T. Ryder Smith

A Booklist Best Crime Novel Debut
“Don’t miss this one.”—USA Today
"A masterful job." -Michael Connelly
It is called kaamos—two weeks of unrelenting darkness and soul-numbing cold that falls upon Finnish Lapland, a hundred miles into the Arctic Circle, just before Christmas. Some get through it with the help of cheap Russian alcohol; some sink into depression.
This year, it may have driven...

A musician and songwriter, Clyde Edgerton has penned multiple best-sellers and has had five of his novels named New York Times Notable Books. In The Bible Salesman, Preston Clearwater is scoring cash working a car-theft ring in post-World War II North Carolina. When he picks up 19-year-old Bible salesman Henry Dampier, Preston convinces the kid that he's an FBI spy. And before Henry knows what's up, he finds himself in way over his head with no apparent...

A selection of some of Chekhov's short stories that capture his themes of alienation and the absurdity of life.

State Road 177 runs along the Suwannee River, between Fargo, Georgia, and the Okefenokee Swamp. Drive that route from east to west, and you'll cross six bridges. Take it from west to east, and you might find seven. But you'd better hope not. Titus and Davina Bell leave their hotel in Fargo for a second honeymoon canoeing the Okefenokee Swamp. But shortly before they reach their destination, they draw up to a halt at the edge of a rickety bridge with...

Mysterious dreams of grizzly bears, a bumbling FBI agent, and a tense hostage negotiation have the town of Cold Storage, Alaska, turned upside down.
Things in the sleepy fishing town of Cold Storage, Alaska, are changing. It’s the summer of 1968; the men are wearing their hair long, the Vietnam War is at its height, and multiple assassinations have gripped the country. But some things remain the same. Ellie’s bar is still the...

From the acclaimed author of Snow Angels comes a new novel featuring Inspector Vaara.

Inspector Kari Vaara has left the Arctic Circle and returned- reluctantly-to Helsinki, where headaches and sleeplessness plague him. But he must work through the pain. He has two cases on his plate: the brutal murder of a Russian businessman's wife, and-more secretively-an investigation into an elderly Finnish national hero who may have played a

...

Hollywood, 1945: Ben Collier has just arrived from war-torn Europe to find that his brother, Daniel, has died in mysterious circumstances. Why would a man with a beautiful wife, a successful career in the movies, and a heroic past choose to kill himself? Determined to uncover the truth, Ben enters the maze of the studio system and the uneasy world beneath the glossy shine of the movie business. For this is the moment when politics and the dream...

A small Western town lives in fear of another visit from a known outlaw, but a while after the outlaw mysteriously disappears, a stranger rides into town to make repairs to the dilapidated village.

Backpacking into the Wind River Mountains on their tenth annual trip, Mack and his wife, Vonnie, find the magnificent woods and stunning mountains of Wyoming full of ghosts and danger. Mack comes from a long line of ranchers, and his dedication to keeping the family land has led him into penury and a life of crime. Vonnie is a fiercely intelligent and headstrong woman who came west for love, only to have it stolen from her bit by bit. They've made...

From the acclaimed author of Every Secret Thing comes an imaginative novel sizzling with suspense. After a string of personal losses, Harry Sterling has hit rock bottom. He takes a teaching job at a small Florida college, but can't abandon his journalistic roots. So when he learns that a world-famous physicist may have stolen a revolutionary idea from a student, Harry launches an investigation and soon finds himself in terrible danger.