Society Mystery

An indispensable guide, Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies connects the dots and sets the record straight on a host of greedy gurus and murderous messiahs, crepuscular cabals, and suspicious coincidences. Some topics are familiar - the Kennedy assassinations, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, the People's Temple and Heaven's Gate - and some surprising, like Oulipo, a select group of intellectuals who created wild formulas for creating literary masterpieces, and the Chauffeurs, an 18th-century society of French home invaders, who set fire to their victims' feet.

At Princeton University, a famed geneticist dies inside a biohazard lab. In Rome, a Vatican archaeologist is found dead in St. Peter's Basilica. In Africa, a U.S. senator's son is slain outside a Red Cross camp. The three murders on three continents bear a horrifying connection: all the victims are marked by a Druidic pagan cross burned into their flesh. The bizarre murders thrust Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force into a race against time to solve a riddle going back centuries.

When Lois Grover moves into the Beacon of Hope Assisted Living Center, she fears boredom will consume her, but a fellow resident soon invites her to a secret meeting of the Twilight Society. This quirky group of elderly residents, with a variety of skills, talents, and expertise, helps lost souls, tethered to the world of the living, by solving the mysteries keeping them from moving on. The center itself—a historic colonial mansion that has functioned as a hospital, a school, and a sanitarium—possesses mysteries of its own that both help and hinder the society's investigations.

Three unforgettable journeys filled with danger, discovery, and destiny. Book 1: The Lost Ark – When an eccentric professor vanishes atop Mount Ararat, ex-National Geographic photojournalist Sam Ward is hired to track him down. But this search for Noah’s Ark turns deadly as Sam and archaeologist Faye Roberts stumble upon a hidden base with a sinister purpose. Now, they must outrun ruthless enemies while uncovering one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time. A high-stakes thriller perfect for fans of Clive Cussler and James Rollins. Book 2: The Grail Quest – Mystery ...

Lord Farrington is returning from what had been a wonderful evening at White’s, when he is struck suddenly and knocked unconscious. Waking up to find himself in a locked room, he has no knowledge as to why he is there or who attacked him. With no means of escape, he struggles between fear and anger, only to be greeted by a veiled lady who promises to explain everything. Lady Josephine Rutherford has spent five years searching for the truth about her husband’s death. Believing that Lord Farrington is responsible, she uses her wealth and influence to have him captured and brought to her ...

Ten years ago, four students lost their lives in the infamous unsolved North Tower murders at the elite Carvell Academy of the Arts, forcing the school to close its doors. Now Carvell is reopening, and fearless freshman Lottie Fitzwilliam is determined to find out what really happened. But when her beautiful but standoffish roommate, Alice Wolfe, stumbles upon a sinister soul-splitting ritual in a book hidden in Carvell’s library, the North Tower claims another victim. Is there a killer among them . . . or worse, within them?

Once in a long while, a child is born possessing the rarest of gifts, the innate ability to feel impossible beauty, to recognize priceless works of art. When such a child is discovered, a 250-year-old secret organization called Our World trains them to acquire the greatest works of art through theft, bribery, forgery, and even murder. Once found, the masterpiece will disappear again without anyone ever knowing it surfaced and sold for billions of dollars of profit at a secret auction attended by only the wealthiest of the art world’s patrons.

Anglemore Park is the ancestral home of Lady Emily Hargreave's husband Colin. But the stately calm of country life is destroyed when their neighbor, the Marquess of Montagu, bursts through the French doors from the garden and falls down dead in front of the shocked gathering. But who has a motive for murdering the young aristocrat? The lovely cousin who was threatened by his engagement, the Oxford friend he falsely accused of cheating, the scheming vicar's daughter he shamelessly seduced or the relative no one knew existed who appears to claim the Montagu title?

Psychic Ryley St. James's life spirals into chaos when her estranged father arrives in town with the Grim Reaper at his heels. To make matters worse, her boyfriend is keeping secrets, and the reaper training she desperately needs is postponed. When her brother falls into a coma after a sinister attack, and a teenager's murder demands justice, Ryley's psychic abilities are put to the ultimate test. Straddling the line between the living and the dead, Ryley is in the killer's crosshairs, racing against time to unravel the truth and unmask the killer to save her brother's life.

What happens when you accidentally bring one of the world's most powerful blood-mages back from the dead? Orson Reid and his friends are about to find out. But first they'll need to deal with the Paragon Society's ever-growing web of lies, an ancient shape-shifter blood sport, and a very unexpected display of magic ability - but not necessarily in that order. Whoever said being the good guys was easy, was dead wrong.

London, 1866. Móirín Donnelly has spent the last five years working in the shadows for the Dread Penny Society, a secret fraternity of penny dreadful authors who use their profits, influence, and street smarts to protect the poor and vulnerable of Victorian London. But spending so much of her life in secret is taking its toll on her soul—and her heart. When members of the Dread Penny Society begin disappearing, Móirín turns to her friend Detective Constable Fitzgerald Parkington for help.

Psychic Ryley St. James has a million problems, but a haunted house isn't one of them. Until now. When a woman is attacked in a haunted house and sent to the hospital fighting for her life, her powerful fiance blackmails Ryley into uncovering the deadly secrets hidden on the property. The house reeks of ill warnings and bad tidings. This isn't what Ryley calls a typical haunting. It's an infestation, and the evil spirit residing inside refuses to cooperate. Now she'll have to risk her life to save her brother's career, her multi-million-dollar foundation, and her new unorthodox family.

San Francisco, 2051. Baz Covane is a battle-scarred thief who sticks to small-time bots. Ria Rose is the underworld “fixer” with a big-time score that could easily get ’em both killed. ’Cuz the Fang’s psychotic kingpin Otto Rex has a vault with more security than a fusion reactor. And the glass inside is priceless—enough to set up Baz, Ria, and their crack team of cyber-misfits on the white sands of Tahiti forever. But this crime doesn’t just carry infinite VR-Prison time—it’s Baz and Ria’s last shot at redemption.

They Never Left When disgraced journalist Rex Mallory returns to the small town of Whisper Ridge, he expects rust, rumors, and a few ghosts from his past. What he doesn’t expect is a missing woman, a mutilated corpse, and the burned remains of a notebook that points to decades of disappearances. As Mallory digs deeper, he uncovers chilling whispers of an abandoned asylum, a preacher with too many secrets, and a sheriff who doesn’t take kindly to questions. Every lead pulls him closer to a horrifying truth buried beneath the town’s sleepy surface—one the townspeople are willing to ...

Twenty years ago, a woman with a secret vanished only to turn up murdered a year later on the same shoreline where she'd disappeared. And now it's happening again. Psychic Ryley St. James has found a killer's dumping ground. Six dead bodies took their secrets to a watery grave. And now Ryley's name has been added to the killer's hit list. She refuses to be number seven.

As a struggling young attorney fresh out of law school, Renny Jacobson was pining for the day he could afford the fast cars and sprawling homes of the partners in his Charlotte firm. And with news of his father's death and an ancient, secret inheritance, Renny's life was sure to change forever. But the inheritance and membership in the clandestine society which provided it soon threatens to change him in more ways than one.

Some secrets refuse to stay buried... When Liv returns to her grandmother Eleanor's Victorian mansion in Heartwood Haven, she expects to find solace among the herb gardens and faded memories. Instead, she discovers a body among the rosemary—Walter Pembroke, head of the Historical Society, clutching a mysterious document that could change everything. As Liv reluctantly steps into her inheritance, she finds herself at the center of a town divided between preservation and progress. The suspicious Detective Marcus Rivera considers her the prime suspect, while the Knitting Circle's whispers ...

Can a group of senior amateur detectives solve the mystery and find their missing neighbor? Willow Wisteria disappeared, but not without a trace. Now it’s up to Madame Sleuth and the members of the Secret Senior Sleuths Society of Peacock Perch to find out what happened to her. They’ve set aside their bingo and bridge games and daily tennis and pickle ball matches to investigate “The Case of the Vanishing Vixen.” They’ll use all their cunning, life experience and the knowledge from their former occupations to follow the trail of gossip and social media posts about Willow to gather...

A hidden mystery in Jupiter’s second-largest moon holds a power beyond imagining. Beneath the icy surface of Callisto lies an underground sea. Decades ago, a research base was built to study the strange lifeforms inhabiting this silent world before tragedy struck, killing everyone. News of this incident is quickly hushed up, with all access to the Jovian moon restricted. Kirill Sereda was orphaned when his mother never returned from that very outpost. Now an adult, he gathers together a team of misfits for a clandestine mission: head to Callisto and find out what really happened. What ...

Conspiracy theories, and particularly the belief that elements of the world are secretly controlled by individuals or groups, have been around for as long as people have lived in groups. Perhaps that’s inevitable - after all, those who are excluded from power are very likely to be inclined to see their position not as an outcome of their own choices or situation but because of the secret machinations of shadowy groups.