Detective Sean Duffy investigates the death of an American military veteran in 1982 Ireland and quickly finds himself combatting his romantic instincts, professional misconduct, and powerful men.

"Count Falier was urging his Venetian son-in-law to investigate, and preferably intervene in, the seemingly innocent plan of the Count's best friend, the elderly Gonzalo Rodríguez de Tejada, to adopt a much younger man as his son. Under Italian inheritance laws this man would then be heir to Gonzalo's entire fortune, a prospect Gonzalo's friends find appalling. For his part, Brunetti wonders why the old man, a close family friend, can't be allowed...

"What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It's a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in Give unto Others, Donna Leon's splendid thirty-first installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series. Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti's mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately,...

"It's spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators' lives after many years. The two were young children when their...

"The shouts and laughter of Christmas revelers break the muffled silence as Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie are swept along onto the Metro. But when the train is stopped due to the bad weather, Jessie notices that one lady hasn't left the train: Margaret Krukowski has been fatally stabbed. Why would anyone want to harm this reserved, elegant lady? Arriving at the scene, DI Vera Stanhope is relieved to have an excuse to escape the holiday...

"College student Joe Talbert has a writing assignment to interview a stranger and write a brief biography. With deadlines looming, he heads to a nearby nursing home to find a subject and meets Carl Iverson. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran--who has been medically paroled after spending thirty years in prison for rape and murder. As he writes about Carl's life, Joe cannot reconcile the heroism of the soldier with the despicable acts of the convict....

When a peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. Still on suspension, and frankly curious, Gamache accepts and soon learns that the other two executors are Myrna Landers, the bookseller from Three Pines, and a young builder. None of them had ever met the elderly woman. The will is so odd and...

As the bell-ringers get ready for the visit of the dashing Bishop Peter Salver-Hinkley, the whole village is thrown into a frenzy. Meanwhile, Agatha convinces one of the bell-ringers, the charming lawyer Julian Brody, to hire her to investigate the mystery of the Bishop’s ex-fiancée: a local heiress, Jennifer Toynby, who went missing years ago and whose body was never found... Meanwhile, the bodies in the village just keep on piling up: the corpse...

"A Catholic cop tracks an IRA master bomber amidst the sectarian violence of the conflict in Northern Ireland The early 1980s. Belfast. Sean Duffy, a conflicted Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), is recruited by MI5 to hunt down Cormac McCann, an IRA master bomber who has made a daring escape from the notorious Maze Prison. In the course of his investigations Sean discovers a woman who may hold the key to Cormac's whereabouts;...

Racing through springtime orders at The Cookie Jar, Hannah investigates an unexpected number of suspects when her sister, Andrea, is implicated in the murder of Lake Eden's bullying mayor.