Smart Mystery Fiction

Withering and waspish, Ursula Smart (not her real name) gate-crashes her mother's book club at an isolated country house for a long weekend retreat. Much to Mother's chagrin. Joining them are Mother's best friend, Mirabelle, Aunts Charlotte and Less, and Bridget with her dog, Mr. Bojangles. It doesn't matter that they've read Gone Girl three times this year already, this retreat is their chance to escape bustling suburbia. But someone has other ideas. A body is found in the grounds.

When a modern home in High Peaks burns to the ground killing the family, it appears as if the tragic deaths were an accident. But a gut instinct tells Noah Sutherland otherwise. Days later, a family at another residence is found dead under bizarre circumstances. A coincidence, or are the two related? As the calculating stalker dubbed The Smart Killer stays in the shadows and continues slaughtering ordinary families in their homes, the investigation shakes the small Adirondack town to the core.

MEET LINDA. Linda lives a nice, normal life, on a nice, normal street with Terry, her perfectly ordinary husband. Linda’s not like everyone else, she keeps herself to herself. But she’s good at solving puzzles and there are times she sees things other people might have overlooked. Because nothing on Cavendish Avenue is quite as it seems. People have started to go missing in the neighbourhood and Linda will soon discover that some secrets can’t stay buried forever…

She's beautiful, street-smart, and hoping to leave her troubled past behind her. Makedde Vanderwall has finished her studies and is ready to start practising as a forensic psychologist. She's also starting a new life in Australia with her detective boyfriend Andy Flynn. Hoping to scrape together some extra cash, Mak begins doing part-time work for an infamous Sydney PI.

When investigative journalist Chrissie O’Brian lands a senior job at The Argus, she is desperate to escape the nightmares of her past. Her life has become a daily battle to numb the pain. But her job is something she can do better than anyone else - and the only thing that keeps the memories at bay.

It's 1867 in the Wyoming Territory. Chance Creager and his brothers have built their small, isolated ranch in the uninhabited valley near the Greybull River. While hunting, Chance stumbles upon a decaying wagon sunk in mud, near it the grisly remains of an Indian sacrifice. Nothing about the eerie scene makes sense. The mountains have secrets. Chance finds himself pulled deeper into the mystery when he finds a beautiful fugitive named Raven while hunting a deadly mountain lion.

Henni, the scribe of Stella Street (also the tallest girl in her new school) tells everything that happened when the new unfriendly neighbours (from hell) moved into 45 Stella Street. From the moment the newcomers they nicknamed The Phonies cruised down friendly old Stella Street in their silver Bentley turbo, there was trouble. They were all in it together: Henni, her best friend Zev, her loopy sister Danielle, little Frank who lives at 47 and his dog Briquette (aff aff aff aff) – but Henni tells it best.

A dentist dangles from the window of a swanky Park Avenue hotel, while Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who's very far from home, clutches the man by his jacket, which is tearing slowly, stitch by stitch. Across the room, a dead man lies on the bed, his killer pounding on the hotel room door, which sounds like it's going to give way as quickly as the dentist's jacket. Somehow, this entire mess is Albert Einstein's fault. Two groups have been threatening the great physicist. One is a ring of blackmailers who claim to have evidence that he has been passing nuclear secrets to Russia.

Ursula Smart, along with her dysfunctional family, heads to Scotland for a gentle weekend of foraging and camping in the Outer Hebrides. Their boat capsizes. Washed up on an uninhabited island, the Smart women face starvation, freezing conditions, and - worse - no Wi-Fi. A fun break swiftly turns into a desperate battle for survival. Someone begins killing them off one by one.

When a traveling carnival arrives in Hollowbeck, it promises magic and mayhem. It's also an opportunity for Morgan to find someone who can transform her brother, Ruiner, back into a human—he's a little tired of being a talking cat, and she's a little tired of cleaning his litter box. Things look promising until the curtains rise on rehearsal night to reveal Ruiner sitting on the lifeless body of the wizard who promised to help him.

When homegrown terrorists threaten to turn Blue Ridge University into a funeral pyre, Riley Reid, Director of Security, is thrown into a shadow world where old hatreds run deep, family feuds poison relationships, and death and danger spill off the college campus into mountain wilderness. To survive, the former FBI agent must decide where to place her trust. Not easy when conflicting loyalties pose ethical dilemmas and the men in her life trigger emotions that war with logic.

Nexi Ketts has reinvented herself-new name, new look, new life. She makes her living catching corporate cheats - partial atonement for dear old dad's embezzling ways. A fling with a handsome cop ends badly when he tries to kill her. She flees, naked, causing a fender bender, and making it damn hard for Detective Barry Gerton to think clearly.

When a bloody corpse is discovered in a North London park, Detective Inspector Daniel Graves is the man tasked with finding the killer. However, with no clues and no suspects, the case seems like a dead end. Then another body turns up—and this time, it looks like it could be Graves’s fault. Has his investigation caused the murderer to strike again? As the case gets ever more complicated, a report comes in of another suspicious death—but this is nothing like any other Graves has dealt with. All involved are convinced that something supernatural is to blame: a demon.

Heidi’s gone; her body lies curled up at my feet. Despite the ache inside my chest, it falls to me to alert our alpha and maintain calm within the pack. Those are rules I vowed to obey. Yet, when my vampire neighbor Eli flashes his investigator’s badge, insisting Heidi’s death wasn’t the first, I join his hunt for the murderer, instead. Eli should come with a warning label, though.

Yard sales can bring out the worst in people. So when Scumble River school psychologist Skye Denison organizes a 100-mile yard sale, otherwise neighborly folk get downright nasty: her own mother creams a woman, and a battle of the sexes breaks out. But when her former boss is found murdered, nobody knows for sure how this cookie will crumble.

With a trillion sensors feeding data into a central computer unleashed into the world, governments, militaries, mega-corporations, dictators, and even hackers will be able to hear the heartbeat of the Earth. This is an invisible communications network enveloping everything, including your home. These Smart Dust particles, 100 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair, easily penetrate human skin, enabling trackers to monitor every moment of your day.

After a whirlwind romance, Princess Kensi’s bright destiny is becoming a daunting reality. Not two months ago, she was earning her bacon as a private investigator, and now she wonders if her new werewolf-mate, Drake, even likes bacon. They constantly bicker, yet he’s mere days from being invested as the official co-heir to her father’s kingdom. When another contender for the throne emerges, the claimants go toe-to-toe in a race designed to put their skills and stamina to the test. But the competition is rigged - and one of them is marked for death.

In Wager Smart, Eddie and Uncle Mike take on a cold case for Arlene Adams, the wealthy widow of a notorious hitman. The case leads Eddie and his uncle to Vegas, where they meet the hitman’s old partner, the Deacon, a legend in the mob. The cold case quickly spirals into an investigation of a current murder that requires the men to make a dangerous deal with the mob.

Who can you trust when no one is who they seem? Aided by his wife Ria and friend Dev, Partho’s long overdue vacation on the US east coast is finally on. But mysteries have a way of tracking him down, especially the sinister ones. It started out as a cheerful family outing to a Spanish restaurant on Thanksgiving Eve. Somewhere in between the entrée and the dessert, it has turned into a calamity, embroiling them in a sinister plot involving an escaped convict, assassinations, and corporate greed and malfeasance.

Florian has it all: excellent fashion sense, a kickass job with his best friend, and a hard-won place among Silverton's werewolves. When a pack of females pads into their territory, Flo's alpha dispatches him to handle a merger. Total cakewalk. Except Keely, their alpha, has no intention of submitting her wolves to Flo's larger pack. Worse, a single glance from her baby blues sends his eloquence on vacation and his heartbeat into overdrive.