Diverse, provocative, eerie, and inspired, this collection of Jeffery Deaver's best stories exhibits the amazing range and signature plot twists that have earned him the title "master of ticking-bomb suspense" by People. With nods to O. Henry and Edgar Allan Poe, these beautifully crafted pieces pulse with subtle intrigue and Deaver's incomparable imagination.

A serial killer is trolling a midwestern suburb. His tools: a hammer, a screwdriver, floral wire, a kitchen knife and, to complete his errand, a Russian nesting doll left behind as a calling card. From one grisly crime scene to the next, Detective Ernest Neville and his Russian Doll Killer task force follow. With few leads and his career on the line, Neville is driven to desperate measures to get to the core of this diabolical puzzle. Layer by layer, he’s getting closer to the final piece.

Tate Collier, once one of the country's finest trial lawyers, is trying to forget his past. Now a divorced gentleman farmer, land developer, and community advocate in rural Virginia, he's regrouping from some disastrous mistakes in the realms of love and the law. But controversy - and danger - seem to have an unerring hold on Tate. Even as he struggles to rebuild his life, his alter ego is plotting his demise.

New York Times best-selling author Jeffery Deaver has long thrilled fans with tales of masterful villains and their nefarious ways, and the brilliant minds who bring them to justice. Now the author of the Lincoln Rhyme series has collected his award-winning, spine-tingling stories of suspense, stories that will widen your eyes and stretch your imagination.

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.

Jeffery Deaver, best selling author of The Empty Chair and Speaking in Tongues, turns his talents to the labyrinthine world of cyberspace - a world where the most powerful can lose their wealth, their minds, and their lives with a hacker's touch of a button.

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.

Teaming up with New York Times best-selling author Jeffery Deaver, Suspense Magazine offers up a nail-biting anthology titled Nothing Good Happens After Midnight. This thrilling collection consists of 13 original short stories representing the genres of suspense/thriller, mystery, sci-fi/fantasy, and more.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Somewhere on the flat Kansas landscape, a school bus carrying 8 deaf schoolgirls and their teachers brakes suddenly. Waiting are 3 ruthless men, just escaped from prison. And now, the girls are their hostages. Convicted killer Lou Handy promises that he and his crew will kill a girl each hour unless the FBI, led by negotiator Arthur Potter, cuts a deal to avoid the bloodbath.

Colter Shaw is a career "reward-seeker", making his living traveling the country and locating missing persons, collecting reward money in return. So it is not unusual when a wealthy entrepreneur hires him to track down his wife, an enigmatic artist who vanished one month before. As Shaw begins to investigate, he suspects that she was fleeing a bad marriage, and he follows her trail to an artists' retreat in Indiana. The case takes one surprising turn after another, and soon, Shaw begins to wonder if this mysterious woman is more of a captor than a captive.