A .38, a nip of gin, and sensational legs get Depression-era private investigator Maggie Sullivan out of most scrapes - until a stranger threatens to bust her nose, she's hauled in on suspicion of his murder and she finds herself in the cross-hairs of a crime boss with connections at City Hall.

When Depression-era private eye Maggie Sullivan is invited to dine with a millionaire, she doesn't expect the first course to be a gun in her face. It draws her into a gold-plated web of theft, revenge, double crosses, and murder. A big-time swindle has made fools of some of the city's wealthiest businessmen. The man behind it has vanished. When Maggie begins asking questions, he reappears - dead in the river. But she's already learned too much. Someone's out to silence her too.

It was a hell of a long shot.... CIA assassin Fortune Redding is about to undertake her most difficult mission ever - in Sinful, Louisiana. With a leak at the CIA and a price placed on her head by one of the world's largest arms dealers, Fortune has to go off-grid, but she never expected to be this far out of her element.

TV journalist Elizabeth “E.M.” Danniher will tell you she committed two sins: She didn’t stay young, and she made an enemy of a powerful news executive - her ex. She used to break national news. Now, her top story as the "Helping Out!" reporter at dinky KWMT-TV in Sherman, Wyoming, is getting a defective toaster repaired.

Olivia Denis is a content young wife with a carefree life in late 1930s London. Then her world is shattered with the violent death of her husband, Reggie. The police want to call it a suicide and close the case, but Olivia knows Reggie couldn't possibly have fired the fatal shot. Further mysteries surface surrounding her husband's death. Did the trustworthy Foreign Office employee betray government secrets? Was his murder linked to the death of a German embassy clerk the same night? And who searched their flat?

It is 1995 in Chicago, Illinois. Jake Cooper is a former Ultra-Orthodox scholar of Jewish Talmudic law turned amateur sleuth. In this suspenseful thriller, he investigates a murder for which his girlfriend has been arrested. His investigation reveals secret stories and crimes about the Jewish mafia. The corruption runs deep into extortion, kidnapping, and murder. The only way to stop the mayhem and take down the rabbi and his mafia puts Jake in mortal danger. Will he stop them before becoming their next victim?

Desperate to avoid marriage, Nell Lillington refuses to divulge the name of her child's father and accepts her stepfather's decision that the baby be born at a Poor Farm and discreetly adopted. Until an unused padded cell is opened, and two small bodies fall out. Nell is the only resident of the Poor Farm who is convinced the unwed mother and her baby were murdered, and rethinks her decision to abandon her own child to fate. But even if she manages to escape the Poor Farm with her baby, she may have no safe place to run to.

London, 1861. Samantha Kingston has lived under the control of her overbearing uncle since the death of her parents six years ago. Trapped by the conventions of her gender and social class, she is desperate to find a way out. But when her aunt and uncle are murdered, the freedom she sought seems even further out of reach. A suspect in the crime, she finds herself on the run, unsure whom to trust, lost in the underworld she had only ever read about in the pages of a Dickens novel.

December 1927. Mystery-writer Marius Quin has one previous bestseller, endless looming mortgage payments, and no idea how to write his next book. When his childhood friend Lady Isabella Montague invites him to an intimate New Year’s Eve party hosted by a narcissistic actor, Marius seizes upon the distraction. With his perpetually glum Basset hound along for the ride, he navigates the snowy lanes to the opulent estate of Everham Hall. As the celebrations begin, fireworks light up the sky, champagne corks pop, and then the host is murdered…

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

It's 1949. When war veteran Aloysius Archer is released from Carderock Prison, he is sent to Poca City on parole with a short list of dos and a much longer list of don'ts: do report regularly to his parole officer, don't go to bars, certainly don't drink alcohol, do get a job - and don't ever associate with loose women. The small town quickly proves more complicated and dangerous than Archer's years serving in the war or his time in jail.

Dan Corrigan wants to disappear. Burnt out by the pressures of corporate life, he escapes to the countryside. But when he least expects it, a chance discovery draws him into a compelling mystery. An ancient legend, a coded message on a stone slab, and a secret concealed in a country manor house: these are the clues that take Dan on a journey into the past, delving deeper into a hidden history.

London, 1922. Between gallivanting in his Rolls-Royce and darkening the doorways of London's hotspots, Lord Reginald "Rex" Bankes-Fernsby has almost succeeded in banishing the battlefield nightmares that plague his sleep. Pity he can't say the same about that nagging lack of direction in his life. If only he were like his best friend Freddie—self-assured, suave, and up to his ears in secrets. But when Freddie is murdered, Rex doubts the verdict. Was Freddie really cut down while up to no good, or was he killed in the line of duty?

Whether dueling with new forensics or the local old boys' network, irreverent defense attorney Andy Carpenter always leaves them awed with his biting wit and winning fourth-quarter game plan. But the fun stops the day Andy's dad, Paterson, New Jersey's legendary ex-DA, drops dead in front of him at a game in Yankee Stadium.

England, 1920. Eleanor Swift has spent the last few years travelling the world: taking tea in China, tasting alligators in Peru, escaping bandits in Persia and she has just arrived in England after a chaotic 45-day flight from South Africa. Chipstone is about the sleepiest town you could have the misfortune to meet. But then, from the edge of a quarry, through the driving rain, Eleanor is shocked to see a man shot and killed in the distance. Before she can climb down to the spot, the villain is gone and the body has vanished.

It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.

In Osaka in 1973, the body of a murdered man is found in an abandoned building. Investigating the crime, Detective Sasagaki is unable to find the killer. Over the next 20 years, through the lens of a succession of characters, Higashino tells the story of two teens, Ryo and Yukiho, whose lives are most affected by the crime, and the obsessed detective, Sasagaki, who continues to investigate the murder, looking for the elusive truth.

Private eye Eddie Valiant doesn't like Toons - those cartoon characters who live side-by-side with humans. But Eddie will work for a Toon if his cash supply is low enough. So he reluctantly agrees when Roger Rabbit, a Toon who plays straight man (or should that be straight rabbit) in the Baby Herman cartoon series, asks him to find out who's been trying - unsuccessfully - to buy his contract from the DeGreasy Brothers syndicate. Then Rocco DeGreasy is murdered - and Roger is the prime suspect!

When anthropology professor Gideon Oliver is offered a teaching fellowship at US military bases in Germany, Sicily, Spain, and Holland, he wastes no time accepting. On his first night, he is forced to fend off two desperate, black-clad men who have invaded his Heidelberg hotel room with intent to kill. And then there are a few trivial details that the recruiting agency forgot to mention - such as the fact that the two previous holders of the fellowship both met with mysterious ends.

Ferrying tourists around Dublin for the Leprechaun Limo Service makes quite a change after years in the military. Still, Megan Malone is enjoying her life in Ireland. She likes the scenery, the easy pace, the quirky, quick-witted locals. Everything - except having one of her clients drop dead at the statue of fabled fishmonger, Molly Malone. Most restaurant critics notch up their share of enemies. Elizabeth Darr, however, was a well-loved international star. She and her husband, Simon, had just had dinner when Elizabeth collapsed, and spoiled seafood is the first suspect.

The hooker was young, pretty...and dead, butchered in a Greenwich Village apartment. The prime suspect, a minister's son, was also dead, the victim of a jailhouse suicide. The case is closed, as far as the NYPD is concerned. Now the murdered prostitute's father wants it opened again--that's where Matthew Scudder comes in.

Melanie Turner has made quite a name for herself remodeling historic houses in the San Francisco Bay Area. But now her reputation may be on the line. At her newest project, a run-down Pacific Heights mansion, Mel is visited by the ghost of a colleague who recently met a bad end with power tools. Mel hopes that by nailing the killer, she can rid herself of the ghostly presence of the murdered man - and not end up a construction casualty herself....

Ellery Hathaway knows a thing or two about serial killers, but not through her police training. She's an officer in sleepy Woodbury, Massachusetts, where a bicycle theft still makes the newspapers. No one there knows she was once victim number 17 in the grisly story of serial killer Francis Michael Coben. The only victim who lived. When three people disappear from her town in three years, all around her birthday - the day she was kidnapped so long ago - Ellery fears someone knows her secret. Someone very dangerous.

Quinn Victoria Caine is back in her quirky town of Vienna, Virginia, starting her new life as a bookbinder in her family-owned bookshop. With her trusty German Shephard RBG - Ruff Barker Ginsburg - by her side, what can go wrong? Okay, sure, bumping into her ex Scott or her former high-school nemesis Tricia is a drag. It certainly doesn't help that they’ve acquired the new hobby of shoving their recent engagement in her face every chance they get. But that doesn't mean Quinn wanted to find Tricia dead in the road. So why does half the town think she may have done it?

An unbearably tense novel of revenge, murder, bereavement and the destructive force of passion. The single-mother families of the isolated community under the shadow of the Pyderhorn, Bergen's greatest mountain, are being terrorised by a teenage gang. But teenage violence is nothing compared to what awaits detective Varg Veum when he gets to know the blue-eyed Wenche Andersen.

Nobody knows what happened to Sarah Cook. The beautiful blonde teenager disappeared 15 years ago, the same night her parents were brutally murdered in their suburban Ohio home. Her boyfriend, Brad Stockton - black and from the wrong side of the tracks - was convicted of the murders and is now on death row. Though he's maintained his innocence all along, the clock is running out. His execution is only weeks away when his devoted sister insists she spied Sarah at an area gas station.

Everyone wants a piece of millionaire Bennett Marshfield, owner of Marshfield Manor, but now it's up to new curator Grace Wheaton and handsome groundskeeper Jack Embers to protect dear old Marshfield. But to do this, they'll have to investigate a botched Ponzi scheme, some torrid Wheaton family secrets-and sour grapes out for revenge.

The Thin Man introduces Nick and Nora Charles, New York's coolest crime-solving couple. Nick retired from detecting after his wife inherited a tidy sum, but six years later a pretty blonde spies him at a speakeasy and asks for his help finding her father, an eccentric inventor who was once Nick's client. Nick can no more resist the case than a morning cocktail or a good fight, and soon he and Nora are caught in a complicated web of confused identities.

Poke Rafferty was writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored when Bangkok stole his heart. Now the American expat is assembling a new family with Rose, the former go-go dancer he wants to marry, and Miaow, the tiny, streetwise urchin he wants to adopt. But trouble in the guise of good intentions comes calling just when everything is beginning to work out.

Matthew Scudder, a down-but-not-out-detective, is shocked by the apparent suicide of Paula, a waitress at Armstrong’s, one of Scudder’s hangouts. When Paula’s sister shows up and asks Matt to investigate what she believes to be a murder, Scudder agrees to take on the case. A number of clues don’t add up to suicide, and Scudder’s investigation leads him to the dark corners of Paula’s world.