Recommendations based on "The Madman's Tale A Novel"

Why would a man serving a long prison sentence escape the day before he's due to be released? Audie Palmer has spent ten years in a Texas prison after pleading guilty to a robbery in which four people died and seven million dollars went missing. During that time he has suffered repeated beatings, stabbings and threats by inmates and guards, all desperate to answer the same question: where's the money? On the day before Audie is due to be released, he suddenly vanishes. Now everybody is searching for him -- the police, FBI, gangsters and other powerful figures -- but Audie isn't running to save his own life. Instead, he's trying to save someone else's. Michael Robotham has created the ultimate underdog hero, an honorable criminal shrouded in mystery and ready to lead readers on a remarkable chase.

From New York Times bestselling author James Rollins comes a thrilling short story that delves deep beneath the city of Paris to a dark necropolis, where the only means for escape is…The Skeleton Key. Seichan is ripped out of the Sigma series for an adventure all her own—but can she survive? The beautiful and elusive assassin wakes in a hotel in Paris with a deadly electronic collar fastened to her throat. Joined by a boy who is similarly threatened, she must rescue the son of a hated enemy, who has fallen under the sway of the nefarious leader of an apocalyptic cult. To survive, she must venture into the dark world beneath the City of Lights, into the infamous catacombs of Paris. Caught between two enemies, she must fight for her life…while time ticks down toward a fiery apocalypse. But in the dark, surrounded by the moldering bones of the dead, even success does not equal survival. In the end, the only true hope for the world lies in a stunning act of betrayal. Included with this short story is a sneak peek at the first 70 pages of The Devil Colony, where a clue unlocked by The Skeleton Key will play a key role.

FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR‘Deadly conspiracies, bone-crunching action and a tormented hero with a heart . . . packs a real punch’ Andy McDermottA LOST MANUSCRIPT. A SAVAGE MURDER. A DEADLY SECRET.While on a business trip to the UK, Ben Hope makes an impulse decision to attend a college reunion at his former university, Oxford. There he meets an old friend, Nick, now an internationally-renowned classical musician.But storm clouds are soon once again brewing on Ben’s horizon. After Nick’s brutal murder in an apparent home invasion robbery, Ben is drawn into the mystery of a missing music manuscript that may be a lost work by the legendary composer Johann Sebastian Bach.The hunt for his friend’s killers leads Ben across Europe, and into bloody conflict with even more dangerous people than he’d bargained for. As his quest unfolds, so does the shocking truth about the lost Bach manuscript, a secret dating back to the very darkest historical chapter of Man’s inhumanity to Man.The Ben Hope series is a must-read for fans of Dan Brown, Lee Child and Mark Dawson. Join the millions of readers who get breathless with anticipation when the countdown to a new Ben Hope thriller begins…Whilst the Ben Hope thrillers can be read in any order, this is the sixteenth book in the series.Scott Mariani's book 'The Tudor Deception' was a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller w/c 2023-11-06.

Don’t miss the TV series, Dark Winds, based on the Leaphorn, Chee, & Manuelito novels, now on AMC and AMC+!“With The Shape Shifter, Hillerman once again proves himself the master of Southwest mystery fiction, working in a Hemingway-esque tradition of pared-down writing to bring the rugged Southwest into focus.”—Santa Fe New MexicanLegendary Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn is drawn back into the past to solve a cold case that has haunted him for nearly a decade in this atmospheric and twisting mystery infused with the Native American culture and lore of the desert Southwest.Though he’s officially retired from the Navajo Tribal Police, Joe Leaphorn occasionally helps his former colleagues Jim Chee and Bernie Manuelito crack particularly puzzling crimes.But there is that rare unsolved investigation that haunts every lawman, including the legendary Leaphorn. Joe still hasn’t let go of his “last case”—a mystery involving a priceless Navajo rug that was supposedly destroyed in a fire. Nine years later, what looks like the same one-of-a-kind rug turns up in a magazine spread, and the man who showed Joe the photo has gone missing.With Chee and Bernie on their honeymoon, Leaphorn plunges into the case solo, picking up the threads of this crime he’d long thought impossible to solve. Not only has the passage of time obscured the details, but a murderer long thought dead continues to roam free—and is ready to strike again to keep the past buried.

Unafraid to walk both sides of the law to attain his goals, CIA operative Tommy Carmellini is sent to post guard duty at a farmhouse in West Virginia. When he arrives, he finds the guards shot dead and a ruthless team of American commandos killing everyone in sight. Carmellini escapes in a hail of bullets with what seems to be the sole survivor-a stunningly attractive translator, who then steals his car and abandons him after a deadly mountain car chase. But someone else survived the massacre-someone who holds the answers to a deadly conspiracy.Catapulted into a life and death struggle, Tommy must employ all his savvy and skill just to stay alive. But to find out who is hunting him and why, he'll need the help of retired Admiral Jake Grafton. Now they must learn to tell friend from foe as they fight their way through a poisonous wilderness of intrigue, all the way to a presidential convention in New York City-and to the surprising identity of someone standing on the verge of absolute power who has jeopardized the safety of the entire nation to prevent a dark secret from ever seeing the light of day...

He was the perfect assassin.Boy Nobody: No name. No past. No remorse. At least until he began to ask questions and challenge his orders -- until he fell in love with his target. Now The Program is worried that its valuable soldier has become a liability.Boy Nobody, haunted by the outcome of his last assignment, is given a new mission. A test of sorts. A chance to show his loyalty.His objective: Take out Eugene Moore, the owner of a military training and indoctrination camp for teenagers. One target. Limited time frame. Public place. It sounds simple, but a previous operative couldn't do it. He lost the mission and is presumed dead. Boy Nobody is confident he can finish the job. Quickly.But when things go awry, Boy Nobody finds himself lost in a mission where nothing is as it seems: not The Program, his allegiances, or the truth.The riveting second book in The Unknown Assassin series by Allen Zadoff delivers heart-pounding action and thought-provoking characters, as well as a new, exotic setting; a new mission; and new secrets to be revealed.

An unforgettable true story of friendship, loyalty, violence and revenge, set against the unmistakable backdrop of New York City. Now a major film starring Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt, Robert de Niro and Kevin Bacon.Four boys - lifelong friends who shared everything - in the confines of New York City's Hell's Kitchen, content with playing as many pranks as they can without getting caught. Until one disastrous afternoon.When a harmless scheme goes terribly wrong, the boys are left facing a year's imprisonment in the Wilkinson Home for Boys, and the beatings and abuse they find there will change their lives forever.In the years that follow, one will become a lawyer, one a reporter, and two will grow to become hitmen for-hire. But for all of them, the legacy of Wilkinson - the pain, fear and anger - still rages on within. Only revenge will erase it.One final, audacious stand against a corrupt system. If they are caught this time, the only thing to lose is their lives.

A new terror is sweeping the streets of San Francisco. And the killers look a lot like cops... As Detective Lindsay Boxer investigates whether the perpetrators are brilliant impostors or police officers gone rogue, she receives a chilling warning to back off. On the other side of the city, an innocent woman is murdered in broad daylight in front of dozens of witnesses. But there are no clues and no apparent motive. With killers in disguise, a maniac murderer on the loose, and danger getting ever closer to Lindsay's door, could this be one case too many for the Women's Murder Club?

In this twisty, fast-paced thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Find You First and Take Your Breath Away, a man desperately tries to track down his father—who was taken into witness protection years ago—before his enemies can get to him. Your dad’s not a good person. Your dad killed people, son. These are some of the last words Jack Givins’ father spoke to him before he was whisked away by witness protection, leaving Jack and his mother to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives as best they could. Years later, Jack is a grown man with problems of his own. He’s a talented but struggling author, barely scraping by on the royalties from his moderately successful first book. So when the U.S. Marshals approach him with a lucrative opportunity, he’s in no position to turn them down. They’re recruiting writers like Jack to create false histories for people in witness protection—people like Jack’s father. The coincidence is astonishing to Jack at first, but he soon realizes this may be a chance to find his dad. Only there’s one problem—Jack’s father hasn’t made contact with his handlers recently, and they have no idea where he is. He could be in serious danger, and Jack may be the only one who can find him. But how will he find a man he’s never truly known? A man who has done terrible things in his lifetime and made some deadly enemies in the process—enemies who wouldn’t think twice about using his own son against him.

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller! Michael Mann, four-time-Oscar-nominated writer-director of The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Ali, Miami Vice, Collateral, and Heat teams up with Edgar Award–winning author Meg Gardiner to deliver Mann’s first novel, an explosive return to the universe and characters of his classic crime film—with an all-new story unfolding in the years before and after the iconic movie “A hard-boiled, cinematic read that moves as fast as a well-planned heist.” —Esquire One day after the end of Heat, Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) is holed up in Koreatown, wounded, half delirious, and desperately trying to escape LA. Hunting him is LAPD detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Hours earlier, Hanna killed Shiherlis’s brother in arms Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) in a gunfight under the strobe lights at the foot of an LAX runway. Now Hanna’s determined to capture or kill Shiherlis, the last survivor of McCauley’s crew, before he ghosts out of the city. In 1988, seven years earlier, McCauley, Shiherlis, and their highline crew are taking scores on the West Coast, the US-Mexican border, and now in Chicago. Driven, daring, they’re pulling in money and living vivid lives. And Chicago homicide detective Vincent Hanna—a man unreconciled with his history—is following his calling, the pursuit of armed and dangerous men into the dark and wild places, hunting an ultraviolent gang of home invaders. Meanwhile, the fallout from McCauley’s scores and Hanna’s pursuit cause unexpected repercussions in a parallel narrative, driving through the years following Heat. Heat 2 projects its dimensional and richly drawn men and women into whole new worlds—from the inner sanctums of rival crime syndicates in a South American free-trade zone to transnational criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia. The novel brings you intimately into these lives. In Michael Mann’s Heat universe, they will confront new adversaries in lethal circumstances beyond all boundaries. Heat 2 is engrossing, moving, and tragic—a masterpiece of crime fiction with the same extraordinary ambitions, scope, and rich characterizations as the epic film.