The Corpse Reader

Jade Dragon Mountain

Elsa Hart · 423 pages

"On the mountainous border of China and Tibet in 1708, a detective must learn what a killer already knows: that empires rise and fall on the strength of the stories they tell. Li Du is an imperial librarian in exile. Arriving in Dayan, the last Chinese town before the Tibetan border, he is surprised to find it teeming with travelers, soldiers, and merchants, all come for the spectacle of an eclips

The Red Pavilion: A Judge Dee Mystery ((Chronological order) #9)

Robert van Gulik · 173 pages

A Study in Scarlet

Arthur Conan Doyle · 145 pages

A Study in Scarlet is an 1887 detective novel by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle. The story marks the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who would become the most famous detective duo in literature.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Alan Bradley · 375 pages

In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950--and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia's family calls home. A dead bird is found

Cut to the Bone

Jefferson Bass · 368 pages

As Governor Bill Clinton and Senator Albert Gore begin their campaign to win the White House in 1992, Dr. Bill Brockton, determined to revolutionize the study of forensics to help law enforcement better solve crime, launches a macabre-research facility that results in a rising body count.

The Critic

Peter May · 345 pages

Gaillac, south-west France: Gil Petty, America's most celebrated wine critic, is found strung up in a vineyard, dressed in the ceremonial robes of the Order of the Divine Bottle and pickled in wine. For forensic expert Enzo Macleod, the key to this unsolved murder lies in decoding Petty's mysterious reviews - which could make or break a vineyard's reputation. Enzo finds that beneath the tranquil f

Death on the Nile

Agatha Christie · 276 pages

The tranquillity of a cruise along the Nile was shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway ( Linnet Doyle) had been shot through the head. She was young, stylish, rich and beautiful. A girl who had everything... until she lost her life. Hercule Poirot recalled an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: 'I'd like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.' Yet

The Snowman

Jo Nesbo · 550 pages

"In Oslo, after the first snow of the season has fallen, a woman disappears, and a sinister snowman is left in her wake. As irascible detective Harry Hole realizes that this is only one of multiple disappearances, he begins to think a serial killer may be at work--and may be drawing in Hole personally and intentionally"--

The Restless Dead: (David Hunter 5)

Simon Beckett · 456 pages

Gorky Park

Martin Cruz Smith · 384 pages

A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI and New York police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fu

The Black Country

Alex Grecian · 384 pages

When members of a prominent coal-mining family go missing, Scotland Yard's Murder Squad teammates Inspector Walter Day and Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith, aided by newly arrived forensics pioneer Dr. Bernard Kingsley, investigate dark secrets and realize that the family's village is slowly sinking into underground mines.

Sacrilege

S.J. Parris · 423 pages

Summer, 1584. Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth, has long suspected an undercurrent of Catholic resistance in the city that was once England's greatest centre of pilgrimage. He calls Giordano Bruno, his maverick secret agent, away from his post at the French Embassy to investigate. But when Bruno arrives in Canterbury, he has no idea of the dark secrets he's about to uncover. He

Grave Goods

Ariana Franklin · 336 pages

Combining the best of modern forensic thrillers with the drama of medieval fiction, New York Timesbestselling author Ariana Franklin returns with the third title in the Mistress of the Art of Death series.England, 1176. Beautiful, tranquil Glastonbury Abbey one of Englands holiest sites, and believed by some to be King Arthurs sacred Isle of Avalonhas been burned almost to the ground. The arsonist

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Edgar Allan Poe · 38 pages

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been described as the first modern detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination". C. Auguste Dupin is a man in Paris who solves the mystery of the brutal murder of two women.

The Empty Chair

Jeffery Deaver · 444 pages

Reowned criminalist Lincoln Rhyme is pitted against Amelia Sachs, his own brilliant protegee, as they disagree on the analysis of a crime they began working together.

Postmortem

Patricia Cornwell · 342 pages

A killer is stalking the streets of Richmond, Virginia. When the bodies begin to mount, Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta is pulled into a chilling investigation that blends high-stakes forensics with psychological warfare. Armed with cutting-edge science and unflinching resolve, Scarpetta must navigate hostile forces both inside and outside the investigation—because someone isn’t just trying t

The Girl and the Gravedigger

Oliver Pötzsch · 448 pages

The Silver Swan

Benjamin Black, John Banville · 304 pages

The inimitable Quirke returns in another spellbinding crime novel, in which a young woman’s dubious suicide sets off a new string of hazards and deceptions. Two years have passed since the events of the bestselling Christine Falls, and much has changed for Quirke, the irascible, formerly hard-drinking Dublin pathologist. His beloved Sarah is dead, his surrogate father lies in a convent hospital p

The Good Earth

Pearl S. Buck · 316 pages

This tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought

The Alienist

Caleb Carr · 534 pages

The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or "alienist." On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels. Th

The Dead Shall Not Rest

Tessa Harris

Bones to Ashes

Kathy Reichs · 354 pages

Discovering the skeleton of a young girl in the neighborhood of a childhood best friend who had gone missing thirty years earlier, Tempe Brennan investigates suspicions that victim and her friend are one and the same.

Where There's a Will

Aaron Elkins · 250 pages

Forensics expert Gideon Oliver journeys to northern Hawaii to uncover a deadly family plot involving greed, intrigue, skullduggery, and murder.

The Fig Eater

Jody Shields · 339 pages

Vienna, 1910. An eighteen-year-old girl named Dora (loosely inspired by Freud's famous patient Dora) is found brutally murdered in the Volksgarten Park. The crime is being investigated by the Inspector, newly schooled in rationalist criminology. Meanwhile, his Hungarian wife, Erszebet, driven by Gypsy superstition, and Wally, a teenage English governess, secretly conduct a parallel investigation b