A Perfect Crime

On a normal day in provincial China, a teenager goes about his regular business, but he’s also planning the brutal murder of his only friend. He lures her over, strangles her, stuffs her body into the washing machine and flees town, whereupon a perilous game of cat-and-mouse begins. A shocking investigation into the despair that traps the rural poor as well as a technically brilliant excursion into the claustrophobic realm of classic horror and suspense, A Perfect Crime is a thrilling and stylish novel about a motiveless murder that echoes Kafka’s absurdism, Camus’ nihilism and Dostoyevsky’s depravity. With exceptional tonal control, A Yi steadily reveals the psychological backstory that enables us to make sense of the story’s dramatic violence and provides chillingly apt insights into a country on the cusp of enormous social, political and economic change.

“A perfect page-turner . . . Books this well written and involving don’t come along often. . . . Peter Abrahams is my favorite American suspense novelist.”—Stephen King An unfaithful wife. A cheating lover. A loyal friend. A jealous husband. In this stunning thriller, four lives hang in precarious balance—as a cunning killer prepares their roles in A Perfect Crime. Distraught by a failing marriage, Francie Cullingwood enters into a secret affair with charismatic radio psychologist Ned Demarco. But what seems like a refuge takes a decidedly dark turn. For when the liaison is discovered, a seething, enraged genius begins to construct the perfect, flawless murder, manipulating Francie, her lover, and her best friend like chess pieces in a lethal game. But even the most brilliant mind can make mistakes. And soon the intricate plan is spinning wildly out of control—in shocking, fatal directions. . . . Praise for A Perfect Crime “Abrahams gets the human dimensions just right. . . . Each stage of this perverse puzzle has been constructed with deadly artistry.”—The New York Times Book Review “A first-rate psychological thriller . . . a plot filled with Machiavellian maneuvers and subtle irony . . . Drawing the reader unrelentingly through the chain of events, this novel is a must-read.”—The Denver Post “Abrahams has written more than a crime story here. His prose is elegant by any literary standard. . . . Abrahams grips us so closely, line by line, making everything hyper-real.”—Los Angeles Times “A Perfect Crime is a perfect read—a novel of malice and retribution that crackles from page one like a live wire.”—New York Times bestselling author Michael Palmer

In his new book, perhaps the most cogent expression of his mature thought, Jean Baudrillard turns detective in order to investigate a crime which he hopes may yet be solved: the "murder" of reality. To solve the crime would be to unravel the social and technological processes by which reality has quite simply vanished under the deadly glare of media "real time." But Baudrillard is not merely intending to lament the disappearance of the real, an occurrence he recently described as "the most important event of modern history," nor even to meditate upon the paradoxes of reality and illusion, truth and its masks. The Perfect Crime is also the work of a great moraliste: a penetrating examination of vital aspects of the social, political and cultural life of the "advanced democracies" in the (very) late twentieth century. Where critics like McLuhan once exposed the alienating consequences of "the medium," Baudrillard lays bare the depredatory effects of an oppressive transparency on our social lives, of a relentless positivity on our critical faculties, and of a withering 'high definition' on our very sense of reality.

Don’t miss the new, devastatingly good thriller from Helen Fields, The Institution. Coming March 2023 – available to pre-order now! ‘One of the best crime fiction series out there... Helen Fields always delivers gripping, compelling, thrilling and tense stories full of intriguing characters.’ Reader review, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

When 21 shots from a semi-automatic pistol rang out across the Alpine woodland high above Lake Annecy, there was nobody nearby to raise the alarm. In a car, in a lay-by off the single-land track above, were the bloodied bodies of British computer engineer, Saad al-Hilli, his dentist wife, Iqbal, and her mother, Suhaila. Nearby, on the road, lay the corpse of French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, punctured by seven shots from the same gun. Saad's eldest daughter, Zainab, seven, had been shot, pistol-whipped and left for dead. Cowering underneath her mum Iqbal's skirt in the back seat of the car was Zainab's little sister Zeena - the only one of the six people there left unharmed. Was this a professional assassin's error, or a humane gesture by someone who knew the girls? Two years on from this most implausible crime, French police remain baffled. This book explores the background of the case.

In the vein of The Creative Habit and The Artist’s Way, a manifesto on the creative process from a master of the impossible. Since well before his epic (and illegal) 1974 walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, Philippe Petit had become an artist who answered first to the demands of his craft—and not just on the high wire, but also as a magician, street juggler, visual artist, builder, and writer. He was a rebel and an autodidact, cultivating the attitudes, resources, and techniques to tackle even seemingly impossible feats. His outlaw sensibility spawned a unique approach to the creative process—an approach he shares, with characteristic enthusiasm, irreverence, and originality, in Creativity: The Perfect Crime. With the reader as his accomplice, Petit reveals fresh and unconventional ways of going about the artistic endeavor, from generating and shaping ideas to practicing, problem-solving, and ultimately pulling off the “coup” itself—executing a finished work. His strategies and insights will resonate with performers of every stripe (actors, musicians, dancers), practitioners of the non-performing arts (writers, artists), professionals in search of new ways of meeting challenges, and individuals simply engaged in the art of living creatively.

Presents seventeen short crime stories with sections giving clues and solutions for each.

The dead tell no tales. And the unspeakable evil they know of, may be one that would forever remain buried six feet under... How do you solve an unsolvable string of robberies that leaves a bloody trail of murder and mayhem? FBI agent Blake Wilder is all too familiar with unsolved cases. Plagued by the mysterious tragedies that destroyed her family. She made it her life mission to solve crime and punish the evil doers in this world. This time Blake takes on an unsolved case from her early career, one that spans half a decade. But as she and her team dive further into the investigation, they uncover another string of shocking savage crimes that are claiming the lives of innocent women. As they delve into their case, the coincidences continue to mount until the truth cannot be denied and Blake realizes that they have uncovered something far more complex and disturbing than she had ever imagined. The clock is ticking and Blake must solve this case and make an arrest, or risk losing the killers and thieves once again. And as Blake races to solve the case, a note from someone that knew her parents has the mystery of Blake's deadly and dangerous past catching up to her. There are shadows she's unaware of moving behind the scenes. Pieces being moved about on the board, and a force that's frightening in its scope being brought to bear against her. Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil. But how do you avoid it when it comes knocking on your door?

In a collection of mini-mysteries, Mr. Boddy invites his six best friends to be guests at his mansion for the weekend, providing the setting for crimes which readers must try to solve.

Combining the pulsating drive of Showtime's Homeland with the fascinating historical detail of such of narrative nonfiction bestsellers as Double Cross and In the Garden of Beasts, Dark Invasion is Howard Blum’s gritty, high-energy true-life tale of German espionage and terror on American soil during World War I, and the NYPD Inspector who helped uncover the plot—the basis for the film to be produced by and starring Bradley Cooper. When a “neutral” United States becomes a trading partner for the Allies early in World War I, the Germans implement a secret plan to strike back. A team of saboteurs—including an expert on germ warfare, a Harvard professor, and a brilliant, debonair spymaster—devise a series of “mysterious accidents” using explosives and biological weapons, to bring down vital targets such as ships, factories, livestock, and even captains of industry like J. P. Morgan. New York Police Inspector Tom Tunney, head of the department’s Bomb Squad, is assigned the difficult mission of stopping them. Assembling a team of loyal operatives, the cunning Irish cop hunts for the conspirators among a population of more than eight million Germans. But the deeper he finds himself in this labyrinth of deception, the more Tunney realizes that the enemy’s plan is far more complex and more dangerous than he suspected. Full of drama and intensity, illustrated with eight pages of black and-white photos, Dark Invasion is riveting war thriller that chillingly echoes our own time.