Genre: Mystery and thrillers
“A truly harrowing murder plot… An ambitious foray…deep into Hannibal Lecter territory… The extravagantly gifted Connolly, living up to his title, is never too busy for another flashback to Bird’s violent past en route to his final confrontation with the Traveling Man.” – Kirkus Reviews
“For me, the best thing about an author’s first novel is its untarnished honesty. John Connolly’s EVERY DEAD THING has that reckless intensity. Set against the gritty canvas of a serial killer loose in New York City, John Connolly’s writing is as lilting and refreshing and as tempestuous as an Irish rainstorm. Warning: Don’t start this book unless you have time to finish it.” – Paul Lindsay, former FBI agent and author of Witness to the Truth
“Classic American crime fiction; it’s hard to believe that John Connolly was born and raised on the Emerald Isle.” – amazon.com
“[A] darkly ingenious debut novel… The New Orleanssequence of the novel sing[s]… The rural Virginia town is petty, bitter perfection: no mean feat for a native Dubliner. The prose rings of ’40s L.A. noir, à la Chandler and Hammett, but the grisly deaths, poetic cops, and psychic episodes set this tale apart.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“An ambitious, moral, disturbing tale with a stunning climax… In many ways its terror quotient exceeds that of Thomas Harris’ great work.” – The Times (London)
“Connolly writes with confidence, a swaggering self-assurance that is almost breathtaking in a first novel.” – Dublin Evening Herald (Ireland)
“A debut novel of stunning complexity… The tension starts on the first page and continues right through the last, concluding in a dramatic and ambiguous way that could disturb readers’ thoughts for days. A work of fiction that stays with you long after the book is closed is a rare and beautiful thing. This one goes right up there on the year’s list of the best.” – St. Petersburg Times (FL)
“A nonstop, action-packed tale that also has a warm side where love and loyalty (not DNA) make a person human.” – Barnesandnoble.com
“Shades of The Silence of the Lambs here-but this debut book by Dubliner Connolly also has echoes of James Crumley, Patricia Cornwell, and Lawrence Block… A terrifying finale… Connolly manages to keep the tension simmering right to the very end.” – Express Star (UK)
“Absolutely spellbinding… This is not a book for the timid.” – Naples Daily News (FL)
“A big, meaty, often superbly written novel-astonishing, for a first-time author, in its scope and apparent veracity… A book of sudden, horrifying violence and no-holds-barred explicit scene-of-the-crime detail… A painstakingly researched crime novel, impressive both in terms of its driven central character [and] its scrupulously evoked geography… Impressive, too, is the superior, topflight prose and sheer momentum of the plot.” – Tangled Web (UK)
“[An] exciting, scary, and darkly humorous story that deserves to be a success.” – Irish News
“A highly intelligent and exciting novel, with almost enough action and story for two books. The grim and grisly events are emotionally balanced by the book’s dark humor and Bird’s vulnerability.” – Library Journal
“[A] stunning debut… Painstaking research, superb characterization, and an ability to tell a story that’s chilling and thought-provoking make this a terrific thriller.” – The Mirror (UK)
“Brilliant… While Thomas Harris’ Hannibal is the year’s most anticipated thriller, John Connolly’s EVERY DEAD THING might just be the best… A real adrenaline rush… Simply too good to be missed-or to put down.” – The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS)
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
The race to secure the prize draws in private detective Charlie Parker, a man who knows more than most about the nature of the terrible evil that seeks to impose itself on the world, and who fears that his own name may be on the list. It lures others, too: a beautiful, scarred woman with a taste for killing; a silent child who remembers his own death; and a serial killer known as the Collector, who sees in the list new lambs for his slaughter. But as the rival forces descend upon this northern state, the woods prepare to meet them, for the forest depths hide other secrets.
Someone has survived the crash. has survived the crash.
And it is waiting. . . .
Review
“Strongly recommended for plot, characterization, authenticity . . . horror . . . and humanity.” (
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
Samuel Johnson – with a little help from his dachshund Boswell and a very unlucky demon named Nurd – has sent the demons back to Hell. But the diabolical Mrs Abernathy is not one to take defeat lying down. When she reopens the portal and sucks Samuel and Boswell down into the underworld, she brings an ice-cream van full of dwarfs as well. And two policement. Can this eccentric gang defeat the forces of Evil? And is there life after Hell for Nurd?
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
Randall Haight has a secret: when he was a teenager, he and his friend killed a 14-year-old girl. Randall did his time and built a new life in the small Maine town of Pastor's Bay, but somebody has discovered the truth about Randall. He is being tormented by anonymous messages, haunting reminders of his past crime, and he wants private detective Charlie Parker to make it stop. But another 14-year-old girl has gone missing, this time from Pastor's Bay, and the missing girl's family has its own secrets to protect. Now Parker must unravel a web of deceit involving the police, the FBI, a doomed mobster named Tommy Morris, and Randall Haight himself. Because Randall Haight is telling lies…
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
''-Oh, little one,' he whispered, as he gently stroked her cheek, the first time he had touched her in fifteen years. '-What have they done to you? What have they done to us all?' ' In his latest dark and chilling Charlie Parker thriller, New York Times bestselling author John Connolly takes us to the border between Maine and Canada. It is there, in the vast and porous Great North Woods, that a dangerous smuggling operation is taking place, run by a group of disenchanted former soldiers, newly returned from Iraq. Illicit goods – drugs, cash, weapons, even people – are changing hands. And something else has changed hands. Something ancient and powerful and evil.The authorities suspect something is amiss, but what they can't know is that it is infinitely stranger and more terrifying than anyone can imagine. Anyone, that is, except private detective Charlie Parker, who has his own intimate knowledge of the darkness in men's hearts. As the smugglers begin to die one after another in apparent suicides, Parker is called in to stop the bloodletting. The soldiers' actions and the objects they have smuggled have attracted the attention of the reclusive Herod, a man with a taste for the strange. And where Herod goes, so too does the shadowy figure that he calls the Captain. To defeat them, Parker must form an uneasy alliance with a man he fears more than any other, the killer known as the Collector…
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
A strange novel for strange young people. Young Samuel Johnson and his dachshund Boswell are trying to show initiative by trick-or-treating a full three days before Hallowe'en. Which is how they come to witness strange goings-on at 666 Crowley Avenue. The Abernathys don't mean any harm by their flirtation with Satanism. But it just happens to coincide with a malfunction in the Large Hadron Collider that creates a gap in the universe. A gap in which there is a pair of enormous gates. The gates to Hell. And there are some pretty terrifying beings just itching to get out…Can Samuel persuade anyone to take this seriously? Can he harness the power of science to save the world as we know it?
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
A brilliantly chilling novel by New York Times bestselling author John Connolly about a chain of killings, linked obscurely by great distances and the passage of years, and the settling of their blood-debts – past, present, and future.
As a small boy, Louis witnesses an unspeakable crime that takes the life of a member of his small, southern community. He grows up and moves on, but he is forever changed by the cruel and brutal nature of the act. It lights a fire deep within him that burns white and cold, a quiet flame just waiting to ignite. Now, years later, the sins of his life are reaching into his present, bringing with them the buried secrets and half-forgotten acts of his past.
Someone is hunting him, targeting his home, his businesses, and his partner, Angel. The instrument of revenge is Bliss, a killer of killers, the most feared of assassins. Bliss is a Reaper, a lethal tool to be applied toward the ultimate end, but he is also a man with a personal vendetta.
Hardened by their pasts, Louis and Angel decide to strike back. While they form a camaraderie that brings them solace, it offers them no shelter from the fate that stalks them. When they mysteriously disappear, their friends are forced to band together to find them. They are led by private detective Charlie Parker, a killer himself, a Reaper in waiting.
Connolly's triumphant prose and unerring rendering of his tortured characters mesmerize and chill. He creates a world where everyone is corrupt, murderers go unpunished, but betrayals are always avenged. Yet another masterpiece from a proven talent, The Reapers will terrify and transfix.
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
With The Black Angel, John Connolly takes his Charlie Parker series a step further away from the conventional serial killer thriller and over the border into supernatural horror-which, in fairness, is where these extraordinary books have been heading from the beginning. The question of why and how so many bad people find their way into Parker's orbit has always been lurking in the background of his novels; why so many ghosts of victims point him the way to vengeful justice and why so good a man is so fond of his killer for hire friends Louis and Angel. Many writers would just leave these as givens, but Connolly has too much integrity for that.
The search for Louis' junkie whore cousin, and her abductors, leads the trio ever further into darkness. They have fought evil obsessives before, but none as bad as the Believers, a group obsessed with fallen angels and with the strange sculpted objects men have made from human bones. This time at least there is a possibility that what the Believers believe is true, both what they believe about the world and what they believe about Parker-this is a book which ought to be insane and ludicrous and is in fact chilling. -Roz Kaveney
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
A collection of stories by John Connolly
John Connolly, bestselling author of five brilliantly scary mystery novels, now turns his pen to the short story to give us a dozen chilling tales of the supernatural. In this macabre collection, echoing masters of the genre from M R James to Stephen King, Connolly delves into our darkest fears – lost lovers, missing children, subterranean creatures and predatory demons. Framing the collection are two substantial novellas – The Cancer Cowboy Rides charts the fatal progress of a modern-day grim reaper, while The Reflecting Eye is a haunted house tale with a twist and marks the return of private detective Charlie Parker, the troubled hero of Connolly's crime novels. The perfect antidote to Christmas cheer, Nocturnes is a masterly volume to be read with the lights on – menace has never been so seductive…
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
Daniel Clay, a once-respected psychologist, has been missing for years following revelations about harm done to the children in his care. Believing him dead, his daughter Rebecca has tried to come to terms with her father's legacy, but her fragile peace is about to be shattered. Someone is asking questions about Daniel Clay, someone who does not believe that he is dead: the revenger Merrick, a father and a killer obsessed with discovering the truth about his own daughter's disappearance. Private detective Charlie Parker is hired to make Merrick go away, but Merrick will not be stopped. Soon Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Daniel Clay to be revealed, and those who want it to remain hidden at all costs. But there are other forces at work here. Someone is funding Merrick 's hunt, a ghost from Parker's past. And Merrick 's actions have drawn others from the shadows, half-glimpsed figures intent upon their own form of revenge, pale wraiths drifting through the ranks of the unquiet dead. The Hollow Men have come…
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
New York Times bestselling author John Connolly’s unique imagination takes readers through the end of innocence into adulthood and beyond in this dark and triumphantly creative novel of grief and loss, loyalty and love, and the redemptive power of stories.
High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother. He is angry and alone, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness, and as he takes refuge in his imagination, he finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a land that is a strange reflection of his own world, populated by heroes and monsters, and ruled over by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book . . . The Book of Lost Things.
An imaginative tribute to the journey we must all make through the loss of innocence into adulthood, John Connolly’s latest novel is a book for every adult who can recall the moment when childhood began to fade, and for every adult about to face that moment. The Book of Lost Things is a story of hope for all who have lost, and for all who have yet to lose. It is an exhilarating tale that reminds us of the enduring power of stories in our lives.
Genre: Mystery and thrillers
Three hundred years ago, the settlers on the small Maine island of Sanctuary were betrayed by one of their own, and slaughtered. Now a band of killers has returned to Sanctuary to seek revenge on a young woman and her son, and the only people who stand in their way are a young rookie officer and the island’s resident policeman, the troubled giant known as Melancholy Joe Dupree. But Joe Dupree is no ordinary policeman. He is the guardian of the island’s secrets, the repository of its memories. He knows that Sanctuary has been steeped in violence, and that its ghosts will tolerate the shedding of innocent blood no longer. On Sanctuary, the hunters are about to become the hunted.