Nuclear brinksmanship, psychological warfare, spies, double agents, femmes fatales, and dead drops… The Cold War - a terrifying time when nuclear war between the world's two superpowers was an ever-present threat, an all-too-real possibility that could be set off at the touch of a button - provides a chilling backdrop to this collection of all-new short stories from today's most celebrated mystery writers.

From David Baldacci - the modern master of the thriller and number-one worldwide best-selling novelist - comes a new hero: a lone Army Special Agent taking on the toughest crimes facing the nation. John Puller is a combat veteran and the best military investigator in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigative Division. His father was an Army fighting legend, and his brother is serving a life sentence for treason in a federal military prison. Puller has an indomitable spirit and an unstoppable drive to find the truth.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a tiger by its toe. It's seared into Atlee Pine's memory: the kidnapper's chilling rhyme as he chose between six-year-old Atlee and her twin sister, Mercy. Mercy was taken. Atlee was spared. She never saw Mercy again. Three decades after that terrifying night, Atlee Pine works for the FBI. She's the lone agent assigned to the Shattered Rock, Arizona resident agency, which is responsible for protecting the Grand Canyon. So when one of the Grand Canyon's mules is found stabbed to death at the bottom of the canyon - and its rider missing - Pine is called in to investigate.

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Harlan Coben set huge sales records with last year’s Six Years - and he’s poised to do it again in his next breathtaking stand-alone thriller. Harlan Coben, author of six consecutive instant number-one New York Times best sellers and a total of 24 award-winning, best-selling, and internationally acclaimed novels, returns with another ripped-from-real-life thriller full of impossibly high emotional stakes and the real-to-life characters for which he has become famous.

Some mistakes can change your life forever. For Matt Hunter, that mistake came in one terrible moment when his attempt to help a friend and stop a fight resulted in an accidental death. Matt was convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison. Time that his peers spent in college, Matt endured behind bars.

James Patterson's greatest detectives together for the first time! Three electrifying thrillers with Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, and the Women's Murder Club. Detective Cross: An Alex Cross Story - An anonymous caller has promised to set off deadly bombs in Washington, DC. A cruel hoax or the real deal? The Medical Examiner: A Women's Murder Club Story - A woman checks into a hotel room and entertains a man who is not her husband. Manhunt: A Michael Bennett Story - Someone attacked the Thanksgiving Day Parade directly in front of Michael Bennett and his family.

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 at their oncoming demise several minutes before they were attacked. There's a serial killer in Glenmore Park.

In her career as an Army intelligence officer, Amy Cornwall has seen haunting sights half a world away. None compare to the chilling scene at her Virginia home. It is empty. A phone rings with a terrifying ultimatum: locate and liberate an unnamed captive in 48 hours, or her kidnapped husband and 10-year-old daughter are dead. Now, and in open defiance of Army Command, Amy must employ every lethal tactic she has to save them. To succeed, she must discover not only who dispatched her on this mission, but why. Without her family, she's dead anyway.

When Caitlin Sommers finds herself alone in a deserted parking lot with blood on her clothes and no memory of the past few months, it seems like one of the nightmares that have tormented her for years...but it's all too real. Desperate to learn the truth about where she's been and what has happened to her but terrified of what she may find, Caitlin embarks on a search for answers.

This audio bundle includes books one to four of the exciting CJ Washburn mysteries: Deserving of Death, Sailing into Death, Angel of Death, and Never Surrender to Death.

Ex-Chicago cop and new PI Josie Harper has been hired by an outside group to clear the name of publisher Lauren Wade, recently acquitted of the murder of her lover. That means finding the real killer, a task made more difficult by Lauren's unwillingness to cooperate and a large family problem - Lauren's parents have been kidnapped for a ransom she can no longer pay. Josie has a big challenge of her own: how to redeem herself after losing her job as a detective.

The Bodies Left Behind is an epic cat-and-mouse chase, told nearly in real-time, and is filled with Deaver's patented twists and turns, where nothing is what it seems, and death lingers just around the next curve on a deserted path deep in the midnight forest.

A woman’s body is found floating in a sultry Florida mangrove. She has no ID, and there is no indication of cause of death. Who is she? Who killed her? Everyone has dark secrets that will be revealed. Rookie Detective Tom Lange couldn’t have landed a more difficult first case. The only thing he has to go on is the woman’s butterfly tattoo. His boss, Lauren Blythe, piles the pressure on, and the medical examiner won’t tell him what he needs to know.

Fans of mysteries, thrillers, and suspense will enjoy these fast-moving stories of murder, greed, and treason, the cast of colorful characters, and their setting in and around historic St. Paul, Minnesota. This bundle includes First Case, The St. Paul Conspiracy, and Deadly Stillwater.

Cady Maddix survived a brutal upbringing - emotionally scarred but hardened - with a will for self-preservation. Hunting fugitives has given her life purpose and control. But when the Deputy US Marshal returns home to care for her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother, a new case stirs old memories. Child killer Samuel Aldeen has broken out of a nearby facility for the criminally insane, and the authorities believe he was aided by accomplices, both inside and out.

Ten years ago in California, Daniel Pell, a self-styled Charles Manson, was sentenced to life in prison for murdering an entire family: husband, wife, and two children, plus one of his young male followers. He is brought to Salinas, California, to interview with Kathryn Dance after he is implicated in yet another killing. Things go terribly wrong during an interview break, and Pell escapes, intent on killing again.

It was inescapably chilling, as if the murderer was methodically working his way down a page torn from the phone book. The three victims brutally killed in their own homes had one thing in common: They were all listed as M. Douglas. The fact that Mara Douglas is next on the list has her jumping at shadows, until FBI agent Aidan Shields shows up to make sure she doesn't become the fourth victim.

My life was ordinary until three years ago when I was thrown out of a downtown hotel window. My name is Robbie Brownlaw, and I am a homicide detective for the city of San Diego. I am 29 years old. I now have synesthesia, a neurological condition where your senses get mixed up. Sometimes when people talk to me, I see their voices as colored shapes provoked by the emotions of the speakers, not by the words themselves. I have what amounts to a primitive lie detector.

A brutal, psychopathic murderer is released from prison - and stalks his prey with intent to kill.

On a balmy spring evening, four high school seniors - three boys and a girl - enter a park in the small Pennsylvania city of Conroy. The next morning, two of the boys are found shot to death, and the girl and the third boy are gone. After three weeks with no leads and no sign of either of the two missing teenagers, the chief of police begins to wonder if they too were victims.

Detective Mike McCabe moved from a top homicide job with the NYPD to Portland, Maine, to leave his failed marriage and suspicions of wrongdoing behind, and to find a more peaceful life for himself and his 13-year-old daughter. But the small New England city is not nearly as safe as he thought. On a warm September night, a missing high school athlete is found dead in a scrap-metal yard, her heart removed from her body with surgical precision. As outrage over the killing spreads, a young businesswoman disappears while out on a morning jog.

Three years ago LAPD Detective Scarlet Moreno and rookie cop Krista Hart were nearly killed during a botched sting operation. Now, they're best friends and partners in the Orange County private investigation firm of Moreno & Hart. But their routine assignments are anything but safe…

It looked for all the world like a terrible, tragic accident. Susanna Morgan had gotten up in the middle of the night, tripped, fallen, and broken her neck. Yet when detective Justin Westwood inspects the victim's apartment, he can't help noticing that the details don't quite add up. The glass on the bedside table is knocked over but there are no cuts on her body. The scrape on her knee looks suspiciously fresh. And then a terrified witness comes forward, confirming his worst fear.

International best-selling author Linwood Barclay delivers pulse-pounding suspense that puts him among the masters of the genre. A Tap on the Window finds private investigator Cal Weaver making an ill-advised decision to pick up a young female hitchhiker who reminds him of his dead son. But something is off about the girl, and Cal is soon drawn into a host of nightmarish secrets.

A mind-bending, genre-twisting debut novel. In West Akron, there lived a reclusive elderly man who always wore mittens, even in July. He had no friends and no family; all over town, he was known only as The the Man from Primrose Lane. And on a summer day in 2008, someone murdered him.

A pipe bomb explodes at a birth control clinic, then a young client turns up dead in a dumpster. Kera, the clinic nurse, discovers that the girl’s Bible group is sharing more than the Good News. Confidentiality keeps her from telling the police, so she digs for the truth on her own—becoming the bomber’s new target. Meanwhile, Detective Jackson races to find the killer, fearing that his own daughter could be next.

Regulars at Nadia’s nature lodge don’t ask what she does in the off-season. And that’s a good thing. If she told them, she’d have to kill them. She’s a hit woman for a Mafia family. Tough and self-sufficient, Nadia doesn’t owe anyone any explanations. But that doesn’t mean she always works alone. One of her contacts has recruited her in the hunt for a ruthlessly efficient serial killer cutting a swath of terror across the country. The assassin is far too skilled to be an amateur - and the precision of the killings is bringing the Feds much too close to the hit man community for comfort.

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.

Steven James' Christy Award-nominated crime thriller pits FBI Special Agent Bowers against a serial killer who enjoys torturing women. After visiting the mountain vistas where the murderer posed his dead victims, Bowers receives a taunting call from the "Illusionist." Although Bowers gets close, his insidious foe continues to elude him.

Women are missing and dying in the Triangle area of North Carolina. One woman holds the key to why. With the conclusion of the Y-Man murders nine months ago and her resignation from the FBI, former Special Agent and Behavioral Analyst Rainey Bell has finally found peace and contentment she never thought possible - even if she remains a bit paranoid. Her wariness is justified when a monster from her past rears his demonic head. Rainey has faced death and evil before - alone. Now it’s different - she has a family to protect, her own. Only Rainey can keep them alive. Or can she?