Open Season


Archer Mayor - 1988
    Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont police force has a serious problem: in a community where a decade could pass without a single murder, the body count is suddenly mounting. Innocent citizens are being killed—and others set-up—seemingly orchestrated by a mysterious ski-masked man. Signs suggest that a three year-old murder trial might lie at the heart of things, but it’s a case that many in the department would prefer remained closed. A man of quiet integrity, Lt. Gunther knows that he must pursue the case to its conclusion, wherever it leads.Open Season is the first of Archer Mayor’s twenty-three Joe Gunther novels, a series of gripping police procedurals set in New England, where small-town charm, stoicism and civility sometimes conceal brutal truths.

The Widow File


S.G. Redling - 2013
    Receipts, parking tickets, the detritus of daily life—if you leave it behind, she will figure you out.Her latest case involves high-tech industrial espionage at a corporation with ties to the military. But when a team of assassins sweeps through the firm, stealing all files and killing her coworkers, Dani narrowly escapes. Whoever ordered the strike thinks Dani has vital information and they put a hit man named Booker on her trail.Armed with only her wits and a bag of random investigation materials, Dani must figure out who the enemy really is while playing a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with the cunning hit man who has an agenda of his own.

Orient


Christopher Bollen - 2015
    One late summer morning, the body of a local caretaker is found in the open water; the same day, a monstrous animal corpse is found on the beach, presumed a casualty from a nearby research lab. With rumors flying, eyes turn to Mills Chevern—a tumbleweed orphan newly arrived in town from the west with no ties and a hazy history. As the deaths continue and fear in town escalates, Mills is enlisted by Beth, an Orient native in retreat from Manhattan, to help her uncover the truth. With the clock ticking, Mills and Beth struggle to find answers, faced with a killer they may not be able to outsmart. Rich with character and incident, yet deeply suspenseful, Orient marks the emergence of a novelist of enormous talent.

The Watcher


Jo Robertson - 2011
    Working with a single-minded tenacity, she sets out to prove it.Deputy Sheriff Ben Slater hides his personal pain behind the job, but Kate's arrival in his county knocks his world on its axis. He wants to believe her wild theory, but the idea of a serial killer with the kind of pathology she proposes is too bizarre.Together they work to find a killer whose roots began in a small town in Bigler County, but whose violence spread across the nation. A Janus-like killer, more monster than man, he fixates on Kate. The killer wants nothing more than to kill the "purple-eyed girl again."

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.

The Darkest Flower


Kristin Wright - 2021
    Attempted murder? Inexplicable accident? Either way, a PTA mom struggled for her life in an elementary school cafeteria, poisoned by wolfsbane. Now all eyes are on the accused, the victim, and a woman hired to look deeper.Ambitious defense attorney and single mother Allison Barton is anxious to escape the shadow of the low-down dog of a marquee partner carrying their renowned Virginia law firm. A win for her high-profile new client will give Allison the career she deserves. And PTA president Kira Grant certainly appears innocent—except for the toxic bloom in her backyard and perhaps a bit of a malicious streak. But no one said the innocent had to be likable—or entirely honest. Besides, with an image as carefully cultivated as her garden, Kira would be insane to risk everything on something as outrageous as the attempted murder of one of her closest friends.What about those in Kira’s orbit, a sunny suburb of moms behaving badly? What do they really know about Kira? What does Kira know about them? For Allison, the answers are getting darker every day.

Flash


Tim Tigner - 2013
    Aside from raging headaches and no idea what's happened, they appear to have nothing in common. Troy thinks it's 2001 and he's still a combat surgeon fighting terrorists in Afghanistan. Emmy believes it's 2002 and she's still grifting a living from the streets of L.A.Are they archenemies or coconspirators? Lovers or friends? What are they doing in the Caribbean, and why is a Croatian assassin determined to kill them? The only thing they know for certain is that they'll be spending the rest of their lives in prison if the police catch them before they learn the truth.

The Good Lawyer


Thomas Benigno - 2012
    Working as a Bronx Legal Aid Attorney he learns how to twist the system, how to become an unbeatable defense lawyer, and he his peacock proud of his perfect record-not a single conviction. But it's 1982. The Spiderman rapist is on the loose and New York City is a city in fear. When an outraged rape victim commits suicide right before his eyes, searching for absolution, he grabs the headline case of a teacher’s aide accused of molesting three students. Armed with a firm belief in his client’s innocence, he knocks the pegs out from under the prosecution’s case. When one of the children turns up dead, he discovers that his client may be strangely connected to the Spiderman. Digging deeper, horrifying revelations about his family's past collide with the true identity of the sadistic sociopath behind the Spiderman's rampage. In the process, this good lawyer comes face-to-face with his greatest conflict and deepest fear: to win, really win-save the city and even the woman he loves-must he sacrifice every principle he believes in and embrace his family's mafia past to become judge, jury, and executioner?

Squall


Sean Costello - 2014
    On a clear winter morning he sets out in his Cessna 180 to do some repairs on a remote hunt camp, leaving his five year old son and very pregnant wife snug in their beds.On the return trip, a squall forces him into an emergency landing and he winds up—quite literally—in the lap of petty criminal Dale Knight. Dale, now a fugitive from the law—and worse, from a merciless drug lord who just happens to be his brother—draws Tom into a web of mayhem and treachery that puts not only his life at risk, but the lives of his wife, son…and unborn child.SQUALL is a fast-paced, darkly-comic tale of murder and gang-style retribution that grabs the reader on page one and simply does not let go.

The Hanover Square Affair


Ashley Gardner - 2003
    Cavalry captain Gabriel Lacey returns to Regency London from the Napoleonic wars, burned out, fighting melancholia, his career ended. His interest is perked when he learns of a missing girl, possibly kidnapped by a prominent member of Parliament. Lacey's search for the girl leads to the discovery of murder, corruption, and dealings with a leader of the underworld. He faces his own disorientation transitioning from a soldier's life to the civilian world at the same time, redefining his role with his former commanding officer and making new friends--from the top of society to the street girls of Covent Garden.#1 of the Captain Lacey Regency Mysteries series.This is a full-length novel, e-version of The Hanover Square Affair, previously published in print by Berkley Prime Crime.

Still Waters


Viveca Sten - 2008
    Before long, he has identified the deceased as Krister Berggren, a bachelor from the mainland who has been missing for months. All signs point to an accident—until another brutalized corpse is found at the local bed-and-breakfast. But this time it is Berggren’s cousin, whom Thomas interviewed in Stockholm just days before.As the island’s residents reel from the news, Thomas turns to his childhood friend, local lawyer Nora Linde. Together, they attempt to unravel the riddles left behind by these two mysterious outsiders—while trying to make sense of the difficult twists their own lives have taken since the shared summer days of their youth.

The Six


Anni Taylor - 2017
    She's stunned when she's offered a lifeline: A program that includes a six-day stay in a Greek monastery, six challenges and a chance at sixty thousand dollars. There is just one condition - she must keep it secret. Evie's husband Gray is gutted to find the note that Evie left behind. Why did she leave and where did she go? And is she ever coming back? But his anger turns to alarm as he begins to piece together the circumstances of his wife's disappearance. When Evie's car is found burned in woodland, the police suspect him of murdering Evie. Gray has got one chance to get out of the country and find Evie - before he's arrested for something he didn't do.Too late, Evie discovers the chilling truth about the program and the island itself. And the closer she gets to finding an escape, the closer the deadly danger lurking in the depths of the monastery gets to her.

Murder in the Marais


Cara Black - 1999
    Especially since her father, the late police detective, was killed in the line of duty. But when an elderly Jewish man approaches Aimée with a top-secret decoding job on behalf of a woman in his synagogue, Aimée unwittingly takes on more than she is expecting. She drops off her findings at her client’s house in the Marais, Paris’s historic Jewish quarter, and finds the woman strangled, a swastika carved on her forehead. With the help of her partner, René, Aimée sets out to solve this horrendous murder, but finds herself in an increasingly dangerous web of ancient secrets and buried war crimes.

Don't Lie to Me


Willow Rose - 2019
    She's the town's most beloved surf idol, and it was believed that she could be the next Kelly Slater.As another child, the son of a well-known senator is kidnapped, and the parents receive a disturbing video, FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas — who has just returned to her hometown, divorced and out of a job — plunges into the investigation, breaking her promise to her children not to do police work again.Local law enforcement, with her old flame Matt Miller in charge, are the ones who ask for her help in a case so unsettling that only she can solve it. But the deeper they dig, the deadlier it becomes for Matt and Eva Rae. Soon, everyone she holds dear is in grave danger as this case hits a little too close to home. DON’T LIE TO ME is the first book in the Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Series and can be read as a standalone.

The Reincarnationist


M.J. Rose - 1999
    Equal parts modern-day thriller, historical fiction, and love story, with one foot in present-day Rome and New York City, and the other in Rome some 1600 years ago.Photojournalist Josh Ryder survives a terrorist's bomb, only to be haunted by near-hallucinatory memories of a past life in Rome as a pagan priest whose dangerous congress with Sabina, one of the Vestal Virgins, poses a transgression so serious the lovers will face a certain death if exposed. Scents of jasmine and sandalwood and images of furtive liaisons and violence descend on Josh at will, pulling him to an ancient yet strangely familiar Roman burial chamber harboring the remains of a woman clutching a wooden box.A trail of present-day murders takes the reader deeper into a labyrinth at whose heart lies the enigma of a collection of ancient gems, or memory stones, whose origins trace back to both ancient Egypt and India. The stones' promise to "assist the wearer in reaching his next incarnation" sets the ancient and modern worlds on a collision course.The question of who we are cannot be asked without first asking who we were, according to the author. Rose attempts to answer that question based on her own reincarnation research and on the writings of others, spanning thousands of years.