Showing results by author "Jonathan Kellerman" in All Categories

Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.

In the middle of the night, Detective Lieutenant Milo Sturgis is called to a Westside hospital. A young woman has been left dead at the entrance to the E.R. Milo soon identifies the victim as an aspiring actress, and evidence points him in the direction of a Hollywood misfit with an arrest record. Before they can arrest the suspect, however, he is found shot dead on his balcony. Milo calls brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware to help unpick the case. But as more bodies appear, linked only by the rifle used to kill them, the more complicated it becomes.

A sniper opens fire on a crowded Californian schoolyard but is killed before any children are harmed. When the sniper’s identity is revealed, a media frenzy erupts – why would they want to take innocent lives? Psychologist Alex Delaware is brought in to help the kids cope with the ordeal but is quickly drawn into exploring the motives of the would-be assassin. Alex soon finds himself on a bloody and twisted trail into the world of political extremism from which there may be no way back…

The new masterfully plotted, standalone pyschological thriller from number-one best seller Jonathan Kellerman, featuring tough, brilliant young pyschologist Grace Blades, a former student of Alex Delaware. A brilliant and dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches - because she bears her own invisible scars.

One night of hedonism. Four counts of murder. A run-down mansion nestled between Beverley Hills and the San Fernando Valley is leased out for one night to house a party big enough to herald the end of days. When a limo is discovered in the grounds of the house the morning after with four dead bodies inside, a mind-bending case begins.

At a party for a controversial Los Angeles sex therapist, Alex encounters a face from his own past: Sharon Ransom, an exquisite, alluring lover who left him abruptly more than a decade earlier. Sharon now hints that she desperately needs help, but Alex evades her. The next day she is dead, an apparent suicide. Driven by guilt and sadness, Alex plunges into the maze of Sharon's life - a journey that will take him through the pleasure palaces of California's ultra-rich, into the dark closets of a family's disturbing past.

Not since Jack the Ripper has there been such a gruesome crime scene. One look at the victim's apartment turned charnel house is enough for Milo Sturgis to summon The Crime Reader. But even Alex Delaware's skills may be stymied when more slayings occur in the same ghastly fashion... with no apparent connection between them.

A burned-out L.A. detective...a woman of mystery who is far more than she seems...a grotesque, ancient monster bent on a mission of retribution. When these three collide, a new standard of suspense is born. The legend of the Golem of Prague has endured through the ages, a creature fashioned by a 16th-century rabbi to protect his congregation, now lying dormant in the garret of a synagogue. But the Golem is dormant no longer....

An uninvited guest. A missing identity. A trail of deadly secrets. When a horrified bridesmaid finds the body of a young woman at a wedding reception, it makes the bride and groom’s choice of a Saints and Sinners theme all the more macabre. There are no means of identification and nobody knows the victim. The bride is convinced someone is trying to sabotage her big day. The groom is sure it’s a dreadful mistake. It’s up to brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware and LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis to uncover the truth.

Clay Edison gets the call in the middle of the night, and it's a bad one. A party in Oakland, feuding neighbours, a wild crowd in the street. Two guns, firing at random, spreading chaos and death. Nobody knows the body count yet. It's going to be a long night for Clay - longer than he ever could have imagined. Because when the dust settles, there's a victim who can't be accounted for. A young woman, strangled instead of shot, without ID and a stranger to all. Clay's journey to give her a name and bring her justice will lead him into a bizarre world where right and wrong begin to blur.

It is a case unlike any psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware has ever encountered. Five-year-old Woody Swope is ill, but the real problem is his parents. They refuse to agree to the one treatment that could save this boy's life. Alex sets out to convince Mr. and Mrs. Swope - only to find that the parents have left the hospital and taken their son with them. Worse, the sleazy motel room where the Swopes were staying is empty - except for the ominous bloodstain. The Swopes and their son have vanished into the sordid shadows of the city.

Clay Edison has left behind the Alameda County coroner’s office to strike out on his own as a private investigator. He’s perfectly happy investigating calm, low-stakes embezzlement cases—that is, until PI Regina Klein calls him with a case only he can solve. Adam Valois, the missing son of a wealthy Los Gatos couple, was found floating dead in the Bay with a head injury and drugs in his system. The police have lost interest, ruling it a likely overdose. But as Clay digs deeper into Adam’s mysterious death, he begins to suspect darker forces are at play . . .

When the phone rings in the middle of the night, child psychologist Alex Delaware does not hesitate. Driving through the dream-lit San Fernando Valley, Alex rushes to Jamey Cadmus, the patient he had failed five years before - and who now calls with a bizarre cry for help. But by the time Alex reaches Canyon Oaks Psychiatric Hospital, Jamey is gone, surfacing a day later in the hands of the police, who believe Jamey is the infamous Lavender Slasher, a psychotic serial killer. Wooed by a high-powered attorney to build a defense, Alex will get a chance to do what he couldn't five years ago.

Guitar sleuth and music-history detective Deke Dickerson tells the true tales behind 48 rare-guitar and amplifier finds that will make any player or collector green with envy. Finding that holy grail of a guitar stashed away beneath a bed, in a closet, in the dusty corner of a guitar shop, or up in an attic is something that all guitar aficionados dream of. Strat in the Attic shares some of those real-life stories, related in spine-tingling detail by the author.

Unraveling the madness behind L.A.’s most baffling and brutal homicides is what sleuthing psychologist Alex Delaware does best. And putting the good doctor through his thrilling paces is what mystery fiction’s #1 best-selling master of psychological suspense Jonathan Kellerman does with incomparable brilliance. Kellerman’s universally acclaimed novels blend the addictive rhythms of the classic police procedural with chilling glimpses into the darkest depths of the human condition.

Ellie Barker is a self-made millionaire by the age of 40 and is obsessed with reopening the coldest of cases: the decades-old death of the mother she never knew. She hires LAPD Homicide Lieutenant Milo Sturgis to help. Twenty-five years ago Ellie's mother was found with a bullet in her head in a torched Cadillac that has overturned on infamously treacherous Mulholland Drive. No physical evidence, no witnesses, no apparent motive. And a slew of detectives have already worked the job and failed.

When a photographer is found inside an LA warehouse slumped in bed, shot to death, it sets in motion a complex and dangerous case for Lieutenant Milo Sturgis and Psychologist Alex Delaware. The victim had just received rave media attention for his latest project—images of homeless people living out their 'dreams'. But there were many who saw the work as crass exploitation. Did anger turn to homicidal rage? Or do the roots of violence reach down to the victim's own family? As new murders arise, Alex and Milo must peel back the layers of the case.

A brilliant criminal psychologist, Alex works with the police to help solve the most complex of crimes in Los Angeles, city of illusions, glamour and infamy. An affluent family returns home from Sunday dinner only to find the murdered and brutalised corpse of a total stranger in their house. This baffling, twisted tale tests Alex and Milo to their intellectual and emotional limits.

When a young couple takes possession of their dream home, they can't wait to remodel the neglected mansion. That is until they make a gruesome discovery of a rusted metal strongbox containing two rotting leather doctor's bags. And inside each bag, swaddled in sheets of 60-year-old newspaper, lies a tiny human skeleton. The case hits the media, and theories abound. The most likely culprit is a mysterious woman, employed as private nurse to wealthy L.A. families during World War Two.

A young woman who disappeared into the black night; a retired school teacher stabbed to death in broad daylight and two women butchered in a beauty parlour. Three murder cases, linked only by a perplexing lack of motive. But then LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware are called to the scene of a bizarre "crime". A stolen car has been anonymously returned to its owner, undamaged and unblemished - except for a tiny, solitary bloodstain.