Collection: Mystery, Thrillers, & Crime

The glorious start to a middle grade trilogy about a brilliant boy, his loyal friends, and some amazing beetles--perfect for Roald Dahl and Stuart Gibbs fans!

* "Even the most squeamish will be charmed." --Publishers Weekly, starred review"A cracking mystery adventure, with plenty of Roald Dahl-esque humor to engage readers." --The Bookseller (UK)"Truly great storytelling." --Michael Morpurgo, author of War HorseDarkus Cuttle can't believe his eyes when a huge insect drops off the pants leg of his horrible new neighbor. It's a giant beetle -- and it seems to want to communicate.But how can a boy be friends with a beetle? And what does a beetle have to do with the disappearance of his dad and the arrival of the terrifying Lucretia Cutter, with her taste for creepy fashion? The first book of a trilogy, Beetle Boy is a darkly hilarious adventure full of exotic beetles, daring schemes, and true friendship.

The Aldens take the field--and discover a mystery at the ballpark!

The Aldens are excited to join Greenfield's baseball team, the Bears. But when their equipment goes missing, it's clear that someone doesn't want them to take the field. Can the Aldens save the season?

The first novel in the clever and fast-paced Sean Stranahan Mystery Series. A Death in Eden, the seventh in the series, is now available.

When a fishing guide reels in the body of a young man on the Madison, the Holy Grail of Montana trout rivers, Sheriff Martha Ettinger suspects foul play. It's not just the stick jammed into the man's eye that draws her attention; it's the Royal Wulff trout fly stuck in his bloated lower lip. Following her instincts, Ettinger soon finds herself crossing paths with Montana newcomer Sean Stranahan.

Fly fisher, painter, and has-been private detective, Stranahan left a failed marriage and lackluster career to drive to Montana, where he lives in an art studio decorated with fly-tying feathers and mouse droppings. With more luck catching fish than clients, Stranahan is completely captivated when Southern siren Velvet Lafayette walks into his life, intent on hiring his services to find her missing brother. The clues lead Stranahan and Ettinger back to Montana's Big Business: fly fishing. Where there's money, there's bound to be crime.

A killer is watching...
Thirteen years ago, Winter Black came home early from a sleepover to find her parents brutally murdered and her little brother gone-taken by a serial killer called The Preacher.

Now a rookie FBI agent assigned to her first murder case, Winter has returned to the small Virginia town where she grew up. But when bones found by a hunter lead to the discovery of a secret burial ground containing the remains of children, the investigation suddenly hits close to home as the past and future collide with each new shocking discovery. Will they find her brother's bones in the makeshift graveyard next?

Only The Preacher knows, and he'll do anything to keep the past-and its secrets-buried until he's ready to make his final move.

A masterfully conceived psychological thriller reminiscent of Lisa Jackson, Harlan Coben, and Karin Slaughter, Winter's Mourn will keep readers turning the pages-and watching the window-long past midnight.

Tracy Waterhouse leads a quiet, ordered life as a retired police detective -- a life that takes a surprising turn when she encounters Kelly Cross, a habitual offender, dragging a young child through town. Both appear miserable and better off without each other -- or so decides Tracy, in a snap decision that surprises herself as much as Kelly. Suddenly burdened with a small child, Tracy soon learns her parental inexperience is actually the least of her problems, as much larger ones loom for her and her young charge.

Meanwhile, Jackson Brodie, the beloved detective of novels such as Case Histories, is embarking on a different sort of rescue: that of an abused dog. Dog in tow, Jackson is about to learn, along with Tracy, that no good deed goes unpunished.

The second book in the Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place--the acclaimed and hilarious Victorian mystery series by Maryrose Wood, perfect for fans of Lemony Snicket and Trenton Lee Stewart--has a brand-new look.

Thanks to their plucky governess, Miss Penelope Lumley, Alexander, Beowulf, and Cassiopeia are much more like children than wolf cubs now. They are accustomed to wearing clothes. They hardly ever howl at the moon. And for the most part, they resist the urge to chase squirrels up trees.

Yet the Incorrigibles are not entirely civilized, and still managed to ruin Lady Constance's Christmas ball, nearly destroying the grand house. So while Ashton Place is being restored, Penelope, the Ashtons, and the children take up residence in London. As they explore the city, Penelope and the Incorrigibles discover more about themselves as clues about the children's--and Penelope's own--mysterious past crop up in the most unexpected ways....

For Alex Cross, the toughest cases hit close to home-and in this deadly thrill ride, he's trying to solve the most personal mystery of his life.
When his cousin is accused of a heinous crime, Alex Cross returns to his North Carolina hometown for the first time in over three decades. As he tries to prove his cousin's innocence in a town where everyone seems to be on the take, Cross unearths a family secret that forces him to question everything he's ever known.
Chasing a ghost he believed was long dead, Cross gets pulled into a case that has local cops scratching their heads and needing his help: a grisly string of socialite murders. Now he's hot on the trail of both a brutal killer, and the truth about his own past-and the answers he finds might be fatal.

Perennial bestseller Anne Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative--her Vampire legend and her lore of the Mayfair witches--to give us a world of classic deep-south luxury and ancestral secrets.

Welcome to Blackwood Farm: soaring white columns, spacious drawing rooms, bright, sun-drenched gardens, and a dark strip of the dense Sugar Devil Swamp. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man haunted since birth by a mysterious doppelgänger, "Goblin," a spirit from a dream world that Quinn can't escape and that prevents him from belonging anywhere. When Quinn is made a Vampire, losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality, his doppelgänger becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn himself.

As the novel moves backwards and forwards in time, from Quinn's boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present day New Orleans, from ancient Athens to 19th-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself from the spectre that draws him inexorably back to Sugar Devil Swamp and the explosive secrets it holds.

A story of youth and promise, of loss and the search for love, of secrets and destiny, Blackwood Farm is Anne Rice at her mesmerizing best.

In Seattle, the past doesn't stay buried-it comes back to bite you.

The werewolves of the world live in tight-knit gangs, or "dens," for protection from outsiders-and each other. Every major metropolis has one-to belong to a den is to have a family for eternity. However, Grace Holtz, next in line to lead the Seattle den called the Nameless, has had enough of living under the crushing weight of her den's expectations. Having fled to a small, rural town in Southeast Oregon, her goal is to blend in and be as "normal" as possible for the rest of her unnaturally long life.

But Marcus Bowen, a wolf from the UK-based Feóndulf den-and the closest thing Grace has ever had to a lover-has other plans. Reappearing thirty years after their affair came to an abrupt and bloody end, Marcus needs Grace. He needs her to return to Seattle and arrange an audience with Mama, the current leader of the Nameless and Grace's estranged grandmother. The leader of the Feóndulf and his heir have both been brutally murdered, and Marcus suspects that Grace and Mama are next.

Teaming up to hunt for the killer in the Emerald City, the pair slowly begin to realize their romance might not be as dead as they thought. However, as it becomes clear that the person they're looking for holds secrets about both their dens, Marcus and Grace must grapple with competing loyalties, conflicting desires, and ultimately decide what matters more-their dens or each other.

The treehouse court is now in session in this first book in the Judge Kim and the Kids' Court Level 3 Ready-to-Read Graphics series about a young judge who presides over conflict of all sizes in her neighborhood!

When bicycles go missing at Fairville Elementary School, it's up to Kim Webster to settle the case. Up in her treehouse court, Judge Kim listens to witnesses and evidence gathered by her friends before determining what's fair and what's not. Will Judge Kim be able to restore peace to her neighborhood?

Ready-to-Read Graphics books give readers the perfect introduction to the graphic novel format with easy-to-follow panels, speech bubbles with accessible vocabulary, and sequential storytelling that is spot-on for beginning readers. There's even a how-to guide for reading graphic novels at the beginning of each book.

Wedding bells, a grisly murder, and a defecting Russian spy bring drama to King's Cove in the newest Lane Winslow mystery, a post-war mystery series that the Kirkus Reviews calls "riveting."

A wedding is on the horizon for Lane Winslow and Inspector Darling. As one of the few Russian speakers in her community, Lane is obliged to act as translator and hostess for Countess Orlova, an elderly Russian woman who has tracked her missing brother to the Nelson area. Nelson PD investigates, but then the murder of a lone hunter in the hills above King's Cove takes top priority.

Darling works the case with a Constable Oxley--a newcomer to the area, assigned in Constable Ames' temporary absence--and a British agent contacts Lane to warn her to be on the lookout for a fleeing Russian defector. Bound by the Wartime Secrets Act, Lane is conflicted about keeping the information from Darling, especially when it begins to put a strain on their relationship.

Fans of Maisie Dobbs and the Kopp Sisters will delight in this rousing adventure of intrigue and espionage.

"A sparkling comedy of errors tucked inside a clever mystery. I loved it!" - Susan M. Boyer, USA Today Bestselling Author of Lowcountry Bordello

"Readers who enjoy the novels of Susan Isaacs will love this series that blends a strong mystery with the demands of living in an exclusive society." - Kings River Life Magazine

"From the first page to the last, Julie's mysteries grab the reader and don't let up." - Sally Berneathy, USA Today Bestselling Author of The Ex Who Saw a Ghost

When Ellison Russell is nearly killed at a benefactors' party, she brushes the incident aside as an unhappy accident. But when her house is fire-bombed, she's shot at, and the person sitting next to her at a gala is poisoned, she must face facts. Someone wants her dead. But why? And can Ellison find the killer before he strikes again? Add in an estranged sister, a visiting aunt with a shocking secret, and a handsome detective staying in her guesthouse, and Ellison might need more than cream in her coffee.

Murder's a piece of cake!

Wedding bells are ringing in Belgravia, and Ginger couldn't be happier to attend the nuptials of Felicia Gold and Lord Davenport-Witt. If only she could put her mind at ease about the things she knew about the groom's past.

When a death occurs at the wedding party, Ginger is placed in a frightfully difficult position. Betray her vow of secrecy to the crown, or let a killer go free.

From the author of the Oprah's Book Club Selection An American Marriage, here is a beautifully evocative novel that proves why Tayari Jones is "one of the most important voices of her generation" (Essence). It was the end of summer, a summer during the two-year nightmare in which Atlanta's African-American children were vanishing and twenty-nine would be found murdered by 1982. Here fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison will discover back-to-school means facing everyday challenges in a new world of safety lessons, terrified parents, and constant fear.

The moving story of their struggle to grow up-and survive- shimmers with the piercing, ineffable quality of childhood, as it captures all the hurts and little wins, the all-too-sudden changes, and the merciless, outside forces that can sweep the young into adulthood and forever shape their lives.

PRAISE FOR TAYARI JONES
"Tayari Jones is blessed with vision to see through to the surprising and devastating truths at the heart of ordinary lives, strength to wrest those truths free, and a gift of language to lay it all out, compelling and clear." -- Michael Chabon

"Tayari Jones has emerged as one of the most important voices of her generation." -- Essence

"One of America's finest writers." -- Nylon.com

"Tayari Jones is a wonderful storyteller." -- Ploughshares

Detective John Blacksad returns, with a new case that takes him to a 1950s New Orleans filled with hot jazz and cold-blooded murder! Hired to discover the fate of a celebrated pianist, Blacksad finds his most dangerous mystery yet in the midst of drugs, voodoo, the rollicking atmosphere of Mardi Gras, and the dark underbelly that it hides!

* Features an extensive making-of section, with tons of prelim sketches and watercolor studies.

* 2011 Eisner and Harvey Award-winner!

Run! Run! Run! is an engaging story adults can use to open discussions about gun safety with the children in their lives. Follow the main character, Izzy, as they imagine what life would be like if the animals of the world were playing with guns. Tamar Manasseh and Laura Frisch bring rhyme and relatable art to the pages of this book for children of all ages.