A gripping first mystery, as beguiling and secretly sinister as Venice herself. Sparkling and irresistible. -- Rita Mae Brown
The first book in the internationally bestselling Guido Brunetti detective series in which a high society murder leads Guido to investigate the darker side of beautiful Venice.
There is little violent crime in Venice, a serenely beautiful floating city of mystery and magic, history and decay. But the evil that does occasionally rear its head is the jurisdiction of Guido Brunetti, the suave, urbane vice-commissario of police and a genius at detection. Now all of his admirable abilities must come into play in the deadly affair of Maestro Helmut Wellauer, a world-renowned conductor who died painfully from cyanide poisoning during an intermission at La Fenice.
But as the investigation unfolds, a chilling picture slowly begins to take shape--a detailed portrait of revenge painted with vivid strokes of hatred and shocking depravity. And the dilemma for Guido Brunetti will not be finding a murder suspect, but rather narrowing the choices down to one.
The Great Depression has bound a nation in despair -- and only a privileged few have risen above it: the exorbitantly wealthy ... and the hucksters who feed upon them. Diego, a seventeen-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant, owes his salvation to master grifter Thomas Schell. Together with Schell's gruff and powerful partner, they sail comfortably through hard times, scamming New York's grieving rich with elaborate, ingeniously staged séances -- until an impossible occurrence changes everything.
While communing with spirits, Schell sees an image of a young girl in a pane of glass, silently entreating the con man for help. Though well aware that his otherworldly powers are a sham, Schell inexplicably offers his services to help find the lost child -- drawing Diego along with him into a tangled maze of deadly secrets and terrible experimentation.
At once a hypnotically compelling mystery and a stunningly evocative portrait of Depression-era New York, The Girl in the Glass is a masterly literary adventure from a writer of exemplary vision and skill.
A new crime-thriller full of suspense from Sujata Massey, the acclaimed author of The Bride's Kimono and The Floating Girl.
Antiques dealer Rei Shimura is in San Francisco visiting her parents and researching a personal project tracing the story of 100 years of Japanese decorative arts through her own family's experience. Her work is interrupted by the arrival of her boyfriend, lawyer Hugh Glendinning, who is involved in a class action lawsuit on behalf of aged Asian nationals forced to engage in slave labour for Japanese companies during
World War II.
These two projects suddenly intertwine when one of Hugh's clients is murdered and Rei begins to uncover unsavoury facts about her own family's actions during the war. Rei unravels the truth, finds the killer, and at the same time learns about family ties and loyalty and the universal desire to avoid blame.
Published in the UK as Caedmon's Song, this is a gripping standalone thriller from New York Times bestselling author Peter Robinson.
On a balmy June night, Kirsten, a young university student, is strolling home through a silent moonlit park when she is viciously attacked.
When she awakens in the hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night. But then slowly, painfully, details reveal themselves--dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her; snatches of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand . . .
In another part of the country, Martha Browne arrives in a Yorkshire seaside town, posing as an author doing research for a book. But her research is of a particularly macabre variety. Who is she hunting with such deadly determination? And why?
The First Cut is a vivid and compelling psychological thriller, from the author of the critically acclaimed Inspector Banks series.
Spence Tailor, a lawyer with an actual set of principals, loves his mama, Rose. Rose--with advanced cardiomyopathy and a rare blood type--is scheduled for a heart transplant. But when the president's heart craps out during a photo op three months before the national election, the White House chief of staff orders the FBI to seize the heart that was going to Rose--all in the name of democracy. But Spence isn't about to let anybody steal what rightfully belongs to his mom. So with the help of his reluctant older brother, they hijack the heart, inadvertently kidnap a beautiful cardiac surgery resident, and take to the road in a '65 Mustang--with all the president's men in potentially murderous pursuit.
--Kinky Friedman, author of Kill Two Birds and Get StonedIn 1977, Innes Haldane was one of seven extremely dysfunctional teenagers incarcerated in the Unit, an avant-garde psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Edinburgh. There, she and her fellow inmates were forced into each other's lives, exposed to each other's pasts, and now share a collective memory.
Since then, they have spent their adult lives trying to forget the unspeakable acts that sent them there and the terrible secret that occurred behind its walls . . . until a message on Innes's answering machine with a voice from the past interrupts the quiet life she has tried so hard to make for herself. There is a murderer stalking the former inmates, and the only way for them to save themselves is by reuniting -- no matter what the emotional cost. If the killer doesn't shatter their new lives, the memories being brought back to light just might.
Now Innes must contact the others before someone else finds them first. . . .
The year is 1962. John Glenn is in orbit, Audrey Hepburn is breakfasting outside Tiffany's, Elvis is recording Bossa Nova Baby, and in Istanbul, a middle-aged Dutch spy has just met a fiery death. Enter Jack Mallory and Laura Morse, clandestine operatives for the Consultancy. He's a laconic ex-soldier from the oil fields of Corpus Christi; she's a wintrily beautiful Boston Brahmin and an adept at Floating Hand karate. The murdered man was their colleague, and the Consultancy has ordered them to exact revenge on the genially murderous Piotr Nemerov and the playboy-turned-arms-dealer Anton Rauth, who is holed up in his HQ in an extinct South Seas volcano preparing for a literally earthshaking confrontation.
Into the Volcano is an homage to James Bond, Modesty Blaise, and the golden age of the spy thriller, a time when America was still innocent and its enemies possessed a dash of Space Age style. It takes the reader from New York to Istanbul, from Cannes' balmy breezes to the island known as the Dragon's Throne, and at last into the molten heart of the Cold War.
Nick Ray lives in a world where everything is for sale. University Ph.D.s, pig fetuses, bomb shelters, and vending-machine-dispensed live bait, to name just a few. But for the first time in a long time, Nick Ray finally has something to sell.
Determined to be covert about an affair he's having with a woman already spoken for (by another woman), Nick buys the cheapest computer he can find at a local pawn shop, only to discover that the hard drive contains the names and addresses of dozens of members of the Witness Protection Program.
Partnering with a hulking Russian gangster with the world's worst fashion sense and a disbarred lawyer who drinks rocket fuel, Nick decides to take advantage of his unique discovery. Yet despite the impressive credentials of this entrepreneurial dream team, Nick soon learns that having something to sell can end up simply making you a valuable commodity to someone else wanting to make a big score ...
Could the curse of the Bambino be over? For too many miserable seasons, the Boston Red Sox have endured nothing but defeatand heartbreak.
Finally, there is hope in the sensational Ron Kane, a strapping rookie pitcher whose fastball scorches the radar gun at an ungodly 110 miles per hour. He can also handle the bat. And play the outfield. With Kane dazzling sellout crowds, the Red Sox are suddenly a juggernaut.
The only fly in the ointment is the fact that murder seems to be stalking the club. Wherever the Sox play, a killer strikes, marking his victims with strange ritualistic symbols. Is a fan responsible for the carnage as he follows the team from town to town? Or could it be that the madman wears a Red Sox uniform?Screwball is not just a savage morality tale; it is a hard-hitting, laugh-out-loud look at the greatest battle in modern-day sports: the struggle for sanity.
Samantha Ranvali can't sleep. Haunted by nightmares and the memory of a man who attacked her years ago, she seeks a cure for her insomnia through an experimental study called Endymion's Circle. The treatment seems to be a success, but after her first full night of sleep in months, Samantha learns that one of the other participants in the study has been murdered. The body is found crucified upside down, and a recording of J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations plays at the scene. As an old lover investigates the crime, he draws Samantha into a mystery that spans over two hundred years and suggests something far more sinister than the police expect. And with each night of Samantha's newfound sleep, she awakens to another ritualistic crime. Every clue takes her deeper into her own past, her own history of loss, pain, and desperation. Every murder reveals that a dark curse has taken hold of her world. And every clue brings her closer to the revelation that she is the next victim. Here is stunning suspense that plays masterfully with the conventions of the genre and perfectly blends historical richness with modern-day terror.
In the fall of '73, Brooklyn, New York, is home to worn-down hotels, wiseguys, immigrants, the disturbed, the disenfranchised, and a few people just trying to make an honest buck. When Silvano Iurata's troubled brother, Noonie, rumored to be living in Brooklyn Heights, goes missing, Silvano returns to a place he swore he'd never set foot in again.
Silvano left Brooklyn a long time ago -- wanting to leave behind his family and their seedy mob connections, and a past that just won't stay buried. The jungles of Viet Nam felt more hospitable to him than his own hometown; now that he's back, he doesn't intend to stay for long. His cousin Domenic has harbored a deadly grudge against him for something that happened when they were teenagers, but they aren't kids anymore, and his cousin has some dangerous friends. Silvano needs to find out what happened to his brother and get out -- fast.
A tale of revenge and redemption, The Angel of Montague Street has the same vivid characters, razor-sharp detail, and dead-on dialogue that made Norman Green's debut novel, Shooting Dr. Jack, an unforgettable snapshot of life on the streets of Brooklyn. With its perceptive, poignant heart and gripping plot, this is literary suspense at its best.
What actions must a boy take to become a man? One might use a razor to clear his first growth of beard, while another could employ it as a weapon -- both actions might be a fitting rite of passage.
In these dazzling works of fiction, seventeen masters of crime and suspense explore what it means to be a son, what it means to be a father, what it means to be a man. Spanning continents and decades, the stories are set in interconnected worlds both instantly recognizable and astonishingly believable, from long stretches on a dry Texas highway to a bleak London alley, from the claustrophobic confines of an after-hours backroom poker game to a rundown jazz joint in Manhattan.
Amid card sharks, revolvers, and shallow graves, the characters who inhabit these stories strive to discover what is right, what will give them dignity, what will earn them respect. Whether at the age of ten or thirty-five, all will come face-to-face with a situation that will brutally separate the men from the boys.
Martin Brock is living a wasted life. He wants to be happy. He wants to have a girlfriend who can stand to be near him. He wants his friends to respect him. Burned out and self-deluded, he takes each day as it comes, dealing low-quality cocaine to tourists, his head in a perpetual cloud of pot smoke. Martin knows he's in a rut, but he lacks the will to dig himself out. Incapable of changing his life, he hopes instead that one day something momentous will simply fall into his lap.
And, one day, it does. An old friend rides into town, unannounced and uninvited, needing a place to lie low for a couple of days. He says he's been in a motorcycle accident, and hides a badly infected leg beneath his expensive leathers. Martin almost cares, but he's far more interested in what's concealed beneath the seat of the bike: five kilos of high-grade cocaine. Suddenly Martin has the means to escape his miserable existence: all he needs is a little time and a lot of luck. But Martin Brock is not a lucky man. He's spent years dreaming of a life of ease, a life of plenty, and a life of unlimited narcotics. By the end of the week, he'll settle for any life at all.