It came in a plain brown wrapper, no return address - an audiocassette recording of a horrifying, soul-lacerating scream, followed by the sound of a childlike voice delivering the enigmatic and haunting message: . Bad love. Bad love. Don't give me the bad love... For Alex Delaware, the chant, repeated over and over like a twisted nursery rhyme, is the first intimation that he is about to enter a living nightmare. Others soon follow: disquieting laughter echoing over a phone line that suddenly goes dead, a chilling trespass outside his home in the middle of the night, a sickening act of vandalism. He has becoine the target of a carefully orchestrated campaign of vague threats and intimidation rapidly building to a crescendo as harassment turns to terror, mischief to madness. Searching his memory for the phrase bad love, Alex recalls a symposium he attended over a decade ago commemorating the work of Dr. Andres de Bosch, the celebrated child psychologist who ran a clinic for troubled adolescents. With the help of his friend LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, Alex discovers a seemingly random series of violent deaths - a hit-and-run, a suicidal leap from a high rise, and a brutal mutilation-murder - that may somehow be related to de Bosch. As he delves deeper into the history of the clinic, the escalating pattern of violence becomes inescapably clear. And if Alex fails to decipher the twisted logic of the stalker's mind games, he will be the next to die. Taut, penetrating, terrifying, Bad Love is vintage Kellerman.

Deputy coroner Clay Edison goes to extreme lengths for a forgotten Jane Doe in the new thriller from a father-son team of bestselling authors who write "brilliant, page-turning fiction" (Stephen King). "As for the keen sense of drama, it must be a genetic trait. . . . The Kellermans show compassion for the survivors, including conscientious officials like Edison."-- The New York Times Book Review Former star basketball player Clay Edison is busy. He's solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother's fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications. Then the phone rings in the dead of night. A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos. For Clay and his fellow coroners, it's the start of a long night and the first of many to come. The victims keep piling up. What begins as a community tragedy soon becomes lurid fodder for social media. Then the smoke clears and the real mystery emerges--one victim's death doesn't match the others. Brutalized and abandoned, stripped of ID, and left to die: She is Jane Doe, a human question mark. And it falls to Clay to give her a name and a voice. Haunted by the cruelty of her death, he embarks upon a journey into the bizarre, entering a hidden world where innocence and perversity meet and mingle. There, his relentless pursuit of the truth opens the gateway to a dark and baffling past--and brings him right into the line of fire. Praise for A Measure of Darkness "Edison is an interesting protagonist, a good man for whom finding the truth is more important than anything else, including his own safety. He's gentle and strong, compassionate and ruthless, methodical and impulsive. A strong sequel to Crime Scene that will leave readers wanting to see more of Edison." -- Booklist

"Diabolically clever."--New York Times "Horowitz dazzles with the brilliant third entry in his Susan Ryeland series . . . . [He is] is at the top of his game here, linking past and present in a virtuoso finale worthy of Agatha Christie."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) Murder links past and present once again in this mind-boggling metafictional mystery from Anthony Horowitz featuring detective Atticus Pünd and editor Susan Ryeland, stars of the New York Times bestsellers Magpie Murders and Moonflower Murders. Editor Susan Ryeland has left her Greek island, her hotel and her Greek boyfriend, Andreas, in search of a new life back in England. Freelancing for a London publisher, she's given the last job she wants: working on an Atticus Pünd continuation novel called Pünd's Last Case. Worse still, she knows the new writer. Eliot Crace is the troubled grandson of legendary children's author Miriam Crace who died twenty years ago. Eliot is convinced she was murdered--by poison. To her surprise, Susan enjoys reading the manuscript which is set in the South of France and revolves around the mysterious death of Lady Margaret Chalfont, days before she was about to change her will. But when it is revealed that Lady Margaret was also poisoned, alarm bells begin to ring. The more Susan reads, the clearer it becomes that Eliot has deliberately concealed clues about his grandmother's death inside the book. Desperately, Susan tries to prevent Eliot from putting himself in harm's way--but his behaviour is becoming increasingly erratic. Another murder follows . . . and suddenly Susan finds herself to be the number one suspect. Once again, the real and the fictional worlds have become dangerously entangled. And if Susan doesn't solve the mystery of Pünd's Last Case, she could well be its next victim.

Paul Auster's great trilogy of 1985-1986 broke ground in its mix of serious fictional techniques and detective and mystery genres. Since that time it has become one of the most successful series of novels of the last decades, now republished in a beautiful cloth edition.

"Well-plotted, well-written, clear-eyed. I never saw the end coming. There's a hell of a one-two punch waiting for you." --Stephen King New York Times bestseller Laura Lippman tells the story of Amber Glass, desperately trying to get away from her tabloid past but compulsively drawn back to the city of her youth and the prom date who destroyed everything she was reaching for. Amber Glass has spent her entire adult life putting as much distance as possible between her and her hometown of Baltimore, where she fears she will forever be known as "Prom Mom"--the girl who allegedly killed her baby on the night of the prom after her date, Joe Simpson, abandoned her to pursue the girl he really liked. But when circumstances bring Amber back to the city, she realizes she can have a second chance--as long as she stays away from Joe, now a successful commercial real estate developer, married to a plastic surgeon, Meredith, to whom he is devoted. The problem is, Amber can't stay away from Joe. And Joe finds that it's increasingly hard for him to ignore Amber, if only because she remembers the boy he was and the man he said he was going to be. Against the surreal backdrop of 2020 and early 2021, the two are slowly drawn to each other and eventually cross the line they've been trying not to cross. And then Joe asks Amber to help him do the unthinkable . . . and she must decide if she is willing to let their toxic and dangerous past repeat itself.

Bedridden after a freak accident, a novelist begins to question his own sanity as he moves through dreamlike memories of his own fictional characters.

When your son can’t look you in the eye . . . does that mean he’s guilty? Jacob Hunt is a teen with Asperger’s syndrome. He’s hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, though he is brilliant in many ways. But he has a special focus on one subject—forensic analysis. A police scanner in his room clues him in to crime scenes, and he’s always showing up and telling the cops what to do. And he’s usually right. But when Jacob’s small hometown is rocked by a terrible murder, law enforcement comes to him. Jacob’s behaviors are hallmark Asperger’s, but they look a lot like guilt to the local police. Suddenly the Hunt family, who only want to fit in, are directly in the spotlight. For Jacob’s mother, Emma, it’s a brutal reminder of the intolerance and misunderstanding that always threaten her family. For his brother, Theo, it’s another indication why nothing is normal because of Jacob. And over this small family, the soul-searing question looms: Did Jacob commit murder?

In New York Times bestselling author Anthony Horowitz's ingenious fourth literary whodunit following The Word is Murder, The Sentence is Death, and A Line to Kill, Horowitz becomes the prime suspect in a murder investigation--and only one man can prove his innocence: his newly estranged partner in solving crime, Detective Hawthorne. "I'm sorry but the answer's no." Reluctant author, Anthony Horowitz, has had enough. He tells ex-detective Daniel Hawthorne that after three books he's splitting and their deal is over. The truth is that Anthony has other things on his mind. His new play, a thriller called Mindgame, is about to open at the Vaudeville Theater in London's West End. Not surprisingly, Hawthorne declines a ticket to the opening night. The play is panned by the critics. In particular, Sunday Times critic Margaret Throsby gives it a savage review, focusing particularly on the writing. The next day, Throsby is stabbed in the heart with an ornamental dagger which turns out to belong to Anthony, and has his fingerprints all over it. Anthony is arrested by an old enemy . . . Detective Inspector Cara Grunshaw. She still carries a grudge from her failure to solve the case described in the second Hawthorne adventure, The Sentence is Death, and blames Anthony. Now she's out for revenge. Thrown into prison and fearing for both his personal future and his writing career, Anthony is the prime suspect in Throsby's murder and when a second theatre critic is found to have died in mysterious circumstances, the net closes in. Ever more desperate, he realizes that only one man can help him. But will Hawthorne take the call?

Psychologist-detective Dr. Alex Delaware finds terror in the heart of paradise in this relentlessly sinister novel by America's premier writer of psychological suspense, the author of ten successive "New York Times "bestsellers. Three months in paradise, all expenses paid. It's an invitation Alex Delaware can't refuse. Dr. Woodrow Wilson Moreland, a revered scientist and philanthropist on the tiny Pacific island of Aruk, has invited Alex to his home to help him organize his papers for publication-- a light workload leaving Alex plenty of time to enjoy a romantic interlude with Robin Castagna. Quickly, however, secretive houseguests, frightening nocturnal visitors, and the elusive Dr. Moreland himself dim the pleasures of deep blue water and white sand. The cases Moreland chooses to share--a patient driven to madness by a cruel, unspeakable act; a man who succumbed forty years ago to radiation poisoning after a nuclear blast; a young woman, brutally murdered, whose mutilated body was found on the beach just six months before-- seem unconnected. And yet Alex can't help wondering what the good doctor is trying to tell him...and what Moreland's real reason for inviting him to Aruk is. As Alex probes--with a little long-distance help from his friend LAPD detective Milo Sturgis--he comes to believe the answer lies hidden somewhere on Moreland's vast estate. Yet when he finally discovers the truth, the revelation will be more shocking than he could have imagined. And it will come too late to stem the tide of violence that threatens guilty and innocent alike on the lovely lost island of Aruk. Once again, with his brilliant characterizations and rapid-fire pace, Jonathan Kellerman has redefined the boundaries of suspense, probing real-life horrors and innermost fears in a novel that transfixes from first page to last. Also available on BDD Audio Cassette.

Dr. Alex Delaware doesn’t see many private patients anymore, but the young woman called Lucy is an exception. So is her dream. Lucy Lowell is referred to Alex by Los Angeles police detective Milo Sturgis. A juror at the agonizing trial of a serial killer, Lucy survived the trauma only to be tormented by a recurring nightmare: a young child in the forest at night, watching a strange and furtive act. Now Lucy’s dream is starting to disrupt her waking life, and Alex is concerned. The power of the dream, its grip on Lucy’s emotions, suggests to him that it may be more than a nightmare. It may be the repressed childhood memory of something very real. Something like murder.

With scores of millions of books in print, translation into two dozen languages, and one of the most popular heroes in contemporary fiction to his name, #1 New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman is the unequivocal “master of the psychological thriller” (People). In his newest novel Kellerman delivers a tour de force–poignant, dark, and chilling–that illuminates a shadowy world where impulse rules. Tanya Bigelow was a solemn little girl when Dr. Alex Delaware successfully treated her obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Now, at nineteen, she still seems older than her years–but her problems go beyond hyper-maturity. Patty Bigelow, Tanya’s aunt and adoptive mother, has made a deathbed confession of murder and urged the young woman to seek Delaware’s help. The doctor recalls Patty as a selfless E.R. nurse struggling to raise a child on her own–a woman seemingly incapable of the “terrible thing” she has admitted. But for Tanya’s peace of mind, Delaware agrees to investigate, and he enlists LAPD detective Milo Sturgis in the search for the phantom victim of a crime that may never have occurred. Armed with only the vaguest details, psychologist and cop follow a trail twisting from L.A.’s sleaziest low-rent districts to its overblown mansions, retracing Patty and Tanya’s nomadic and increasingly puzzling life to the doorsteps of a sullen heroin addict; a randy real-estate broker; and a brilliant, enigmatic physics student. Suddenly a very real murder tears open a terrifying tunnel into the past, where secrets–and bodies–are buried. As the tension mounts, Delaware and Sturgis uncover a tangled history of desperation, vengeance, and death–a legacy of evil that refuses to die. Dramatic, action-packed, and filled with the psychological detail that only Jonathan Kellerman can provide, Obsession is a whodunit, a whydunit–and something unique: a did-it-even-happen? This is Kellerman at his heart-racing best. From the Hardcover edition.

Perennial bestseller and acknowledged master of the psychological thriller, Jonathan Kellerman has created his most riveting and memorable work to date in the Alex Delaware novel about a troubled and elusive young woman whose brutal murder forces the brilliant psychologist-detective to confront his own fallibility. Lauren Teague is a beautiful, defiant, borderline-delinquent teenager when her parents bring her to Alex Delaware's office. But for all Alex's skill and effort, Lauren resists--angrily, provocatively. Reluctantly, the psychologist chalks Lauren up as one of the inevitable failures of a challenging profession. But years later, when Alex encounters Lauren as a stag party's featured entertainment, both doctor and patient are sticken with shame. And the ultimate horror takes place when, soon after, Lauren's brutalized corpse is found dumped in an alley. Alex disregards the advice of his trusted friend, LAPD detective Milo Sturgis, and jeopardizes his relationship with longtime lover, Robin Castagna, in order to pursue Lauren's murderer. As he investigates his young patient's troubled past, Alex enters the shadowy worlds of fringe psychological experimentation and the sex industry, and then into mortal danger when lust and big money collide in Southern California. Jonathan Kellerman's L.A. is evil, seductive, erotic, and unforgiving, and "Flesh and Blood" is mind-opening in its drama of a driven man's personal quest, breathtaking in its ingenious plot, filled with unforgettable characters, and topped off by a terrifying climax. This is suspense fiction at its finest.

"For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe she was abandoned, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice?s old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother?s whereabouts. Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest: Serenity Jones, a psychic who rose to fame finding missing persons, only to later doubt her gifts, and Virgil Stanhope, the jaded private detective who?d originally investigated Alice?s case along with the strange, possibly linked death of one of her colleagues. As the three work together to uncover what happened to Alice, they realize that in asking hard questions, they?ll have to face even harder answers." --Amazon.com.

A second-rate actor is found mutilated in a car trunk. Then a psychologist at a Los Angeles hospital for the criminally insane is murdered in a similar grisly fashion. Suddenly the incoherent ramblings of an inmate at the presumably secure institution begin to make chilling sense--they are, in fact, horrifying predictions. Yet how can a barely functional psychotic locked behind asylum walls possibly know such vivid details of crimes committed in the outside world? Drawn into a labyrinth of secrets, revenge, sex, and manipulation, Dr. Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis set out to unlock this enigma and put an end to the brutal killings--before the madman predicts their own demise. .

New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder's breakneck stand-alone thriller about the secrets families can keep—and the danger of their discovery. When former investigative reporter Rick Hoffman loses his job, fiancée, and apartment, his only option is to move back into--and renovate--the home of his miserable youth, now empty and in decay since the stroke that put his father in a nursing home. As Rick starts to pull apart the old house, he makes an electrifying discovery—millions of dollars hidden in the walls. It's enough money to completely transform Rick's life—and everything he thought he knew about his father. Yet the more of his father's hidden past that Rick brings to light, the more dangerous his present becomes. Soon, he finds himself on the run from deadly enemies desperate to keep the past buried, and only solving the mystery of his father—a man who has been unable to communicate, comprehend, or care for himself for almost 20 years—will save Rick...if he can survive long enough to do it.

FINALIST FOR THE 2018 MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD An addictive novel of psychological suspense from the award-winning author of Night Night, Sleep Tight, about three generations of women haunted by a little girl’s disappearance, and the porcelain doll that may hold the key to the truth . . . Seven-year-old Lissie Woodham and her four-year-old sister Janey were playing with their porcelain dolls in the front yard when an adorable puppy scampered by. Eager to pet the pretty dog, Lissie chased after the pup as it ran down the street. When she returned to the yard, Janey’s precious doll was gone . . . and so was Janey. Forty years after Janey went missing, Lis—now a mother with a college-age daughter of her own—still blames herself for what happened. Every year on the anniversary of her sister’s disappearance, their mother, Miss Sorrel, places a classified ad in the local paper with a picture of the toy Janey had with her that day—a one-of-a-kind porcelain doll—offering a generous cash reward for its return. For years, there’s been no response. But this year, the doll came home. It is the first clue in a decades-old mystery that is about to turn into something far more sinister—endangering Lis and the lives of her mother and daughter as well. Someone knows the truth about what happened all those years ago, and is desperate to keep it hidden.

Mosley departs from his Easy Rawlins mysteries for this thought-provoking novel. Charles Blakey is a young black man whose life is slowly crumbling. When a mysterious white man offers to rent Charles's basement for the summer, Charles embarks on a journey into inconceivable worlds of power and manipulation, and unimagined realms of humanity.

This new edition of Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler offers readers a new translation from the original German text and a comprehensive exploration of the acclaimed novella, originally published as Traumnovelle in 1926 and adapted into the movie Eyes Wide Shut. Set in early 20th-century Vienna, Schnitzler's narrative delves into the psychological complexities of desire, marriage, and the blurred lines between fantasy and reality. His background in psychiatry, provides a nuanced examination of the human psyche that remains strikingly relevant today. This edition is enriched with: Illustrations depicting key scenes Chapter-by-chapter footnotes A detailed study guide with chapter summaries Ten-question test for each chapter Also included are seven essays: Class Analysis in "Dream Story" by Arthur Schnitzler From Page to Screen: A Comparative Analysis of Schnitzler's "Dream Story" and Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" From Assimilation to Antisemitism: Understanding Jewish Identity in Schnitzler's Works Arthur Schnitzler's Use of Stream of Consciousness and Internal Dialogue Arthur Schnitzler and Sigmund Freud: A Comparative Analysis Desire and Identity: Arthur Schnitzler and the Cultural Tapestry of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna Controversy and Censorship Surrounding the Works of Arthur Schnitzler Ideal for both newcomers and scholars, this edition provides a deep dive into one of the most influential novellas of the 20th century, offering readers the tools to unpack its enduring themes and cultural significance.

As a potentially cataclysmic situation brews between Beijing and Washington, Assistant Secretary of State Dr. Desaix Clark is sent to China to assess the threat that this enigmatic Asian nation could pose to the United States. The two Chinese rulers vying for power - the machiavellian Prime Minister and the ruthless Defense Minister - each seek to manipulate Clark against the other. But whom can he trust? Before he can unravel the final mystery, he must confront some fundamental facts about himself and the mission upon which he was sent. Why did his closest friend, the Secretary of State, really send him to China? Thrust into a deadly web of conspiracy, deceit, and betrayal, Clark races to uncover the truth as the West faces one of the most insidious threats to its security.