A young recluse, believing in the occult power of magic, will do anything to keep her family together as they grow apart   When Dolly's mother-her only friend-dies, twenty-three-year-old Dolly becomes a second mom to her younger brother, Pup. Socially isolated and booze-addled, Dolly believes that Pup's occult power, and a talisman he's made for her, will give her the life she wants. But as Pup grows older and her father takes a new wife, her carefully...

Collects nineteen winners of the Crime Writers' Association Short Story Dagger award, which began in 1982, and includes tales of such crimes as serial murder, the drug trade, and forgery.

A compelling British police procedural starring the mild-mannered Detective Inspector Thanet from "a modern-day version of Agatha Christie" (Booklist). Change is coming to the Sturrenden police station. After twenty years at the helm, the superintendent has retired, and Det. Inspector Luke Thanet is now reporting to a brusque, ambitious upstart recently promoted from Cardiff. A new chief means turf wars and bureaucratic infighting. With the station...

Baghdad is holding a secret superpower summit, but the word is out, and an underground organization in the Middle East is plotting to sabotage the talks. Into this explosive situation appears Victoria Jones, a young woman with a yearning for adventure who gets more than she bargains for when a wounded spy dies in her hotel room. The only man who can save the summit is dead. Can Victoria make sense of his dying words: Lucifer…Basrah…Lefarge.…...

Celebrate the holidays with M. C. Beaton, the queen of cozy mysteries!
In the dark, wintry highlands of Lochdubh, Scotland, where the local Calvinist element resists the secular trimmings of Christmas, the spirit of Old St. Nick is about as welcome as a flat tire on a deserted road. Nor is crime taking a holiday, as Constable Hamish Macbeth soon finds himself protecting an unhappy girl, unlocking the secrets of a frightened old woman, and...

A rare stamp and a corpse are discovered in Bath within hours of each other. As he investigates, Inspector Peter Diamond discovers that both the person who found the stamp and the victim belong to the Bloodhounds, an elite group of mystery lovers, who now urge Diamond to bring the murderer to justice. But there's a hitch: the body lies inside a padlocked houseboat and the only key is in the pocket of a man with an airtight alibi.