Mystery

Harris Maloub, a killer with an erased official past, now in his fifties, is visited by someone who could not be alive and given an assignment. In Aarhus, Denmark, Jens Erik, police officer on pre-retirement leave, somehow cannot forget the body of a Black man recovered from the sea some years ago. On an abandoned oil rig in the North Sea, turned into a resort for the very rich, Michelle, a young Caribbean woman, realizes that the man she has followed to this job is not what he claims to be. And neither is the rig, where a secret laboratory bares to her a face that is neither human nor animal. Behind all this, there lurks the ghost of a seminar in 2007: most of the participants of that seminar are dead or untraceable. Why was their obscure research on plants and fungi and microbes so important? What is the secret that killed them? What is the weapon that powerful syndicates are trying to obtain - or develop?

Narrated from the perspective of the post-pandemic world around 2030, but moving back in time to cover all of the 21st century, and even bits and pieces from the 20th and the 19th, The Body by the Shore is a novel of suspense and speculation about the complexity of life and intricacy of the earth. It is also a novel about reason and emotion, love and despair, greed and hope, human beings and microbes. When the narrative strands come together, a world of great terror and beauty is revealed to the reader.

Love is deadly

Stupid Cupid is making School psychologist Skye Denison-Boyd regret returning to work after her maternity leave. It starts with an emergency school lockdown, continues with her godfather's arrest by the state police, and ends with a dead body!

It's every teacher and administrator's worst nightmare--a school shooter lockdown. And even worse for Skye because she's trapped in a tiny room with the district's creepy superintendent, Dr. Wraige while they wait for the all-clear.

When Dr. Wraige turns up dead in his home just a short time later, is it a coincidence, or something more?

Skye joins her police chief husband, Wally, in an investigation that becomes more complicated by the minute. With a dead boss and a mysterious killer on the loose, Skye is caught between a rock and a heart place--but she won't give up until Scumble River is safe once again.

FBI Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith, last seen in Backfire, has been recruited by Dillon Savich to join his unit in Washington, D.C. Savich sees something special in Hammersmith, an almost preternatural instinct for tracking criminals.

While on his way to D.C., Hammersmith plans to visit his sister, Delsey, a student at Stanislaus School of Music in Maestro, Virginia. Before he arrives, he gets a phone call that Delsey was found naked, unconscious, and covered with blood after a wild party. The blood isn't hers--so who does it belong to?

Meanwhile, back in D.C., Savich and Sherlock have their hands full when the grandson of former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank is found murdered, every bone in his body broken, and frozen at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial.

Was Savich right--is Griffin gifted with a unique ability to see how criminals think? And will he figure out who was behind the attempt on Delsey's life--before it's too late?

Bone on Bone, the next powerful chapter in Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Keller's beloved Bell Elkins series, sends readers headlong into the thick of a mystery as young as today's headlines -- but as old as the mountains that hold these lives in a tight grip.

How far would you go for someone you love? Would you die? Would you kill? After a three-year prison sentence, Bell Elkins is back in Acker's Gap. And she finds herself in the white-hot center of a complicated and deadly case -- even as she comes to terms with one last, devastating secret of her own.

A prominent local family has fallen victim to the same sickness that infects the whole region: drug addiction. With mother against father, child against parent, and tensions that lead inexorably to tragedy, they are trapped in a grim, hopeless struggle with nowhere to turn.

Bell has lost her job as prosecutor -- but not her affection for her ragtag, hard-luck hometown. Teamed up with former Deputy Jake Oakes, who battles his own demons as he adjusts to life as a paraplegic, and aided by the new prosecutor, Rhonda Lovejoy, Bell tackles a case as poignant as it is perilous, as heartbreaking as it is challenging.

A new title in the Alexa Glock Forensics Mysteries. When bodies wash up on the beach, is man or animal the culprit? It'll take everything forensic specialist Alexa Glock has to seek out the truth. Because lips may lie, but teeth never do...

These thrilling New Zealand mysteries are:

At first, Alexa Glock's initial case as a traveling forensic investigator seems straightforward--her expertise in teeth helps her identify the skeletal remains of a hunter found on the remote Stewart Island in New Zealand. But when she realizes the bullet lodged in his skull was not self-inflicted, and then a second, shark-ravaged body washes up on Ringaringa Beach, it's clear that something dangerous is lurking in the beautiful waters surrounding the island.

The disturbing sight seems to confirm what locals have hashed out in the pub: shark cage-diving, lucrative for owners and popular with tourists, has changed the great white sharks' behavior, turning them into man-eaters. Tensions between cagers and locals mount as Alexa--christened the shark lady--dives into the harrowing case. While measuring bite patterns, she makes a shocking discovery that just might lead her to who--or what--is behind both deaths.

Alexa Glock, an expert in teeth and bones, finds herself playing shark detective in the newest book of Sara E. Johnson's acclaimed forensic mysteries. But she'll soon learn that there are dark things lurking beneath the water, something far worse than a natural born predator...

Alexa Glock Forensic Mysteries:

Molten Mud Murder

The Bones Remember

Sanders, whose first novel Kamikaze Lust, won a 2000 Lambda Literary Award, offers an international espionage thriller in which a failed Olympic speed skater falls for her father's lover, a former Israeli army pilot turned corporate spy.
--Publishers Weekly

This is a book of murky morality and uncertain resolutions. Which is to say, a thriller of literary pedigree, unbound by convention...If you're seeking a cathartic resolution in the final pages, you might be disappointed--but you shouldn't be surprised. Not when you're talking about Israel and corrupt fortunes, and madness, obsession, and abuse. These are the themes of timeless fiction; we can work through them and seek something resembling sanity. Just don't expect to find a safe, comforting space in the pages of Lauren Sanders's discomforting and terrific book.
--Village Voice

[A] thrilling tale of espionage, family ties, sex, love, and betrayal. If you're looking for an exciting and juicy read, look no further.
--The Advocate, Included in 17 New Books About LGBT Families

Set in contemporary Israel, The Book of Love and Hate by Lambda Literary Award-winning author Lauren Sanders follows failed Olympic speed skater Jennifer on a quest to find her missing billionaire father as she encounters 'fake Orthodox Jews, queer Palestinians on the run' and a host of others.
---Bay Area Reporter

"The Book of Love and Hate, a new novel from Lambda Literary Award winner Lauren Sanders, tells of protagonist Jennifer Baron encounters with queer Palestinians in Israel while searching for her missing father.
--Washington Blade

A literary spy thriller and love story that shifts between New York and Israel, The Book of Love and Hate by Lauren Sanders is told from the perspective of a failed Olympic skater, trying to stay sober. Traveling to Israel in search of her disappeared father, she encounters a Mossad agent gone bad, fake Orthodox Jews, gay Palestinians on the run and others wandering the Holy Land.
--The New York Jewish Week, included in Fall Books Preview

Sanders knows how to craft a story. The storyline is riveting, and the personal development of the characters kept me engaged on a deeper level than even her thrilling plot could. Her prose is beautiful and brings you to an ending that is sure to have you reeling.
--Windy City Times

Brilliant...Like Jeanette Winterson, with dazzling language and character anathema to sensibilities, Sanders spotlights human transgression...The Book of Love and Hate contains lessons of patriarchal pitfalls, written with a brilliance sure to challenge social constructs via opposition, shining a light on non-binary thinking and lesbian love.
--Sinister Wisdom

Jennifer Baron is a failed Olympic speed skater now running her family's foundation and trying to stay sober, when her billionaire father disappears. She travels to Israel in search of him, becoming recklessly entangled in his illegal dealings and with his enigmatic lover, Gila, a former Mossad agent gone bad. Along the way, she is drawn into the shadow worlds of the Promised Land, where career-jockeying government agents, fake Orthodox Jews, queer Palestinians on the run, and other displaced wanderers scramble to find home amid the endless cycles of war, occupation, and heartbreak.

The Book of Love and Hate is an unraveling of white-collar crime and its motivations. It's a testament to the magnificent oblivion of love and a shattering of inherited trauma, both personal and historical.

The Quetico-Superior Wilderness: more than two million acres of forest, white-water rapids, and uncharted islands on the Canadian/American border. Somewhere in the heart of this unforgiving territory, a young woman named Shiloh--a country-western singer at the height of her fame--has disappeared.

Her father arrives in Aurora, Minnesota, to hire Cork O'Connor to find his daughter. Cork joins a search party that includes an ex-con, two FBI agents, and a ten-year-old boy. Others are on Shiloh's trail as well--men hired not just to find her, but to kill her.

As the expedition ventures deeper into the wilderness, strangers descend on Aurora, threatening to spill blood on the town's snowy streets. Meanwhile, out on the Boundary Waters, winter falls hard. Cork's team of searchers loses contact with civilization, and like the brutal winds of a Minnesota blizzard, death--violent and sudden--stalks them.

A skull in one place, a torso in another. Are they connected? Thirty years ago, the authorities didn't think so. But the ingenious forensic anthropologist Dr. Sebastien Grey is now on the case, and he believes they both belong to the same victim - an unidentified man who was shot, dismembered, scattered in two states and burned. But time is not the only thing standing in the way of the truth. A pair of professional rivals, a spy inside the sheriff's office and a local family with a dark secret are all obstacles to untying this murderous knot.

This second book in the Sebastien Grey series finds Dr. Grey once again in the Black Hills of South Dakota and teamed up with Tiffany Reese - a shrewd and tough detective who doubles as the love of his life and the only woman who can coax him out of his awkward social isolation. Will their relationship survive the pressure of high stakes cold case work?

Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother of two, is a compulsive do-gooder who can't say no when someone asks for help--even when she knows better. When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous project yet. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.

Is the boy a victim of child trafficking? Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him? When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy's are in jeopardy, too. In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is trying to hunt him down.

A man wanted by two governments, Peter Ash has found a simple, low-profile life in Milwaukee, living with his girlfriend June and renovating old buildings with his friend Lewis. Staying out of trouble is the key to preserving this fragile peace . . . but when Peter spots a suspicious armed man walking into a crowded market, he knows he can't stand by and do nothing.

Peter does interrupt a crime, but it wasn't at all what he'd expected. The young gunman appeared to have one target and one mission--but when he escapes, and his victim vanishes before police arrive, it seems there is more to the encounter than meets the eye. Peter's hunch is proven correct when a powerful associate from his past appears with an interest in the crime, and an irresistible offer: if he and June solve this mystery, Peter's record will be scrubbed clean.

While Peter and Lewis trace the gunman, reporter June digs into the victim of the incident, a man whose face rings a bell in her memory. As their parallel investigations draw together, they're thrust into the path of a ruthless tech thief, an eerily cheerful assassin, a brilliant and troubled inventor, and a revolutionary technology that could wreak devastation in the wrong hands. But for Peter, even more is at stake: this investigation is his only path to a life free from the threat of prosecution or prison. Before the end, he'll have to fight harder than ever before to ensure that freedom doesn't come at too high a cost. . . .

Journalist Cecily Wong is in over her head. She's come to Manaslu, the eighth-highest peak in the world, to interview internationally famous mountaineer Charles McVeigh on the last leg of a record-breaking series of summits. She's given up everything for this story--her boyfriend, her life savings, the peace she's made with her climbing failures in the past--but it's a career-making opportunity. It could finally put her life back on track.

But when one climber dies in what everyone else assumes is a freak accident, she fears their expedition is in danger. And by the time a second climber dies, it's too late to turn back. Stranded on a mountain in one of the most remote regions of the world, she'll have to battle more than the elements in a harrowing fight for survival against a killer who is picking them off one by one.