Dagger AwardsEager for physical action in the spirit-numbing wake of 9/11, VI Warshawski is glad to take on a routine stake-out for her most important client, Darraugh Graham. His ninety-one year-old mother has sold the family estate, but Geraldine Graham keeps a fretful eye on it from her retirement apartment across the road. When Geraldine sees lights there in the middle of the night, Darraugh sends V I out to investigate-and the detective finds a dead journalist in the ornamental pond. The man is an African-American; when the suburban cops seem to be treating him as a criminal who stumbled to a drunken death, his family hires V I to investigate.As she retraces the dead reporter’s tracks, V I finds herself in the middle of a Gothic tale of sex, money, and power. The trail leads her back to the McCarthy era blacklists, and forward to the ominous police powers the American government has assumed today. V I finds herself penned into a smaller and smaller space by an array of business and political leaders who can call on the power of the Patriot Act to shut her up. Only her wits, and an unusual alliance she forges with Geraldine Graham and a sixteen year old girl save her.

Based on the hit TV Series Scott and BaileyThe Journey's Inn, Lark's Estate, Manchester. Three bodies have been found, stabbed to death in their beds. The husband and father of two of the victims has fled. The police are in a race against time to find him – especially when they discover his two young sons are also missing…Manchester Metropolitan police station. Having survived a near-fatal attack, DC Janet Scott is quietly falling apart. And her best friend and colleague DC Rachel Bailey is reeling from a love affair gone bad.DCI Gill Murray is trying to keep the team on track, but her own family problems are threatening tip her over the edge. Finding the desperate man is their top priority. But none of them knows where he is going or what he intends to do next. Or what will they have to do to stop him…

Thomas Pynchon brings us to New York in the early days of the internetIt is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. Silicon Alley is a ghost town, Web 1.0 is having adolescent angst, Google has yet to IPO, Microsoft is still considered the Evil Empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there’s no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what’s left.Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics—carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people’s bank accounts—without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom—two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst, life as normal as it ever gets in the neighborhood—till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO, whereupon things begin rapidly to jam onto the subway and head downtown. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, plus elements of the Russian mob and various bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.With occasional excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, Thomas Pynchon, channeling his inner Jewish mother, brings us a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet, not that distant in calendar time but galactically remote from where we’ve journeyed to since.Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will she and Horst get back together? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?Hey. Who wants to know?

Prywant detektyw, Lew Archer, otrzymuje typowe zlecenie: ma odnaleźć obraz skradziony z zamożnego domu Biemeyerów. Obraz jest dziełem kalifornijskiego malarza, który rozgłos i sławę zdobył dopiero po swym tajemniczym zniknięciu. W trakcie poszukiwania zaginionego arcydzieła wychodzą na jaw tajemnice bohaterów. Archer stopniowo rozwiązuje zagadkę. Reakcją na jego działania jest seria makabrycznych zbrodni.

The new series from the author of The Silence of the Library and Murder Past Due...New York Times bestselling author Miranda James returns to Athena, Mississippi, with an all-new mystery featuring Miss An’gel and Miss Dickce Ducote, two snoopy sisters who are always ready to lend a helping hand. But when a stressed socialite brings murder right to their doorstep, even they have trouble maintaining their Southern hospitality…With the Mississippi sun beating down, An’gel and Dickce are taking a break to cool off and pet sit their friend Charlie Harris’s cat, Diesel, when their former sorority sister, Rosabelle Sultan, shows up at their door unexpectedly, with her ne’er-do-well adult children not far behind.Rosabelle’s selfish offspring are desperate to discover what’s in her will, and it soon becomes clear that one of them would kill to get their hands on the inheritance. Suddenly caught up in a deadly tangle of duplicitous suspects and deep-fried motives, it will take all of the sisters’ Southern charm to catch a decidedly ill-mannered killer…

Forced to cope with her claustrophobia and to use all the skills she has developed above ground, park ranger Anna Pigeon enters the dangerous Lechuguilla Cavern in New Mexico's Carlsbad Cavern National Park to attempt a rescue and learns who she can trust and who can be saved.

Close to a motorway service station, the body of a young woman is discovered. She appears to have no family, no friends, no one to identify her.DI Anna Travis is brought onto the team of investigators by DCS James Langton, who already suspects that this recent case could be linked to two unsolved murders. As more evidence is discovered the team realize that they are contending with a triple murder investigation — and no suspect.Anna’s blood runs cold when she receives a letter from a murderer she helped to arrest. He makes contact from prison insisting that he can track down their killer, but he will only talk to Anna.Does he really have insight into the other killer’s mind, or is he merely intent on getting into hers?

A sunny, Sunday afternoon, a family barbecue, and Naomi Baxter and her boyfriend Alex celebrate good news. Driving home, Naomi causes a fatal accident, leaving nine-year-old Lily Vasey dead, Naomi fighting for her life and Alex bruised and bloody.Traumatised, Naomi has no clear memory of the crash and her mother Carmel is forced to break the shocking truth of the child's death to her. Naomi may well be prosecuted for causing death by dangerous driving. If convicted she will face a jail term of up to 14 years, especially if her sister's claim that Naomi was drunk-driving is proven. In the months before the trial, Carmel strives to help a haunted Naomi cope with the consequences of her actions.

Nathan Stein-once an attractive, cultured lawyer-has slipped into the dark world of his powerful father's corrupt practice. After one too many shady deals, he finds himself alone, sick in body and spirit. His career and life are careening out of control, and he's about to become the prime suspect in the murder of a young woman. As we follow him over a long day and night, Nathan encounters the friends, lovers, and family members he has betrayed. Lurching toward redemption, he must answer for his actions. Is he a murderer or the victim of an elaborate frame-up? Or do his sins go even deeper? A tale of chilling suspense that belies the elegance of its prose, Blood Acre is a compelling story of one man's harrowing search through the dark streets of the soul.

Inspector Alan Banks' ninth case sees him investigating the murder of a young racist. A man who, it seems, has lived by the sword and now died by the sword. But it is never that simple… A night at the opera had offered Chief Inspector Alan Banks a temporary respite from his troubles – both at work and at home. But the telephone call summoning him to Easlvale brings him back to reality with a bump. For the body of teenager Jason Fox has been found in a dirty alleyway. He has been kicked to death. At first it looks like an after-hours pub fight gone wrong – until Banks learns that Jason was a member of a white power organisation known as the Albion League. So who wanted him dead? The Pakistani youths he had insulted in the pub earlier that evening? The shady friends of his business partner Mark Wood? Or someone within the Albion League itself? Someone who resented the teenager's growing power in a brutal and unforgiving organisation…?

First in a new series from bestselling author and famed O. J. Simpson trial prosecutor Marcia Clark, a "terrific writer and storyteller" (James Patterson).Samantha Brinkman, an ambitious, hard-charging Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, is struggling to make a name for herself and to drag her fledgling practice into the big leagues. Sam lands a high-profile double-murder case in which one of the victims is a beloved TV star – and the defendant is a decorated veteran LAPD detective. It promises to be exactly the kind of media sensation that would establish her as a heavy hitter in the world of criminal law.Though Sam has doubts about his innocence, she and her two associates (her closest childhood friend and a brilliant ex-con) take the case. Notorious for living by her own rules – and fearlessly breaking everyone else's – Samantha pulls out all the stops in her quest to uncover evidence that will clear the detective. But when a shocking secret at the core of the case shatters her personal world, Sam realizes that not only has her client been playing her, he might be one of the most dangerous sociopaths she's ever encountered.

Eve Duncan returns in a thriller that pits her against the most evil mind she has ever encountered: a ruthless killer who taunts her with his every move…and who has a special affinity for blood. When a Georgia senator's daughter is found murdered, and her body drained of blood, Eve Duncan is drawn into the web of Kevin Jelak – a serial murderer who is on Eve's short list of killers who might know something about her missing daughter Bonnie. When a goblet of blood is found in Eve's refrigerator, she knows the taunting is over…and the games have begun. As Eve and Jelak engage in a dance of death, Eve must call upon those she loves and trusts the most…even if it means bringing them into the game as well.

In this thrilling police-procedural, we are introduced to Alice Rice, Edinburgh's latest fictional detective. Smart and capable, but battling disillusionment and lonliness, we follow her as she races against time and an impacable killer to solve a series of grisly murders amongst Edinburgh's professional elite in the well-to-do New Town.

This is the story of Olav: an extremely talented “fixer” for one of Oslo’s most powerful crime bosses. But Olav is also an unusually complicated fixer. He has a capacity for love that is as far-reaching as is his gift for murder. He is our straightforward, calm-in-the-face-of-crisis narrator with a storyteller’s hypnotic knack for fantasy. He has an “innate talent for subordination” but running through his veins is a “virus” born of the power over life and death. And while his latest job puts him at the pinnacle of his trade, it may be mutating into his greatest mistake...

Detective Mac Taylor is a dedicated crime scene investigator who believes that everything is connected and everyone has a story. He and Detective Stella Bonasera lead a team of crack forensic experts through the gritty and kinetic world of New York City as they piece together clues and eliminate doubt to ultimately crack their cases.A modest home in a suburban Queens neighborhood is the unlikely site of a grisly crime scene: a married couple and their daughter are found brutally murdered. Missing from the scene is the couple's young son, and Mac Taylor and Danny Messer soon uncover signs of a possible kidnapping. Can they find him before it's too late?In a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, the body of a devoutly religious man is found ritually displayed on the floor of his synagogue. Stella Bonasera and Aiden Burn initially suspect a fringe fundamentalist group that has had run-ins with the victim's congregation, but the group is led by a charismatic and antagonistic man who does everything he can to stonewall the team's investigation.Two very different crimes, with one thing in common: CSI investigators who won't stop until they uncover the truth.

Returning to her South Side alma mater for a reunion, private detective V.I. Warshawski becomes involved in the search for a former classmate's long-lost father, a quest that uncovers a web of corruption, danger, and murder.

Fleeing from the witch trials in Salem, Terra Rowan finds herself in modern day Asheville, North Carolina. A dark spirit from the past hunts the last witch of Salem. With the help of the ladies of the Biltmore Society, Asheville aristocrats with untapped powers and a crooked-legged fat orange cat named Pixel, Terra must discover the secret within the forest to preserve the bloodline. Combining elements from different cultures, Appalachian folklore, Celtic legends, Native American mysticism, Bloodline creates a new witch mythology while staying true to the realm of cozy mystery. Terra Rowan is a witch trapped between worlds and lost in time."Best Cozy Mystery I have read this year".

Karen Owen Mystery BloggerAuthor"Vicki Vass takes me back to the first mysteries I ever read…Nancy Drew."

By Lisa Ks Book Reviews"There were so many twists and turns that I was not able to figure out who did it until the end of the book. I like that because it makes me want to read faster to see what happens next"

Griperang's BookmarksA cross genre mix of historical fiction and paranormal mystery, Bloodline by Vicki Vass is the first book in her A Witch Cat Mystery series. Set in two different locations; Salem, Massachusetts during the witch trials of the early 1690; s and contemporary Ashville, North Carolina, Ms. Vass uses the local folklore of both locations to build her story. Well-developed characters, two interesting mysteries and a solid pace kept me turning the pages from start to finish.

While there are two separate mysteries, only one will be resolved by the end of the story. The secondary mystery will undoubtedly be something that is carried as an ongoing thread throughout the series. Ms. Vass does a good job dropping clues for the reader to gather and the story takes plenty of twists and turns. The story’s pace is fairly quick and Ms. Vass’s voice as an author is well established and easy to read.

Queen of All She Reads.

Shetland Detective Jimmy Perez knows it will be a difficult homecoming when he returns to the Fair Isles to introduce his fiancee, Fran, to his parents. It's a community where everyone knows each other, and strangers, while welcomed, are still viewed with a degree of mistrust. Challenging to live on at the best of times, with the autumn storms raging, the island feels cut off from the rest of the world. Trapped, tension is high and tempers become frayed. Enough to drive someone to murder…When a woman's body is discovered at the renowned Fair Isles bird observatory, with feathers threaded through her hair, the islanders react with fear and anger. With no support from the mainland and only Fran to help him – Jimmy has to investigate the old-fashioned way. He soon realizes that this is no crime of passion – but a murder of cold and calculated intention. With no way off the island until the storms abate – Jimmy knows he has to work quickly. There's a killer on the island just waiting for the opportunity to strike again…

Janine Lewis is a pregnant, single mother whose life has become rather hectic. As well as juggling three lively children single-handed, she has ruffled a few feathers by becoming Greater Manchester’s first female Detective Chief Inspector. At last, Janine has been given her first murder enquiry to head. The body of a local deputy head teacher is found with a slashed stomach and left to die. With a suspect on the run, an elderly dying man and a seven-year-old child as the only available witnesses, Janine knows this won’t be an easy case to crack.