Adult

Detective Patrik Hedstrom is no stranger to tragedy. A murder case concerning Fjällbacka’s dead financial director, Mats Sverin, is a grim but useful distraction from his recent family misfortunes. It seems Sverin was a man who everybody liked yet nobody really knew. His high school sweetheart, Nathalie, has just returned to Fjällbacka with her five-year-old son. Perhaps she can shed some light on who Sverin really was. However, Nathalie has her own secret. If it’s discovered, she will lose her only child. As the investigation stalls, the police have many questions. But there is only one that matters: Is there anything a mother would not do to protect her child?

CRIME PLUS MUSIC collects 20 darkly intense, music-related noir stories by world-renowned mystery authors Brendan DuBois, Alison Gaylin, Craig Johnson, David Liss, Val McDermid, Gary Phillips, Peter Robinson, and, from the music world, Galadrielle Allman, author of PLEASE BE WITH ME: A Song for My Father, Duane Allman and award-winning songwriter-novelist Willy Vlautin. Edited by novelist and Wall Street Journal rock and pop music critic Jim Fusilli, CRIME PLUS MUSIC exposes the nasty side of the world of popular music, revealing it to be the perfect setting for noir.

The five centuries between the end of Roman Britain and the death of Alfred the Great have left few voices save a handful of chroniclers, but Britain's "Dark Ages" can still be explored through their material remnants: architecture, books, metalwork and, above all, landscapes. Max Adams explores Britain's lost early medieval past by walking its paths and exploring its lasting imprint on valley, hill and field. Each of his 10 walking narratives form free-standing chapters as well as parts of a wider portrait of a Britain of fort and fyrd, crypt and crannog, church and causeway, holy well and memorial stone.

When Robert Constable, President of the United States, dies in bed with a woman in a New York hotel room, the public is told that he died suddenly and peacefully of natural causes --- and alone. The President’s wife, Hillary Constable, asks young senator Bobby Hart, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, to find out who had her husband murdered and why. As Hart begins to learn more about the President’s shady dealings, he uncovers a massive global criminal and financial conspiracy, headed by a secret underground organization. Yet the closer Hart gets to the truth, the more shocking secrets are revealed that could threaten his life, American Democracy, and the future of the nation.

Liz McCall grew up in a playful winter wonderland, but it was never her dream to manage her father’s vintage toyshop. However, after he sank his entire police pension into the business, someone needed to help him turn his dreams into reality --- and keep him from sneaking off to patrol the not-so-mean streets of East Aurora, NY. The mood goes from nice to naughty when a nervous man, who was trying to have his antique toys appraised, is found in the shop with a lawn dart through his chest. Suddenly, Liz’s business plan is plunged into deep freeze, while she and her father find themselves toying with a cold-blooded killer who’s playing for keeps.

Before motherhood, before marriage, Bridget Jones, with biological clock ticking very, very loudly, finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at the 11th hour. But which of her ex-boyfriends is the father? Mark Darcy: honorable, decent, notable human rights lawyer? Or the incorrigible Daniel Cleaver: charming, witty, notorious ladies’ man? In this tale of baby-deadline panic, maternal bliss, and social, professional, technological, culinary and childbirth chaos, Bridget navigates a pregnancy full of cheesy potatoes, outlandish advice from Smug Mothers, chaos at scans and childbirth classes, high jinks and romance.

The year 1956 was a turning point in history. Over 16 extraordinary days, the twin crises involving Suez and Hungary pushed the world to the brink of a nuclear conflict. BLOOD AND SAND delivers this story in an hour-by-hour account through a fascinating international cast of characters: Anthony Eden, the British prime minister, caught in a trap of his own making; Gamal Abdel Nasser, the bold young populist leader of Egypt; David Ben-Gurion, the aging Zionist hero of Israel; Guy Mollet, the bellicose French prime minister; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the American president, torn between an old world order and a new one in the very same week that his own fate as president was to be decided by the American people.

In late-18th-century Ireland, accidental stargazer Caroline Ainsworth learns that her life is not what it seems when her father, Arthur, throws himself from his rooftop observatory. A grief-stricken Caroline leaves Ireland for London, and tries to forget her love for Finnegan O'Siodha, the tinkering blacksmith who was helping her father build a telescope larger than his rival's. But her father has left her more than the wreck of that unfinished instrument: his cryptic atlas holds the secret to finding a new world at the edge of the sky. As Caroline reluctantly resumes her father's work and confronts her own longings, Ireland is swept into rebellion, and Caroline and Finnegan are plunged into its violence.

The VegasVegas online casino posts entertainment propositions like “American Idol,” political elections and celebrity trials. VegasVegas customers don't want to bet on speeding tickets or misdemeanor theft. They want murder. The movie director Andrew Marvel is on trial for murdering his wife, Audrey, in their summer home. Most VegasVegas customers know a sure thing when they see one and bet on conviction. But a local bettor puts $500 on dropped charges at 125 to 1 odds. Two days later, an unshakable alibi surfaces, proving the movie director couldn't have murdered his wife. All charges are dropped. The casino owner, Jackson Oliver, suspects the bettor of involvement in the murder, making the bet fraudulent. Before he pays out the winnings, Jackson goes to Vermont to investigate.

After the deadly challenges of his last job for a security firm Prime Protection, Rusty Mullins swore he'd stop risking his life on assignments. Then his good friend Ted Lewison, head of Prime Protection, asks him back for a routine mission guarding Chinese scientist Dr. Lisa Li and her seven-year-old nephew, Peter, and Mullins agrees. The conference on Artificial Intelligence bringing Dr. Li to Washington, DC, is barely underway when a team of assassins storms the room. The carnage is great, but Mullins saves Dr. Li and Peter while the attackers kill the two other AI experts, along with Lewison. His widow begs Mullins to uncover the power behind the group claiming credit for the assassinations.