A sociopath cuts a path of destruction across the rural Midwest. In pursuit: a vigilante detective and a prosecutor, one bent on revenge, the other on virtue. And in the wrong place at the wrong time: a doctor in a life-and-death moral struggle. Barreling toward justice, their fates converge in these four interlocking short stories of cunning misdirection by internationally bestselling author Jeffery Deaver.

When an improvised explosive device is found outside a hospital, the understaffed Middleton PD knows it’s up against a pro. No one takes credit for the sophisticated device—all that Detective Jake Sloan has to go on is a poem. The cryptic rhyme surfaced shortly after the bomb scare. But ex-soldier and football player Sloan has never been much of a poetry buff. When a second verse turns up, containing a message in code, he solicits the help of English professor Ciara Hawkins.

Jon Talbot is a history professor who makes sense of the past by examining facts. He also knows how to speculate about the what-ifs. Jon’s doing both following the death of his wife, Pax. Driving home late from a volunteer assignment, she plunged off a mountain highway and died. The police find nothing suspicious about the facts: a deer in the road, a blown tire, a broken neck. But the what-ifs are leading Jon down a twisting trail of secrets. After five years of marriage, he is finally getting to know his wife.

When the FBI comes to Lincoln Rhyme with the news that a mysterious assassin is targeting him, the detective is not particularly concerned. With his long career putting away criminals, he is accustomed to threats on his life, and has designed his Upper West Side townhome to be secure against nearly any threat. But when the assassin gets too close for comfort, Rhyme determines to find out why this person is after him. He must put himself inside the mind of a killer in order to save his own life, and possibly the lives of those he loves most.

After a long run as a respected journalist, Edward “Fitz” Fitzhugh is on his way out when he stumbles across the story of a lifetime. The Gravedigger is a serial kidnapper who taunts the police with riddles. The other puzzle is his motive, which Fitz is determined to piece together. When an eyewitness to the latest abduction leads Fitz closer to the facts, he realizes that the last great story of his career is not at all what it appears to be.

In the wake of a disastrous firefight with a Mexican cartel, two El Paso police officers find themselves in a military hospital facing a debriefing about what went wrong. As their accounts unfold, Tony, a by-the-book cop, begins to believe that hotheaded Matt might have divided loyalties. Could he have intentionally led the team into a trap that saw the death of a beloved senior officer? Or is the truth even more terrifying than Tony dares to imagine?

It looks like just another gray March morning in the tough urban district nicknamed Nowhere when seven lives converge. Any one of them could have a dark motive. Any one of them could be walking into a trap. When the fog lifts, it will all be much clearer - that a single, shattering act of violence has marked each of them forever.

At an off-campus party, university professor Rose Taylor is drugged, undressed, and photographed on a burner phone. In seconds her humiliation is uploaded, and millions of JPEGs are zipping like immortal wasps through the Internet. But why would someone target her? She has no vengeful exes or rival academics, no stalkers, or unhinged students. Jon Avery, the sharpest, most experienced investigator in the sheriff’s office, is determined to find out who’s behind this horrific invasion of privacy.

In this explosive short story, international bestselling author Jeffery Deaver brings listeners a classic tale of star-crossed lovers who defy the boundaries of enemy territory. When an underworld kingpin gets taken out, his prime turf is up for grabs. For Irish crime lord Brendon Nagle and archrival John Yung, head of a forty-man tong, it’s war. For Nagle’s son, Andrew, and Yung’s daughter, Loi, it’s love at first sight. But others are watching as their secret love unfolds.

Frederick Lowell has quietly managed the estate of the revered novelist Edward Goodwin. Though the author of only one novel, that book has gone on to sell hundreds of millions of copies, keeping Lowell comfortable as well as Goodwin's ne'er-do-well and feckless children. Then word comes that a sequel to the novel may in fact exist, and Lowell becomes a detective, navigating a series of twists that take him from a Hamptons retreat to a penitentiary, from a Westchester homestead to a decaying Southern hotel.

Three original short stories from The New York Times best-selling author Jeffery Deaver. "Fast" (A Kathryn Dance story): Kathryn Dance is in a race against the clock to track down the members of a domestic terrorist cell - and the lives of 200 people hang in the balance. "Game": After Sarah Lieberman's new tenants murder her in an attempt to steal her money, Sarah's housekeeper, Carmel, is determined to find Sarah's body so she can lay her soul to rest. But Carmel may discover that the truth is uncomfortably close to home.... Also includes "Paradice" (A John Pellam story).

After an early morning machine-gun attack by a madman called the Digger leaves dozens dead in the Washington, D.C., subway, the mayor’s office receives a message demanding twenty million dollars by midnight or more innocents will die. It is New Year’s Eve, and with the ransom note as the only evidence, Special Agent Margaret Lukas calls upon retired FBI agent and the nation’s premier document examiner Parker Kincaid to join the manhunt for the Digger.

When paranoid schizophrenic killer Michael Hrubek escapes from an institution, there’s no doubt of where he’s headed: to find the woman who put him away and to finally get his revenge. Lis Atcheson knows he’s out there - the man who killed two of her students. He’s haunted every sleepless night ever since she testified against him. Now, the nightmares are coming true. He’s watching...and waiting...and he’s going to take Lis to hell with him. With a massive storm coming - in more ways than one - Lis can barely prepare for the dark cloud that approaches.

Keera Duggan was building a solid reputation as a Seattle prosecutor, until her romantic relationship with a senior colleague ended badly. For the competitive former chess prodigy, returning to her family’s failing criminal defense law firm to work for her father is the best shot she has. With the right moves, she hopes to restore the family’s reputation, her relationship with her father, and her career.

When a man is shot in the head, Bree Taggert and her new partner, veteran detective Dana Romano, respond to the call. They break the news to the victim’s ex-wife and learn the estranged couple’s five-year-old daughter was supposed to have been with him. What starts as a murder investigation quickly morphs into a desperate search for a missing child. The case stirs memories of Bree’s own traumatizing childhood. To find the little girl, Bree will have to relive her own terrifying past.

A sociopath cuts a path of destruction across the rural Midwest. In pursuit: a vigilante detective and a prosecutor, one bent on revenge, the other on virtue. And in the wrong place at the wrong time: a doctor in a life-and-death moral struggle. Barreling toward justice, their fates converge in these four interlocking short stories of cunning misdirection by internationally bestselling author Jeffery Deaver.

Jon Talbot is a history professor who makes sense of the past by examining facts. He also knows how to speculate about the what-ifs. Jon’s doing both following the death of his wife, Pax. Driving home late from a volunteer assignment, she plunged off a mountain highway and died. The police find nothing suspicious about the facts: a deer in the road, a blown tire, a broken neck. But the what-ifs are leading Jon down a twisting trail of secrets. After five years of marriage, he is finally getting to know his wife.

Special Agent Constant Marlowe is tasked with taking over the investigation of an obsessed serial killer trolling the small town of Clark Valley in the quiet—and eerie—plains of the Midwest. Two female victims in quick succession, the same brutal MO, and every indication that victim number three is only days away. Also in the killer’s scope is Constant herself. When she interviews a local family who may be potential witnesses, she leads the devil to their doorstep, throwing their lives into chaos.

After a long run as a respected journalist, Edward “Fitz” Fitzhugh is on his way out when he stumbles across the story of a lifetime. The Gravedigger is a serial kidnapper who taunts the police with riddles. The other puzzle is his motive, which Fitz is determined to piece together. When an eyewitness to the latest abduction leads Fitz closer to the facts, he realizes that the last great story of his career is not at all what it appears to be.

When an improvised explosive device is found outside a hospital, the understaffed Middleton PD knows it’s up against a pro. No one takes credit for the sophisticated device—all that Detective Jake Sloan has to go on is a poem. The cryptic rhyme surfaced shortly after the bomb scare. But ex-soldier and football player Sloan has never been much of a poetry buff. When a second verse turns up, containing a message in code, he solicits the help of English professor Ciara Hawkins.

At an off-campus party, university professor Rose Taylor is drugged, undressed, and photographed on a burner phone. In seconds her humiliation is uploaded, and millions of JPEGs are zipping like immortal wasps through the Internet. But why would someone target her? She has no vengeful exes or rival academics, no stalkers, or unhinged students. Jon Avery, the sharpest, most experienced investigator in the sheriff’s office, is determined to find out who’s behind this horrific invasion of privacy.

Things started out so sweet. Everyone was going to be rich. All because of Trunk Man. He was the guy Papa and his meatheads stuffed in the back of a stolen Nissan and drove to a forest preserve outside Detroit. He owed Papa big-time. To save his own sorry neck, Trunk Man made an offer: a million dollars in bonds tucked away in a safe. Boost it, split it, and toss Trunk Man from a roof. Easy.

Death is a topic Bradford Douglas is intimately familiar with. The young attorney is on a crusade against capital punishment. He’s saved a number of death row inmates, but none of his cases has been as tough as the one he now faces: Henry Combs, a vicious serial killer, has only hours to live when Douglas is summoned for a Hail Mary attempt to have the man’s sentence commuted to life imprisonment. As Douglas races to pursue whatever strategies he can think of, he finds his passion for justice giving way to something altogether different. An obsession.

If our memories make us who we are, who is a man without any? Nameless has only a gun, missions from a shadowy agency, and one dead aim: dispense justice when the law fails. As he moves from town to town, driven by splintered visions of the past and future, he's headed toward the ultimate confrontation in this propulsive series of short thrillers by number one New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.

Nathan Tyler is an unassuming professor at a middling American university with a rather obscure specialty in mathematics—in short, a nobody from nowhere. So why is the White House calling? Summoned to Washington, DC, for a top-secret briefing, Nathan discovers that he’s the key to a massive foreign intelligence breakthrough. Reading between the lines of a cryptic series of equations, he could open a door straight into the heart of the Kremlin and change the global balance of power forever.