The Reckoning

The Reckoning, by John Grisham

Pete Banning was Clanton, Mississippi’s favorite son—a decorated World War II hero, the patriarch of a prominent family, a farmer, father, neighbor, and a faithful member of the Methodist church. Then one cool October morning he rose early, drove into town, walked into the church, and calmly shot and killed his pastor and friend, the Reverend Dexter Bell.

As if the murder weren’t shocking enough, it was even more baffling that Pete’s only statement about it—to the sheriff, to his lawyers, to the judge, to the jury, and to his family—was: “I have nothing to say.” He was not afraid of death and was willing to take his motive to the grave.

Corruption of Honor

Corruption of Honor, by A.M. Rycroft

Shaun gave up on proving to the new king that she’s not a traitor to the realm as he claims. Hellbent on finding Sara, she broke free from her prison and made a deal with the king’s enemy. The dark sorceress promised to help Shaun use the creature inside her to find Sara. But it didn’t go as planned.Thomas Delschein, possibly the last person still on Shaun’s side, searches for both Sara and his fugitive friend behind the king’s back. If he doesn’t capture Shaun as he’s been ordered to do, he risks being stripped of his knighthood. But he still believes she can be saved.

If Shaun can stay ahead of the hunters and find Sara, there may yet be a way she and the kingdom can be saved.

There’s a Giant Trapdoor Spider Under Your Bed

There’s a Giant Trapdoor Spider Under Your Bed, by Edgar Cantero

The thrill of a sleepover becomes sheer terror as kids voice their greatest fears into existence in this cheeky, vividly cinematic tale by New York Times bestselling author Edgar Cantero. Lights out.

It’s bad enough that its venom-dripping chelicerae can slice through flesh like warm butter. Worse? It’s right there under the bunk. It’s a fact now. To make it through the night, the children must obey the rules: don’t get out of bed, stay out of the shadows, and don’t wake the beast. But as the threats multiply, so do the rules of survival. And with the safety of dawn still hours away, the fun is just beginning.

Edgar Cantero’s There’s a Giant Trapdoor Spider under Your Bed is part of Dark Corners, a collection of seven heart-stopping short stories by bestselling authors who give you so many new reasons to be afraid. Each story can be read in a single sitting. Or, if you have the nerve, you can listen all by yourself in the dark.

The Sleep Tight Motel

The Sleep Tight Motel, by Lisa Unger

A woman on the run finds refuge in a motel at the edge of the woods, with plenty of vacancies. Check in for the night with New York Times bestselling author Lisa Unger.

Eve has a fake ID, a .38, and a violent lover receding in the rearview mirror. He’ll never find her at the isolated motel, and its kindly manager is happy to ease her fears. But if Eve is the only guest, whom does she keep hearing on the other side of the wall? Eve won’t get a good night’s rest until she finds out.

Vengeance

Vengeance, by Mark David Abbott

John Hayes’ life is perfect. He has a dream job in an exotic land, his career path is on an upward trajectory and at home he has a beautiful wife whom he loves with all his heart.

But one horrible day a brutal incident tears this all away from him and his life is destroyed.

He doesn’t know who is to blame, he doesn’t know what to do, and the police fail to help.

The Christmas Scorpion

The Christmas Scorpion, by Lee Child

On Christmas Eve, Jack Reacher stumbles into a no-name bar in the California desert, desperate to take refuge from an unexpected snowstorm.

Reacher came to Barstow for a little R&R. Instead, he’s sequestered in a dark little roadhouse with a bartender, a bewildered elderly couple—and two members of Britain’s Royal Military Police. They tell Reacher they were escorting a VIP to a top-secret meeting at a U.S. military base when they became separated from their charge.

That’s when the threat came in from a notorious assassin: the Christmas Scorpion. Now they need a miracle to save the day. Or maybe all they need is Jack Reacher.

Our Little Lies

Our Little Lies, by Sue Watson

Marianne has a life others dream of. A beautiful townhouse on the best street in the neighbourhood. Three bright children who are her pride and joy.

Sometimes her past still hurts: losing her mother, growing up in foster care. But her husband Simon is always there. A successful surgeon, he’s the envy of every woman they’ve ever met. Flowers, gifts, trips to France – nothing is too good for his family.

Then Simon says another woman’s name. The way he lingers on it, Caroline, gives Marianne a shudder of suspicion, but she knows she can’t entertain this flash of paranoia.

In the old days, she’d have distracted herself at work, but Marianne left her glamorous career behind when she got married. She’d speak to a friend, but she’s too busy with her children and besides, Simon doesn’t approve of the few she has left.

Swamp Spook

Swamp Spook, by Jana DeLeon

Sinful, Louisiana, really knows how to throw a party, and it goes all out for Halloween. The weeklong celebration kicks off with a maze of horror in the park built of hay bales. And Fortune has the perfect assignment—the executioner. Her scene comes complete with a head block, a hatchet, and a fake body with removable head. It’s the perfect setup…for a crime.

When Fortune returns from break and realizes the body in her scene is a real one and not the prop, she knows trouble is coming. Before she can shake a broomstick, Celia Arceneaux has raised the alarm and the state police show up to take over the investigation. With Carter on the sidelines and Fortune the prime suspect, Swamp Team 3 sets out to catch a real monster.

What Have You Done

What Have You Done, Matthew Farrell

When a mutilated body is found hanging in a seedy motel in Philadelphia, forensics specialist Liam Dwyer assumes the crime scene will be business as usual. Instead, the victim turns out to be a woman he’d had an affair with before breaking it off to save his marriage. But there’s a bigger problem: Liam has no memory of where he was or what he did on the night of the murder.

Panicked, Liam turns to his brother, Sean, a homicide detective. Sean has his back, but incriminating evidence keeps piling up. From fingerprints to DNA, everything points to Liam, who must race against time and his department to uncover the truth—even if that truth is his own guilt. Yet as he digs deeper, dark secrets come to light, and Liam begins to suspect the killer might actually be Sean…

Dr. Kingston

Dr. Kingston, by J.E. Lindsay

Dr Kingston is the perfect citizen to the outside world. He has a good job, a loving wife and no criminal record… but all is not as it seems. For over a decade, Sebastian Kingston has been harbouring a very sinister hobby – murdering women that remind him of his abusive mother.

He has it down to a fine art, until an infatuation with one of his students causes him to become reckless. Valerie Woods, lead detective on the case, is closing in on him.

Holy Ghost

Holy Ghost, by John Sandford

Pinion, Minnesota: a metropolis of all of seven hundred souls, for which the word “moribund” might have been invented. Nothing ever happened there and nothing ever would–until the mayor of sorts (campaign slogan: “I’ll Do What I Can”) and a buddy come up with a scheme to put Pinion on the map. They’d heard of a place where a floating image of the Virgin Mary had turned the whole town into a shrine, attracting thousands of pilgrims. And all those pilgrims needed food, shelter, all kinds of crazy things, right? They’d all get rich! What could go wrong?

When the dead body shows up, they find out, and that’s only the beginning of their troubles–and Virgil Flowers’–as they are all about to discover all too soon.

The Spotted Parasol

The Spotted Parasol, by Abbey Pen Baker

Set against the steamy backdrop of Prohibition and the criminal minds in New England, this series launches the career of Myrl Adler Norton, the daughter of Sherlock Holmes, a professor of logic at Smith College in the 1920s. With her teaching assistant, Faye Martin Tullis, the two come up against the Mafia, drugs, blackmail and murder and an array of crimes so bizarre they echo the cases from the canon itself. A father would be proud.

Iraq. Sand dunes. A missing woman. Myrl and Faye, sent by a cryptic note to protect Gertrude Bell, the “Queen of the Desert,” arrive in Baghdad to find her missing. T. E. Lawrence is convinced she’s been abducted. When a clutch of children’s teeth and a few marbles of glass and gold arrive in the pocket of a runner, the two women set off across the desert.

What I’ve Done

What I’ve Done, by Melinda Leigh

Haley Powell wakes up covered in blood, with no memory of the night before. When she sees a man lying in the backyard, stabbed to death, she has only one terrified thought: What have I done?

Agreeing to take the case as a favor to her PI friend Lincoln Sharp, Morgan must scale a mountain of damning circumstantial and forensic evidence to prove her client innocent. Haley couldn’t appear more guilty: her bloodstained fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and she has no alibi. But Morgan can’t shake the feeling that this shocked young woman has been framed.

Someone out there is hell-bent on sabotaging her defense, targeting Morgan, her partner, and especially Haley. Someone who will stop at nothing—and whose next move will be deadly.

Target: Alex Cross

Target: Alex Cross, by James Patterson

A killer elite–six assassins–are on the loose. So is Alex Cross.

A leader has fallen, and Alex Cross joins the procession of mourners from Capitol Hill to the White House. Then a sniper’s bullet strikes a target in the heart of DC. Alex Cross’s wife, Bree Stone, newly elevated chief of DC detectives must solve the case or lose her position.

The Secret Service and the FBI deploy as well in the race to find the shooter. Alex is tasked by the new President to lead an investigation unprecedented in scale and scope. But is the sniper’s strike only the beginning of a larger attack on the nation?

Dark Sacred Night

Dark Sacred Night, by Michael Connelly

Detective Renée Ballard is working the night beat — known in LAPD slang as “the late show” — and returns to Hollywood Station in the early hours to find a stranger rifling through old file cabinets. The intruder is retired detective Harry Bosch, working a cold case that has gotten under his skin.

Ballard can’t let him go through department records, but when he leaves, she looks into the case herself and feels a deep tug of empathy and anger. She has never been the kind of cop who leaves the job behind at the end of her shift — and she wants in.

The murder, unsolved, was of fifteen-year-old Daisy Clayton, a runaway on the streets of Hollywood who was brutally killed, her body left in a dumpster like so much trash. Now Ballard joins forces with Bosch to find out what happened to Daisy, and to finally bring her killer to justice. Along the way, the two detectives forge a fragile trust, but this new partnership is put to the test when the case takes an unexpected and dangerous turn.