Showing results by publisher "Scribd Audio" in Crime Fiction

An unscrupulous womanizer, as devoid of morals now as he once was full of idealistic fervor, returns to Italy, where he is wanted for a series of crimes. To earn himself the guise of respectability, he is willing to go as far as murder.

A house on a quiet street on the south side of Glasgow. Neat, terraced homes with manicured lawns and pruned trees. Not the sort of place that reeks of decay or where dead bluebottles pile up on a windowsill. When the police break in, there’s a surprise in store for them. They find Julie Campbell’s decaying body at her desk, her laptop open beside her. She’s a well-liked, respectable woman. On the laptop is a confession – to five murders.

Matt Connell, a formerly successful literary agent who’s been in prison for four years for a crime of passion—homicide by strangulation after learning his wife slept with a friend—receives an early release from Sing Sing to join an FBI undercover investigation of multiple murders in Manhattan. Killings continue to mount as Matt does his best to calm his “Ferrari brain”—a condition in which his mind accelerates wildly into negative thoughts and worst-case scenarios—even as he falls in love with a suspect, then discovers disturbing truths about his past and hers.

Marcus Kemp is a beat cop living a normal life in San Diego, California—until the day he makes a shocking discovery: a dead body in the trunk of a stolen car. Worse, the victim turns out to be the man who abused him as a child. Marcus instinctively wants to help the killer get away with murder and, disregarding his police oath, will stop at nothing to make it happen. With both his job and freedom in jeopardy, Marcus’s investigation leads him to an unexpected suspect, and he is soon faced with an impossible decision.

During a buffalo photo shoot, wildlife photographer Nikki Lancaster snaps a picture of an odd man who later follows her to her car. She races away, only to have a vehicle run her off the road and leave the scene of the accident. When the first officer on the scene is DCI Agent Xavier Palinski, her ex-fiancé, Nikki figures things can’t get any worse. She’s wrong. Days later, Nikki discovers a dead body in that same area. After search teams find the bodies of three other women, Nikki suspects she hasn’t just photographed a crazy tourist. Instead, she’s captured a serial killer on film.

The Murderer’s Maid interweaves the stories of two women, the 19th-century servant of infamous Lizzie Borden and the other a 21st-century modern-day barista fleeing from an attempt on her life. Irish maid Bridget Sullivan, trapped by servitude and afraid for her own safety, finds herself an unwilling witness to the tensions in the volatile Borden household. In 2016, Brooke, the illegitimate daughter of an immigrant maid, is unknowingly connected to the legendary 19th-century crime. Brooke struggles to conceal her identity and stay a jump ahead of the men who want to kill her.

A heinous double murder in a squalid apartment on the wrong side of town pits Inspector Lojacono, Di Nardo and the rest of the motley collection of cops known as the “bastards” of the Pizzofalcone precinct against their superiors, the press, and the local political hierarchy. Only by bringing the killer to justice can they save their reputations and the department.

The best noir writers make us feel the heat of the sun, the touch of a lover. Setting can be gritty but can also be sublime, no longer relegated to urban locales and seedy hotel rooms but also mansions and swimming pools. Hence, Palm Springs, which may seem like an odd setting for a collection of dark short stories—it’s so sunny and bright here. The stories in this collection come on like the wicked dust storms common to the area.

When a young Montreal family dies in an orgy of bloody violence, all signs point to a rampage by the father. But Victor Lessard isn’t convinced. The brilliant, brooding detective suspects that others were involved in the killings. But who? And why? As Lessard struggles to solve the puzzle, the discovery of a nightmarish chamber of horrors seems to confirm that the murders are part of a wider pattern. Meanwhile, in the Major Crimes Unit, Jacinthe Taillon is investigating the strange kidnapping of Laila François, a former street kid turned webcam girl.

The Maine of Not When I'm Gone is about mother nature, the sea, the woods, the tides, the seasons, sunrise and sunset. It is also about human nature. Central are events that happen on the Fourth of July weekend. Locals are drinking, partying, waiting for fireworks. The Coast Guard is like them, cruising the bay, but not patrolling much, most of the sailors below deck, with girlfriends, celebrating the holiday. It is the perfect moment for a multi-million drug drop to take place. A boat from Panama is hardly noticed when it slips into the bay.

Alex Turner and his treacherous lover, the Russian diamond thief Slav Lily, are back on the hunt. An American prospector is murdered in the great diamond field of northern Canada—a magical landscape of pristine lakes and granite ridges. The U.S. government fears that the Chinese billionaire twins who suddenly control the dead prospector’s company are seeking a toehold for their government in this vital region. As we race across the globe, Hart keeps a heart-bounding pace with lethal plane chases and a battle between the scheming twins and the murdered prospector’s daughter.

When Nate wakes up in the woods, he has no idea how he got there. The last thing he remembers is being at home. And when he spots two people digging a grave, his problems multiply. After escaping from the woods, he goes home to find his house burning and his brother, Peter, dead inside. Now the police are after him for the murder. Determined to find out who set him up and why, Nate goes on a dangerous journey to uncover the truth. But can he find those responsible and prove his innocence before it’s too late?

While all Iraqis will readily agree that their life has always been noir, the majority of the stories in Baghdad Noir are set in the years following the American invasion of 2003, though one story is set in 1950 and three are set in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet it is this recent history of Iraq—over the last few decades—that serves to inform its present....

When Matt Armstrong learns that his sister has been murdered, he returns to London to find out what happened. Visiting the place where his sister’s corpse was found, Matt struggles to uncover any information. But when he learns that a camera might have been used to record the killing, he becomes a man on a mission. Together with his former girlfriend, Matt chases down every scant lead, finding one dead end after another. Then an anonymous tip changes everything he thought he knew about his sister’s life—and how it ended.

DCI Alex Fleming has returned to work after convalescent leave to find that the Assistant Chief Constable wants him to review an old cold case. William Stroud, a union activist, was shot dead five years ago after a strike at the Atomic Weapons Establishment organized by union leader Bill Kauffman. No one had ever been arrested for the crime. When Fleming later finds out that MI5 have an interest in the case and in what’s going on at the AWE, he realizes how deep he’s going to have to dig.

A shady London nightclub owner is found dead on his boat on the River Thames—and newly promoted DCI Alex Fleming, a man with a troubled past, is keen to prove his worth with his first murder case after joining the Major Crime Unit of Thames Valley Police. But Bill Watson, a belligerent fellow DCI, gives Fleming a hostile reception and, as internal politics come into play, Fleming finds himself up against both a difficult case and his own colleagues. During the course of the investigation, Fleming and his sergeant identify five suspects. Now they need to eliminate them one by one.

When armed men infiltrate the tiny Peak District hamlet of Barkelow, Emil Torrance thinks they’ve cone to kill him because of his past. Escaping is easy enough for a man like him, but when he learns that all of Berkelow has been overtaken, he realises his son is in grave danger. Believing that calling the police will cost lives, he decides to deal with the problem alone. But Emil isn’t far from the target, and the threat he’s facing is far greater than he realises. Who are these killers? What do they want? And how far are they willing to go to get it?

Earl Marcus thought he had left the mountains of Georgia behind forever, and with them, the painful memories of a childhood spent under the fundamentalist rule of his father RJ’s church - a church built on fear, penance, and the twisting, writhing mass of snakes. But then an ominous photo of RJ is delivered to Earl’s home. The photograph is dated long after his father’s burial, and there’s no doubt that the man in the picture is very much alive.

Amy Wirkner, a high school senior in Barnesville, Ohio, is a loner, nicknamed “Chevy” for her size. She’s smart, funny, and absolutely determined to escape from her small town in the Ohio Valley, a place poisoned by fracking. She does well in school despite the cruelty of her classmates and has her eyes on a college scholarship, so she can one day become a veterinarian and make something of herself.

In the seaside city of San Marco, Florida, Lise Norwood spends her days serving papers and her nights spying on cheating spouses. But before she became a PI, she was an art major at San Marco University. So when the local police ask her to consult on a murder case in which the victim was posed to resemble a classic Greek sculpture, Lise dusts off her art history degree and joins the task force.