Company Town


Madeline Ashby - 2016
    One of the few in her community to forego bio-engineered enhancements, she’s the last truly organic person left on the rig. But she’s an expert in the arts of self-defence, and she’s been charged with training the Family’s youngest, who has been receiving death threats – seemingly from another timeline. Meanwhile, a series of interconnected murders threatens the city’s stability – serial killer? Or something much, much worse...?

Dark of the Moon


John Sandford - 2007
    First it was the army and the military police, then the police in St. Paul, and finally Lucas Davenport had brought him into the BCA, promising him, "We'll only give you the hard stuff." He'd been doing the hard stuff for three years now — but never anything like this.In the small town of Bluestem, where everybody knows everybody, a house way up on a ridge explodes into flames, its owner, a man named Judd, trapped inside. There is a lot of reason to hate him, Flowers discovers. Years ago, Judd had perpetrated a scam that'd driven a lot of local farmers out of business, even to suicide. There are also rumors swirling around of some very dicey activities with other men's wives, of involvement with some nutcase religious guy, and of an out-of-wedlock daughter. In fact, Flowers concludes, you'd probably have to dig around to find a person who didn't despise him.That wasn't even the reason Flowers had come to Bluestem. Three weeks before, there'd been another murder — two, in fact, a doctor and his wife. The doctor was found propped up in his backyard, both eyes shot out. There hadn't been a murder in Bluestem in years — and now suddenly three? Flowers knows two things: this wasn't a coincidence, and it had to be personal.But just how personal is something even he doesn't realize, and may not find out until too late. Because the next victim... may be himself.Librarian's note: as of 2021, there are 13 volumes in the author's Virgil Flowers series. The last was published in April 2021. It is in the "Prey" series but Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers share the billing - "Ocean Prey."

Nailed


Joseph Flynn - 2010
    Then he left L.A. to become the chief of police in the Sierra Nevada resort town of Goldstrike. One sunny morning in the mountains, though, he comes upon a crime unlike anything he’s ever seen before. He finds the body of an African American man nailed to a tree. The victim is a highly respected minister, and his father is the nationally known televangelist Jimmy Thunder. Ron, on the other hand, has described himself in court as a recovering bigot. Goldstrike’s mayor for life and movie icon, Clay Steadman, wants Ron to catch the killer fast. Adding to the pressure, the victim’s grandmother comes to town. She tells the media mob that has descended on Goldstrike that God will curse the town until the killer is caught. That’s when a rogue mountain lion begins attacking people. At first, the attacks happen on the wilderness outskirts of Goldstrike. Then the predator moves into town, leaping a fence into a family’s backyard. Finally, it turns the tables on one of the hunters sent out to bring it down. Looking for a killer, hunting a lion and defending his own integrity — makes being a cop in L.A. seem like the good old days.

The Merchant's House


Kate Ellis - 1998
    Then Wesley's old friend from university, archaeologist Neil Watson, unearths the bodies of a strangled young woman and a new-born baby on the site of a seventeenth century merchant's house: though luckily for the overstretched police force the skeletons are centuries old. But as the search for the missing child intensifies and the true identity of the body on the cliff path is established, Wesley begins to suspect a tragic link, spanning the centuries, between his investigations and Neil's: for motives of jealousy, sexual obsession and desperate longing are as old as time. And when the dark secret of the merchant's house is finally revealed, Wesley must act swiftly to avert a further tragedy.

Carved in Bone


Jefferson Bass - 2006
    The real-life scientist who founded the "Body Farm" has broken cold cases and revolutionized forensics . . . and now he spins an astonishing tale inspired by his own experiences.Renowned anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton has spent his career surrounded by death at the Body Farm. Now he's being called upon to help solve a baffling puzzle in a remote mountain community. The mummified corpse of a young woman dead for thirty years has been discovered in a cave, the body bizarrely preserved and transformed by the environment's unique chemistry. But Brockton's investigation is threatening to open old wounds among an insular people who won't forget or forgive. And a long-buried secret prematurely exposed could inflame Brockton's own guilt—and the dangerous hostility of bitter enemies determined to see him fail . . . by any means necessary.With Fascinating Insider Information on the Body Farm!

The Mistress Of Nothing


Kate Pullinger - 2009
    But when her debilitating tuberculosis means exile, she and her devoted lady's maid, Sally, set sail for Egypt. It is Sally who describes, with a mixture of wonder and trepidation, the odd menage marshalled by the resourceful Omar, which travels down the Nile to a new life in Luxor. When Lady Duff Gordon undoes her stays and takes to native dress, throwing herself into weekly salons; language lessons; excursions to the tombs; Sally too adapts to a new world, affording her heady and heartfelt freedoms never known before. But freedom is a luxury that a maid can ill-afford, and when Sally grasps more than her status entitles her to, she is brutally reminded that she is mistress of nothing.

Déjà Dead


Kathy Reichs - 1997
    In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Quebec. When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Temperance detects an alarming pattern and she plunges into a harrowing search for a killer. But her investigation is about to place those closest to her, her best friend and her own daughter, in mortal danger...

Sleeping Beauty


Phillip Margolin - 2004
    Tonight the audience waits to hear Miles discuss recent developments in his sister's case -- unaware that pieces of this complex puzzle of violence, unknown even to the author, are about to be revealed.Six years earlier, life was much simpler for everyone involved, especially seventeen-year-old Ashley Spencer, a popular high school soccer star. Then one night an intruder entered Ashley's home and murdered her father and her best friend. Traumatized and suffering from a crippling sense of survivor guilt, Ashley is ready to give up on both soccer and life until help comes from an unexpected source -- a scholarship to an elite private school is extended to her by school dean Casey Van Meter. The school quickly becomes a haven for both Ashley and her mother, Terri. As Ashley regains her sense of self through the school's soccer program, Terri joins a writing group for adults led by Joshua Maxfield, a former literary wunderkind who has disappeared from the bestseller lists since his second book was panned by both critics and fans.Then tragedy strikes again and Ashley has to run for her life, unaware that the key to her survival is in the one book she's afraid to read -- Sleeping Beauty.

An Incomplete Revenge / Among the Mad


Jacqueline Winspear - 2011
    A peculiar secrecy shrouds the village, and ultimately Maisie must draw on her finely-honed skills of detection to solve one of her most intriguing cases yet. Among the Mad , by Jacqueline Winspear(Maisie Dobbs novel #6)On the way to see a client, Maisie Dobbs witnesses a man commit suicide on a busy London street. The following day, the Prime Minister's office receives a letter threatening a massive loss of life if certain demands are not met--and the writer mentions Maisie by name. Tapped by Scotland Yard's elite Special Branch to be a special adviser on the case, Maisie is soon involved in a race against time to find a man who proves he has the knowledge and will to inflict destruction on thousands of innocent people.

The Crooked Maid


Dan Vyleta - 2013
    The war is over, and as the initial phase of de-Nazification winds down, the citizens of Vienna struggle to rebuild their lives amidst the rubble.Anna Beer returns to the city she fled nine years earlier after discovering her husband's infidelity. She has come back to find him and, perhaps, to forgive him. Traveling on the same train from Switzerland is 18-year-old Robert Seidel, a schoolboy summoned home to his stepfather's sickbed and the secrets of his family's past.As Anna and Robert navigate an unrecognizable city, they cross paths with a war-widowed American journalist, a hunchbacked young servant girl, and a former POW whose primary purpose is to survive by any means and to forget. Meanwhile, in the shells of burned-out houses and beneath the bombed-out ruins, a ghost of a man, his head wrapped in a red scarf, battles demons from his past and hides from a future deeply uncertain for all.In The Crooked Maid, Dan Vyleta returns to the shadows of war-darkened Vienna, proving himself once again "a magical storyteller, master of the macabre" (David Park).

Bust


Ken Bruen - 2006
    When you hire someone to kill your wife, don’t hire a psychopath.2. Drano is not the best tool for getting rid of a dead body.3. Those locks on hotel room doors? Not very secure.4. A curly blond wig isn’t much of a disguise.5. Secrets can kill.

Alias Grace


Margaret Atwood - 1996
    Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders.An up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories?Captivating and disturbing, Alias Grace showcases best-selling, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood at the peak of her powers.

A Firing Offense


George Pelecanos - 1992
    Blow-out sales and shady deals are his life. When a stockroom boy hooked on speed metal and the fast life disappears, Nick has to help find him.

Home to Woefield


Susan Juby - 2011
    But the bank is about to foreclose, so Prudence must turn things around fast! Fortunately she'll have help from Earl, her banjo-playing foreman with a family secret; Seth, the neighbor who hasn't left the house since a high school scandal; and Sara Spratt, an eleven-year-old who's looking for a home for her prize-winning chickens.Home to Woefield is about learning how to take on a challenge, face your fears, and find friendship in the most unlikely of places.

When the Bough Breaks


Jonathan Kellerman - 1985
    It's a good one!We meet Dr. Morton Handler who practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.Psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware's job is to unlock the terrible secret buried in Melody's memory. As the sinister shadows in the girl's mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that the mystery touches a shocking incident in his own past. This connection is only the beginning, a single link in a forty-year-old conspiracy. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent victim: Melody Quinn.