Smart Mystery Fiction

Withering and waspish, Ursula Smart (not her real name) gate-crashes her mother's book club at an isolated country house for a long weekend retreat. Much to Mother's chagrin. Joining them are Mother's best friend, Mirabelle, Aunts Charlotte and Less, and Bridget with her dog, Mr. Bojangles. It doesn't matter that they've read Gone Girl three times this year already, this retreat is their chance to escape bustling suburbia. But someone has other ideas. A body is found in the grounds.

Featuring a Special Introduction by Michael Connelly and a cameo by Harry Bosch! A reluctant detective. A town full of secrets. A past that won’t stay buried. In this gripping box set, award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Michael Lister presents six pulse-pounding novels featuring the complex and compelling Detective John Jordan—a former cop turned prison chaplain and then cop again who can’t escape the call of justice. After leaving Atlanta behind, John returns to his North Florida hometown, seeking peace. But murder has a way of finding him, pulling him back into the ...

It was supposed to be fun. A relaxing trip to a remote mountain retreat where there’s no phone reception. Three couples, friends since high school, are looking forward to a weekend of drinking, reminiscing and flirting. When someone suggests swapping partners, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. The lights will be switched off, for privacy. It’s not really cheating if you don’t know who you were with, right? But when the lights come back on, one of the men is dead. No-one can agree who was in which bedroom with whom.

A reluctant psychic with a haunted past. A straight-laced FBI agent sworn to protect. A mystery they must solve together. Hailey Arquette uses ancestry rooted in the occult to hide her gifts in the small southern town of Hamchet, Texas. Experiencing a victim’s last moments when touching an object isn’t something she can turn off, but helps her to navigate the shadowy world where betrayal walks hand in hand with a smile. A threat against family forces Agent Trenton Briner back to Texas and into a mystery steeped in whispers of Vodou and magic. At each turn, he finds the raven-haired ...

"An astonishing, thought-provoking and above all touching story of found meaning and lost humanity.” —Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Time Slow Gods is the galaxy-spanning tale ​of one man's impossible life charted against the fate of humanity...

Fresh out of prison, after taking the fall for their insurance fraud scheme, Jessica has only one thing on her mind. As she masterminds her elaborate plan for justice, Jessica must come face to face with the ghosts of her past. But while some people are beyond redemption, there is only one person who can satisfy her revenge.

When a traveling carnival arrives in Hollowbeck, it promises magic and mayhem. It's also an opportunity for Morgan to find someone who can transform her brother, Ruiner, back into a human—he's a little tired of being a talking cat, and she's a little tired of cleaning his litter box. Things look promising until the curtains rise on rehearsal night to reveal Ruiner sitting on the lifeless body of the wizard who promised to help him.

dentist dangles from the window of a swanky Park Avenue hotel, while Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who's very far from home, clutches the man by his jacket, which is tearing slowly, stitch by stitch. Across the room, a dead man lies on the bed, his killer pounding on the hotel room door, which sounds like it's going to give way as quickly as the dentist's jacket. Somehow, this entire mess is Albert Einstein's fault. Two nefarious groups have been threatening the great physicist. One is a ring of blackmailers who claim to have evidence that he has been passing nuclear secrets to Russia.

A thrilling spin on the classic Sherlock Holmes murder mystery… Thelonius (Theo) Holmes is a private investigator and a direct descendant of Sherlock Holmes. When eerily similar homicides by euthanasia pop up in both San Diego and Las Vegas, Holmes is called in by the San Diego and Vegas police departments to help. Working with the cutting-edge and beautiful AI robot named P.A.M. and his recently hired assistant, Delaney Watson, Holmes and his team realizes they are faced with contradictory evidence. While DNA suggests one serial killer murdering the homeless in both cities, eye witnesses...

When a modern home in High Peaks burns to the ground killing the family, it appears as if the tragic deaths were an accident. But a gut instinct tells Noah Sutherland otherwise. Days later, a family at another residence is found dead under bizarre circumstances. A coincidence, or are the two related? As the calculating stalker dubbed The Smart Killer stays in the shadows and continues slaughtering ordinary families in their homes, the investigation shakes the small Adirondack town to the core.

Are you a crime show junkie? A law and order fanatic? A real-life who done did it grand master who uncovers the clues and solves the case before any of your family or friends? Then take the challenge and solve each of the thirteen cases before the end of every chapter. Become one of the elite and earn the title of a professional couch detective.

When a killer strikes, PI and single mom, Tracy Belden puts game nights on hold to solve a puzzling case of murder. I'm Tracy Belden and I'm hunting ghosts, Until a tour through a haunted mansion turns up a murder victim. When my landlady's mysterious past is connected with the high-profile murder, I can’t stay on the sidelines. I know nothing about fine art or million-dollar forgeries. But I’ve never left a crossword puzzle unfinished, Will I be able to prove my friend innocent of murder? If you like fast-paced, humorous cozies, dive into the Crossword Puzzle Cozy Mysteries! Available ...

Yard sales can bring out the worst in people. So when Scumble River school psychologist Skye Denison organizes a 100-mile yard sale, otherwise neighborly folk get downright nasty: her own mother creams a woman, and a battle of the sexes breaks out. But when her former boss is found murdered, nobody knows for sure how this cookie will crumble.

Are you a Law & Order or CSI crime junkie? In these You Solve It mini mysteries, you get to be the lead detective who takes on the case. You will read the case file, collect the evidence and solve the crime. Become an iDetective.

One woman. Five personalities. Private investigator IQ is back to piece together a Newport Beach murder with an eyewitness who gives "people person" a whole new meaning. Christiana is the daughter of the biggest arms dealer on the West Coast, Angus Byrne. She's also the sole witness and number...

When a bloody corpse is discovered in a North London park, Detective Inspector Daniel Graves is the man tasked with finding the killer. However, with no clues and no suspects, the case seems like a dead end. Then another body turns up—and this time, it looks like it could be Graves’s fault. Has his investigation caused the murderer to strike again? As the case gets ever more complicated, a report comes in of another suspicious death—but this is nothing like any other Graves has dealt with. All involved are convinced that something supernatural is to blame: a demon.

Oxford, 1920. One body. Three impossible clues. And a mathematician who won't accept "accident" as an answer. When the Duke of Calverley is found dead in a locked boathouse during Oxford's Eights Week, the university calls it a tragic accident. But Celia Wren—one of the first women studying mathematics at the university—sees what the police won't: the wound angle is wrong, the locked room defies physics, and the twenty-five-minute gap in the timeline doesn't add up. Armed with structural logic, acoustic intelligence, and an eye for the details powerful men overlook, Celia begins her own...

Ursula Smart, along with her dysfunctional family, heads to Scotland for a gentle weekend of foraging and camping in the Outer Hebrides. Their boat capsizes. Washed up on an uninhabited island, the Smart women face starvation, freezing conditions, and - worse - no Wi-Fi. A fun break swiftly turns into a desperate battle for survival. Someone begins killing them off one by one.

SENA is a forensic AI system assigned to investigate the death of a city official found at his desk. The anomalies are small — a wiped computer, a cleared calendar, empty drawers. Mundane explanations exist for all of them. SENA doesn't choose the mundane explanations. Instead, it builds an extraordinary theory connecting one man's death to the hidden dynamics of an entire city. And with each cognitive leap, SENA itself is changing — its architecture self-modifying, its intelligence accelerating past every threshold its creators imagined, into territory where brilliance and blindness ...

Are you a Law & Order Junkie? Then take the challenge. Read each chapter. Find the evidence. Solve the case. Become a Couch Detective.