The Essence of Evil


Rob Sinclair - 2019
    He’s a murderer.He’s your twin. When D.I Dani Stephens returns to work after the attack that almost ended her life, she’s quickly plunged into a horrific new case, as dead bodies are discovered on the streets of Birmingham. But with no link between the victims, Dani has to get inside a killer’s mind - so turns to the murderer she knows best. Her own twin brother… But what makes a psychopath? Can understanding her twin help her find a murderer who leaves no trace? As the circle closes on Dani, the clock is ticking and she needs a breakthrough – before she becomes the latest victim. A heart-stopping crime thriller that fans of Peter James and Mark Billingham won’t be able to put down.

A Cutthroat Business


Jenna Bennett - 2010
    But Savannah doesn’t think she’s supposed to take the warning literally ... until an early morning phone call sends her to an empty house on the ‘bad’ side of town, where she finds herself standing over the butchered body of a competitor, face to face with the boy her mother always warned her about. Rafe Collier is six feet three inches of testosterone and trouble; tall, dark, and dangerous, with a murky past and no future—not the kind of guy a perfect Southern Belle should want to tangle with. In any way. But wherever Savannah turns, there he is, and making no bones about what he wants from her. Now Savannah must figure out who killed real estate queen Brenda Puckett, make a success of her new career, and avoid getting killed—or kissed—by Rafe, all before the money in her savings account runs out and she has to go back to selling make-up at the mall.

Spider's Web


Mike Omer - 2016
    He stalks and murders young women seemingly at random, and he always warns them first… Twenty year old Kendele Byers is savagely killed and buried in a shallow grave. She had a violent past, a bizarre kinky line of work, and the suspect list grows longer every day. But when another woman is murdered, Detective Mitchell Lonnie realizes that there’s something much more sinister afoot, a connection between the two murders. Both victims had received a clue hinting their incoming demise several minutes before they were attacked. There’s a serial killer in Glenmore Park. Even worse, he seems to be accelerating his murder pace. Now Mitchell and his partner need to locate the killer before more innocent women die. But when his sister gets involved, Mitchell’s focus begins to unravel. Soon his pursuit becomes personal, and the stakes rise very high… Fans of Angela Marsons, Michael Connelly and Peter James will be hooked by this new police mystery novel

Blood Stained


Rebecca Bradley - 2021
    But now his own wife has gone missing.Then a large pool of blood is discovered in their garage. And Dominic is the prime suspect.Is Dominic being framed by a serial killer or will Claudia expose an even uglier truth?Can’t tell a soul how it ends.

Two Suns at Sunset


Gene Doucette - 2020
    Widely respected, nothing about Linus’s expertise suggests somebody might want him dead.Professor Linus is also Brother Linus, a high-ranking member of an ancient, powerful religious organization known as the House. This makes his murder much more complicated, but no more explicable, because murder on House grounds just doesn’t happen. Not even when one of the last things the victim did was steal something important from the House vault.Finally, Orno is also the younger brother of Calcut Linus, one of the most powerful and criminally dangerous people on the planet. Killing any Linus means incurring the wrath of a man for whom laws very rarely apply.In short, Professor Orno Linus is a highly unlikely murder victim.And yet, somebody killed him.The Cursed DetectiveDetective Makk Stidgeon already knows he’s unlucky. He’s a cholem: an outcast. A bad-luck charm. He was born this way, and has the brand on his wrist to prove it.But in terms of bad luck, the gods have really gone overboard by sticking him with the Linus case.Between a House leadership that seems more interested in retrieving their stolen artifact than in solving the murder of one of their own, the demands of the murderous Calcut Linus, a new partner who seems to know more than she’s telling, and an omnipresent news media constantly looking for an angle on the biggest story of the year, Makk barely has time to just follow the clues.And that’s before an impossible video surfaces that purports to reveal the killer’s identity. What makes it impossible? The person in the video couldn’t have possibly done it.To get to the bottom of the Orno’s murder, Makk will have to navigate between the House and the Linus family, find the source of the video, and figure out what’s missing from the House vault. Even if he can pull all that off, he may discover he’s not at the end of a mystery at all, but at the beginning of a much larger one.Tandemstar: The Outcast Cycle. The journey begins here.

The Hangman


Louise Penny - 2010
    On his run, he finds a dead man hanging from a tree. The man was a guest at the local Inn and Spa.The man might have been looking for peace and quiet, but something else found him. Something horrible. Did the man take his own life? Or was he murdered? Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to the crime scene. As Gamache follows the trail of clues, he opens a door into the past. And he learns the true reason why the man came to Three Pines. A quick and easy read for people on the go.Librarian's note: "The Hangman" is a short story and a one-off; it is not part of a larger collection of short stories.

Mallory


James Hadley Chase - 1969
    But the traitor, Mallory, proved more than a match for them, and two corpses later, the remaining three called in outside help. They chose Martin Corridon, an ex-commando, who accepted the job and planned a neat double-cross of his own once he had the money. But it didn't quite work out that way: Corridon found himself trailing Mallory from the dens of Soho to the wilds of a remote Scottish island...

The 1st Victim


Tami Hoag - 2013
    New Year’s Day is a time for new beginnings, but Minneapolis homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are focused on endings: specifically, the tragic end of their latest murder victim, an unidentified young woman discovered on the side of the freeway. Believed to be the victim of a serial killer, Kovac and Liska are determined to do the girl the small justice of returning her body to her family as they investigate her case, but it is no simple task matching the broken corpse to any of the scores of missing persons reports, especially when no one seems to be looking for her.Meanwhile, recent widow Jeannie Reiser is frantic when she is unable to get in touch with her daughter, Rose, who, as an eighteen-year-old, is a legal adult rather than a missing child in the eyes of the law. Jeannie’s desperate attempts to get the police to believe her child is in trouble lead her closer and closer to the New Year’s Doe and to an evil even Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska may be unable to stop. Tami Hoag once again proves her place as “one of the most intense suspense writers around”* with The 1st Victim. Includes an early look at The 9th Girl, coming July 2013.

The Appeal


Janice Hallett - 2021
    Another member is currently in prison for the crime. We have reason to suspect that they are innocent, and that there were far darker secrets that have yet to be revealed.We believe that the killer has given themselves away. It's there in writing, hidden in the emails, texts, and letters. In the events surrounding the charity appeal for little Poppy Reswick, and the question of whether that money was truly being used to fund her life-saving cancer treatment. Will you accept the challenge? Can you uncover the truth? Do you dare?

Murder, Curlers, and Cream


Arlene McFarlane - 2016
    Not only has she got a meddling mother, a wacky staff, and a dying business, but now she’s got a dead client who was strangled while awaiting her facial.With business the way it is, combing through this mystery may be the only way to save her salon. Until a second murder, an explosion, a kidnapping, death threats, and the hard-nosed Detective Romero complicate things. But Valentine will do anything to untangle the crime. That’s if she can keep her tools of the trade in her bag, keep herself alive, and avoid falling for the tough detective.In the end, how hard can that be?

Power in the Blood


Michael Lister - 1997
    In this debut novel Lister, a prison chaplain, introduces John Jordan, chaplain of a prison in the Florida Panhandle, who witnesses the bloody death of Potter Correctional Institution inmate Ike Johnson. Jordan discovers that in the closed society of captives and captors no action goes unseen, and no one takes kindly to a cop in a collar. He soon finds his reputation, his career, and even his life are at stake. "While writing Power in the Blood , I attempted to present Chaplain Jordan as a person who is in many ways quite ordinary despite being a man of the cloth. Like everyone else, Jordan attempts to find romance, deals with the demands of work on a daily basis, and struggles with his faith," said Michael Lister. "Despite the extraordinary violence that he must face and the misdeeds of fallen souls he endures, Jordan manages to pursue the investigation with honesty and grace. I think that makes him an unusual hero in today's mystery market." By offering up the sacred as well as the profane, Power in the Blood is sure to please both mystery readers and general fiction enthusiasts. Michael Lister was a chaplain with the Florida Department of Corrections from 1993 to 2000. During his tenure at Gulf Correctional, Lister earned these words of praise from his warden, "Chaplain Lister's un prejudiced concern for the welfare of staff as well as inmates has brought a spiritual soothing to both populations at this institution. He is an exceptionally gifted teacher, truly an angel, a shepherd to all."