Best Hard-Boiled Mysteries

Medical science and governments around the world scramble in an effort to solve the problem, but twenty-five years later there is no cure, and an entire generation grows up with a population of fewer than a thousand women. She's been held in the prison her entire life, along with a few other girls who disappear after the coming-of-age ceremony. Zoey and her new friends must break into the compound and rescue the other female prisoners.

A Thriller Award nominee for Best eBook Original Novel... Book 1 in award-winning author Alexandra Sokoloff's riveting new Huntress FBI series about a driven FBI agent on the hunt for that most rare of all killers: a female serial. Her novels bring human frailty and the desperate desire to survive together in poignant stories of personal struggle and human triumph. Alexandra Sokoloff is the Thriller Award-winning and Bram Stoker, Anthony, and Black Quill Award-nominated author of the supernatural thrillers The Harrowing, The Price, The Unseen, Book of Shadows, The Shifters, and The Space Between , and the Thriller Award-nominated, Amazon bestselling Huntress FBI thriller series ( Huntress Moon, Blood Moon ). As a screenwriter she has sold original horror and thriller scripts and adapted novels for numerous Hollywood studios. She has also written two non-fiction workbooks: Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love , based on her internationally acclaimed workshops and blog (ScreenwritingTricks.com), and has served on the Board of Directors of the WGA, west (the screenwriters union) and the board of the Mystery Writers of America.

Detective Michael Bennett and his family are about to be haunted... by a father's worst nightmare--the signs he should have seen and a son's desperate cry for help. When local cops uncover a grisly crime scene buried deep in the woods, they consult the vacationing Bennett, who jumps at the chance to atone for his own sins. ― Lee Child "It's no mystery why James Patterson is the world's most popular thriller writer: his uncanny skill in creating living, breathing characters we truly feel for and seamless, lightning-fast plots. He holds the record for most New York Times bestsellers and is the author of the two most popular detective series of the past decade, the Alex Cross novels and the Women's Murder Club. Patterson has won an Edgar Award, the mystery world's highest honor, and his novels Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider were made into feature films.

Twenty years before, amid strange staff disappearances and allegations of fraud, panicked investors sold Cleveland’s largest bank in the middle of the night, locking out customers and employees, and thwarting a looming federal investigation. Iris, a young engineer working her first job out of the office, finds herself assigned to map out a floor plan for the bank building which has been empty for two decades. Just as Beatrice did 20 years before her, Iris quickly recognizes that there’s something not quite right at the bank and she soon learns that the building is not as empty as everyone thinks.

His drug-addicted sister has just been released from prison and his mother is succumbing to Alzheimer's, but Dillard's commitment to the case never wavers despite the personal troubles and professional demands that threaten to destroy him. "Pratt's richly developed characters are vivid and believable, especially the strong Southern women who fight their male-dominated culture from behind a facade of vulnerability in this brilliantly executed debut."

“Penny’s absorbing, intricately plotted 13th Gamache novel proves she only gets better at pursuing dark truths with compassion and grace.” — PEOPLE “Louise Penny wrote the book on escapist mysteries.” — The New York Times Book Review “You won't want Louise Penny's latest to end….Any plot summary of Penny’s novels inevitably falls short of conveying the dark magic of this series.... ‘Glass Houses,’ along with many of the other Gamache books, is so compelling that, for the space of reading it, you may well feel that much of what’s going on in the world outside the novel is ‘just noise.’” —Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post When a mysterious figure appears in Three Pines one cold November day, Armand Gamache and the rest of the villagers are at first curious. In Glass Houses , her latest utterly gripping book , number-one New York Times bestselling author Louise Penny shatters the conventions of the crime novel to explore what Gandhi called the court of conscience. - AudioFile Editor's Pick "In his third narration of Louise Penny's popular Three Pines series, Robert Bathurst emphasizes the humanity and compassion of Chief Superintendent Armand Gamache . AudioFile , Earphones Award Winner "The audio book is splendidly read by Robert Bathurst." "Robert Bathurst puts his own indelible stamp on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in Louise Penny's twelfth Three Pines puzzle. LOUISE PENNY is the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail bestselling author of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels ( Still Life, A Fatal Grace, and The Cruelest Month ).

Hoping to clear his name, Dawn returns to Starlight Cove, her idyllic hometown on Lake Michigan, where the doomed vessel sleeps beneath the beam of a ramshackle lighthouse. “I wanted to stay in Starlight Cove—Cynthia Ellingsen’s fictional town is magical, and its people and its mysteries, both past and present, are too much fun to leave behind.” —Alison Atlee, author of The Typewriter Girl.

Private investigator Kinsey Millhone finds shocking connections between two seemingly unrelated deaths in this #1 New York Times bestselling mystery in the Alphabet series. Wasted lives, wasted time, and wasted opportunities are at the heart of this twenty-third entry in the long-running Kinsey Millhone series, which reveals how the deaths of two very different men impact Kinsey’s life. --Stephanie Zvirin Praise for W is for Wasted “Grafton is a writer of many strengths—crisp characterizations, deft plotting, and eloquent dialogue among them—and she has kept her long-running alphabet mystery series fresh and each new release more welcome than the last.”— Louisville Courier-Journal “Further proof—as if it were needed—of Grafton’s immense talent. And her ability to give equal weight to the story of the detective and the detective story sets her apart in the world of crime fiction.”— Richmond Times-Dispatch “Involving, amusing and fast-paced.”— The Wall Street Journal “Nearing the conclusion of this celebrated series, Grafton continues to shape Millhone’s character, toughened by circumstance but still both understanding and forgiving.”— Booklist “Grafton has lost none of her ability to bring her character vividly to life: Kinsey is as witty and engaging as ever.”— Library Journal (starred review) More Praise for Sue Grafton and the Alphabet Series.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Lee Child returns with a gripping new powerhouse thriller featuring Jack Reacher, “one of this century’s most original, tantalizing pop-fiction heroes” ( The Washington Post ). Reacher takes a stroll through a small Wisconsin town and sees a class ring in a pawn shop window: West Point 2005. Reacher wonders what unlucky circumstance made her give up something she earned over four hard years. So begins a harrowing journey that takes Reacher through the upper Midwest, from a lowlife bar on the sad side of small town to a dirt-blown crossroads in the middle of nowhere, encountering bikers, cops, crooks, muscle, and a missing persons PI who wears a suit and a tie in the Wyoming wilderness. Powerful forces are guarding a vast criminal enterprise. Praise for The Midnight Line “Puts Reacher just where we want him.” — The. New York Times Book Review. “A gem.” — Chicago Tribune “A timely, suspenseful, morally complex thriller, one of the best I’ve read this year . Child weaves in a passionately told history of opioids in American life. I don’t know another author so skilled at making me turn the page, at putting me in the thick of it all.” — The Times “Reacher is the purest distillation of the white knight in contemporary mystery fiction. As always in a Child novel, pace is fast, twists and turns surprise, characters are well-developed, dialogue is exactly right, and the plot is very plausible. One of the best thrillers I’ve read this year.” — The Washington Post “Jack Reacher has become arguably the most iconic fictional hero we have.” — Men’s Health “Compelling and moving . bold and mysterious.” — Associated Press “This, Child’s twenty-second book in the series, has heart to spare, and it proves the franchise has plenty of gas left in its tank.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Compulsively readable.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “[A] multifaceted novel about dealing with the unthinkable . It’s automatic: Reacher gets off a bus, and Child lands on the New York Times bestseller list.” — Booklist “The book is very smart . [and] suggests something that has not been visible in the series’ previous entries: a creeping sadness in Reacher’s wanderings that, set here among the vast and empty landscapes of Wyoming, resembles the peculiarly solitary loneliness of the classic American hero. “Child does a stellar job this time by not following his customary formula; his usually stoic hero who rarely displays softness and compassion is hit hard emotionally by this case.”’ — Library Journal (starred review). A native of England and a former television director, Child lives in New York City.

Germany, 1660: When a dying boy is pulled from the river with a mark crudely tattooed on his shoulder, hangman Jakob Kuisl is called upon to investigate whether witchcraft is at. play in his small Bavarian town. Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Author Oliver PötzschQuestion: What initially inspired you to write this story? But I also look up to many authors of the fantasy genre such as Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, and the almost forgotten Fritz Leiber. In his life he built an enormous archive of information about my ancestors and the hangman profession, and I have been allowed free use of this resource. Also, during my career as a journalist I made several radio programs on this topic, talking to herb women and guardians of cultural heritage and searching in many archives of Bavarian cities for my ancestors. Oliver Pötzsch: After the thriller about Ludwig II, I am writing the fourth novel in the Hangman series. "A brilliantly-researched and exciting story of a formative era of history when witches were hunted and the inquisitors had little belief in their methods beyond their effect in pacifying superstitious townspeople . Pötzsch, actually descended from a line of hangmen, delivers a fantastically fast-paced read, rife with details on the social and power structures in the town as well as dichotomy between university medicine and the traditional remedies, which are skillfully communicated through character interactions, particularly that of Magdalena and Simon. The shocking motivations from unlikely players provide for a twist that will leave readers admiring this complex tale from a talented new voice."

A South Florida Sun-Sentinel Best Mystery of 2017. An Amazon Book of the Month Harry Bosch is back as a volunteer working cold cases for the San Fernando Police Department and is called out to a local drug store where a young pharmacist has been murdered. Meanwhile, an old case from Bosch's LAPD days comes back to haunt him when a long-imprisoned killer claims Harry framed him, and seems to have new evidence to prove it. "[Connelly's] immaculate plotting and gift for bringing procedural intricacies to life now seem as strong as ever...he writes the best detective novels around. "Harry Bosch is a one-of-a-kind hero who started out pretty wild when he returned from Vietnam to become a cop, but over the years he's developed into someone you want to ride with. "Connelly's immaculate plotting and gift for bringing procedural intricacies to life now seem as strong as ever...he writes the best detective novels around. "[Two Kinds of Truth] is a reflection of Connelly's talent that after 19 books chronicling Bosch's career, this iteration feels fresh and authentic. "Expertly juggling both plots, Connelly mines the double murder for fascinating and frightening details...Connelly remains atop a heap of contemporary crime writers thanks to his rare ability to combine master plotting and procedural detail with a literary novelist's feel for the inner lives of his or her characters.