After Meg Barrett found her fiancé still had designs on his ex-wife, she decided it was time to refurbish her life. Leaving her glamorous job at a top home and garden magazine, she fled Manhattan for Montauk, only to find decorating can sometimes lead to detecting… In between...  more

After Meg Barrett found her fiancé still had designs on his ex-wife, she decided it was time to refurbish her life. Leaving her glamorous job at a top home and garden magazine, she fled Manhattan for Montauk, only to find decorating can sometimes lead to detecting… In between scouring estate sales for her new interior design business, Cottages by the Sea, Meg visits the swanky East Hampton home of her old college roommate, Jillian Spenser. But instead of seeing how the other half lives -- she learns how the other half dies. Jillian’s mother, known as the Queen Mother of the Hamptons, has been murdered. Someone has staged a coup. When she helps a friend inventory the Spensers’ estate for the insurance company, Meg finds herself right in the thick of things. Cataloging valuable antiques and art loses its charm when Meg discovers that the Spenser family has been hiding dangerous secrets, which may have furnished a murderer with a motive. As Meg gets closer to the truth, the killer will do anything to paint her out of the picture…

Halloween is coming to Tinker’s Cove, Maine, and local reporter Lucy Stone is covering the town’s annual Giant Pumpkin Fest for the Pennysaver. There’s the pumpkin-boat regatta, the children’s Halloween party, the pumpkin weigh-in…even a contest where home-built...  more

Halloween is coming to Tinker’s Cove, Maine, and local reporter Lucy Stone is covering the town’s annual Giant Pumpkin Fest for the Pennysaver. There’s the pumpkin-boat regatta, the children’s Halloween party, the pumpkin weigh-in…even a contest where home-built catapults hurl pumpkins at an old Dodge! But not everything goes quite as planned… Lucy’s getting very annoyed that her husband Bill and his friend Evan have been working seemingly nonstop on their potentially prize-winning pumpkin catapult. But when the day of the big contest arrives, Evan is nowhere to be found…until a catapulted pumpkin busts open the trunk of the Dodge. Amid the pumpkin gore is a very deceased Evan, bashed in the head and placed in the trunk by someone long before the contest started. Bill is on the hook for the Halloween homicide—he was the last one to see Evan—so Lucy knows she’s got some serious sleuthing to do. The crime’s trail seems to always circle back to Country Cousins, the town’s once-quaint general store that’s now become a big Internet player. Though the store’s founder, Old Sam Miller, is long gone, his son Tom and grandson Trey now run the hugely successful company. But whispered rumors say things aren’t going well, and Lucy finds that this case may have something to do with an unsolved, decades-old Miller family mystery… With each new lead pointing her in a different direction, Lucy sees that time is quickly running out. If she wants to spook the real killer, she’ll have to step into an old ghost story…

The betrayed spouse of a wealthy businessman, a hot-tempered woman who was probably too quick to file for divorce and is still out for revenge on the husband who bedded her best friend. She is now plotting to steal a valuable painting her ex doesn't even know he possesses. The newly...  more

The betrayed spouse of a wealthy businessman, a hot-tempered woman who was probably too quick to file for divorce and is still out for revenge on the husband who bedded her best friend. She is now plotting to steal a valuable painting her ex doesn't even know he possesses. The newly ensconced elderly couple in the house next door, needy and seemingly helpless. In fact, the neighbors from hell. A banker's box holding a recently murdered private investigator's files. Secretly stashed in a false bottom is a padded mailer containing personal items: a small Bible, a red-bead rosary, a child's birthday card with four one-dollar bills, a studio portrait of a little girl on her mother's lap - perhaps the child for the whom the card was intended? And falling out of one file folder, a piece of graph paper with lines of numbers - a code or cipher that, when broken, contains the names of six women. One, a suicide according to the coroner's office, died twenty-eight years ago; a second, a woman who sued a coworker for harassment. The only link: Ned Lowe, husband of the dead woman, the target of the lawsuit. And a remorseless serial killer cunning enough to leave no trace of his crimes. Once again breaking the rules, Sue Grafton wastes no times identifying the sociopath. The test is whether Kinsey can prive her case against him before she becomes his next victim. Sue Grafton's X: Dark and chilling and clever, but as well, infinitely wise in the matter of human misbehavior, or why we are often our own worst enemy.

FIRST IN A NEW SERIES! In Rudolph, New York, it's Christmastime all year long. But this December, while the snow-lined streets seem merry and bright, a murder is about to ruin everyone's holiday cheer… As the owner of Mrs. Claus's Treasures, Merry Wilkinson knows how to...  more

FIRST IN A NEW SERIES! In Rudolph, New York, it's Christmastime all year long. But this December, while the snow-lined streets seem merry and bright, a murder is about to ruin everyone's holiday cheer… As the owner of Mrs. Claus's Treasures, Merry Wilkinson knows how to decorate homes for the holidays. That's why she thinks her float in the semi-annual Santa Claus parade is a shoe-in for best in show. But when the tractor pulling Merry's float is sabotaged, she has to face facts: there's a Scrooge in Christmas Town. Merry isn't ready to point fingers, especially with a journalist in town writing a puff piece about Rudolph's Christmas spirit. But when she stumbles upon the reporter's body on a late night dog walk—and police suspect he was poisoned by a gingerbread cookie crafted by her best friend, Vicky—Merry will have to put down the jingle bells and figure out who's really been grinching about town, before Vicky ends up on Santa's naughty list…

The toughest cases hit closest to home. Alex Cross left his hometown, and some awful family tragedies, for a better life with Nana Mama in Washington, DC. He hasn't looked back. Now his cousin Stefan has been accused of a horrible, unthinkable murder, and Cross drives south with Bree,...  more

The toughest cases hit closest to home. Alex Cross left his hometown, and some awful family tragedies, for a better life with Nana Mama in Washington, DC. He hasn't looked back. Now his cousin Stefan has been accused of a horrible, unthinkable murder, and Cross drives south with Bree, Nana Mama, Jannie, and Ali to Starksville, North Carolina, for the first time in thirty-five years. Back home, he discovers a once proud community down on its luck, and local residents who don't welcome him with open arms. As Cross steps into his family home, the horrors of his childhood flood back--and he learns that they're not really over. He brings all his skill to finding out the truth about his cousin's case. But truth is hard to come by in a town where no one feels safe to speak. Chasing his ghosts takes Cross all the way down to the sugarcane fields of Florida, where he gets pulled into a case that has local cops needing his kind of expertise: a string of socialite murders with ever more grisly settings. He's chasing too many loose ends--a brutal killer, the truth about his own past, and justice for his cousin--and any one of the answers might be fatal. In Cross Justice, Alex Cross confronts the deadliest--and most personal--case of his career. It's a propulsive, edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that proves you can go home again--but it just might kill you.

"I'm not on trial. San Francisco is." An accused murderer called Kingfisher is about to go on trial for his life. Or is he? By unleashing unexpected violence on the lawyers, jurors, and police involved in the case, he has paralyzed the city. Detective Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club...  more

"I'm not on trial. San Francisco is." An accused murderer called Kingfisher is about to go on trial for his life. Or is he? By unleashing unexpected violence on the lawyers, jurors, and police involved in the case, he has paralyzed the city. Detective Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club are caught in the eye of the storm. Now comes a courtroom shocker you will never see coming. BookShots LIGHTNING-FAST STORIES BY JAMES PATTERSON Novels you can devour in a few hours Impossible to stop reading All original content from James Patterson