John Sandford

The New York Times–bestselling author presents a thrilling anthology of devious crimes with stories by C. J. Box, Peter Straub, Joyce Carol Oates and more.
 
“Some people might tell you that crime short stories, unlike the more precious kind, are a kind of fictional ghetto, full of cardboard characters and clichéd situations. Not true. These stories are remarkably free of bullshit—al­though...

After a vicious female bank robber named Candy dies in a shootout with police, her violent associates vow revenge, targeting the loved ones of the police officers involved, and it is up to Lucas Davenport to stop the nightmarish killings.

Virgil Flowers was brought into the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension by a promise from Lucas Davenport: "We'll only give you the hard stuff." He's been doing the hard stuff for three years, but he's never seen anything like this. In the small rural town of Bluestem, an old man is bound in his basement, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. This is the third murder in just as many weeks, and it's becoming clear that Flowers has stepped into a killer's...

Hoping to use a supposedly straightforward case of murder to clear his mind, Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport finds himself matching wits with an ever-escalating serial killer, art history professor, congenial pervert, and sexual predator James Qatar.

At 1:15 a.m, a Minnesota political fixer answers his doorbell. The next thing he knows, he's waking up on the floor of a moving car, lying on a plastic sheet, his body wet with blood. When the car stops, a voice says, "Hey, I think he's breathing," and another voice says, "Yeah? Give me the bat." And that's the last thing he ever knows. Lucas Davenport is investigating another case when the trail leads to the man's disappearance, then--very troublingly--to...

A savage psychopath is playing cat and mouse with Lucas Davenport. But both killer and detective find themselves at odds with a female investigator who has intensely personal reasons for catching the killer herself-and fast.

Weather Karkinnen, surgeon, wife of an investigator named Lucas Davenport, unwittingly witnesses the robbery of the hospital pharmacy where she works. With the death of a pharmacy worker on their hands, the three thieves set out to find out who Weather is, and eliminate the only possible witness ..

While competing in a fishing tournament in a remote area of northern Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a call from Lucas Davenport to investigate a murder at a nearby resort, where a woman has been shot while kayaking. The resort is for women only, a place to relax, get fit, recover from plastic surgery, and commune with nature. Which makes things all the more complicated for Virgil, because as he begins investigating, he finds a web of connections between...

"Class reunions: a time for memories--good, bad, and, as Virgil Flowers is about to find out, deadly--in the thrilling new novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, he investigated the corrupt - and as it turned out, homicidal - local school board, and now the town's back in view with more alarming news: A woman's been found dead, frozen in a block of ice. There's...

Summoned by Lucas Davenport to investigate a pair of murders in which the victims are found with lemons in their mouths, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers struggles to find a connection that could prevent additional killings.