Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Crime Thrillers

It's a sunny morning in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also Dr. Kay Scarpetta's birthday. She's about to head to Miami for a vacation with Benton Wesley, her FBI profiler husband, when she notices seven pennies on a wall behind their home. Is this a kids' game? And if so, why are all of the coins dated 1981 and so shiny they could be newly minted? Her cellphone rings, and Detective Pete Marino tells her there's been a homicide five minutes away. A high school music teacher has been shot with uncanny precision as he unloaded groceries from his car. Yet no one has heard or seen a thing.

Sophie wasn’t expecting to find love in Sicily. But then she sees him: Emilio, a professor who works at the university where she is teaching for the summer. He’s kind, intelligent, funny, exciting and deliriously unpredictable… …maybe perfect. But paradise quickly turns to purgatory as she uncovers the haunting disappearance of Emilio’s first wife. And when she senses a shadowy character following her, watching her every move, Sophie starts to question her grip on reality. Is she being paranoid, or is nothing about her new life really what it seems?

Lily has only been married for three weeks. When her new husband fails to come home from work one night, she is left stranded in a new country where she knows no one. Alice finds a man on the beach outside her house. He has no name, no jacket, no idea what he is doing there. Against her better judgement, she invites him into her home.

Virginia's Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta is under suspicion and criminal investigation. And the nightmare perpetuated on Scarpetta's doorstep continues as she discovers that the so-called Werewolf murders may have extended to New York City and into the darkest corners of her past.

Master assassin Will Robie is the man the US government call to eliminate their most ruthless enemies at home or abroad. He never questions his orders, and he never misses his mark. He’s just returned from a covert assignment in Edinburgh to neutralize a growing threat, having drawn upon all his expertise to complete his mission and disappear without a trace. The odds were stacked against him, but that’s never made a difference before.

Seven years ago, six-year-old Maisie Earnshaw was found facedown in a duck pond, her body mutilated. Isabel - at age 14, found covered in Maisie's blood - was convicted of murder. As Leah spends time with Isabel, she comes to know her as a young woman with a sweet, gentle nature, someone she could never see as a murderer. Leah begins to suspect members of the Fielding family of framing Isabel as a young girl, and she's not the only one. True crime blogger James Gorden thinks Isabel is innocent, too.

DS Kat Ballantyne is still reeling from a revelation that turned life as she knew it upside down. But when a dog walker discovers the body of a woman among the standing stones known locally as the Three Sisters, there’s no time to focus on her own troubles. Kat is drawn back to work to investigate. At first, the death appears to be an accident. But then Kat discovers an infinity symbol branded onto the dead woman’s abdomen.

When Special Agent Will Robie gets the call to make his first visit home since he was a teenager, it's because his father, the local judge, has been arrested for murdering a man who came before him in court. The small, remote Mississippi town hasn't changed, and its residents remember Robie as a wild sports star and girl magnet. He left a lot of hearts broken and a lot of people angry. Will and his father, Dan, are estranged, and his mother left years ago.

In the LAPD's Open-Unsolved Unit, not many murder victims die almost a decade after the crime. So when a man succumbs to complications from being shot by a stray bullet nine years earlier, Bosch catches a case in which the body is still fresh, but any other evidence is virtually nonexistent. Now Bosch and his new partner, rookie Detective Lucia Soto, are tasked with solving what turns out to be a highly charged, politically sensitive case.

A mutilated body is found dumped at Cowane's Hospital in the heart of historic Stirling. For DCI Malcolm Ford it's like nothing he's ever seen before, the savagery of the crime making him want to catch the murderer before he strikes again. For reporter Donna Blake it's a shot at the big time, a chance to get her career back on track and prove all the doubters wrong. But for close protection specialist Connor Fraser it's merely a grisly distraction from the day job.

Gemma Guillory has lived in Rainier her entire life. She knows the tiny town's ins and outs like the back of her hand, the people like they are her family, their quirks as if they were her own. She knows her once-charming town is now remembered for one reason, and one reason only. That three innocent people died. That the last stop on the Rainier Ripper's trail of death seventeen years ago was her innocuous little teashop. She knows that the consequences of catching the Ripper still haunt her police officer husband and their marriage to this day and that some of her neighbours are desperate.

Two years ago, Martha didn't know that Alan existed. Now, they're married - it was easy to say yes to someone so sweet. But when Martha thinks she sees Alan's mask slip, she starts to fear that the conferences he travels the country to attend might be a cover for something far more sinister. As her research unearths a string of dead women, she enlists the help of Lily Kintner, an old friend from grad school. What Martha doesn't know is that Lily has a dark side of her own . . .

Lt. Eve Dallas hasn't even arrived at work when her first call of the day comes in. Alva Quirk - 46 years old, sidewalk sleeper - was beaten to death with a crowbar. Known to the local cops for handing out origami flowers to anyone who gives her change, Alva was well-liked, but with no fixed address, no job and no family, there's no one to remember her. Eve has barely had time to examine the crime scene when her second victim of the morning is discovered just a block away.

Black-ops legend Christopher Wren prevented three major terror attacks on the homeland, and his reward? Dumped in a CIA black site for the rest of his life. But for Wren's enemies, that's not enough. They want to destroy him—his reputation, his friends, his family. It begins with a string of vicious murders, and continues right up to the door of Wren's cell. Because this attack is a false flag. The killers are claiming responsibility in Wren's name, and the CIA believe them—now the full weight of the US government is coming for those he cares most about.

Late one night a man walks into the luxurious home of disgraced banker Harry McNamara and his wife, Julie. The man launches an unspeakably brutal attack on Harry as a horror-struck Julie watches, frozen by fear. Just an hour later the attacker, JP Carney, has handed himself in to the police. He confesses to beating Harry to death, but JP claims that the assault was not premeditated and that he didn't know the identity of his victim.

A family is gunned down in the snow, but one of the children survives. Three years on, that child takes revenge, and the Snow Killer is born. But then, nothing - no further crimes are committed, and the case goes cold. 50 years later, has the urge to kill been reawakened? As murder follows murder, the detective team tasked with solving the crimes struggle with the lack of leads. It’s a race against time and the weather - each time it snows, another person dies.

Sean King and Michelle Maxwell both bear the scars of their previous case. Michelle's in a psychiatric hospital after making a suicide attempt while Sean, down on his luck and desperately worried about his friend, accepts a PI job at Babbage Town: a hugely secret establishment where, it seems, corpses turn up more quickly than new codes can be encrypted by the genius mathematicians who are employed in the place.

Superstar footballer Luca Bruni is being blackmailed for a night of lust he swears he didn't participate in...except the ransom photo denies that. A media darling on and off the field, he has powerful charisma, a perfect home life he'll do anything to protect, and more money than he knows what to do with. He's determined to defy the extortion racket. When Detective Superintendent Jack Hawksworth learns that the cunning mastermind behind this crime has already swindled a dozen of the world's most highly prized male athletes, he is instructed to keep the situation from escalating.

A summer of relentless heat. A local surfer named Ray Carlson is found dead in a house not far from Portsea back beach. There’s a silver-handled kitchen knife deep in his chest, and blood everywhere. Detective Sergeant Zoe Mayer is scarcely back from extended leave and still wrestling with her demons, but she is assigned the case, alongside her new service dog, Harry, whose instincts help her in unexpected ways.

When a night out at the theatre is interrupted by the murder of a young woman in Washington Square Park, it seems like an ordinary case for Detective Eve Dallas and her team. But when Roarke spots a shadow from his past in the crowd, Eve realises that this case is far from business as usual.