Chilling Crime Novels
Discover terrifying tales of crime and corruption with this collection of twisted mysteries & thrillers.
Jawad Ali was fourteen years old when he built a cosplay jetpack that a teacher mistook for a bomb. A jetpack that got him arrested, labeled a terrorist—and eventually killed. But he’s more than a dead body, and more than “Bomb Boy.” He was a person with a life worth remembering.
Driven by Jawad’s haunting voice guiding her throughout her investigation, Safiya seeks to tell the whole truth about the murdered boy and those who killed him because of their hate-based beliefs.
This gripping and powerful book uses an innovative format and lyrical prose to expose the evil that exists in front of us, and the silent complicity of the privileged who create alternative facts to bend the truth to their liking.
Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is feeling the heat. She’s investigating the death of a senior government prosecutor, David Minton, who has friends in high places. When one of their own is killed, the powers that be want answers fast. But Clarke is puzzled: if Minton died in a robbery as everyone thinks, why is nothing missing from his home? The answer may lie not in what was taken, but in what was left behind at the scene—an ominous note.
Malcolm Fox is feeling useless. Shunned by his colleagues because of his past in the Complaints bureau, he’s been reassigned to a grunt detail, helping a surveillance team—one that trusts him even less than his own boss does—track a notorious Glasgow crime family. Helping Clarke with the Minton case is the only thing that makes Fox feel like a real cop.
Newly minted civilian John Rebus is feeling restless. Being a cop is in his blood and he’s failing miserably at retirement. So when Clarke and Fox ask for his help, Rebus doesn’t need long to consider his options. But before he can get his bearings, a call comes from Rebus’s old nemesis—”Big Ger” Cafferty. Someone just fired a bullet through his front window—and sent him a note identical to Minton’s. The normally unflappable old gangster is on edge, but for the life of him Cafferty can’t figure out who he’s wronged. And the only man he trusts with his life is Rebus.
As the cases collide, it’s up to Clarke, Fox, and Rebus to connect the dots and save their unlikely ally Cafferty, whose past harbors a shocking secret that implicates Minton’s friends in an unspeakable crime. Even Dogs in the Wild reunites crime fiction legend Ian Rankin’s greatest characters in an explosive story exploring the darkest corners of our desires.
Most gunmen say goodbye to the world with a bang. Frank’s still here. No longer in his prime, certainly. But with decades of experience at the top of his profession. Underestimating such a man could prove to be deadly.
Once a covert operative for a false-flag unit of the US military, Hendricks was presumed dead after a mission in Afghanistan went sideways. He left behind his old life—and beloved fiancée—and set out on a path of redemption…or perhaps one of willful self-destruction.
Now Hendricks makes his living as a hitman entrepreneur of sorts—he only hits other hitmen. For ten times the price on your head, he’ll make sure whoever’s coming to kill you winds up in the ground instead. Not a bad way for a guy with his skill-set to make a living—but a great way to make himself a target.
Sam receives a call from Lucy while he’s at work. She tells him to leave the building immediately. He does…just before it explodes, killing everyone inside. Lucy vanishes, and Sam wakes up in a prison cell. As the lone survivor of the attack, he is branded by the CIA as a murderer and a traitor.
Escaping from the agency, Sam launches into a desperate hunt to save his kidnapped wife and child, and to reveal the unknown enemy who has set him up and stolen his family. But the destruction of Sam’s life was only step one in an extraordinary plot—and now Sam must become a new kind of hero.
Four have been successful.
But now, Beecher White discovers a killer in Washington, D.C., who’s meticulously re-creating the crimes of these four men. Historians have branded them as four lone wolves. But what if they were wrong?
Beecher is about to discover the truth: that during the course of a hundred years, all four assassins were secretly working together. What was their purpose? For whom do they really work? And why are they planning to kill the current President?
Beecher’s about to find out. And most terrifyingly, he’s about to come face-to-face with the fifth assassin.
Initially galvanized by a career-making story, Jake—and his son—are soon the victims of brutal violence and the targets of Jake’s fellow reporters, who dog them for their story. Concerned for the survival of his family, Jake realizes some sins of the past should never be uncovered…
A high-profile crime boss who has heard of Lucas’s specialty hires him to find out who has been stealing from his operation. It’s the biggest job Spero has ever been offered, and he quickly gets a sense of what’s going on. But before he can close in on what’s been taken, he tangles with a world of men whose amorality and violence leave him reeling. Is any cut worth your family, your lover, your life?
Alden is avidly courted but holds out emotionally—until Lux Davis, a handsome landscape worker and her husbands undetected killer, tracks her down. Lux is smitten with Alden, but his immediate problem, unknown to her, is how to dispose of the body. Lux and Alden bond strongly in the face of their mutual demons, past and current, creating a charged and magical love story. In the meantime, his secret is on the verge of being discovered as the law closes in behind him.
Maria Flook finds valiant people within the working-class population of an off-season resort community. Although unsteady and disenfranchised, her characters emerge intact, buoyed by their love for one another and for the natural world, and portrayed by Flook with her signature mixture of high poetic seriousness and a ribald, picaresque sensibility (The New Yorker).
Meanwhile, Sebastian Bergman, psychologist, criminal profiler and one of Sweden’s top experts on serial killers, is in Västerås to settle his mother’s estate following her death. Sebastian has withdrawn from police work after the death of his wife and daughter in the 2004 tsunami.
When the Crime Investigation Department asks Sebastian for his help in Roger’s case, his arrogant manner at first alienates the rest of the team. Pushing forward, though, they begin to make disturbing discoveries about the private school Roger attended . .
This is the story of thirteen days that begin with one murder and end with another. Jéme Morval, a man whose passion for art was matched only by his passion for women, has been found dead in the stream that runs through the gardens. In his pocket is a postcard of Monet’s Water Lilies with the words: Eleven years old. Happy Birthday.
Entangled in the mystery are three women: a young painting prodigy, the seductive village schoolteacher, and an old widow who watches over the village from a mill by the stream. All three of them share a secret. But what do they know about the discovery of Jéme Morval’s corpse? And what is the connection to the mysterious, rumored painting of Black Water Lilies?
Ree Dolly’s father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn’t show up for his next court date. With two young brothers depending on her, 16-year-old Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive. Living in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, Ree learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. But, as an unsettling revelation lurks, Ree discovers unforeseen depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost.
Archaeologist Riley Smith has been obsessed with Helen of Troy since she was a small girl, trailing her professor father all over the world in search of the tomb of the world’s most beautiful woman. Professor Smith put his life on the line to prove that, instead of a myth, Helen had been a living, breathing queen.
Riley seeks the help of forensic sculptor Eve Duncan, who has the unusual skills necessary to recreate the face that launched a thousand ships—revealing Helen’s true appearance for the first time in history. But convincing Eve to take on the challenge will be difficult because her efforts could come at great personal risk to her and her family…
Tomb raiders have murdered Riley’s father, and now she is more determined than ever to reach the burial site first, avenge his death, and enlist Eve’s aid. Also on hand to help is dashing fixer and treasure hunter Michael Cade, but could he have his own secret agenda when it comes to finding Helen?
Now both Riley and Eve are in danger and in a race across one of the most remote parts of the world. All they have is their trust in each other and their belief in a dream as they hunt for Helen.
Catherine Strayed is living a quiet, un?remarkable life in a secluded college town following the mysterious death of her husband, a promising writer whose death may have been an accident, a suicide, or perhaps even a murder. When her former mentor (and onetime lover)—a powerful critic who singlehandedly destroyed her late husband’s chance for success—takes a teaching job at the college, Catherine’s world threatens to collapse. For with him has come his latest protégé, an exotic young woman named Antonia Lively. Antonia’s debut novel has become a literary sensation—but it is, in fact, an almost factual retelling of a terrible crime that she relates without any concern for the impact its publication will have on the lives of those involved.As Antonia insinuates herself into Catherine’s life, mysterious and frightening things start to happen, because unbeknownst to Catherine, the younger woman intends to plunder her own dark, regrettable past—and the unsolved death of her husband—for her next literary triumph. Provocative and cunning, Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence asserts that fiction is never truly fictional and asks, What does stealing another’s life do to your soul? Levinson spins a tale of surprises, peeling back one revelation only to find another in this tightly wrought, wickedly cynical look at the worlds of academia, publishing, and celebrity.
