Stone Dead

Stone Dead is Frank Smith's second novel featuring British Chief Inspector Neil Paget. A routine robbery investigation turns into something much more sinister when a corpse is found in the well of a cottage belonging to photographer Peter Foster. Foster fears the body is the ex-husband of his current girlfriend, a model shooting on location in France. Worse, he fears Lisa may have killed him. But Lisa herself has mysteriously disappeared, and the true identity of the corpse adds a strange twist to the already-convoluted crime. A murder has taken place--but who is the victim, and who is the killer? It seems everyone involved knows something, but not enough to piece together an emerging puzzle of love and hate--until a fatal mistake leads Paget to the shocking solution . . . in Frank Smith's Stone Dead.

An unwelcome blast from the past puts Patrick and Ingrid back in harm’s way . . . Nicholas Haldane was dead, but he wouldn’t lie down. And now Julian Hardy, the man who hired him in a bid to destroy Richard Daws, a top official in the National Crime Agency, is out of prison and has changed his surname to Mannering. Patrick Gillard, working for the agency but within the Avon and Somerset force with his wife Ingrid Langley, receives a request from MI5, for whom he used to work, to investigate Mannering. They are then called in when his cleaner makes a shocking discovery. Meanwhile, an enigmatic couple calling themselves Simon and Natasha Graves turn up in the village, intent on pestering Patrick’s recently widowed mother. Could there be a connection to Mannering? Patrick and Ingrid are soon embroiled in a deeply personal and disturbing case.

When a human bone is found on a lonely stretch of coastline, a determined homicide detective and a reluctant scientist risk their lives as they join forces to bring a serial killer to justice. Trooper Leigh Abbott has something to prove, both to herself and to the chauvinistic men in her department. She's been assigned a difficult challenge: solve a murder where the only evidence is a single bone. To identify the victim and find the killer, she must join forces with forensic anthropologist Matt Lowell. Matt's initial refusal to join the team is only the first in a series of setbacks. Matt and Leigh's skills and tenuous partnership are tested when the evidence leads them to a burial ground of unidentified victims, where, to their horror, they stumble upon a freshly ravaged corpse. As the body count rises, the team must piece together a deadly puzzle spanning years of clandestine killings. Before long, the serial killer raises the stakes and Matt and Leigh find themselves marked as targets. Now they must stop the killer before they become the next victims.

December 21, 1960, the shortest day of the year: Fifteen-year-old Darleen Hicks slips away from her school bus as it idles in the junior-high parking lot, waiting to depart. Moments later the bus rumbles away without her, and she is never seen again. New Year’s Eve, 1960: The small upstate town of New Holland, New York, is in the grips of a severe cold snap, when Ellie Stone receives a late-night caller—Irene Metzger, the grieving mother of Darleen Hicks. She tells Ellie that the local police won’t help her, that they believe Darleen has run off with some older boy and will return when she is ready. Irene has read Ellie’s stories in the paper on an earlier murder case and believes Ellie is her last hope. Ellie Stone is on a chilling journey to a place of uncertainty, loss, teenage passion, and vulnerability—where Ellie’s questions are unwanted and her life is in danger. From the Trade Paperback edition.

Former cop turned lawyer Stone Barrington investigates a Hollywood homicide in this “stylish whodunit” (Detroit News) in the #1 New York Times bestselling series. Stone’s trip to Venice with a fiery Mafia princess is cut short by a frantic phone call from halfway around the world. A celebrity murder has Los Angeles in an uproar—and a former flame pining for Stone’s help in more ways than one. When he lands amid Hollywood’s sun and sin, Stone must plumb the depths of film society to find the killer, before a court trial rips away his last chance at a life he once desperately wanted...

THE ACCLAIMED SEQUEL TO THE CHOSEN In desperation, the Ruling Lord Suth searches within the sacred walls of Osrakum for Carnelian, his son, and Osidian, the God Emperor elect. He suspects the Empress Ykoriana is behind their disappearance and knows that if they are not found soon it is her other son, Osidian's brother Molochite, who will rule - with fearful consequences for the Three Lands. Captive of the tribes of the Earthsky, Carnelian is - for the moment - safe, and succumbs readily to the seasonal rhythms of tribal life, he is convinced by unexpected discoveries that it is fate that has bought him there.He grows to love these simple people and hopes for sanctuary among them. But the dark forces Carnelian helped unleash in Osrakum begin to cast their shadow over his adopted home. He is witness to the awful oppression that the Masters - whom the tribesmen call the Standing Dead - have been inflicting on them for millennia. But even more terrible is the presence Carnelian has unwittingly brought with him. Potent and terrifying, it threatens everything he now holds dear in this new-found world. With The Standing Dead, Ricardo Pinto gives us a tumultuous new chapter in the Stone Dance of the Chameleon trilogy and confirms his place as one of fantasy's most singular and literate voices.

The first novel in the thrilling Stone Barrington Series by #1 New York Times Bestselling author Stuart Woods Everyone is always telling Stone Barrington that he's too smart to be a cop, but it’s pure luck that places him on the streets in the dead of night, just in time to witness the horrifying incident that turns his life inside out. Suddenly he’s on the front page of every New York newspaper, and his life is hopelessly entwined in the increasingly shocking life (and perhaps death) of Sasha Nijinsky, the country's hottest and most beautiful television anchorwoman. No matter where he turns, the case is waiting for him, haunting his nights and turning his days into a living hell. Stone finds himself caught in a perilous web of unspeakable crimes, dangerous friends, and sexual depravity that has throughout it one common thread: Sasha.