Search Results: Mystery/Suspense/Thriller from I Cannot Live Without Books

Billy Summers by Stephen King
Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He's a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he'll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. First, there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, and a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong?
How about everything?
This spectacularly riveting novel is part war story, part love letter to small-town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King's fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. Billy Summers is about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.
You won't put this story down, and you won't forget Billy.
Scribner, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2021

Cool Blue Tomb (Aristotle Socarides Series, Book #1) by Paul Kemprecos
A 50-million-dollar salvage operation. An expert diver dead at the bottom of the sea. An elegant mermaid in a black Porsche -- and an open invitation to dip into the troubled waters of her marriage. Cape Cod's Aristotle "Soc" Socarides, part-time fisherman, part-time private eye, is swimming with the sharks. Only problem is, he's the bait, and blood is beginning to boil to the surface.
Soc didn't think he could get in much ddper, but he'd better think again. A family debt of honor comes due -- a debt only he can settle -- plunging him into the middole of a lethal search for buried treasure. Now Soc's about to discover how deadly the Cape's currents can be. Snarled in a net of smuggling, treachery, and revenge, he's finding out that no matter how far down you go, nothing's hard to salvage than the truth.
Suspense Publishing, Softcover, 2013

The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike Series, Book #1) by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office.
Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story. His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.
You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may thing you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation… Read More

The Dead Cry Justice (Gilded Age Mystery Series, Book #6) by Rosemary Simpson
May 1890: As NYU Law School finally agrees to admit female law students, Judge MacKenzie's daughter Prudence weighs her choices carefully. Chief among her concerns is how her decision would affect the Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law agency and her professional and personal relationship with the partner who is currently recuperating from a near-fatal shooting.
But an even more pressing issue presents itself in the form of a street urchin, whose act of petty theft inadvertently leads Prudence to a badly beaten girl he is protecting. Fearing for the girl's life, Prudence rushes her to the Friends Refuge for the Sick Poor, run by the compassionate Charity Sloan. When the boy and girl slip out of their care and run away, Prudence suspects they are fleeing a dangerous predator and is desperate to find them.
Aided by the photographer and social reformer Jacob Riis and the famous journalist Nellie Bly, Prudence and Geoffrey… Read More

Death Brings a Shadow (Gilded Age Mystery, Book #4) by Rosemary Simpson
Investigators Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter discover all that glitters is not gold in the Gilded Age, whether on the island of Manhattan or an island off the coast of Georgia.
In spring 1889, Prudence and Geoffrey set sail from New York Harbor on a private yacht bound for Bradford Island, where her friend Eleanor Dickson is to be wed. The Sea Islands along the Georgia coast serve as a winter playground for the likes of the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Dicksons. Despite her Yankee pedigree, Eleanor is marrying a Southern gentleman, Teddy Bennett, and Prudence is thrilled to be the maid of honor.
But days before the wedding, the bride is nowhere to be found. A frantic search of the island turns up her drowned corpse in an alligator infested swamp. Prudence is devastated, but as they prepare the body for burial, she and Geoffrey discover evidence of bruising that indicates Eleanor was held under --… Read More

Death, Diamonds, and Deception (Gilded Age Mystery Series, Book #5) by Rosemary Simpson
Fall 1889: Lady Rotherton has arrived from London intent on chaperoning her niece Prudence through a New York social season to find a suitable husband. It's certainly not her niece's devilishly handsome partner in Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law. Aunt Gillian's eye for eligible suitors is surpassed only by her ability to discern genuine gems from nearly flawless fakes. At the Assembly Ball at Delmonico's, she effortlessly determines that the stones in the spectacular diamond waterfall necklace adorning the neck of the wife of banker William De Vries are fake.
Insisting on absolute discretion to avoid scandal, the banker employs Prudence and Geoffrey to recover the stolen diamonds pried out of their settings -- priceless stones acquired by Tiffany, originally purchased for Marie Antoinette. Their search for a possible fence rapidly leads to a dead end: a jeweler brutally killed in his shop during an apparent… Read More

Death in Deep Water (Aristotle Socarides Series, Book #3) by Paul Kemprecos
Aristotle Plato ("Soc") Socarides has got a business card as unusual as his name: he's a private investigator, a diver, and a fisherman operating out of Cape Cod. But he's definitely got the perfect resume when the owners of a marine park, desperately need someone to prove that a suspect is innocent of murder -- the suspect being Rocky, a ten-ton killer whale who's the park's star attraction.
Soc goes undercover as an employee at the Oceanus Aquatic Park, which has been closed to the public since the death of animal trainer Eddy Byron. Picketed by animal rights groups and beset by sensationalist publicity, Oceanus no longer looks so attractive to the Japanese conglomerate that's been eager to buy it. Soc's employer's, the owners of the park, want him to quickly clear the whale of suspicion, get to the bottom of why Eddy Byron died, and help convince the Japanese to close the deal.
Easier said than done. Eddy Byron turns out to… Read More

From Below by Darcy Coates
Years ago during a routine voyage, the SS Arcadia vanished without a brace. Though a strange, garbled emergency message was broadcast, neither the ship nor any of its crew could be found. Sixty years later, its wreck has finally been discovered more than three hundred miles from its intended course...a silent graveyard deep beneath the ocean's surface, eagerly waiting for the first sign of life.
Cove and her dive team have been granted permission to explore the Arcadia's rusting hull. Their purpose is straightforward: examine the wreck, film everything, and, if possible, uncover how and why the supposedly unsinkable ship vanished.
But the Arcadia has not yet had its fill of death, and something dark and hungry watches from below. With limited oxygen and the ship slowly closing in around them, Cove and her team will have to fight their way free of the unspeakable horror now desperate to claim them.

Fruits of the Poisonous Tree (Joe Gunther Series, Book #5) by Archer Mayor
Joe Gunther's girlfriend, Gail Zigman, is raped, causing consternation and great pain, not just to the two of them, and a media frenzy due to her political prominence, his involvement win the case, and her refusal to hide behind a shroud of anonymity. Instead, while Joe and his colleagues narrow in on the identity of her attacker, Gail is leading candlelight parades down Main Street, bringing attention to the true character of rape. But is the man the police nail for the crime the right one? Risking his friendship with Gail, the respect of his peers, and finally his own life, Joe doggedly keeps digging, hoping to find out if the man they have in jail is rightfully there, or if the evidence against him was "fruit of the poisonous tree."
AM Press, Softcover, 2007

Let the Dead Keep Their Secrets (Gilded Age Mystery, Book #3) by Rosemary Simpson
In Gilded Age New York, heiress Prudence MacKenzie and ex-Pinkerton Geoffrey Hunter investigate crimes that take them from the slums of Five Points in lower Manhattan to the Fifth Avenue mansions of society's elite. In the late nineteenth century, women are particularly vulnerable.
Childbirth can be dangerous even for the wealthy. So when opera singer Clair Buchanan shows Prudence and Geoffrey a postmortem cabinet photograph of her deceased twin sister and newborn niece, they express sadness but not surprise. The popular black-bordered portraits are the era's way of coping with the devastating losses that plague every family. What makes this death different is that Claire is convinced Catherine and her child were murdered.
Prudence's friend is haunted by a sense of her sister's lingering presence, and by the conviction that her dead twin is demanding justice. Catherine's widower, Aaron Sorensen, is a cold, controlling… Read More

The Long Call (Two Rivers Series, Book #1) by Ann Cleeves
In North Devon, where two rivers converge and run into the sea, Detective Matthew Venn stands outside the church as his estranged father's funeral takes place. On the day Matthew left the strict evangelical community he grew up in, he lost his family too.
Now as he turns and walks away again, he receives a call from one of his team. A body has been found on the beach nearby: a man with a tattoo of an albatross on his neck stabbed to death.
The case calls Matthew back to the people and places of his past, as deadly secrets hidden at their hearts are revealed, and his new life is forced into a collison course with the world he thought he'd left behind.
From Ann Cleeves, bestselling author of the Shetland and Vera series, beloved by readers and TV viewers alike, comes a spectacular new novel, told with deep compassion and searing insight.
Minotaur Books, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 4th Printing

The Mitford Secret (Mitford Murders, Book #6) by Jessica Fellowes
It's 1941, and the Mitford household is splintered by the vicissitudes of war. To bring the clan together -- maybe for one last time -- Deborah invites them to Chatsworth for Christmas, along with a selection of society's most impressive and glamorous guests as well as old family friend Louisa Cannon, a private detective.
One night a psychic arrives, and to liven things up Deborah agrees she may host a seance. But entertainment turns to dark mystery as the psychic reveals that a maid was murdered in this very same house -- and she can prove it.
Louisa steps forward to try to solve the cold case. But with a house full of people who want nothing more than to bury their secrets, will she be able to unmask the murderer? And how deep does the truth lie?
A mystery with the fascinating Mitford sisters at its heart, Jessica Fellowe's The Mitford Secret is the sixth and final intriguing installment in the Mitford Murders series.
Minotaur Books,… Read More

Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
In the predawn hours, in a distressed American city, hundreds of unemployed men and women line up for the opening of a job fair. They are tired and cold and desperate. Emerging from the fog, invisible until it is too late, a lone driver plows through the crowd in a stolen Mercedes, running over the innocent, backing up, and charging again. Eight people are killed; fifteen are wounded. The killer escapes.
Months later, an ex-cop named bill Hodges, still haunted by the unsolved crime, contemplates suicide. When he gets a crazed letter from "the perk," claiming credit for the murders, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, fearing another even more diabolical attack and hell-bent on preventing it.
Brady Hartfield lives with his alcoholic mother in the house where he was born. He loved the feel of death under the wheels of the Mercedes, and he wants that rush again. Only Bill Hodges, with a couple of eccentric and mismatched allies, can apprehend the killer… Read More

Murder Wears a Hidden Face (Gilded Age Mystery, Book #8) by Rosemary Simpson
February 1891: New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is hosting an exhibition of Chinese art objects, timed to coincide with the arrival of a new Chinese cultural attache, Lord Peng. Prudence and Geoffrey are invited to attend the opening ceremonies. But among the throng of dignitaries making their way through the galleries is one decidedly unwelcome and unexpected visitor -- an assassin who stabs the attache to death, then flees through Central Park.
As witnesses, Prudence and Geoffrey quickly become immersed in the case and join former New York detective Warren Lowry in investigating the murder. But there are complications. The Pen family will no longer enjoy diplomatic standing and is threatened by deportation and possible disgrace or execution in their homeland. Desperate to remain in the West, they flee into the labyrinth of Chinatown, enlisting the protection of a long lost uncle, now the leader of one of the city's… Read More

Neptune's Eye (Aristotle Socarides Series, Book #2) by Paul Kemprecos
A simple missing-persons case: Find Frederick Walther's beautiful young daughter, who disappeared after a love affair turned sour. Simple, that is, until Leslie Walther's lover turns up dead in a fishy place -- the seal pool at the Woods Hole aquarium. Part-time fisherman, part-time private eye "Soc" Socarides finds the highy loathsome Tom Drake had a number of acquaintances, business rivals, ex-lover, and an ex-wife -- all with reason to want him dead.
Soc's investigation turns up so many knotted threads he could make a fishnet: a long-lost German U-boat, a cutting-edge underwater vehicle, corporate espionage, a shady munitions dealer, and a CIA spook from Soc's distant past. Soc hopes the net will snare a murderer. But if he makes one wrong move, it could drag him down to a cold, wet, silent grave.
Suspense Publishing, Softcover, 1991

The Outsider by Stephen King
In The Outsider, Stephen King delivers one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.
An eleven-year-old boy's violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City's most popular citizens. He is Terry Maitland, Little League League coach, English teacher, husband, and father of two girls. Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son Maitland once coached, orders a quick and very public arrest. The case seems ironclad, especially when Anderson and the district attorney are able to add DNA evidence to go with the fingerprints and witnesses. But Maitland has an alibi, and it turns out his story has incontrovertible evidence of its own.
How can two opposing stories be true? What happens to a family when an accusation of this magnitude is delivered? When must reason or rationality be abandoned in order to explain the inexplicable? As the investigation expands and horrifying answers begin to emerge, King's… Read More

Troubled Blood (Cormoran Strike Series, Book #5) by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling)
Private detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough, who went missing under mysterious circumstances in 1974.
Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one forty years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on, adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on. Plus the pair are still battling their feelings for one another, while Robin is also juggling a messy divorce and unwanted male attention.
As Strike and Robin investigate Margot's disappearance, they come up against a fiendishly complex case with leads that include tarot cards, a psychopathic serial killer, and witnesses who cannot all be trusted. And they learn that even cases forty years old can prove to be deadly.
A breathtaking, labyrinthine epic,… Read More