Mystery

In this exclusive authorized edition from the Queen of Mystery, 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.

Go back to Whitehall and look for more spies on your drawing boards.

George Smiley is no one's idea of a spy--which is perhaps why he's such a natural. But Smiley apparently made a mistake. After a routine security interview, he concluded that the affable Samuel Fennan had nothing to hide. Why, then, did the man from the Foreign Office shoot himself in the head only hours later? Or did he?

The heart-stopping tale of intrigue that launched both novelist and spy, Call for the Dead is an essential introduction to le Carré's chillingly amoral universe.

When Ruth Galloway arrives to supervise the opening of a coffin containing the bones of a medieval bishop, she finds the museum's curator lying dead on the floor. Soon after, the museum's wealthy owner is also found dead, in his stables.

These two deaths could be from natural causes, but once again Ruth and DCI Harry Nelson cross paths during the investigation. When threatening letters come to light, events take an even more sinister turn. But as Ruth's friends become involved, where will her loyalties lie? As her convictions are tested, Ruth and Nelson must discover how Aboriginal skulls, drug smuggling, and the mystery of "The Dreaming" hold the answers to these deaths, as well as the keys to their own survival.

"Lovers of well-written and intelligent traditional mysteries will welcome [Griffith's] fourth book . . . A Room Full of Bones is a clever blend of history and mystery with more than enough forensic details to attract the more attentive reader." --Denver Post

Galloway is an Everywoman, smart, successful and a little bit unsure of herself. Readers will look forward to learning more about her. --USA Today

A continuation of USA Today bestselling author Leonard Goldberg's Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series, The Abduction of Pretty Penny finds Joanna and the Watsons on the tail of an infamous killer.

Joanna and the Watsons are called in by the Whitechapel Playhouse to find Pretty Penny, a lovely, young actress who has gone missing without reason or notice. While on their search, the trio is asked by Scotland Yard to join in the hunt for a vicious murderer whose method resembles that of Jack The Ripper. It soon becomes clear that The Ripper has reemerged after a 28-year absence and is once again murdering young prostitutes in Whitechapel.

Following a line of subtle clues, Joanna quickly reasons that Pretty Penny has been taken capture by the killer. But as Joanna moves closer to learning his true identity, the killer sends her a letter indicating her young son Johnny will be the next victim to die. Time is running out, and Joanna has no choice but to devise a most dangerous plan which will bring her face-to-face with the killer. It is the only chance to protect her son and rescue Pretty Penny, and save both from an agonizing death.

The Abduction of Pretty Penny is a wonderful new entry in a series that the Historical Novel Society calls "one of the best Sherlock Holmes series since Laurie R. King's Mary Russell books.

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.

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.

From "master of the genre" (The Washington Post) and author of Leaving Berlin, a heart-pounding and intelligent espionage novel about a Nazi war criminal who was supposed to be dead, the rogue CIA agent on his trail, and the beautiful woman connected to them both.

Seventeen years after the fall of the Third Reich, Max Weill has never forgotten the atrocities he saw as a prisoner at Auschwitz--nor the face of Dr. Otto Schramm. He was the camp doctor who worked with Mengele on appalling experiments and who sent Max's family to the gas chambers. As the war came to a close, Schramm was one of the many high-ranking former-Nazi officers who managed to escape Germany for new lives in South America, where leaders like Argentina's Juan Perón gave them safe harbor and new identities. With his life nearing its end, Max asks his nephew Aaron Wiley--an American CIA desk analyst--to complete the task Max never could: to track down Otto in Argentina, capture him, and bring him back to Germany to stand trial.

Unable to deny his uncle, Aaron travels to Buenos Aires and discovers a city where Nazis thrive in plain sight, mingling with Argentine high society. He ingratiates himself with Otto's alluring but damaged daughter, whom he's convinced is hiding her father. Enlisting the help of a German newspaper reporter, an Israeli agent, and the obliging CIA station chief in Buenos Aires, he hunts for Otto--a complicated monster, unexpectedly human but still capable of murder if cornered. Unable to distinguish allies from enemies, Aaron will ultimately have to discover just how far he is prepared to go to render justice.

"With his remarkable emotional precision and mastery of tone" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Joseph Kanon crafts another "gripping and authentic" (The New York Times Book Review) thriller that you won't be able to put down.

From the bestselling author of Black Run comes Antonio Manzini's mesmerizing second mystery novel featuring detective Rocco Schiavone.

Six months after being exiled from his beloved Rome, Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone has settled into a routine in the cold, quiet, chronically backward alpine town of Aosta: an espresso at home, breakfast in the piazza, and a morning joint in his office.

A little self-medication helps Rocco deal with the morons that almost exclusively comprise the local force. Especially on a day like today. It's his girlfriend's birthday (if you could call her that; in his mind, Rocco's only faithful to his late wife), he has no gift--and he's about to stumble upon a corpse.

It begins when a maid reports a burglary in Aosta. But there's no sign of forced entry, and after Rocco picks the lock, he notices something off about the carefully ransacked rooms. That's when he finds the body: a woman, the maid's employer, left hanging after a grisly suicide. Or is it? Rocco's intuition tells him the scene has been staged. In other words, it's murder--a pain in the ass of the highest order.

In this stylish international mystery, Antonio Manzini further establishes Rocco Schiavone as one of the most acerbic, complicated, and entertaining antiheroes crime fiction has seen in years.

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.