28 results for "Mystery"

Crime scene: a novel

Kellerman, Jonathan,Kellerman, Jesse
"A former star athlete turned deputy coroner is drawn into a brutal, complicated murder in this psychological thriller from a father-son writing team that delivers "brilliant, page-turning fiction" (Stephen King). Natural causes or foul play? That's the question Clay Edison must answer each time he examines a body. Figuring out motives and chasing down suspects aren't part of his beat--not until a seemingly open-and-shut case proves to be more than meets his highly trained eye. Eccentric, reclusive Walter Rennert lies cold at the bottom of his stairs. At first glance the scene looks straightforward: a once-respected psychology professor, done in by booze and a bad heart. But his daughter Tatiana insists that her father has been murdered, and she persuades Clay to take a closer look at the grim facts of Rennert's life. What emerges is a history of scandal and violence, and an experiment gone horribly wrong that ended in the brutal murder of a coed. Walter Rennert, it appears, was a broken man--and maybe a marked one. And when Clay learns that a colleague of Rennert's died in a nearly identical manner, he begins to question everything in the official record. All the while, his relationship with Tatiana is evolving into something forbidden. The closer they grow, the more determined he becomes to catch her father's killer--even if he has to overstep his bounds to do it. The twisting trail Clay follows will lead him into the darkest corners of the human soul. It's his job to listen to the tales the dead tell. But this time, he's part of a story that makes his blood run cold. Praise for Jonathan Kellerman "Jonathan Kellerman's psychology skills and dark imagination are a potent literary mix."--Los Angeles Times "Kellerman doesn't just write psychological thrillers--he owns the genre."--Detroit Free Press "A master of the psychological thriller."--People Praise for Jesse Kellerman "Gripping and compelling. but what truly separates Kellerman from the pack is his prose. Jesse Kellerman tightens the noose slowly, and we his readers can do nothing but turn the pages."--Harlan Coben, on The Genius "Kellerman has a gift for creating compelling characters as well as for crafting an ingenious plot that grabs the reader and refuses to let go."--Publishers Weekly (starred review), on The Genius"--
Ballantine Books 2017 381 pages

Death in her hands

Moshfegh, Ottessa
"From one of our most ceaselessly provocative literary talents, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds a cryptic note on a walk in the woods that ultimately makes her question everything about her new home While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the nearby forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, having moved here from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she's a little shaky even on her best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems to be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one--one that strikes closer to home. A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, Death in Her Hands asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both guide us closer to the truth and keep us at bay from it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, only this time the stakes have never been higher"--
Penguin Press 2020 259 pages

The innocent

Coben, Harlan
NOW THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL SERIES EL INOCENTE! The bestselling author and creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger takes readers on an electrifying ride in this thriller that peeks behind the white picket fences of suburbia—where one mistake can change your life forever. One night, Matt Hunter innocently tried to break up a fight—and ended up a killer. Now, nine years later, he’s an ex-con who takes nothing for granted. His wife, Olivia, is pregnant, and the two of them are closing on their dream house. But all it will take is one shocking, inexplicable call from Olivia’s cell phone to shatter Matt’s life a second time...
Dutton 2023-11-07 419 pages

Time bomb

Kellerman, Jonathan
Edgar Award winner Jonathan Kellerman once more explores the corruption of California's golden coast and produces a novel of complex characterizations and nonstop suspense. By the time psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware reached the school the damage was done: A sniper had opened fire on a crowded playground, but was gunned down before any children were hurt. While the TV news crews feasted on the scene an Alex began his therapy sessions with the traumatized children, he couldn't escape the image of a slight teenager clutching an oversized rifle. What was the identity behind the name and face: a would-be assassin, or just another victim beneath an indifferent California sky? Intrigued by a request from the sniper's father to conduct a "psychological autopsy" of his child, Alex begins to uncover a strange pattern of innocence, neglect, and loss. Then suddenly it is more than a pattern -- it is a trail of blood. In the dead sniper's past was a dark and vicious plot. And in Alex Delaware's future is the stuff of grown-up nightmares: the face of real human evil. Also available on BDD Audio Cassette. From the Paperback edition.
Bantam Books 1990 468 pages

The conspiracy club

Kellerman, Jonathan
When his passionate romance with nurse Jocelyn Banks is cut short by her kidnapping and brutal murder, young psychologist Jeremy Carrier is left emotionally devastated, haunted by his lover's grisly demise --- and eyed warily by police still seeking a prime suspect in the slaying. To escape the pain, he buries himself in his work at City Central Hospital --- only to be drawn deeper into a waking nightmare when more women turn up murdered in the same gruesome fashion as Jocelyn. As the suspicion surrounding Jeremy intensifies, the only way for him to prove his innocence and put his torment to rest is to follow the deadly trail of a modern-day Jack the Ripper --
Ballantine Books 2003 376 pages

The stranger in the lifeboat: a novel

Albom, Mitch
Adrift in a raft after a deadly ship explosion, nine people struggle for survival at sea. Three days pass. Short on water, food and hope, they spot a man floating in the waves and pull him in. The man, strange and quiet, claims to be the Lord. Is the man who he claims to be? What actually caused the explosion? Are the survivors already in heaven, or are they in hell? Years later, when the empty life raft washes up on the island of Montserrat-- the events recounted in a notebook-- it falls to the island's chief inspector to solve the mystery of what really happened. -- adapted from jacket
Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2021 271 pages

Legends

Littell, Robert
Now a TNT series starring Sean Bean, from the producers of"24"and"Homeland" Robert Littell is today widely considered one of the true grand masters of American spy fiction, hailed for his profound grasp of the ambiguous world of international espionage, grippingly displayed in his thirteen novels. His most recent international bestseller, The Company, was praised as being "popular fiction at its finest" by the Washington Post Book World and as "one of the best spy novels ever written" by the Chicago Tribune. Now delving into one agent's labyrinth of memories and past identities "legends," in CIA parlance Legends again displays Littell's unparalleled prowess as a seductive storyteller exploring the clandestine but always very human world of secret agents."
Penguin Books 2006 385 pages

Come and find me

Ephron, Hallie
“It takes a lot of chutzpah for a book reviewer to write books of her own….But Hallie Ephron…can hold her head high: She does it, and very well, too.” —Seattle Times A recluse who works and lives online must brave the “real world” when her sister goes missing in Come and Find Me—a gripping and ingenious novel of mystery and psychological suspense from Hallie Ephron, author of Never Tell a Lie. Writing about her sensational debut, USA Today noted, “You can imagine Hitchcock curling up with this one.” Aficionados of Rear Window, Vertigo, and North by Northwest—as well as the many fans of Harlan Coben and Mary Higgins Clark—will get a similar charge from Come and Find Me.
William Morrow 2011-03-22 275 pages

Tough guys don't dance

Mailer, Norman
A dark, brilliant novel of astonishing pitch, set in Provincetown, a “spit of shrub and dune” captured here in the rawness and melancholy of the off-season, Tough Guys Don’t Dance is the story of Tim Madden, an unsuccessful writer addicted to bourbon, cigarettes, and blonde, careless women with money. On the twenty-fourth morning after the decampment of his wife, Patty Lareine, he awakens with a hangover, considerable sexual excitement, and, on his upper arm, a red tattoo bearing a name from the past. Of the night before, he remembers practically nothing. What he soon learns is that the front passenger seat of his Porsche is soaked with blood and that in a secluded corner of his marijuana stash in a nearby woods rests a blonde head, severed at the throat. Is Madden therefore a murderer? He has no way of knowing. As in many novels of crime, the narrative centers on violence—physical, sexual, and emotional—but these elements move in their orbits through a rich constellation of character as Madden tries to reconstruct the missing hours of a terrible evening. In the course of this in-quiry a bizarre and vividly etched gallery of characters reappears to him as in a dream—ex-prizefighters, sexual junkies, mediums, former cons, a police chief, a world-weary former girl friend, and Mad-den’s father, old now but still a Herculean figure, a practitioner of the sternest backroom ethics. Tough Guys Don’t Dance represents Mailer at the peak of his powers with a stunningly conceived novel that soon transcends its origins as a mystery to become a relentless search into the recesses and buried virtues of the modern American male. Rarely, as many readers will discern, have the paradoxes of machismo and homosexuality been so well explored.
Random House 2002 229 pages

Keep her safe

Hannah, Sophie
Pushed to the breaking point, Cara Burrows flees her home and family and escapes to a five-star spa resort she can't afford. Late at night, exhausted and desperate, she lets herself into her hotel room and is shocked to find it already occupied -- by a man and a teenage girl. A simple mistake at the front desk but soon Cara realizes that the girl she saw alive and well in the hotel room is someone she can't possibly have seen: the most famous murder victim in the country, Melody Chapa, whose parents are serving natural life sentences for her murder. Cara doesn't know what to trust -- everything she's read and heard about the case, or the evidence of her own eyes. Did she really see Melody? And is she prepared to ask herself that question and answer it honestly if it means risking her own life?
William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2017 346 pages

Ghost country

Paretsky, Sara
Four troubled people meet beneath Chicago’s shadowy streets and discover a woman who changes their lives forever in this powerful, haunting novel of magic and miracles, from the New York Times bestselling author of the V.I. Warshawski series“Truly remarkable.”— San Francisco Chronicle“Rich, imaginative, [and] intensely moving.”— Chicago Tribune“Astonishing and affecting.”— BooklistThey come from different worlds and meet at a time of crisis for all of them. Luisa, a drunken diva fallen on hard times, discovers on Chicago's streets a drama greater than any she has experienced onstage. Madeleine, a homeless woman, sees the Virgin Mary’s blood seeping through a concrete wall beneath a luxury hotel. Mara, a rebellious adolescent cast out by her wealthy grandfather, becomes the catalyst for a war between the haves and have-nots as she searches among society’s castoffs for the mother she never knew. As the three women fight for their right to live and worship beneath the hotel, they find an ally in Hector Tammuz, an idealistic young psychiatrist risking his career to treat the homeless regardless of the cost. Tensions in the city are escalating when a mysterious woman appears during a violent storm. Alluring to some, repellent to others, she never speaks; the street people call her Starr. And as she slowly transforms their lives, miracles begin to happen in a city completely unprepared for the outcome. In this extraordinary novel, Sara Paretsky gives voice to the dispossessed, to men and women struggling to bury the ghosts of the past, fighting for their lives in a world hungry for miracles, terrified of change --
Delacorte Press 1998 386 pages

A game for all the family

Hannah, Sophie
"Pulled into a deadly game of deception, secrets, and lies, a woman must find the truth in order to defeat a mysterious opponent, protect her daughter, and save her own life in this dazzling standalone psychological thriller with an unforgettable ending from the New York Times bestselling author of Woman with a Secret and The Monogram Murders. You thought you knew who you were. A stranger knows better. You've left the city and the career that nearly destroyed you--for a fresh start on the coast. But trouble begins when your daughter withdraws, after her new best friend, George, is unfairly expelled from school. You beg the principal to reconsider, only to be told that George hasn't been expelled. Because there is, and was, no George. Who is lying? Who is real? Who is in danger? Who is in control? As you search for answers, the anonymous calls begin a stranger, who insists that you and she share a traumatic past and a guilty secret. And then the caller threatens your life. This is Justine's story. This is Justine's family. This is Justine's game. But it could be yours"--
William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2015 447 pages

The wrong mother

Hannah, Sophie
A chilling, compulsively readable novel of psychological suspense from the author of Little Face and The Carrier Sally Thorning is watching the news with her husband when she hears a name she never thought she'd hear again: Mark Bretherick. It's a name she shouldn't recognize. Last year, a work trip Sally had planned was canceled at the last minute. Desperate for a break from juggling her job and a young family, Sally didn't tell her husband that the trip had fallen through. Instead, she treated herself to a secret vacation in a remote hotel. While she was there, Sally met a man--Mark Bretherick. All the details are the same: where he lives, his job, his wife Geraldine and daughter Lucy. Except that the photograph on the news is of a man Sally has never seen before. And Geraldine and Lucy Bretherick are both dead... With the international bestseller Little Face , Sophie Hannah established herself as a striking new voice in psychological suspense. The Wrong Mother , a riveting exploration of a mother's unspeakable betrayal, confirms her reputation as a master of the form.
Penguin Books 2009 415 pages

Another kingdom: a novel

Klavan, Andrew
"Austin, a struggling screenwriter living in LA, is transported to the medieval city of Galiana, where he is charged with murder. He is suddenly transported back to LA and sets off in search of the only book written about the medieval kingdom. But Austin is not the only one interested in the book - Serge Orosgo, a powerful billionaire and family friend, wants the books so badly that he threatens to kill Austin if he doesn't find it. Realizing Serge and his family are on an evil mission, Austin struggles to stay alive and find the book before it gets into Serge's hands. His search is continually derailed, however, because Austin has no control over his passage between the two worlds and keeps suddenly returning Galiana."--
Turner Publishing Company 2018 339 pages

The reservoir

Duchovny, David
"The Reservoir follows an unexceptional man in an exceptional time. We see our present-day pandemic world and New York City through the eyes of a former Wall Street veteran, Ridley, as he, in his enforced quarantined solitude, looks back upon his life. He examines his wins, his failures, the gnawing questions-his career, his divorce, his estranged daughter-and wonders what it all means and who he really is. Sitting and brooding night after night, gazing out his huge picture window high above the Central Park Reservoir, Ridley spots a flashing light in an apartment across the park as if a lonely quarantined person is signaling him in Morse code. His determination to find out who this mystery woman is, this fellow quarantine damsel in distress trapped in her own Fifth Avenue tower, leads him on an epic quest that will ultimately tempt him with either delusional madness or the fulfillment of his own mythic fate. Is he a dying man going mad or an everyman metamorphosing into a hero? Or both? We accompany Ridley as he leaves the safety of his apartment window to save the Fifth Avenue femme fatale and descends into a dangerous, increasingly surreal world of global conspiracies, madness, and sickness of this viral time; beyond that, into the enduring mysteries of love and fatherhood; and deeper still, into the bedrock mystery of life itself. As Ridley's actions grow more and more uncharacteristic, he realizes the key to all the mysteries of now, and even all of history, seem to lie deep beneath the freezing waters of the reservoir. The Reservoir is a twisted rom-com for our distanced time, when the merest touch could kill and conspiracy theories propagate like viruses-a contemporary union of Death in Venice, Rear Window, and The Plague"--
Akashic Books 2022 128 pages