Michael Koryta

"And that is how it happened. Can we stop now?" Kimberly Crepeaux is no good, a notorious jailhouse snitch, teen mother, and heroin addict whose petty crimes are well-known to the rural Maine community where she lives. So when she confesses to her role in the brutal murders of Jackie Pelletier and Ian Kelly, the daughter of a well-known local family and her sweetheart, the locals have little reason to believe her story. Not Rob Barrett, the FBI investigator...

"It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories--a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. No matter how or where they appear, strangers are walking mysteries, complete unknowns in once-familiar...

"Rise the dark. These were the last words written in Lauren Novak's notebook before she was murdered in a strange Florida village. They've never meant anything to the police or to her husband, investigator Markus Novak. Now the man he believes killed her, Garland Webb, is out of prison and draws Markus to the scene he's avoided for so long: the lonely road where his wife was shot to death beneath the cypress trees and Spanish moss in a place called...

"When 13-year-old Jace Wilson witnesses a brutal murder, he's plunged into a new life, issued a false identity and hidden in a wilderness skills program for troubled teens. The plan is to get Jace off the grid while police find the two killers. The result is the start of a nightmare. The killers, known as the Blackwell Brothers, are slaughtering anyone who gets in their way in a methodical quest to reach him. Now all that remains between them and...

Grieving the death of his wife, private investigator Mark Novak reluctantly accepts a case from a suspected murderer who may or may not be innocent.

After he is hired by Alyssa Bradford to research the life of her 95-year-old billionaire father-in-law, Eric Shaw visits the man's hometown, where he discovers a restored hotel that has a checkered past--and a newly reawakened evil bent on revenge.

In the seven years since he learned that his US marshal father lead a double life as a contract killer-and committed suicide to avoid prosecution-Frank Temple III has mostly drifted through life. But when he learns that Devin Matteson, the man who lured his father into the killing game only to later give him up to the FBI, is returning to the isolated Wisconsin lake that was once sacred ground for their families, it's a homecoming Frank can't allow.

Frank

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Sometime after midnight, on a moonless October night turned harsh by a fine, windswept rain, one of the men I liked least in the world was murdered in a field near Bedford, just south of the city...The detectives went looking for suspects—people whose histories with Jefferson were adversarial and hostile. At the top of that list, they found me.

So begins A Welcome Grave, the third novel by award-winning mystery writer Michael Koryta featuring

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A boy comes of age among a family of grifters in this powerful story from a New York Times–bestselling “master” (Stephen King).
 
Never knowing a real home, Markus Novak’s only constant in life is his passion for paperback westerns. The child of a family of outlaws, he moves through the West town by town with his mother and two uncles, staying in a place just long enough to run a short con and...

It was a scam, but then the scam had gone horribly wrong...

In this short story from the thrilling anthology MatchUp, bestselling authors Karin Slaughter and Michael Koryta—along with their popular series characters Jeffrey Tolliver and Joe Pritchard—team up for the first time ever.