They find the boy by the swimming pool, dolls floating on its surface.Inside the house, his teacher lies dead.But he claims to remember nothing... June 2010. In the middle of a World Cup match, Martin Servaz receives a call from a long-lost lover. A few miles away in the town of Marsac, Classics professor Claire Diemar has been brutally murdered. As if that weren't disturbing enough, Servaz receives a cryptic e-mail indicating that Julian Hirtmann, the most twisted of all serial killers, is back...and hitting a little too close to home. With death and chaos surrounding the small university town in Southern France where he was once a student and where his daughter is now enrolled, Servaz must act quickly. With the help of detectives Irene Ziegler and Esperandieu, Servaz will have to uncover a world of betrayal and depravity to connect the dots between these gruesome murders that keep re-opening wounds from his past. After the success of The...

Ben Slayton, T-Man - Book #4

Two new, original novellas—Donaldson's first publication since finishing the Thomas Covenant series—are a sure cause for celebration among his many fans. In The King's Justice, a stranger dressed in black arrives in the village of Settle's Crossways, following the scent of a terrible crime. He even calls himself "Black," though almost certainly that is not his name. The people of the village discover that they have a surprising urge to cooperate with this stranger, though the desire of inhabitants of quiet villages to cooperate with strangers is not common in their land, or most lands. But this gift will not save him as he discovers the nature of the evil concealed in Settle's Crossways. The "Augur's Gambit" is a daring plan created by Mayhew Gordian, Hieronomer to the Queen of Indemnie, a plan to save his Queen and his country. Gordian is a reader of entrails. In the bodies of chickens, lambs, piglets, and one stillborn infant he sees the...

Lea Carson can't believe it when her family moves into the creepy old house on Fear Street. Creepiest of all is the secret room up in the attic. The room has been locked and boarded up for at least a hundred years. A murder was committed in that room, the story goes, and it has been closed up ever since. Lea knows she should stay away. But she thinks she hears footsteps inside the secret room. And voices. Someone—or something—is waiting for Lea in there. Should she open the door? Can she resist?

Tatum Knight is a former contract killer. Ruthless. Conniving. And he's Jack's newest client. Tatum is the older brother of Jack's best friend, Theo. Theo himself spent time on death row until Jack found the evidence to prove him innocent. Jack isn't so sure about Tatum. A gorgeous young woman has been shot dead in her Mercedes on a Miami street. Tatum denies that he had anything to do with it, but he admits to Jack that he did meet with her in Theo's bar, where she tried to hire him. Sally Fenning was worth forty-eight million dollars when she died. Money had never made her happy, so she left it all to her enemies – left it for them to fight over, that is. She named six heirs in her will, but there's a catch: No one gets a penny until all but one of the heirs are dead. It's survival of the greediest. Quickly the lawyers gear up for a bitter legal battle, but Jack braces himself for much worse. He alone knows that heir number six – Tatum Knight – is a professional killer. As the heirs begin to fall, Jack and his unforgettable sidekick, Theo, are in a race against time to discover if Tatum is behind all the killing. Or is someone even more frightening, more dangerous, the odds-on favorite to be the last to die?

Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce didn't intend to investigate another murder -- but then, Rupert Porson didn't intend to die. When the master puppeteer's van breaks down in the village of Bishop's Lacey, Flavia is front and centre to help Rupert and his charming assistant, Nialla, put together a performance in the local church to help pay the repair bill. But even as the newcomers set up camp and set the stage for Jack and the Beanstalk, there are signs that something just isn't right: Nialla's strange bruises and solitary cries in the churchyard, Rupert's unexplained disappearances and a violent argument with his BBC producer, the disturbing atmosphere at Culverhouse Farm, and the peculiar goings-on in nearby Gibbet Wood -- where young Robin Ingleby was found hanging just five years before.It's enough to set Flavia's detective instincts tingling and her chemistry lab humming. What are Rupert and Nialla trying to hide? Why are Grace and Gordon Ingleby, Robin's...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFlavia de Luce--"part Harriet the Spy, part Violet Baudelaire from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events" (The New York Times Book Review)--takes her remarkable sleuthing prowess to the unexpectedly unsavory world of Canadian boarding schools in the captivating new mystery from New York Times bestselling author Alan Bradley.Banished! is how twelve-year-old Flavia de Luce laments her predicament, when her father and Aunt Felicity ship her off to Miss Bodycote's Female Academy, the boarding school that her mother, Harriet, once attended across the sea in Canada. The sun has not yet risen on Flavia's first day in captivity when a gift lands at her feet. Flavia being Flavia, a budding chemist and sleuth, that gift is a charred and mummified body, which tumbles out of a bedroom chimney. Now, while attending classes, making friends (and enemies), and assessing the school's stern headmistress and...

Wilbur Whateley is half-man and half-other-worldly-monster-god. He can bend reality to his will and with his dark powers will one day end the menace known as mankind. But even a servant of the Great Old Ones gets lonely. One day he finds the perfect woman for himself-someone so sick, twisted, and demented that he can't help but fall in love. With this degenerate human, he can finally have a family and bring humanity closer to its destruction... "Yog-Sothoth be praised!" From the modern master of hardcore horror, comes a perverse sequel to H.P. Lovecraft's tale The Dunwich Horror. Only Edward Lee would dare to take one of the most beloved stories in classic horror and splatter it with gore and other bodily fluids.

A Black Ships Novella - Book 2.1 in the 'Black Ships' SeriesDetective Sergeant Ben Mark's life is falling apart. It's been a long, painful process for years but the pace has just accelerated dramatically. A suicide turns into the case from Hell as Ben realizes that Dr. Mortensen was the victim of foul play. And he may not be the last. Ben's own life is in danger as he struggles desperately to uncover what Gaia Biodesign is doing on their orbital lab, and why they are willing to kill to keep it quiet. As he races to uncover the truth, he learns that the entire species may be the next victim. Just as humanity is finally reaching for the stars, a terrible mistake may knock us back into the Stone Age.If anyone is left alive... (approx 18,000 words)**