The Wyatt Butterfly: Two Barrels of Classic Wyatt


Garry Disher - 2010
    Cool and efficient as always, Wyatt bypasses the alarm system, snatches the cash and eludes the cops. But can he make it safely back to his bolthole in Hobart?Port Vila Blues is Wyatt's fifth heist, this time leading him to a reckoning far from home. The Fallout finds Wyatt on a boat with policewoman Liz Redding and a fortune in stolen gems. He escapes, triggering a manhunt, but who exactly is hunting him? In this sixth Wyatt novel, Wyatt joins forces with his nephew to pull off one of his trickiest robberies-and his most dangerous task yet.'Disher's writing is as lean and relentless as his hero. No one does dryly poetic evocations of paranoia and human folly more seductively.' Australian

Limbus, Inc.


Jonathan Maberry - 2013
    We employ. 1-800-555-0606 How lucky do you feel? So reads the business card from LIMBUS, INC., a shadowy employment agency that operates at the edge of the normal world. LIMBUS's employees are just as suspicious and ephemeral as the motives of the company, if indeed it could be called a company in the ordinary sense of the word. In this shared-world anthology, five heavy hitters from the dark worlds of horror, fantasy, and scifi pool their warped takes on the shadow organization that offers employment of the most unusual kind to those on the fringes of society. One thing's for sure - you'll never think the same way again about the fine print on your next employment application!

The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl


Bryce C. Anderson - 2012
    Once her neural paths were scanned and the pattern uploaded to an enormous bank of computers, she could be happy and carefree. No more aging, dandruff, fear of death, or any of the other drawbacks of hauling her own squishy meatsack hither and yon.But her new life is a troubled one. As she learns to enhance her own intelligence, she grows alienated from her old life. She has no legal rights, and the government is trying to shut her down and steal her research.But when a nuke detonates over Manhattan, Helen devotes her growing power to bringing the culprit to justice. She uncovers a force bent not on geopolitical power, but on the extinction of all humankind.Will our heroine be enslaved or deleted by the Feds? Can she avert an impending war with China? How will she find time to finish her doctoral thesis? And (hey, we're trying not to judge) isn't Dr. Mellings way too old for her?Alternately goofy and dark, The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl tells the story of a singular woman, and a life lived at an exponential pace.

On, Off


Colleen McCullough - 2005
    The year is 1965, the setting a university town in Connecticut, and serial killers are still referred to as "multiple murderers." Profiling hasn't even begun, so Delmonico has to go it alone on a frantic learning curve that has the killer always two steps ahead of him." "The story begins when parts of the body of a young woman are found in a research center for neurology privately funded by one of the university's greatest benefactors." "It swiftly develops that the killer is very possibly a member of the research facility and that this is not his first murder. With great cunning and daring, he targets a "type" of young woman, following which the women are subjected to unspeakable torture and rape, and finally a horrible death." "The suspects are many and varied, and include a wealthy and ambitious young Indian eager to win a Nobel Prize; the professional head of the institute, who does something peculiar in his basement; an internationally renowned epilepsy clinician; a neurochemist with a taste for fine food, wine, and music; a Japanese with rarefied and strange tastes; and a business manager named Desdemona Dupre, a tough, well-educated woman, full of common sense, for whom Delmonico feels a growing, risky attraction." As the serial murders begin to mount - the killer is getting more and more bloodthirsty and bold - and the media and anguished parents begin to put pressure on the governor, Delmonico and the forceful, enigmatic Miss Dupre are drawn deeper and deeper into the secrets of the suspects and toward an old family scandal as shocking as it is bizarre. But is the scandal something quite separate, or does it lie at the roots of the present killings?

The Silent Dead


Tetsuya Honda - 2006
    Reiko Himekawa and her squad take the case. The victim was slaughtered brutally---his wounds are bizarre, and no one can figure out the "what" or the "why" of this crime.At age twenty-nine, Reiko Himekawa of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's Homicide Division is young to have been made lieutenant, particularly because she lacks any kind of political or family connections. Despite barriers created by age, gender, and lack of connections, she is mentally tough, oblivious to danger, and has an impressive ability to solve crimes.Reiko makes a discovery that leads the police to uncover eleven other bodies, all wrapped in the same sort of plastic. Few of the bodies are identifiable, but the ones that are have no connection to each other. The only possible clue is a long shot lead to a website spoken only in whispers on the Internet, something on the dark web known as "Strawberry Night."But while she is hunting the killer, the killer is hunting her... and she may very well have been marked as the next victim.

In the Woods


Tana French - 2007
    But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one of the children. He is gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood-filled sneakers and unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours.Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad and keeps his past a secret. But when a 12-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he and Detective Cassie Maddox (his partner and closest friend) find themselves investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now, with only snippets of long-buried memories to guide him, Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.A gorgeously written novel that marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in psychological suspense.

Speaking In Tongues


Jeffery Deaver - 1995
    One seeking only peace. The other, violence." Tate Collier, once one of the country's finest trial lawyers, is trying to forget his past. Now a divorced gentleman farmer, land developer, and community advocate in rural Virginia, he's regrouping from some disastrous mistakes in the realms of love and the law. But controversy -- and danger -- seem to have an unerring hold on Tate. Even as he struggles to rebuild his life, his alter ego is plotting his demise.Aaron Matthews, a brilliant psychologist, has turned his talents away from curing patients to far deadlier goals. He's targeted Tate, Tate's ex-wife, Bett, and their estranged daughter, Megan, for unspeakable revenge. Matthews, ruthless and hell-bent, will destroy anything that inhibits his plans. When their daughter disappears, Tate and Bett reunite in a desperate, heart-pounding attempt to find her and to stop Matthews, a psychopath whose gift of a glib tongue and talent for coercion are as dangerous as knives and guns. Featuring an urgent race against the clock, gripping details of psychological manipulation, and the brilliant twists and turns that are trademark Deaver, "Speaking in Tongues" delivers the suspense punch that has made this author a bestseller. It will leave you speechless.

Ill Will


Dan Chaon - 2017
    “We are always telling a story to ourselves, about ourselves,” Dustin Tillman likes to say. It’s one of the little mantras he shares with his patients, and it’s meant to be reassuring. But what if that story is a lie?A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his forties when he hears the news: His adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. The trial came to symbolize the 1980s hysteria over Satanic cults; despite the lack of physical evidence, the jury believed the outlandish accusations Dustin and his cousin made against Rusty. Now, after DNA analysis has overturned the conviction, Dustin braces for a reckoning.Meanwhile, one of Dustin’s patients gets him deeply engaged in a string of drowning deaths involving drunk college boys. At first Dustin dismisses talk of a serial killer as paranoid thinking, but as he gets wrapped up in their amateur investigation, Dustin starts to believe that there’s more to the deaths than coincidence. Soon he becomes obsessed, crossing all professional boundaries—and putting his own family in harm’s way.From one of today’s most renowned practitioners of literary suspense, Ill Will is an intimate thriller about the failures of memory and the perils of self-deception. In Dan Chaon’s nimble, chilling prose, the past looms over the present, turning each into a haunted place.

Strong Arm Tactics


Jody Lynn Nye - 2005
    Daivid Wolfe has been assigned to X-Ray Company, a repository for outsiders, oddballs, and undesirables that the Galactic Defense Force doesn't want to have to deal with but can't find a legitimate way to discharge. He is the eldest child and only son of one of the most powerful figures in the Thousand Worlds Confederation, who can't imagine why Daivid would ever want to join the army. Central Command - uneasily aware of his connections - sent him to the most unsavory unit in the space service, the Cockroaches. Wolfe takes the assignment as almost a sacred cause, determined to straighten out his company, whip it into a self-respecting fighting force, and make it proud of itself. As for the Cockroaches, they've chewed up and spat out gung-ho young lieutenants before-but have they underestimated Daivid Wolfe? They're sent on what ought to be a cream-puff assignment, a simple courier mission to the greatest amusement park in the galaxy, and end up defending the population from a ruthless enemy in the only way the Cockroaches know how: unconventionally.

Some Dead Genius


Lenny Kleinfeld - 2014
    Their hunt for a slippery serial killer is complicated by interference from their superiors, and the FBI, and a ruthless City Hall fixer, and a brutal Mob boss. Because this is a story about how Chicago works, and the marketing of fine art.

Creepy Crawly (DI Jake Sawyer, #1)


Andrew Lowe - 2018
    Sharp, tough and pathologically fearless.Now he’s quit the capital and returned to his home town in England’s Peak District, to investigate the savage murder of his mother, thirty years earlier.When the body of a teenage boy is found in a shallow grave, close to woodland where Sawyer used to play as a child, he’s called in to help decode the killer’s nightmarish methods.But as the victims stack up and the case takes an unexpected turn, Sawyer must risk his own life to hunt the hunter and save an innocent. Creepy Crawly is Book One in the DI Jake Sawyer series. Dive in now and discover a new breed of detective, with stories that reveal the dark side of one of England's brightest beauty spots. Praise for Andrew Lowe:"Prose that gets under your flesh and into your bones.""Taut and compelling. Not a wasted word.""Plot and character perfectly intertwined.""Keeps you reading through the night.""Poetic and utterly gripping."(Amazon reviews).

Zoo Station


David Downing - 2007
    He writes human-interest pieces for British and American papers, avoiding the investigative journalism that could get him deported. But as war approaches, he faces the prospect of having to leave his son and his longtime girlfriend. Then, an acquaintance from his communist days approaches him to do some work for the Soviets. Russell is reluctant but ultimately unable to resist. He becomes involved in other dangerous activities, helping a Jewish family and an idealistic American reporter. When the British and the Nazis notice his involvement with the Soviets, Russell is dragged into the world of warring intelligence services.

Jurassic Dead


David Sakmyster - 2014
    After one thaws and wakes ravenously hungry, it becomes apparent that death, like life, will find a way. Environmental activist Alex Ramirez, son of the expedition’s paleontologist, came to Antarctica to defend the organisms from extinction, but soon learns that it is the human race that needs protecting.

These Toxic Things


Rachel Howzell Hall - 2021
    When her latest client, Nadia Denham, a curio shop owner, dies from an apparent suicide, Mickie honors the old woman’s last wish and begins curating her peculiar objets d’art. A music box, a hair clip, a key chain―twelve mementos in all that must have meant so much to Nadia, who collected them on her flea market scavenges across the country.But these tokens mean a lot to someone else, too. Mickie has been receiving threatening messages to leave Nadia’s past alone.It’s becoming a mystery Mickie is driven to solve. Who once owned these odd treasures? How did Nadia really come to possess them? Discovering the truth means crossing paths with a long-dormant serial killer and navigating the secrets of a sinister past. One that might, Mickie fears, be inescapably entwined with her own.

Lola on Fire


Rio Youers - 2021
    Just when he expects the cops to arrive, the phone rings. It’s Blair Mayo—the woman he bumped into—and she’s got the missing billfold.Brody will get it back, but only if he does her a favor: steal her late mother’s diamonds from her wicked stepmom. But when he gets to the house, he finds a gruesome crime scene—and a security camera. Brody knows he’s been framed.Back home, the terrified young man gets another call. The police won’t get the incriminating video footage, Blair says. Instead, her daddy, the notorious mobster Jimmy Latzo, will exact his own kind of revenge. Brody and Molly realize that they’ve become pawns in a mysterious game—one that involves a notorious enforcer named Lola Bear who brutally crossed paths with Jimmy Latzo twenty-six years before. . . a ghost from the past who is intimately connected to their lives.