Serial Killer Thrillers Fiction

Doctor Fionn Kane is running from a broken heart, one he hopes to mend in small-town Nebraska, far away from his almost-fiance and his derailed surgical career. It's a simpler life: head down, hard work, and absolutely no romantic relationships. He wants none of the circus he left behind in Boston. But then the real circus finds him.

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.

Every cop makes mistakes. But in Baltimore, one slip-up could be a death sentence. The body of a young woman is discovered in a bleach bath in a derelict Annapolis apartment, throwing FBI Special Agent Caitlin Sandling into her worst nightmare. The victim suffered a terrible death. The tabloids say the killer is a vampire, and it’s a race against time to solve the case before panic spreads through the city. Separated from the Sofa Squad, Sandling is out on her own, while the rest of the team work another strange series of murders. A string of deaths among the city's leading detectives ...

DS Kat Ballantyne came to the crime-writing festival for an escape. Instead she’s walked straight into a murder scene. Moments before he’s due on stage, a famous novelist is found dead in a locked room. It looks like natural causes, but Kat sees tiny clues that suggest murder. As she investigates, she uncovers literary rivalries, personal vendettas and hidden agendas. Is there anyone who didn’t have a motive to murder Mark Swift?

Five years ago, Tessa Chamberlain was the lone survivor of a beach house massacre that left three of her friends dead—and Tessa with an inescapable, unending dread. Now she’s going back to face her fears. Renting the same beach house where she almost died, Tessa returns to lonely Cassadaga Island off the coast of Maine long after the tourists and summer residents have departed for the winter. But as the fog rolls in and the nights grow longer, she wonders if she made a terrible mistake. There are footsteps on the porch, creaks from the second floor, and an unsettling feeling of being watched.

Madison Colson knows deep down that her father—a convicted serial killer—is innocent. Duty calls her back to Fog Lake, Tennessee, where terrifying events begin to unfold. The Good Samaritan Killer—or a copycat—is back. FBI Special Agent Shane Townsend is determined to stop the deadly rampage that has sent the tight-knit community into a frenzy. But he needs to earn Madison’s trust first. The task feels impossible, especially considering his father is the one who put her dad in prison.

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.

An airport killer targeting pilots expands his scope. Alex Cross Must Die. “Drop whatever you’re doing, Detective Cross, and head to Reagan Airport,” DC Metro Police dispatch says. “A jet just crashed and exploded on the runway. The chief and the FBI want you and John Sampson there pronto.”

Dexter is arrested on charges of murder. He has lost everything - including his wife, his kids, and the loyalty of his sister. Now completely alone, Dexter faces a murder charge (for a crime, ironically, he did not actually commit). His only chance for freedom lies with his brother, Brian, who has a dark plan to prove Dexter's innocence. But the stakes are deadly, and the epic showdown that lies in Dexter's path may lead, once and for all, to his demise.

On the island of Jamaica, people have started disappearing without trace. Have they run away, trying to start new lives in the British colony under assumed names, or is something darker afoot? Some of the missing had taken out large life insurance policies before leaving England, and so word of the vanishings reaches Bristol when relatives try to collect their payouts. With suspicion of a grand fraud in the air, ambitious Black barrister’s clerk Isaiah Ollenu is thrown together with pious insurance agent Ruben Ashby and ordered to the Caribbean to investigate.

Chloe and Sloane Morgan were only children when their mother was the second victim of the Bayside Strangler. Now, after spending years trying to discover his identity, the sisters have suddenly vanished. Were they getting too close to the truth? The police consider their interest in the crime to be just a coincidence and have little motivation to pursue the cold case.

Chicago, 1923: Ten-year-old Dani Flanagan returns home to find police swarming the house, her parents dead. Michael Malone, the young patrolman assigned to the case, discovers there’s more to the situation—and to Dani Flanagan herself—than the authorities care to explore. Malone is told to shut his mouth, and Dani is sent away to live with her spinster aunts in Cleveland.

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.

Detective Mia Hart never planned to return home. One terrifying summer night, Mia lost two of her closest friends to suicide. Scarred and broken, she fled St. Lucy’s, a small island off the coast of Maine. Now fifteen years later, when the body of a journalist is fished out of the bay near St. Lucy’s cliffs, Mia is forced to help with the case - and face all she’s been running from. As she approaches the island, the wintery winds of Black Rock Bay usher Mia home again.

Colette “Coco” Weber has relocated to her Catalina Island home, where, twenty years before, she was the sole survivor of a deadly home invasion. All Coco wants is to see her aunt Gwen, get as far away from her ex as possible, and get back to her craft—writing obituaries. Thankfully, her college best friend, Maddy, owns the local paper and has a job sure to keep Coco busy, considering the number of elderly folks who are dying on the island. But as Coco learns more about these deaths, she quickly realizes that the circumstances surrounding them are remarkably similar....

On a warm summer night in one of Boston’s working-class neighborhoods, an unthinkable crime has been committed: Four members of a family have been brutally murdered. The father - and possible suspect - now lies clinging to life in the ICU. Murder-suicide? Or something worse? Veteran police detective D. D. Warren is certain of only one thing: There’s more to this case than meets the eye.

A demented killer believes he’s doing God’s work — and a teenage boy with dreams of getting his license becomes his next target. Elliot Cross doesn't just hate ambitious dreaming — he sees it as sin. In his twisted mind, anyone reaching for more is disobeying the First Commandment: Thou shalt have no other gods before me. When he volunteers to give Timmy, his daughter’s fatherless classmate, a driving lesson, it’s not a gift — it’s a trap. And the road ahead leads nowhere safe. The Driving Lesson is a short story of religious delusion, power, and cruelty — a standalone ...

Sue Grafton's X: Perhaps her darkest and most chilling novel, it features a remorseless serial killer who leaves no trace of his crimes. Once again breaking the rules and establishing new paths, Grafton wastes little time identifying this sociopath. The test is whether Kinsey can prove her case against him before she becomes his next victim.

Four young socialites have gone missing in the Chicago area. Two found dead, bearing the signature marks of a brutal serial killer. With the kind of tragedy that mars Nola Tensley's past, she should be concerned, but without a pot to piss in, all the struggling single mom cares about is making a normal life for her son. After all, she's clearly not the murderer's type. Or is she?

Each time he strikes, he takes two victims. He waits for the first victim to be discovered—a body containing all the clues investigators need to find the second victim, who counts the seconds to a slow but certain death. Now two girls have disappeared and the deadly countdown begins again. Rookie FBI agent Kimberly Quincy knows that the killer’s deadline can be met—but she’ll have to break some rules to do it. Joining forces with her father, renowned FBI profiler Pierce Quincy, and his partner, Rainie Conner, Kimberly will begin a dangerous hunt for a predator like none she’s ever seen.