Crime Fiction Thriller Serial Killer

Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

When teenagers Danielle and Gracie Sullivan take a clandestine car trip to visit their friend in Montana, little do they know it's the last time anyone will ever hear from them again. The girls and their car simply vanish. Cody Hoyt, who's just lost his job and has fallen off the wagon after a long stretch of sobriety, is in no condition to investigate. But his son Justin, who the girls were going to visit, and his former partner, Cassie Dewell, convince him to drive south to their last known location.

FBI agent Rachel Walling finally gets the call she's dreaded for years: the one that tells her the Poet has returned. Years ago she worked on the famous case, tracking down the serial killer who wove lines of poetry into his hideous crimes. Rachel has never forgotten Robert Backus, the killer who called himself the Poet, and apparently he has not forgotten her either.

Everyone thinks Emmy Dockery is crazy. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emmy has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher. Now all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire. Not even Emmy's ex-boyfriend, field agent Harrison "Books" Bookman, will believe her that hundreds of kidnappings, rapes, and murders are all connected.

Eight-year-old Brooklyn Mercer has gone missing. And as accustomed as FBI agents Eliza Sterling and Brandon Eddison are to such harrowing cases, this one has struck a nerve. It marks the anniversary of the disappearance of Eddison’s own little sister. Disturbing, too, is the girl’s resemblance to Eliza - so uncanny they could be mother and daughter. With Eddison’s unsettled past rising again with rage and pain, Eliza is determined to solve this case at any cost. But the closer she looks, the more reluctant she is to divulge to her increasingly shaken partner what she finds.

In 1993, Marie Gesto disappeared after walking out of a supermarket. Harry Bosch worked the case but couldn't crack it, and the 22-year-old was never found. Now, more than a decade later, with the Gesto file still on his desk, Bosch gets a call from the district attorney. A man accused of two heinous murders is willing to come clean about several others, including the killing of Marie Gesto.

Paul Sheldon is a best-selling novelist who has finally met his number-one fan. Her name is Annie Wilkes, and she is more than a rabid reader - she is Paul's nurse, tending his shattered body after an automobile accident. But she is also furious that the author has killed off her favorite character in his latest book. Annie becomes his captor, keeping him prisoner in her isolated house. Annie wants Paul to write a book that brings Misery back to life - just for her. She has a lot of ways to spur him on.

A dark, sleep-robbing thriller in the spirit of Thomas Harris mashed-up with John Irving. Addison Bishop, a beautiful, tough detective in Charlotte, North Carolina hunts a serial killer who tortures, rapes, and kills women, seemingly around holidays. She has no idea why he kills, or why he hangs an Appointed toe tag on each victim; he is leaving few clues. Her partners, gigantic Charlotte detective Virgil Peregrine and FBI Special Agent Andrew Spainher pool their singular skills and form a bond that strengthens the group yet brings them no closer to finding the man the media has dubbed The ...

She calls herself Lady Justice. And once she has chosen a man as her target, she turns herself into a tall blonde or a curvaceous redhead, makes herself as alluring and seductive as possible to them. Once they are in her grasp, they are powerless. The first victim is wealthy businessman Nigel McEnroy. His company’s human resources department has already paid out settlements to a couple of his young victims - but they don’t know that his crimes go far beyond workplace harassment. Lady Justice knows. And in one shocking night of brutality, she makes him pay a much steeper price.

Veteran reporter Jack McEvoy has taken down killers before, but when a woman he had a one-night stand with is murdered in a particularly brutal way, McEvoy realizes he might be facing a criminal mind unlike any he's ever encountered. Jack investigates - against the warnings of the police and his own editor - and makes a shocking discovery that connects the crime to other mysterious deaths across the country. Undetected by law enforcement, a vicious killer has been hunting women, using genetic data to select and stalk his targets.

There's not much that scares Annie Graham. Not even the horrors she has witnessed during her years on the police force. When she agrees to look after her brother's farmhouse, she finds herself drawn to the crumbling old mansion in the woods nearby. But an innocent exploration of the empty ruin and the discovery of the diary of former resident Alice leaves her more than a little spooked. She knows it holds the secrets to a dark past, and she has to find out more.

Masterfully blending elements of psychological suspense and true crime, Jessica Knoll—bestselling author of Luckiest Girl Alive and the writer behind the Netflix adaptation starring Mila Kunis—delivers an “unflinching and evocative” (Laura Dave, New York Times bestselling author) thriller in Bright Young Women. The book opens on a Saturday night in 1978, hours before a soon-to-be-infamous murderer descends upon a Florida sorority house with deadly results. The lives of those who survive, including a sorority president and key witness, Pamela Schumacher, are forever changed.

Baltimore city Homicide Detective JD Fitzpatrick has seen a lot of horrific violence, both as a cop and during his deployment in Afghanistan, but nothing like the trail of tortured bodies that are turning up throughout the city. He’s up against a brutal killer with a very personal vendetta. And now JD is beginning to suspect that his medical examiner may be shielding some crucial evidence linked to the case.

It is a society that is, officially, a paradise. Superior to the decadent West, Stalin's Soviet Union is a haven for its citizens, providing for all of their needs: education, health care, security. In exchange, all that is required is their hard work, and their loyalty and faith to the Soviet State. But now a murderer is on the loose.

Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

A Murderous Enemy Makes an Evil Bargain When an aspiring actress meets a violent end after attending a party at the exclusive Bliss Cove Resort, her death sparks a desperate manhunt for an evil predator who will stop at nothing to hide his deadly past. As reporter Veronica Lee investigates the link between the homicide victim and a prominent billionaire, a woman on the run exposes the ugly truth behind his powerful circle of friends, becoming the heartless killer’s next target. And when a bitter adversary from Veronica’s past enlists the help of an unlikely accomplice, Veronica must ...

In Los Angeles, a reporter investigating a series of murders is killed. In Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a beautiful medical intern suddenly disappears. In the sequel to Along Came a Spider, Washington D.C.'s Alex Cross is back to solve the most baffling and terrifying murder case ever. Two clever pattern killers are collaborating, cooperating, competing-and they are working coast to coast.

An innocent family are the latest victims of a grisly series of hideous sacrificial killings that no one understands, and no one can stop. Nobody lives to tell of the unimaginable carnage. Only the blood-stained walls bear witness. All hope rests on Special Agent Will Graham, who must peer inside the killer's tortured soul to understand his rage, to anticipate and prevent his next vicious crime. Desperate for help, Graham finds himself locked in a deadly alliance with the brilliant Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the infamous mass murderer.

Writer Karen Walker knows more than most about murderers. Her first love went on to become The Bagman, a notorious serial killer now locked away for life in a maximum-security prison. Karen has spent her life running from the weight of having loved him, defended him and, ultimately, leading the police to his door. But now, ten years later, just as she’s about to publish her account of his crimes, a young woman is abducted in horribly familiar circumstances.

In the unbearable heat of another sultry Washington, D.C., summer, a serial killer is on the loose. Dr. Tess Court, one of the capital’s most successful psychiatrists, wants nothing to do with the case—until the police convince her to lend a hand to the lead investigator, legendary ladies’ man Detective Ben Paris. Scarred by his family’s history, Ben has even less use for shrinks than Tess has for him—but the forces of animal magnetism and a shared desire to catch the demented criminal known as “The Priest” inexorably erode the walls they’ve built.