decaying body at her desk, her laptop open beside her. She’s a well-liked, respectable woman. On the laptop is a confession – to five murders.

Earl Marcus thought he had left the mountains of Georgia behind forever, and with them, the painful memories of a childhood spent under the fundamentalist rule of his father RJ’s church - a church built on fear, penance, and the twisting, writhing mass of snakes. But then an ominous photo of RJ is delivered to Earl’s home. The photograph is dated long after his father’s burial, and there’s no doubt that the man in the picture is very much alive.

Miguel and Helena meet at a nursing home in Tarifa, at an age when they believe they have lived it all already. Miguel is afraid of flying. Helena is afraid of the ocean. Both have adult children and feel they are no longer needed. The dramatic suicide of one of the other residents opens their eyes. They don't want to spend their last days remembering and longing for supposedly better times. Together they decide to undertake the journey of their lives and confront the darkness in their pasts.

It’s the middle of a long hot summer on the French Mediterranean shore, and the town is teeming with tourists. Sebag and Molino, two tired cops who are being slowly devoured by dull routine and family worries, deal with the day’s misdemeanors and petty complaints at the Perpignan police headquarters. But then a young Dutch woman is found murdered on a beach at Argelès, and another one disappears without a trace in the alleys of the city. Is it a serial killer obsessed with Dutch women? Maybe. The media senses fresh meat and moves in for the feeding frenzy.

The Murderer’s Maid interweaves the stories of two women, the 19th-century servant of infamous Lizzie Borden and the other a 21st-century modern-day barista fleeing from an attempt on her life. Irish maid Bridget Sullivan, trapped by servitude and afraid for her own safety, finds herself an unwilling witness to the tensions in the volatile Borden household. In 2016, Brooke, the illegitimate daughter of an immigrant maid, is unknowingly connected to the legendary 19th-century crime. Brooke struggles to conceal her identity and stay a jump ahead of the men who want to kill her.

A heinous double murder in a squalid apartment on the wrong side of town pits Inspector Lojacono, Di Nardo and the rest of the motley collection of cops known as the “bastards” of the Pizzofalcone precinct against their superiors, the press, and the local political hierarchy. Only by bringing the killer to justice can they save their reputations and the department.

The best noir writers make us feel the heat of the sun, the touch of a lover. Setting can be gritty but can also be sublime, no longer relegated to urban locales and seedy hotel rooms but also mansions and swimming pools. Hence, Palm Springs, which may seem like an odd setting for a collection of dark short stories—it’s so sunny and bright here. The stories in this collection come on like the wicked dust storms common to the area.

They’ve made a fresh start at the Pizzofalcone precinct of Naples. They fired every member of the investigative branch after they were found guilty of corruption. Now, there’s a group of detectives, a new commissario, and a new superintendent. The new cops immediately find themselves investigating a high-profile murder that has the whole town on edge.

Former Detroit homicide detective Edwin Blake broke into show business as a script consultant on cop movies. Now living in Los Angeles five years later, Blake is suffering from clinical depression, is no longer in demand in film and TV–and money is short. But things look up when Blake gets a call from wealthy, oddball producer, Jason “JP” Perry, telling him he wants to hire him for a future cable TV series. But there’s a catch.

Marcus Kemp is a beat cop living a normal life in San Diego, California—until the day he makes a shocking discovery: a dead body in the trunk of a stolen car. Worse, the victim turns out to be the man who abused him as a child. Marcus instinctively wants to help the killer get away with murder and, disregarding his police oath, will stop at nothing to make it happen. With both his job and freedom in jeopardy, Marcus’s investigation leads him to an unexpected suspect, and he is soon faced with an impossible decision.

Matt Connell, a formerly successful literary agent who’s been in prison for four years for a crime of passion—homicide by strangulation after learning his wife slept with a friend—receives an early release from Sing Sing to join an FBI undercover investigation of multiple murders in Manhattan. Killings continue to mount as Matt does his best to calm his “Ferrari brain”—a condition in which his mind accelerates wildly into negative thoughts and worst-case scenarios—even as he falls in love with a suspect, then discovers disturbing truths about his past and hers.

During a buffalo photo shoot, wildlife photographer Nikki Lancaster snaps a picture of an odd man who later follows her to her car. She races away, only to have a vehicle run her off the road and leave the scene of the accident. When the first officer on the scene is DCI Agent Xavier Palinski, her ex-fiancé, Nikki figures things can’t get any worse. She’s wrong. Days later, Nikki discovers a dead body in that same area. After search teams find the bodies of three other women, Nikki suspects she hasn’t just photographed a crazy tourist. Instead, she’s captured a serial killer on film.

When a young Montreal family dies in an orgy of bloody violence, all signs point to a rampage by the father. But Victor Lessard isn’t convinced. The brilliant, brooding detective suspects that others were involved in the killings. But who? And why? As Lessard struggles to solve the puzzle, the discovery of a nightmarish chamber of horrors seems to confirm that the murders are part of a wider pattern. Meanwhile, in the Major Crimes Unit, Jacinthe Taillon is investigating the strange kidnapping of Laila François, a former street kid turned webcam girl.

The Maine of Not When I'm Gone is about mother nature, the sea, the woods, the tides, the seasons, sunrise and sunset. It is also about human nature. Central are events that happen on the Fourth of July weekend. Locals are drinking, partying, waiting for fireworks. The Coast Guard is like them, cruising the bay, but not patrolling much, most of the sailors below deck, with girlfriends, celebrating the holiday. It is the perfect moment for a multi-million drug drop to take place. A boat from Panama is hardly noticed when it slips into the bay. 

Alex Turner and his treacherous lover, the Russian diamond thief Slav Lily, are back on the hunt. An American prospector is murdered in the great diamond field of northern Canada—a magical landscape of pristine lakes and granite ridges. The U.S. government fears that the Chinese billionaire twins who suddenly control the dead prospector’s company are seeking a toehold for their government in this vital region. As we race across the globe, Hart keeps a heart-bounding pace with lethal plane chases and a battle between the scheming twins and the murdered prospector’s daughter.

When Nate wakes up in the woods, he has no idea how he got there. The last thing he remembers is being at home. And when he spots two people digging a grave, his problems multiply. After escaping from the woods, he goes home to find his house burning and his brother, Peter, dead inside. Now the police are after him for the murder. Determined to find out who set him up and why, Nate goes on a dangerous journey to uncover the truth. But can he find those responsible and prove his innocence before it’s too late?

When armed men infiltrate the tiny Peak District hamlet of Barkelow, Emil Torrance thinks they’ve cone to kill him because of his past. Escaping is easy enough for a man like him, but when he learns that all of Berkelow has been overtaken, he realises his son is in grave danger. Believing that calling the police will cost lives, he decides to deal with the problem alone. But Emil isn’t far from the target, and the threat he’s facing is far greater than he realises. Who are these killers? What do they want? And how far are they willing to go to get it? 

 Amy Wirkner, a high school senior in Barnesville, Ohio, is a loner, nicknamed “Chevy” for her size. She’s smart, funny, and absolutely determined to escape from her small town in the Ohio Valley, a place poisoned by fracking. She does well in school despite the cruelty of her classmates and has her eyes on a college scholarship, so she can one day become a veterinarian and make something of herself. 

In the seaside city of San Marco, Florida, Lise Norwood spends her days serving papers and her nights spying on cheating spouses. But before she became a PI, she was an art major at San Marco University. So when the local police ask her to consult on a murder case in which the victim was posed to resemble a classic Greek sculpture, Lise dusts off her art history degree and joins the task force.

A senior administrator is stabbed to death in his office at the Montreal General Hospital. In the east end of the city, a dead man is found in the trunk of a stolen BMW. A young woman is hospitalized after an apparent hit and run, but despite her doctor’s objections, she refuses treatment and sets off on a desperate search for the man who helped her.