Mystery

In Agatha Christie's classic mystery 4:50 From Paddington, a woman in one train witnesses a murder occurring in another passing one...and only Miss Marple believes her story.

For an instant the two trains ran side by side. In that frozen moment, Elspeth McGillicuddy stared helplessly out of her carriage window as a man tightened his grip around a woman's throat. The body crumpled. Then the other train drew away. But who, apart from Mrs. McGillicuddy's friend Jane Marple, would take her story seriously? After all, there are no other witnesses, no suspects, and no case -- for there is no corpse, and no one is missing.

Miss Marple asks her highly efficient and intelligent young friend Lucy Eyelesbarrow to infiltrate the Crackenthorpe family, who seem to be at the heart of the mystery, and help unmask a murderer.

"A Dying Fall, like all of Griffiths' work, combines an intriguing plot with well-drawn characters--topped by the ever-fascinating Ruth--and a keen sense of place and history. Connoisseurs of thoughtful suspense will revel in its many pleasures."--Richmond Times-Dispatch

When Ruth Galloway learns that her old university friend Dan Golding has died in a house fire, she is shocked and saddened. But when she receives a letter that Dan had written just before he died, her sadness turns to suspicion.

The letter tells of a great archaeological discovery, but Dan also says that he is scared for his life. Was Dan's death linked to his find? The only clue is his mention of the Raven King, an ancient name for King Arthur.

When she arrives in Lancashire, Ruth discovers that the bones reveal a shocking fact about King Arthur--and that the bones have mysteriously vanished. The case draws in DCI Nelson, determined to protect Ruth and their eighteen-month-old daughter, Kate. But someone is willing to kill to keep the bones a secret, and it is beginning to look as if no one is safe.

"Another gem packed with offbeat, well-developed characters and a quirky, challenging mystery."--Kirkus

"As with all Ruth Galloway mysteries, the application of forensic archaeology is intriguing . . . readers are in for a really good time with this flesh-and-blood bone expert."--Booklist, starred

"It's the scenery--and the big guy standing in front of the scenery--that keeps us coming back to Craig Johnson's lean and leathery mysteries."
--The New York Times Book Review

The ninth Longmire book from the New York Times bestselling author of Land of Wolves

It's homecoming for the Durant Dogies when Cord Lynear, a Mormon "lost boy" forced off his compound for rebellious behavior, shows up in Absaroka County. Without much guidance, divine or otherwise, Sheriff Walt Longmire, Victoria Moretti, and Henry Standing Bear search for the boy's mother and find themselves on a high-plains scavenger hunt that ends at the barbed-wire doorstep of an interstate polygamy group. Run by four-hundred-pound Roy Lynear, Cord's father, the group is frighteningly well armed and very good at keeping secrets.

Walt's got Cord locked up for his own good, but the Absaroka County jailhouse is getting crowded since the arrival of the boy's self-appointed bodyguard, a dangerously spry old man who claims to be blessed by Joseph Smith himself. As Walt, Vic, and Henry butt heads with the Lynears, they hear whispers of Big Oil and the CIA and fear they might be dealing with a lot more than they bargained for.

Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti and his wife, Paola, are on their way to a dinner party when Brunetti's eye is caught by a couple ahead of them: a woman in an impossibly expensive fur coat on the arm of a much older man. He is intrigued when they turn out to be fellow dinner guests, and even more so when he sees the woman's face, which has been disfigured by excessive plastic surgery. She is Franca Marinello, La Superliftata, whom he's heard of but never met. This intelligent, mysterious woman entrances Brunetti with her love of Virgil and Cicero, but when she visits him later at the Questura and asks a favor, he is troubled. Her request seems to land near his investigation into a suspicious death and the illegal hauling of garbage. In Italy, the environment has reached a crisis; incinerators across the south are at full capacity, burning who-knows-what, the polluted waters of Venice's canals sit in the shadow of a major chemical complex, and in Naples, enormous piles of garbage grow in the streets. As Brunetti delves into this shadowy, toxic world, he comes face to face with violence and corruption more dangerous than anything he's seen before. An exceptional installment in this masterful series, About Face is Donna Leon at her finest.

In the latest novel from a master of European crime fiction, past, present, and future collide on a breathtaking journey from 1950s Morocco to modern-day Spain and Sweden.

Miguel and Helena meet at a nursing home in Tarifa, at an age when they believe they have lived it all already. Distanced from their children, they feel they are no longer needed. The sudden suicide of one of the other residents opens their eyes. They don't want to spend their last days longing for supposedly better times, so together they decide to undertake the journey of their lives and confront the darkness in their pasts.

Meanwhile, in the distant Swedish city of Malmö, the young Yasmina, a child of Moroccan immigrants who dreams of being a singer, lives trapped between her authoritarian grandfather and her contemptuous mother, who is ashamed of Yasmina because she works for a Swede with a murky reputation. And she's having a secret affair with the Deputy Commissioner of the Swedish police, an older, influential man.

As Yasmina is drawn deeper into Malmö's criminal underworld and Miguel and Helena approach the end of their feverish road trip, Víctor del Árbol masterfully reconstructs the history of violence that links their seemingly disparate lives.

Fine picture of period vice, good mystery plotting, and fun." --San Francisco Chronicle

A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. A comedian who invites the audience to sing along with him finds the words of his song "shamefully" altered. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower's blade. A singer's costume has been rigged. The girl in a magician's box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder. Or was murder intended all along? That indomitable detective team, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray of Scotland Yard, must track down the elusive criminal.

Accidents happen. But so does murder...

On the night of August 11, 1956, in a quiet East Hampton hamlet, Jackson Pollock crashed his car into a tree. The accident killed Pollock, the world-renowned abstract painter and notorious alcoholic, and his 25-year old passenger, Edith Metzger...or did it?

Metzger's autopsy reveals that she was already dead before the crash. Was it murder?

This shocking question draws vacationing Detective Juanita Diaz and her husband, Captain Brian Fitzgerald, of the NYPD into a homicide investigation that implicates famous members of East Hampton's art community--including Pollock himself.

"Edifying and juicy."--Newsday

In Leon's fifth Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, the beating of renowned art historian Dotoressa Brett Lynch draws the contemporary Venetian police detective out of his warm and loving home and into the yearly onslaught of acqua alta, the torrential winter rains.

Brett, an American who spearheaded a recent exhibition of Chinese pottery in Venice, lives with her lover, Flavia Petrelli, the reigning diva of La Scala. With his open mind and good sense, Brunetti finds himself more fazed by Flavia's breathtaking talent than by the nontraditional relationship between the two women. Brunetti's deliberate and humane investigation to uncover a motive for Brett's beating takes him to dark, wet corners of Venice and into a sinister web of art theft, fakery and base human desires.

"Every fan's first-pick Brunetti novel." --The New Yorker

"Music and art mingle delightfully with murder and mayhem in the course of this very engaging story." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"A subtle study of emotion and character... A sophisticated mystery." --Library Journal

With the international bestseller The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Nicholas Meyer brought to light a previously unpublished case of Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Dr. John H. Watson. Now Meyer returns with a shocking discovery--an unknown case drawn from a recently unearthed Watson journal.

January 1905: Holmes and Watson are summoned by Holmes' brother Mycroft to undertake a clandestine investigation. An agent of the British Secret Service has been found floating in the Thames, carrying a manuscript smuggled into England at the cost of her life. The pages purport to be the minutes of a meeting of a secret group intent on nothing less than taking over the world.

Based on real events, the adventure takes the famed duo--in the company of a bewitching woman--aboard the Orient Express from Paris into the heart of Tsarist Russia, where Holmes and Watson attempt to trace the origins of this explosive document. On their heels are desperate men of unknown allegiance, determined to prevent them from achieving their task. And what they uncover is a conspiracy so vast as to challenge Sherlock Holmes as never before.

The New York Times bestselling author of More Than You Know, Leeway Cottage, and Death at Breakfast delivers the second installment in her clever romp of a mystery series combining social comedy and dark-hearted murder--a novel set at a girls' boarding school in a picturesque Hudson River town with more than its share of secrets.

Since retiring as head of a famous New York City private school, Maggie Detweiler is busier than ever. Chairing a team to evaluate the faltering Rye Manor School for girls, she will determine whether, in spite of its fabled past, the school has a future at all. With so much on the line for so many, tensions on campus are at an excruciating pitch, and Maggie expects to be as welcome as a case of Ebola virus.

At a reception for the faculty and trustees to welcome Maggie's team, no one seems more keen for all to go well than Florence Meagher, a star teacher who is loved and respected in spite of her affliction--that she can never stop talking.

Florence is one of those dedicated teachers for whom the school is her life, and yet the next morning, when Maggie arrives to observe her teaching, Florence is missing. Florence's husband, Ray, an auxiliary policeman in the village, seems more annoyed than alarmed at her disappearance. But Florence's sister is distraught. There have been tensions in the marriage, and at their last visit, Florence had warned, If anything happens to me, don't assume it's an accident.

Two days later, Florence's body is found in the campus swimming pool.

Maggie is asked to stay on to coach the very young and inexperienced head of Rye Manor through the crisis. Maggie obviously knows schools, but she also knows something about investigating murder, having solved a mysterious death in Maine the previous year when the police went after the wrong suspect. She is soon joined by her madcap socialite friend Hope, who is jonesing for an excuse to ditch her book club anyway, before she has to actually read Silas Marner.

What on earth is going on in this idyllic town? Is this a run-of-the-mill marital murder? Or does it have something to do with the school board treasurer's real estate schemes? And what is up with the vicious cyber-bullying that's unsettled everyone, or with the disturbed teenaged boy whom Florence had made a pet of? And is it possible that someone killed Florence just so she'd finally shut up?

"Terrifically compelling ... Sit back and go along for the ride." --- Boston Globe

Just after midnight on December 23, 1980, a night flight bound for Paris plummets toward the Swiss Alps, crashing into a snowy mountainside. Within seconds flames engulf the plane, which is filled with holiday travelers. Of the 169 passengers, all but one perish.

The sole survivor is a three-month-old girl--thrown from the airliner before fire consumes the cabin. But two infants were on board. Is "the Miracle Child of Mont Terri" Lyse-Rose or Emilie? The families of both girls step forward to claim the child. Dogged by bad luck, the Vitrals live a simple life, selling snacks from a van on the beaches of northern France. In contrast, the de Carvilles, who amassed a fortune in the oil business, are powerful--and dangerous.

Eighteen years later, a private detective tasked with solving the mystery of the girl known as "Lylie" is on the verge of giving up. As he contemplates taking his own life, Credule Grand-Duc suddenly discovers a secret hidden in plain view. Will he live to tell it?

Meanwhile, Lylie, now a beautiful university student, entrusts a secret notebook into the hands of Marc, the brooding young man who loves her, and then vanishes. After Marc reads the notebook's contents, he embarks on a frantic search for Lylie. But he is not the only one looking for her.

The legacy of the Second World War persists in this multi-layered tale of vengeance and retribution.

1950s Bordeaux is a city plagued by memories of the Second World War. The scars of collaboration and resistance are more keenly felt than ever and citizens struggle to move on. But across the sea, another war has already begun. The young men of France are sent in droves to Algeria, where they wage brutal battle in a conflict so new it hasn't yet been given a name.

Twenty-year-old Daniel has heard the stories. Whispers of massacres and mutilations, of ambushes and patrols played out under a burning north African sun. He knows that he is next in line to join the fight, but with just a month left before his departure he is unsure of his path. The loss of his parents and sister in the atrocities of the last war haunt him, and leave him questioning why he is going to fight in the first place.

Meanwhile, Albert Darlac, the godfather of Bordeaux, finds himself tormented by a past that won't disappear. Corrupt police chief, fascist sympathizer and one-time collaborator, Darlac soon discovers that some things won't remain buried. Before long, a series of explosive events will set off a spiral of violence that will bring the horrific legacy of wars past and present to the streets of Bordeaux.

Hervé Le Corre has produced a truly uncompromising, multi-layered masterpiece set in a world driven by and built on vengeance.