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Recommended Reading

When a young student from a wealthy family commits suicide in the Alexander Gardens, Erast Fandorin of the Moscow Police investigates the supposedly open-and-shut case and discovers that the student’s suicide is not an isolated case.

Erlendur and his team investigate the stabbing death of a young boy and the disappearance of his half-brother. The investigation soon unearths tensions simmering beneath the surface of Iceland’s outwardly liberal, multicultural society. Facts emerge from the snow-filled darkness that are more chilling even than the Arctic night.

When the water level of an Icelandic lake suddenly falls following an earthquake to reveal a skeleton half-buried in its sandy bed, Inspector Erlendur, Elinborg, and Sigurdur Oli look into the long-unsolved disappearance of a young, left-wing student during the Cold War.

Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson investigates the killing of a solitary man, found murdered in his Reykjavik apartment, and discovers that the dead man had been accused but not convicted of a rape forty years earlier.

Still recovering from the trauma of the Great War, Jade del Cameron, a tough New Mexico rancher’s daughter and former front-line ambulance driver, heads for Africa to help fulfill a man’s dying wish, only to come face to face with murder and mystery.

Scottish policeman Hamish Macbeth is charged with investigating the death of a maid struck down by a bucket of water.

Set in Peshawar, a border town in Pakistan, a murder mystery about a missing American businessman offers a glimpse at the situation of women in the Muslim world, from Afghan refugees to maverick women politicians.

Returning to the morgue where he works after an office party, Dublin pathologist Quirke stumbles across a body that should not have been there, a young woman named Christine Falls, as well as his brother-in-law, eminent pediatrician Malachy Griffin, altering a file to cover up the corpse’s cause of death.

Intrepid Aimee Leduc strives to clear the name of a childhood friend who is charged with shooting her partner to death. Aimee knows the solution to proving Laure’s innocence lies somewhere in the hilltop maze of the seedy Montmartre neighborhood, but in this part of Paris the streets are even gloomier and grittier than her worst nightmares.

Making a host of enemies in the course of his long career as a cop in southeast London, Inspector Brant becomes the target of a crazed gunman, and his former partner, Inspector Roberts, and his police colleagues join forces with the intended victim to find out which of his many enemies has targeted the ornery detective.

When the mutilated body of a CIA agent is discovered in District 8 and the killer appears to be a local working girl, Sonchai searches for the truth amid a cover-up orchestrated by his boss, Police Colonel Vikorn, involving Al Qaeda, bad cops, military intrigue, and a cadre of dangerous men.

After surviving a plane crash, Georgia Parish returns home to Queensland, Australia, where she discovers that the plane was deliberately sabotaged and, embarking on her own investigation, learns that nothing is what it seems as she gets dangerously close to the truth.

In a late 1990s North Korea, a younger Inspector O is working Pyongyang as the country’s nuclear missile program begins to escalate and as the wife of a North Korean diplomat turns up dead in Pakistan under suspicious circumstances, but as Inspector O investigates, he discovers that the woman’s death could lead to a larger conspiracy.

A rebellious survivor of North Korea’s brutal totalitarian regime, Inspector O, a state security officer, risks his life and career to solve a case that begins innocuously enough when he is asked to photograph a certain vehicle.

Assisting a long-time friend in a search for a kidnapped woman, detective Charlie Parker links the abduction to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, a 1944 slaughter at a French monastery, and the myth of an object known as the Black Angel.

An eco-thriller takes readers to such far-flung locales as Paris, Iceland, Antarctica, and the Solomon Islands as it follows the desperate efforts of an intelligence agent to prevent a global environmental catastrophe.

In the final days of World War II, the Japanese launch a desperate last-ditch effort to seize victory in the face of certain defeat by sending two submarines carrying a new strain of a deadly virus to the west coast of the United States, but years after the subs are lost at sea, someone plots to use their deadly cargo, and only Dirk Pitt and his children, Summer and Dirk, stand in the way.

Roman sleuth Marcus Didius Falco is pitted against his old rival, the Chief Spy Anacrites, to find a fugitive, an enemy of Rome who vanished from house arrest, leaving behind the body of murdered young man.

While on a routine assignment in the remote region of Calabria, police detective Aurelio Zen is drawn into two suspicious cases involving the disappearance of an advance scout for an American film company and a hunt for buried treasure.

As a professional Scottish dancer, Liss MacCrimmon has performed strathsprays and reels, jigs and Highland flings until a knee injury cuts her career short. Returning to her hometown in Maine, she decides to help her aunt run her Scottish emporium. But when murder rears its ugly head in the idyllic, quiet village, Liss will have to add sleuthing to her repertoire.

Enjoying a satisfying family life and career as Sweden’s youngest chief inspector, Erik Winter faces a daunting case involving a double murder and a suspect with possible links to the gothic world and the local police force.

Hired by the Mossad to perform a series of strategic assassinations in Asia, John Rain, accompanied by ex-Marine Dox, inadvertently botches the assignment and finds himself seeking assistance from alluring Israeli agent Delilah.

When a jogger stumbles upon the mutilated body of the local reformed troublemaker, Inspector Ann Lindell takes time off from maternity leave to uncover the killer and is drawn into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a vicious murderer.

A novelist who moonlights as a thief for hire, Charlie Howard is suspicious when an enigmatic American offers to pay him to steal two small monkey figurines, a suspicion that becomes all too real when his employer is nearly beaten to death.

A missing canister containing a deadly virus forms the center of a storm that traps Stanley Oxenford, director of a medical research firm, and a violent trio of thugs in a remote house during a Christmas Eve blizzard.

When she is asked to investigate the baffling death of a famed author and illustrator of fairy stories, amateur sleuth Phyrne Fisher goes undercover at the women’s magazine that employed the dead writer, while, at the same time, she is forced to deal with some bizarre events involving her lover Lin Chung’s family.

Mara, a judge in sixteenth-century Ireland, arrives in a small independent kingdom on the west coast of Ireland, a land that lives according to the ancient Celtic laws, to investigate the mysterious death of her assistant during a May Day festival.

Mara, the Burren’s Brehon Judge, must investigate the death of the MacNamara clan steward, who just raised the cost of tribute before his death, and a possible link to an alleged suicide that happens days later.

In 1930s Syria, Police Inspector Nikolai Faroun investigates the murder of the beautiful but controversial Vera Tamiri, following a trail that leads to a dark conspiracy from Syria’s troubled past and to a secret that may have cost Vera her life.

Approached by the maid of his former lover Odette, who has gone missing in her husband’s tomb, Victor Legris realizes a sinister agent is at work when the maid herself is murdered.

When a woman collapses and dies while visiting the just opened Eiffel Tower during the 1889 World Exposition, Victor Legris, a young Parisian bookseller appalled by media coverage of the tragedy, launches a personal investigation into the death, which is complicated by the involvement of a host of suspects and an increasing number of mysterious deaths.

Commander Adam Dalgleish investigates the throat-slash murders, in a London Church, of Sir Paul Berowne, former Minister of State, and a tramp named Harry Mack, murders that lead Dalgleish onto surprising English pathways.

Searching for the killer responsible for leaving the mutilated body of a child in a ditch, Detective Harry Mason and his partner, Jacob Tshabalala, follow a trail of clues that takes them into the dark spiritual underworld of the Johannesburg slums.

When a body is discovered in her hometown, a young Swedish lawyer is called back home, only to become traped in a perilous web of betrayal, suspicion, religious fanaticism, and death, in a suspense novel set against the backdrop of northern Sweden.

Forty years after the disappearance of Harriet Vanger from the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family, her octogenarian uncle hires journalist Mikael Blomqvist and Lisbeth Salander, an unconventional young hacker, to investigate.

A brutal attack on a pediatrician by a Carabiniere captain and two privates, who also take away the doctor’s eighteen-month-old son, draws Commissario Guido Brunetti into a dangerous case involving a ring of baby traffickers.

In the aftermath of an artist’s murder in 1300 Florence, newly appointed prior Dante Alighieri undertakes his first official investigation, during which he wonders about a recent assembly of seven master scholars and the secret behind the victim’s mosaic.

A mysterious woman bearing a human skull and a terrifying story draws Texas forensic artist Paul Bern into a relentless and deadly conspiracy involving a clandestine U.S. intelligence operation in Mexico City’s underworld, a dark family secret, a dangerous terrorist, and a plot in which the future of thousands of innocent people is at stake.

When five bodies are discovered hanging by their feet in Banon, a small and peaceful village in Provençe in which the local community’s principal source of income comes from the cultivation and sale of truffles, it takes all of Commissaire Laviolette’s resources to unravel crimes that were committed in a climate of superstition and secret animosity.

Inspector Kurt Wallander, a local Swedish police officer whose own personal life is falling apart, finds himself coping with a wave of anti-foreigner sentiment when he is put in charge of the investigation into the brutal murders of an elderly couple.

Convinced that her beloved twenty-eight-year-old son was killed in spite of a police ruling that he committed suicide, archaeologist Louise Cantor travels throughout the world in search of answers, an endeavor marked by additional murders, dangerous secrets, and sobering truths about the African AIDS epidemic.

Taking a freelance assignment from a Washington, D.C., agency with possible ties to the CIA, Japanese-American investigator Rei Shimura goes undercover as a clerk in a big Tokyo department store to unmask a killer.

Working in Gaborone, Botswana, Precious Ramotswe investigates several local mysteries, including a search for a missing boy and the case of the clinic doctor with different personalities for different days of the week.

When the corpse of a teenager turns up in an area known as the borderlands between the North and South of Ireland, Inspector Benedict Devlin heads up an investigation whose only clues are a gold ring placed on the girl’s finger and an old photograph, but things are complicated by the killing of another teenager, and Devlin unearths a link between the killings.

Inspector Benedict Devlin investigates a series of murders in the Irish borderlands as the carnage begins to jeopardize those he cares about most. A mystery set in modern day Ireland.

Investigating the unusual murder of an antiques dealer, former police officer Zed van Heerden struggles to overcome past demons and the uncertain loyalties of people affiliated with the case in order to identify the killer.

When his uncle is involved in a late-night accident while driving his taxicab, sixteen-year-old Mamoru Kusaka discovers that the victim had been involved in a cruel scam with three other young women.

Marshall Salvatore Guarnaccia, a detective in Florence, investigates the murder of a single mother, who was the daughter of a wealthy nightclub owner, and follow a lead that points to political corruption and international sex trafficking.

When an ex-convict and then a wealthy real-estate tycoon fall victim to a violent attack by a possible ax-murderer, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren is called in to assist with the local investigation, a probe that becomes complicated by yet another murder and the disappearance of a promising female detective who may have gotten too close to the truth.

Seymour goes to Barcelona to investigate the cold case of a successful English businessman, who suspiciously died in a Barcelona prison two years after “Tragic Week,” a series of riots between reserve troops and the Spanish army.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec is called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in Three Pines, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident, but Gamache is convinced that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone more sinister than a careless hunter.

Inspector Chen must battle the political climate of Shanghai and seek the help of a former lover in order to solve the murder of a National Model Worker.

Sent to man an abandoned police station during an international conference between the leaders of the free world, officer John Rebus investigates the suspicious falling death of a delegate at an Edinburgh banquet.

A member of the tiny but ancient Samaritan community has been murdered. The dead man had controlled millions of dollars of government money and if the World Bank cannot locate it, all aid money to the Palestinians will be cut off. Omar Yussef must solve the murder and find the money, or all Palestinians will suffer.

Israel Armstrong, a new Emerald Isle bookmobile attendant, discovers that the roving library’s 15,000 books have disappeared and that he cannot resign from his job until he finds them.

Arriving in Paris for their inaugural meeting during the 1889 World’s Fair, an exclusive society of the world’s most renowned detectives wonders at the absence of its co-founding member, who has sent a secret message about a threat to the society.

Tale of suspense in which the famous Lord Peter Wimsey is called upon to solve the murder of an unknown man in East Anglia.

Follows the efforts of counterterrorist agents to identify and take out an Al Qaeda terrorist who has secured his release from the Guantanamo prison and who is hiding in a remote desert outpost while plotting to bomb a western city.

When their unsuccessful attempts to have a child begin to threaten their marriage, Paul and Joanna adopt a baby girl from Colombia but find their lives shattered when Joanna and the baby are kidnapped by abductors who demand millions of dollars of cocaine as ransom.

Inspector Maigret must visit a prisoner he arrested who is scheduled to be executed at dawn. But when the condemned man tells Maigret a story, his investigations lead him to the Guinguette à Deux Sous, a bar by the River Seine, and into the seamy underside of bourgeois Parisian life.

In the aftermath of the murder of an anonymous victim, assistant superintendent David Bengu begins his career on Botswana, where his convivial passions and determined methods earn him a local nickname that likens him to a hippopotamus.

Aiding local police in a double-homicide investigation involving the brutal killings of two foreign guests at a Botswana bush camp, detective David “Kubu” Bengu learns that a dissident wanted by the Zimbabwean government was involved and that one of the victims allegedly died decades earlier.

An American book translator in Paris, Chloe Underwood, longing for some excitement, gets more than she bargains for when a new assignment immerses her in a deadly world of murder and illegal arms, forcing her to go into hiding with a mysterious stranger.

Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf investigate the killing of Abbess Faife and the disappearances of six young women accompanying her on a pilgrimage, looking for a link between these crimes and the bludgeoning death of an aging abbey scholar.

The first installment in a series introducing unorthodox detective Commissaire Adamsberg, who is unable to shake suspicions about a prankster who circles innocuous objects in blue chalk before a woman is fatally attacked.

When a Parisian town crier receives anonymous, ominous messages warning of an imminent outbreak of the Black Death, genius detective Commissaire Adamsberg and his straight-edged sidekick, Danglard, begin to suspect that the predictions are linked to strange marks that have appeared on doorways, a mystery that is complicated by a suspicious death.

After losing his wife, a distraught Detective Inspector Kimmo Joentaa returns to his job to investigate the death of a woman smothered with her pillow while she slept, and Kimmo soon begins to realize that a serial killer is at work.

When the murdered body of an elderly French army soldier is found with a swastika carved into his chest, Bruno turns his suspicions toward a tortured period of French history when the government turned on its own citizens to help the Germans wage war.

When the mutilated body of a fourth victim is found in one of the Ulan Bataar’s most expensive hotels, Nergui, the former head of the Serious Crimes squad, is no closer to catching the killer. Drew McLeish, a senior British CID officer and no stranger to the savage side of human nature, is sent out to lend his expertise to the investigation.

Investigating the brutal murder of an artist’s son, the first of several victims, detective inspector Javier Falcón reads the artist’s journals and learns several disturbing truths before realizing that he is the killer’s next target.

Two operatives and long-time friends are transformed into enemies when they receive their final mission before retiring, the assassination of each other, embarking on an international chase as they investigate why their bosses want them dead.