Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Modern Detectives

Personal tragedy has left Dave Robicheaux close to the edge. Battling against his old addiction to alcohol and haunted nightly by vivid dreams and visitations, Dave finds his only tranquillity at home with his young ward Alafair. But even this fragile peace is shattered by the arrival of Dixie Lee Pugh who brings with him a brutal trail of murder and violence. Robicheaux reluctantly agrees to help out his old friend but becomes more involved than he bargained for when he finds himself suspect Number One in the series of bloody killings.

The first body is of a young woman, found on a Minneapolis riverbank, her throat cut, her body scourged and put on display. Whoever did this, Lucas Davenport knows, is pushed by brain chemistry. There is something wrong with him. This isn’t a bad love affair. The second body is found three weeks later, in a farmhouse six miles south. Same condition, same display—except this time it is a man. Nothing to link the two victims, nothing to indicate that the killings end here.

Now a statewide troubleshooter, Detective Lucas Davenport is plunged into a murder investigation that involves a Russian corpse, 50-year-old bullets, and some high-level government connections. Haunting and suspenseful, each addition to John Sandford's Prey series shoots to the top of national best-seller lists.

Cops can make mistakes, even when they're not rookies. Deeply traumatized by a shooting incident, Cass Raines resigned from the Chicago PD, leaving one less female African-American on the force. Now she's the head of a one-woman private investigation agency. She also plays chess with the only father figure she's ever known, Father Ray Heaton. When Father Ray asks Cass to look into a recent spate of vandalism at his church, she readily agrees to handle the case. But only hours later she's horrified to discover his murdered body in the church confessional, a dead gangbanger sprawled out nearby.

Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, William E. Townsend, Jr., son of a New Jersey state senator, was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a 19-year-old transgender prostitute, is in custody, and given the evidence against her, there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict. Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open, and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet as a trans woman, she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise.

Legendary mystery writer Dashiell Hammett only wrote one novel about detective Sam Spade: The Maltese Falcon, the most famous private eye story ever told. But the case was never really solved—the priceless golden, bejeweled bird that men and women had been dying to possess turned out to be a fake.

Sitting in cold cars for hours, serving lowlifes with summonses...being a PI means riding out a lot of slow patches. But sometimes the most familiar paths can lead straight to danger - like at Cass's go-to diner, where new delivery guy Jung Byson wants to enlist her expertise. Jung's friend, Tim Ayers, scion of a wealthy Chicago family, has been found dead, floating in Lake Michigan near his luxury boat. And Jung is convinced there's a murderer on the loose.... 

A nurse, wife and mother of two, Nina can’t say no when someone asks for help—even when she knows better. When her estranged friend Karin leaves her a key to a public locker in a Copenhagen train station, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous project yet. Inside the locker is a suitcase, and inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive.

Edgar Award-winning author Lawrence Block has been named a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. A Drop of the Hard Stuff continues Block’s popular series starring New York private detective and recovering alcoholic Matthew Scudder. Scudder is already struggling with his sobriety when his friend and fellow AA member Jack Ellery is found murdered. Now the only thing keeping Scudder from the bottle is his obsession with finding the culprit.

A modern, Southern reinvention of The Maltese Falcon, Crossroad Blues won noir fans with its nod to the masters and thrilled readers with a wild ride along Highway 61. It’s here that we first meet Nick Travers, an ex-New Orleans Saint turned Tulane University blues historian. Nick searches for the lost recordings of 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson—and a missing colleague—and finds trouble at every turn.

In this final installment of the widely popular “Animal” series, we find our anti-hero on a hunt for the woman who forced him to pick his guns back up when she burned his entire world down. The traitorous Red Sonja. She alone holds the key to saving his children and avenging his murdered wife, Gucci, but first he has to find her. 

When Anaïs de Froissart calls Parisian private investigator Aimée begging for help, Aimée assumes the woman wants to hire her to do surveillance on her philandering politician husband again. Aimée is too busy right now to indulge her. But Anaïs insists Aimée must come, that she is in...

So this girl walks into a bar…and when she walks out there’s a man with her. She goes to bed with him, and she likes that part. Then she kills him, and she likes that even better. On her way out, she cleans out his wallet. She keeps moving, and has a new name for each change of address. She’s been doing this for a while, and she’s good at it. And then a chance remark gets her thinking of the men who got away, the lucky ones who survived a night with her.

Beneath the sun and sea of South Florida, dark crimes and bone-chilling secrets are lurking. Introducing a brand-new twisty mystery series from award-winning author Elaine Viets. When the body of adult film star Sammie Lant is found buried next to the courtyard pool of the Florodora, Norah McCarthy’s apartment complex, she quickly becomes the police’s prime suspect. Norah was witnessed having an argument with Sammie six months ago, the last day Sammie was seen alive—the day she gained notoriety for a shocking public stunt with a college football player.

Tempted out of his bookstore into the world of horseracing, Janeway accepts an invitation from wealthy horse trainer H.R. Geiger to travel to Idaho and look at some rare first-edition books. The books are stunning, flawless children's classics that render the usually eloquent Janeway speechless.

Guido Brunetti faces a heinous crime committed outside his jurisdiction. He is drawn in innocently enough: two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joyriding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Brunetti's curiosity is aroused by the behavior of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. If the injuries were the result of an accident, why did they want to avoid association with it?

Erin McCabe’s years as a criminal defense attorney have prepared her for almost anything, except being on the opposite side of the interrogation table. A new client—a successful financial adviser—was found stabbed to death on the beach near his palatial Jersey Shore home. The time of death is estimated to be during Erin’s one and only consultation with him, during which he revealed that he was secretly transgender. As the last person to see him alive, Erin’s now the prime suspect.

New Jersey State Trooper Jon Mazer has been charged with killing Black investigative reporter Stewart Marshall in a racially charged, headline-making murder. The evidence against criminal defense attorney Erin McCabe’s new client is overwhelming. The gun used is Mazer’s off-duty weapon. Fingerprints and carpet fibers link Mazer to the crime. And Mazer was patrolling Marshall’s neighborhood shortly before the victim took three bullets to the chest. Mazer’s argument? He’s a gay officer being set up to take the fall in an even bigger story.

In his popular Matt Scudder mystery series, Edgar and Shamus Award-winner Lawrence Block creates riveting stories set in the hardened streets of New York City. His suspenseful tale Even the Wicked portrays recovering alcoholic PI Matt Scudder hot on the trail of a theatrical and twisted criminal. A demented serial killer, who calls himself "The Will of the People", has gained a wide audience by sending warning letters to the Daily News. 

When an old acquaintance, finance magnate Eleanore Paget, hears August is back in town, she tries to hire him to investigate suspicious goings-on at her investment bank. August declines - detective work is no longer his beat. When Eleanore is found dead the next day of an apparent suicide, August doesn't buy it for a minute. His search for her killer will drag him into a rat's nest of Detroit's most dangerous criminals.