Dr Alex Delaware doesn't see many private patients any more, but for a young woman called Lucy Lowell he's prepared to make an exception. Referred to him by the police detective Milo Sturgis, Lucy had been a juror at the harrowing trial of a serial killer, and having survived that trauma is now being subjected to further emotional stress: a recurrent nightmare of a young child in a forest at night, watching something as furtive as it is disturbing.Now Lucy's dream is starting to disrupt her waking life, and Alex believes the power of the dream and its grip on her emotions may be a repressed childhood memory of something very real.

Psychologist-sleuth Alex Delaware hunts for clues to the death of an old flame, Sharon Ransom, a search that takes him through California 's wealthy enclaves and one family's dark past.

The slightly retarded fifteen-year-old daughter of a diplomat dies on a school field trip – forced or lured into a deserted corner of the Santa Monica mountains and killed in cold blood. Her father adamantly denies the possibility of a political motive, which leaves LAPD detective Milo Sturgis and his longtime friend Alex Delaware to pose the question: why? The victim's father is so intent on controlling the investigation that Alex and Milo start to wonder if he wants to bring out the truth – or make sure it stays buried. Then there is another killing, and within days Alex finds himself ensnared in one of the darkest, most menacing cases of his career. Driven to find answers, he and Milo will work closely with Inspector Daniel Sharavi, the brilliant Israeli police detective introduced in Jonathan Kellerman's The Butcher's Theatre, but it is Alex who goes undercover, alone, to expose the smug brutality of a murderous conspiracy and a terrifying contempt for human life. Weaving together the threads of a mystery that lead from a child's murder to a young scientist's suicide, Jonathan Kellerman draws one of the most chilling, frighteningly realistic portraits of evil you will ever experience.

Alex Delaware nigdy jeszcze nie spotkał się z podobnym przypadkiem. Pięcioletni Woody Swope jest bardzo ciężko chory, a jednak jego rodzice nie wyrażają zgody na kurację, która może uratować mu życie. Alex jedzie do szpitala, by przekonać ich do zmiany decyzji. Na miejscu okazuje się, że zarówno rodzice, jak i syn zniknęli, a w obskurnym pokoju hotelowym, w którym się zatrzymali, pozostałą tylko plama krwi a podłodze… Delaware i jego przyjaciel, detektyw z wydziału zabójstw, Milo Sturgis, nie mają wyboru – będą musieli działać na pograniczu prawa. Przenikają zatem do amoralnego półświatka, w którym można kupić wszystko: narkotyki, marzenia i seks…

Thieves, liars, killers, and conspirators – it's a criminal world out there, and someone has got to write about it. An eclectic collection of the year's best reportage, The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 brings together the murderers and the masterminds, the mysteries and missteps that make for brilliant stories, told by the aces of the true-crime genre. This latest addition to the highly acclaimed series features guest editor Jonathan Kellerman, bestselling author of more than twenty crime novels, most recently Compulsion and the forthcoming Bones.

She was found stabbed to death on a quiet, shaded street in one of Los Angeles ' safest neighbourhoods. For three months the police have found no clues to the murder of Hope Devane, psychology professor and controversial author of a pop-psych bestseller, and angry indictment of men. Now homicide detective Milo Sturgis, newly assigned to the case, turns to his friend, psychologist Dr Alex Delaware, looking for insights into Devane's life. To both men the cold stalking of Hope Devane suggests calculation fuelled by hate – an execution. They discover why as they unlock, one by one, the very private compartments of her life: her marriage, her shadowy work for a Beverly Hills clinic, the Conduct Committee she ran with an iron hand at the University, and her baffling link to another murder victim. But it is when Alex delves into her childhood that he begins to understand the formidable woman she was – and the ties that entangled her life until the horrifying act of betrayal that ended it.

Dedicated young psychologist Dr. Jeremy Carrier is unschooled in the ways of violent crime and incalculable evil – until his life is irreversibly touched by both. When his romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, he is left emotionally devastated and being warily eyed by police seeking a prime suspect in the unsolved killing. To escape the pain, he buries himself in his work. But when more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion as Jocelyn, the suspicion surrounding Jeremy intensifies and the only way for him to prove his innocence is to follow the trail of a cunning psychopath.Spurring on Jeremy's investigation is Dr. Arthur Chess, an enigmatic pathologist who harbors a keen fascination with the darker deeds committed by the living. Arthur draws Jeremy into the confidence of a cryptic society devoted to matters unknown and unspoken. But when Arthur suddenly slips away, Jeremy is left to contend with an onslaught of anonymous clues – and the growing realization that a harrowing game of cat and mouse has been set in motion.

Alex Delaware's relationship with his longterm partner is on the rocks. He is floored when Robin announces she's heading off on a three-month music tour. But he soon has other things to think about. He is sent an envelope with no return address. Inside, he finds an album with gold letters on it – THE MURDER BOOK. It's full of macabre pictures of murders, with brief descriptions of how, and why, the victims died. One picture is marked 'Not solved' – the horrifically mutilated body of a young woman. Unsettled, Alex calls his friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, who seems strangely familiar with the case. What connects the photograph with Milo 's past? What's more, why has it been sent to Alex – and by whom? Ingenious, shocking, unpredictable, THE MURDER BOOK is a masterpiece of suspense fiction that is Jonathan Kellerman at his best.

A brilliant, deeply dedicated psychologist, Grace Blades has a gift for treating troubled souls and tormented psyches — perhaps because she bears her own invisible scars: Only five years old when she witnessed her parents’ deaths in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her fierce intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But even as an adult with an accomplished professional life, Grace still has a dark, secret side. When her two worlds shockingly converge, Grace’s harrowing past returns with a vengeance.Both Grace and her newest patient are stunned when they recognize each other from a recent encounter. Haunted by his bleak past, mild-mannered Andrew Toner is desperate for Grace’s renowned therapeutic expertise and more than willing to ignore their connection. And while Grace is tempted to explore his case, which seems to eerily echo her grim early years, she refuses — a decision she regrets when a homicide detective appears on her doorstep.An evil she thought she’d outrun has reared its head again, but Grace fears that a police inquiry will expose her double life. Launching her own personal investigation leads her to a murderously manipulative foe, one whose warped craving for power forces Grace back into the chaos and madness she’d long ago fled.

After thirty years of attending to the phsical and mental health of the inhabitants of Knife Island, a tiny community in the Micronesian archipelago, Dr William Moreland feels it would be of benefit to his successor, and to his colleagues throughout the Pacific, if his records were properly analysed. Only too grateful to escape the violent atmosphere of Los Angeles and recoup their emotional resources, Dr Alex Delaware and his partner Robin accept Moreland's invitation to spend a sabbatical on the island to help him in the task. But Knife Island is not the paradise of the travel brochures. The murder of a young woman has created an atmosphere of division and fear. A potential development threatens a large part of the island with environmental pollution. And Dr Moreland is not universally regarded as the saintly healer of his own mythology. Co-habiting with cockroaches the size of dinner plates and spiders more venomous than rattlesnakes, Alex and Robin discover the doctor is concealing an older and darker mystery, a conspiracy of such startling magnitude that even Alex, with his knowledge of the depths of human depravity, is hard put to comprehend, or understand why he has been invited into such a horrific web of intrigue and abasement.

Kellerman returns to series hero Alex Delaware after last year's gripping stand-alone, The Conspiracy Club. The success of the long-running Delaware series is testament to both the author's skills and the reading public's hunger for mysteries featuring compassionate, intelligent protagonists, interesting secondary characters (including complex villains), strong plot lines and clear, unpretentious writing. Kellerman delivers all these once again in a tale that opens with Alex at dinner with his best friend, L.A. police lieutenant Milo Sturgis, when the sound of a police siren calls them to a nearby double homicide. The two victims are found in a Mustang convertible; the young man's zipper is open, the young woman's pants are down and each has a bullet in the brain. The man is identified as Gavin Quick, but little is known about the woman other than she's wearing Armani perfume and Jimmy Choo shoes. Milo and Alex interview Gavin Quick's nutty mother, Sheila, and his father, Jerry, a metals dealer and all-around shady character, as well as Gavin's therapist, Mary Lou Koppel. From there, the list of characters branches into an ever-widening delta of suspects and dead bodies. The investigation marches relentlessly on as Milo and Alex run each new lead to ground, slowly constructing an intricate motive that includes abusive boyfriends, eccentric ex-husbands, Medi-Cal fraud, a bent parole officer and Rwandan genocide. This one's more methodical than suspenseful and the final shoot-out and revelations feel tacked on, but fans won't mind as Alex and Milo eventually wrap everything up nicely, and Kellerman provides intriguing details of Alex's new love interest, Allison Gwynn.

The cheerful chaos of a California schoolyard is shattered one autumn day by gunfire. No children are hurt, but a sniper is shot down – and psychologist Dr Alex Delaware is called in to help the kids cope with the trauma. Then comes another stunning surprise: the identity of the sniper. And Delaware is intrigued by the chance to explore intimately the forces that created such a twisted personality. But as he becomes more deeply involved, he discovers an ever-widening net of malice has been cast – one that reaches far beyond the school compound, and which may already have claimed innocent lives… TIME BOMB is a masterpiece of psychological suspense which shocks…and shocks again.

TRUE DETECTIVES follows Moe Reed and Aaron Fox on the twisted trail of a missing girl, a dark, baffling whodunit that forces the brothers to put aside their mutual animus – and to confront the unresolved family mystery that turned them into enemies. PIs can do things, legally, that cops can't. And cops have access to resources denied their private counterparts. Only by pooling their efforts – and by consulting a man both brothers respect, psychologist Alex Delaware, do Fox and Reed stand a chance of peeling back the secrets in high places that explain the fate of an outwardly innocent young woman. And, by doing so, the brothers learn about much more than murder.

A year has passed since the Cold Heart murders and Detective Petra Connor is, once again, working Hollywood Homicide solo. She has just solved three gang-related killings and is feeling pretty good about herself – about life in general – when Isaac Gomez waltzes into her office and tells her he's found something she might want to take a look at. A twenty-two-year-old prodigy researching a Ph.D. in sociology, Isaac has gained access to LAPD case files. But while combing the files, the brilliant young man has come upon a series of apparently unrelated murders all committed shortly after midnight on the exact same date: June 28. Can this be purely coincidence? As Petra 's curiosity leads her to investigate further, she becomes convinced that something evil has managed to conceal itself within the dry pages of the cold-case files. Killings so diabolical and meticulously constructed that they would have remained invisible but for the probing mind of a young, naive genius. To make matters worse, June 28 is only a month away…