Claire Lidman died fourteen years ago.

So why does she appear in the background of a recent holiday snap taken in Venice?

Her husband brings the anomaly to Hans Rekke and Micaela Vargas. Initial scepticism gives way to cautious belief, but Rekke is falling apart again and Vargas has her own problems. Her gangster brother is threatening to silence her if she doesn't get off his case.

Meanwhile, Rekke's daughter Julia has a new boyfriend she's determined to keep secret. He sees something in her she can't see herself, but there are hints of a darker side.

Most troubling of all, Rekke is hearing whispers of a name he hasn't heard for years. A rival from his youth whose restless evil links all the threads in this incipient case. The pieces are laid and he's already one move ahead. The name of the game is revenge.

Cape Town, South Africa. Retired police chief Piet Pieterse has been murdered, necklaced in fact. A tyre placed round his neck, doused with petrol, set alight. An execution from the apartheid era and one generally confined to collaborators. Who would target Pieterse this way, and why now?

Veteran cop Schalk Lourens is trying to forget the past. But Pieterse was his old boss and when Schalk is put on the case, he finds the past has a way of infecting the present.

Meanwhile, it's an election year. People are pinning their hopes on charismatic ANC candidate Gideon Radebe but there's opposition and in this volatile country, unrest is never far from the surface.

Schalk must tread a difficult path between the new regime and the old, between the personal and the professional, between justice and revenge.

This investigation will change his life, and could alter his country's future.

In November 1905 beskryf ’n Windhoekse koerant Siegfried Bock as ’n nuwe soort held. Maar die moordenaar wat hy voor die hof gebring het se advokaat stel Siegfried in ’n heel ander lig. Boonop is oberleutnant Berghammer en die Namakryger Jager Orlam albei daarop uit om Siegfried te laat boet. En dan is daar die burokraat Stauffacher met sy ondraaglike planne. Siegfried sien nie uitkomkans nie. Maar daar móét een wees, veral noudat liefde vir hom wink . . .

As the legacy of El Nino scorches Cape Town, threatening it with drought, fire and civil disorder, the city is gripped by two horrific crimes: an explosion in the tourist centre, and the gruesome murder of a seemingly random victim.

In his investigation, Colonel Vaughn De Vries of the Special Crimes Unit discovers a frightening back story and developing pattern of criminality, and comes to believe that there is more than one killer on the loose, each with a connection to a man who, as a child, drowned his sister and destroyed his family. Newly promoted investigator Lieutenant Mike Solarin, working with De Vries, discovers a trail to the perpetrators of the bomb in the city but, when he is recalled and the incident branded the work of extremists, he pursues an alternative route, calling into question the role of the political elite, the media, and the police themselves.

Now sharing the single belief that there must be justice at any cost as they struggle to represent victims of so many atrocities, De Vries and Solarin fight - against gathering forces - to save their city and their country.

In this twisty thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Take Your Breath Away, a man desperately tries to track down his father – who was taken into witness protection years ago – before his enemies can get to him.

"Your dad’s not a good person. Your dad killed people, son." These are some of the last words Jack Givins’s father spoke to him before he was whisked away by witness protection, leaving Jack and his mother to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives.

Years later, Jack is a struggling author, recruited by the U.S. Marshals to create false histories for people in witness protection. Jack realises this may be a chance to find his dad – but then he discovers he’s gone missing, and he could be in serious danger.

Jack knows he has to track him down. But how will he find a man he’s never truly known? And how will he evade his father’s deadly enemies – enemies who wouldn’t think twice about using his own son against him?

Detective James Cross has been honorably discharged from the Army Criminal Investigation Division due to wounds sustained when an IED blew up near him. Now with the Lake City Police Department, he's rooming with this good buddy and partner, Cole, while he figures out his family dynamics.

Physician Assistant Lainie Jackson is eighteen months out from an attempted murder perpetrated by her ex, which ended when she managed to grab the weapon and shoot him. When he appears to have survived and is back to finish the job he started, Lainie insists it's not possible. But someone keeps trying to kill her, and she keeps seeing his face.

Together, Lainie and James must work together to find out who, exactly, is after her and why he wants her dead. And failure is not an option.

USA Today bestselling author Lynette Eason will leave you breathless with this fast-paced first book in a brand-new series.

Dis donker. Dis koud. Jy’s alleen. En dis wanneer jy twyfel.

Ná drie jaar in die Suid-Afrikaanse Polisiediens is konstabel Alex Steytler gewoond aan die roetine van douvoordag opstaan, inry Kaap toe, op ’n trein klim en twaalf ure lank trokke of stasies patrolleer. Die lelike kant van die lewe is waar hy werk, anders as Tasha in die woonstel langsaan wat haar kamera op die mooi fokus.

Maar nou het sy vriend en medebeampte hom by nog iets ingesleep, en hierdie keer is dit nie so eenvoudig soos ’n motorfiets koop nie. Nee, Pyper wil by die duikeenheid aansluit, want treintrappe, tikkoppe en messtekers bied klaarblyklik nie genoeg opwinding nie. En nou staan Steytler tot by sy naeltjie in ’n rivier vol riool op soek na die slagoffer van ’n boendoehof.

Dis net die begin. Om lede van die duikeenheid te word, sal hulle behoorlik aan die diep kant ingegooi word. Toe Steytler vroeg in die jaar tussen die stukke van ’n treintrapslagoffer gestaan het, kon hy nie weet dat hy teen die einde sy eie stukke sal moet bymekaar maak, of moontlik dele van homself vir ewig verloor nie.

“Hierdie tou is jou lifeline. Jy los hom nie.” Want in donker water is dit al hoe jy jou pad kan terugvind.

Sondag. Oukersaand. Ná ’n inbraak by die Stables Estate in Pretoria-Oos word sakeman Lafras van Zyl vir dood agtergelaat. Die res van die Van Zyl-gesin verdwyn spoorloos. Kaptein AJ Williams moet inspring om te help. Alex en Ranna is op die spoor van ’n meisie, wat in Johannesburg vermis geraak het. Twee misdade. Meer vrae as antwoorde.

‘The dream team delivers big time … Clinton’s insider secrets and Patterson’s storytelling genius make this the political thriller of the decade.’ – Lee Child

The President is missing.

As an unprecedented cyberterrorist attack cripples the United States, the President must face an unthinkable truth:

There is a traitor in his Cabinet. His life is in danger.

And the only way to stay ahead of the shadowy forces tearing at the heart of America is to go off the grid, leaving behind his presidential protection. The President must go missing – and he may never resurface…

Set over the course of three days that shake a nation to its core, The President is Missing sheds a stunning light upon the inner workings and vulnerabilities of the American government. Filled with information that only a former President could know, this is the most authentic, terrifying thriller in years.

A young woman is murdered in her flat and a tiny red diamond in the shape of a five-pointed star is found behind her eyelid. Detective Harry Hole is assigned to the case, alongside his long-time adversary Tom Waaler, and initially wants no part in it.

But Harry is already on his final warning and has little alternative but to drag himself out of his alcoholic stupor when it becomes apparent that Oslo has a serial killer on its hands.

Some secrets are too dangerous to keep . . .

TWO SUSPICIOUS DEATHS

When Dwayne and Alice Odom are killed, the police report states clearly that it was a drug overdose. So why is their daughter, who was there when they died, claiming that’s not the truth?

ONE YOUNG SURVIVOR

Betsy Odom doesn’t trust the police but when she finds herself in the FBI’s custody after her parents’ deaths, she knows she has to be careful. Her uncle wants to adopt her and as he is a very rich and powerful man, she wants to let him. His criminal connections, however, mean the authorities aren’t so sure.

ONE MAN ON THE RUN

Enter Travis Devine. Trying to escape a skilled predator who wants him dead, Devine finds himself as Betsy’s bodyguard. But when an informant is found murdered, Devine knows this job is perhaps even more dangerous than the one he’s running from . . . and the true enemy may be on his side.

The world’s greatest detective, Hercule Poirot – legendary star of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile and A Haunting in Venice – puts his little grey cells to work solving a baffling Christmas mystery.

It’s 19 December 1931. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool are called to investigate the murder of a man in the apparent safe haven of a Norfolk hospital ward. Catchpool’s mother, the irrepressible Cynthia, insists that Poirot stays in a crumbling mansion by the coast, so that they can all be together for the festive period while Poirot solves the case. Cynthia’s friend Arnold is soon to be admitted to that same hospital and his wife is convinced he will be the killer’s next victim, though she refuses to explain why.

Poirot has less than a week to solve the crime and prevent more murders, if he is to escape from this nightmare scenario and get home in time for Christmas. Meanwhile, someone else – someone utterly ruthless – also has ideas about what ought to happen to Hercule Poirot . . .

Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in the small village of Three Pines in Quebec. Someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. When he finally answers the call, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.

That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF. At first they seem small - a missing coat, a note for Gamache reading "this might interest you", a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list - but then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching. A threat unlike anything they've seen before.

This is the story of the first human being born on Mars: Rose Fuller. She saw a better future than the one we were given and gave her life to build it.

It's a story about Dylan Ward, a woman who grew up in the frontier of human existence and misses it every single day.

It's a story about a man who went missing, and the man who wants to find out what he knew.

It's a story about what makes us human - and how we might live once we leave our home.

This is the story of the first murder on Mars.

In this thrilling new instalment of the #1 bestselling series, chief medical examiner Dr Kay Scarpetta finds herself in a Northern Virginia wilderness examining the remains of two campers wanted by federal law enforcement.

The victims have been savaged beyond recognition, and other evidence is terrifying and baffling, including a larger-than-life footprint.

After the most frightening body retrievals of her career, Scarpetta must discover who would commit murders this savage, and why.

Jeffery Deaver returns in this twisty new thriller, as forensic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme and detective Amelia Sachs track a criminal with a bizarre and catastrophic m.o.—toppling the construction cranes in New York City.

When a New York City construction crane mysteriously collapses, causing mass destruction and injury, Rhyme and Sachs are on the case. A political group claims responsibility for the sabotage and threatens another attack in twenty-four hours, unless its demands are met. The clock is ticking.

Then a clue reveals to Rhyme that his nemesis, known as the Watchmaker, has come to town to fulfill his promise of murdering the criminalist. Now Rhyme and Sachs have to dodge his brilliant scheme to destroy them both, while racing against time to stop the construction site terrorists.

With New York in a panic, Rhyme and his team must unravel a handful of plots as tightly wound as a timepiece—before more cranes fall, raining down death and destruction from above.

A Child Missing. A Mother Accused. Charlie Parker Is Their Only Hope.

In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone - ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk - has an opinion on the case, and most believe she is guilty.

But most is not all. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist, one involving a husband too eager to accept his wife's guilt, a disgraced psychic seeking redemption, and an old crooked house deep in the Maine woods, a house that should never have been built.

A house, and what dwells beneath.

From South Africa to Zanzibar, from Kenya to Britain, activists are battling to save lion prides, today more threatened by extinction than rhinos and elephants, as a result of illegal wildlife trading. Having thwarted murderous poachers in The Elephant Conspiracy, the Veteran, Thandi and Mkhize are back battling to save lion prides from being killed for their claws, teeth and bones. As the demand for lion parts soars, impoverished local communities are being incentivised to poach, and the fight against this illegal plunder becomes ever more vicious.

Struggling to defeat the international criminal syndicate responsible for poaching, the team find themselves embroiled in mafia-style smuggling, illicit night flights, tense shoot-outs, and an encounter with a protégé of Vladimir Putin.

Brendan Holmes, Margaret Marple and Auguste Poe run the most in-demand private investigation agency in New York City.

The three detectives make a formidable team, solving a series of seemingly impossible crimes which expose the dark underbelly of the city - from a priceless art theft, high-stakes kidnapping and a decades-old unsolved murder, to a gruesome subterranean prison and corruption and bribery at the highest levels of power.

But it's not long before their headline-grabbing breakthroughs, unconventional methods - and untraceable pasts - attract the attention of the NYPD and the FBI.

After all, it's no surprise that there's a mystery or two to unravel in the city that never sleeps . . . not least, who really are Holmes, Margaret and Poe?

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case.

Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?

Op 17 Desember spoel die lyk van Ernst Richter oop in die duine anderkant Parklands — dié Ernst Richter, berugte internet-entrepreneur, baas van die omstrede webwerf Alibi.co.za wat ’n maand gelede so onverklaarbaar en sensasioneel verdwyn het.

Selfs in normale omstandighede sou die Valke Bennie Griessel en Vaughn Cupido gesukkel het – by Alibi.co.za lieg almal soos tannetrekkers. Maar omstandighede is nie normaal nie. Want Griessel het weer aan die suip gegaan. En Cupido is verlief. Op een van die hoofverdagtes.

En op 24 Desember begin ’n jong wynboer bieg voor ’n advokaat in Kaapstad, wat die hele saak op sy kop keer. Kersfees sal nooit weer dieselfde wees nie.

Psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis confront a baffling, vicious double homicide that leads them to long-buried secrets worth killing for in the riveting thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling “master of suspense” (Los Angeles Times).

A pool boy enters a secluded Bel Air property and discovers two bodies floating in the bright blue water: Gio Aggiunta, the playboy heir to an Italian shoe empire, and a gorgeous, even wealthier neighbor named Meagin March. A married neighbor.

An illicit affair stoking rage is a perfect motive. But a “double” in this neighborhood of gated estates isn’t something you see every day. The house is untouched. No forced entry, no forensic evidence. The case has “that feeling,” and when that happens, Milo turns to his friend, the brilliant psychologist Alex Delaware.

As Milo and Alex investigate both victims, they discover two troubled pasts. And as they dig deeper, Meagin March’s very identity begins to blur. Who was this glamorous but conflicted woman? Did her past catch up to her? Or did Gio’s family connections create a threat spanning two continents?

Chasing down the answers leads Alex and Milo on an exploration of L.A.’s darkest side as they contend with one of the most shocking cases of their careers and learn that that some secrets are best left buried in the past.

Cora-Jane Winslow's father walked out on her family 23 years ago; his letters to her over the years the only connection she has had to him. When his body is discovered in an abandoned building, she is shocked to discover he has been dead all this time. What happened to him and who would cover up his murder by writing the letters?

After his post-traumatic stress disorder forced him to run away from his life, Phin Bishop returns to the Burke Broussard Private Detective Agency, only to stumble upon an armed break-in. Cora-Jane is seen running from the building and his colleague Joy has been shot.

When it appears the shooting is related to Cora-Jane's father, the Agency step in to offer protection while they hunt for the perpetrator. Someone knows what really happened to Cora Jane's father and will stop at nothing to prevent their long-buried secrets being discovered . . .

They thought they found heaven on earth. They discover a living hell.

When Brandt 'Doc' Savage and his girlfriend Kira land on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic, they think they've found a perfect utopia. An escape from their tumultuous pasts.

But they don't have long to enjoy their new-found peace before they are violently separated and dragged to opposite ends of the earth.

As Doc searches the seas and continents for Kira, he discovers they are entangled in a global conspiracy that is bigger than he ever could have imagined.

Can Doc and Kira find each other before one of their many enemies catches them first?

A gripping, emotional thriller that explores the darkest corners of family and the secrets we hide behind closed doors.

Amy jumps at the opportunity when she's offered a nannying job in picturesque West Cork. The assignment is for the Carroll family, whose stunning house is situated on a stretch of remote coastline. It's the perfect chance for Amy to start over - far away from her life in Dublin she is trying to escape.

With two adorable children to oversee, a pair of generous employers and a lavish new home, everything seems wonderful. So why can't Amy shake a creeping sense of unease? Perhaps it's the husband's erratic behaviour. Or the strange messages that somebody has been painting around the local village.

Quickly, it becomes clear that all is not well in the Carroll marriage, nor in their idyllic rural community. Whispered secrets and strange occurrences fill the breath-taking scenery with menace and, as the days pass, Amy realises that the refuge she has sought just might be the most dangerous place of all . . .