In this legal thriller from the New York Times–bestselling author of Against the Wind, breaking into a mansion for a laugh turns into a sobering crime. Maria Estrada, a hard-partying girl with family ties to some of the toughest gangsters in California, had no idea an old mansion could be so beautiful. The boy who broke into it with her had a feeling she might be impressed. But by the time the night is over, Maria has been brutally killed, and the boy is nowhere to be found. It’s up to PI Kate Blanchard and Luke Garrison, a criminal lawyer, to decipher what happened in the grand old mansion. To bring Maria’s killer to justice, they must locate the elusive connection between the poverty where she was raised and the affluence of where she died.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art—from one of our greatest writers. • “Exhilarating ... magical.” —The Washington Post When a thirty-something portrait painter is abandoned by his wife, he secludes himself in the mountain home of a world famous artist. One day, the young painter hears a noise from the attic, and upon investigation, he discovers a previously unseen painting. By unearthing this hidden work of art, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances; and to close it, he must undertake a perilous journey into a netherworld that only Haruki Murakami could conjure.
Prosecuting attorney Bell Elkins and her estranged teenage daughter, Carla, try to protect their town and each other in the aftermath of a shocking triple murder committed by an unknown shooter whose identity is gradually realized by Carla.
Killing the Black Dog is Les Murray's courageous account of his struggle with depression, accompanied by poems specially selected by the author. Since the first edition appeared in 1997, hosts of readers have drawn insight from his account of the disease, its social effects and its origins in his family's history. As Murray writes in this revise...
SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER 2023 '[A] terrific crime novel' Mick Herron 'This moody, atmospheric novel is full of surprises' Sunday Times (Crime Book of the Month) '[W]ell plotted and very funny' ***** Sun 'This has a TV series written all over it' Daily Mail ---------------------------------------------------------- Ryan Wilkins grew up on a trailer park, a member of what many people would call the criminal classes. As a young Detective Inspector, he's lost none of his disgust with privileged elites - or his objectionable manners. But he notices things; they stick to his eyes. His professional partner, DI Ray Wilkins, of affluent Nigerian-London heritage, is an impeccably groomed, smooth-talking graduate of Balliol College, Oxford. You wouldn't think they would get on. They don't. But when a young woman is found strangled at Barnabas Hall, they're forced to. Rich Oxford is not Ryan's natural habitat. St Barnabas's irascible Provost does not appreciate his forceful line of questioning. But what was the dead woman doing in the Provost's study? Is it just a coincidence that on the night of her murder the college was entertaining Sheik al-Medina, a Gulf state ruler linked to human-rights abuses in his own country and acts of atrocity in others? As tensions rise, things aren't going well. Ray is in despair. Ryan is in disciplinary measures. But their investigation gradually disentangles the links between a Syrian refugee lawyer now working in the college kitchens, a priceless copy of the Koran in the college collection and the identity of the dead woman. A Killing in November introduces an unlikely duo from different sides of the tracks in Oxford in a deftly plotted murder story full of dangerous turns, troubled pasts and unconventional detective work.
In his classic works of true crime, Harry MacLean examined the dark side of America and its fascination with violence. In The Joy of Killing, he builds upon this expert knowledge to create a page–turning literary thriller — an exciting combination of love story, mystery, psychological suspense, and meditation on human nature and the origins of violence. This fever dream begins on a stormy fall night at a lake house in the north woods of Minnesota, where we are introduced to a college professor who a few years earlier had written a novel in which he justified a gruesome campus murder under the nihilistic theory that there is no right or wrong, no moral center to man's activity. The writer returns to the lake house where he had spent his childhood summers and locks himself in the attic, intent on writing the final story of his life. Playing on a continuous loop in his mind are key moments in his past: his childhood in small–town Iowa, where he and his best friend befriended a local drifter; his childhood on the lake where one summer a local boy drowned in a storm; and the central fixation of his erotic meeting with a girl on a train bound for Chicago when he was just fifteen. All of these threads weave together as the writer tries to piece together the multitude of secrets and acts of violence that make up one human life. Reminiscent of the work of noir master Derek Raymond and John Banville's The Sea with a touch of David Lynch, The Joy of Killing, with its haunting language and vivid images, is both a fascinating look into the fugue state of one man's mind as well as a searing, philosophical look at violence and its impact on our human condition. With its elegant structure, multiple storylines, and edge–of–your–seat suspense, the novel is the tour–de–force fiction debut by one of America's premier writers of true crime.
In 1852, 72-year-old Nimrod O'Kelly, one of the first pioneers to stake a claim in the lush Willamette Valley, killed young Jeremiah Mahoney over a land dispute. The events that followed provide an intricate look at life and law on the frontier. With marvelous depth and a lawyer's insight, the author presents Nimrod's incredible story from the simple beginning to its astonishing conclusion.
