James Patterson

DC homicide detective and forensic psychologist Alex Cross is called to investigate when a brilliant, media-obsessed killer kidnaps two children from a prestigious private school — drawing Cross into the most complex and personal case of his career.

Alex Cross races to catch two serial killers simultaneously — one targeting children in his own Washington DC neighbourhood, another assassinating celebrities in an escalating pattern. Patterson's dual-threat plot is the Alex Cross series at its most propulsive.

Alex Cross races to find a serial kidnapper called Casanova who keeps intelligent, accomplished women as captives in an underground harem — while simultaneously discovering that his own niece Naomi has become one of Casanova's victims.

San Francisco detective Lindsay Boxer, recently diagnosed with a blood disease, teams up with a journalist, an assistant DA, and a medical examiner to catch a serial killer targeting newlywed couples. The first Women's Murder Club novel launched a beloved second Patterson series.

Gary Soneji, the kidnapper from Along Came a Spider, escapes prison and launches a final campaign of revenge against Alex Cross — while across the Atlantic, FBI agent Thomas Pierce hunts a mutilation killer known only as Mr. Smith. Two manhunts converge in one of Patterson's most audacious thrillers.

Framed as a story Alex Cross wrote about his own family's past, this historical novel follows Ben Corbett, a Washington lawyer sent by President Roosevelt to investigate a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan terror in 1906 Mississippi — where he confronts lynching, injustice, and a town's buried conscience.

Now a private psychologist, Alex Cross is pulled back into the field when his old partner asks for help with a sadistic rapist. The case reopens the oldest wound of Cross's life — the unsolved murder of his wife Maria — and sets him on the trail of the mob enforcer who may have pulled the trigger.

Alex Cross hunts a killer who treats murder as a game. Geoffrey Shafer, a British diplomat in Washington, plays a fantasy role-playing contest called The Four Horsemen, earning points for real killings — and when the hunt turns personal, Cross's own happiness becomes the prize.

A string of bank robberies turns lethal when a meticulous mastermind kills hostages even after his instructions are followed to the letter. Alex Cross chases a criminal who plans every move with terrifying precision — and ends on a revelation that reshapes the series.

Detective Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club hunt a killer whose seemingly random murders share a chilling hidden link — and a vendetta against the police themselves. As the body count rises, the case reaches into Lindsay's own family and past.

A house explosion that kills a family draws Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club into the path of a radical group targeting the rich and powerful. As bombings and assassinations escalate toward a deadly climax, the case exacts a devastating personal cost on the club itself.

After a shootout leaves Lindsay Boxer facing a career-ending lawsuit, she retreats to the coastal town of Half Moon Bay — only to stumble onto a string of brutal murders of wealthy couples. As her trial looms in San Francisco, two cases close in on her at once.

Alex Cross returns to his North Carolina hometown to help defend a cousin accused of a horrifying murder. But Starksville holds more than one secret, and as Cross digs into the case he unearths buried truths about his own family — and the father he believed was long dead.

Just as Alex Cross prepares to leave the police force, his partner John Sampson asks for help: an Army buddy is on death row for murders he didn't commit. Their investigation uncovers a trio of killers operating inside the military and a conspiracy that reaches the highest ranks.

When Alex Cross's niece is found brutally murdered, his birthday celebration turns into a personal manhunt that leads to a secret club where Washington's most powerful indulge their darkest appetites — a trail that climbs toward the very highest levels of government.

NYPD Detective Michael Bennett faces a hostage crisis when a criminal mastermind seizes mourners at a former First Lady's funeral inside St. Patrick's Cathedral. As Bennett negotiates for the lives of the powerful, his wife is dying at home and his ten adopted children need him too.

Alex Cross is in the dock. Charged with murder after a deadly shooting and suspended from duty, he faces a trial that could end his career and send him to prison. But even as he fights for his freedom, he can't ignore a string of disappearances pointing to a predator hiding behind a screen.

A pair of killers obsessed with vampirism drain their victims of blood across the country, while the Mastermind who shattered Alex Cross's life in Roses Are Red continues to taunt him from the shadows. Cross must close two cases at once — one grotesque, one personal — in this two-front thriller.

A luxury-hotel murder scene yields a shocking clue: a news photo places Lindsay Boxer's own husband, Joe, at the scene — with another woman. When Joe vanishes, Lindsay must investigate the man she married, uncovering a possible double life tangled in espionage and national security.

An imprisoned serial killer's reign of terror seems to be over — until a copycat begins killing in his style, and reporter Cindy Thomas, writing a book about the original murderer, finds herself drawn dangerously close to both. Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club race to stop a protégé finishing his mentor's work.

When her longtime mentor and former partner Warren Jacobi is brutally stabbed to death, Lindsay Boxer vows to find his killer at any cost. The murder links to a string of clue-leaving killings — and to a brutal cartel that has drawn her husband Joe to Mexico, as Yuki prosecutes a case of her own.

A pair of arsonists is burning wealthy families alive in their own homes, leaving taunting Latin clues amid the ashes. As Lindsay Boxer hunts the fire-setters, the cold case of a missing young man — the son of a former governor — resurfaces to test the Women's Murder Club on two fronts.

A passenger plane is shot out of the sky over Washington, and Alex Cross is drawn into the hunt for whoever turned the capital's airspace into a killing ground. As the investigation deepens, a separate executioner is at work — and the title is no idle threat: someone wants Cross dead.

As Alex Cross plans his long-awaited wedding to Bree Stone, a sniper begins assassinating Washington's most corrupt politicians and power brokers, dividing a city that half-cheers the killings. Then Cross's oldest nemesis, Kyle Craig, returns to turn the chaos into a personal trap.

A criminal genius named Thierry Mulch becomes obsessed with Alex Cross, watching his every move and orchestrating an elaborate campaign to prove he can outthink and destroy him. As Mulch closes in, the danger gathers around the one thing Cross can't protect: his family.

When Washington's police chief — Cross's friend and mentor — is gunned down, Alex Cross steps back into the force to find the killer. But the murder is only the start: a wave of vigilante killings is sweeping the capital, as someone decides the law is too slow and begins executing criminals in the streets.

A killer who stages elaborate murders for a watching audience terrorizes Washington, just as Alex Cross is trying to build a peaceful life with Bree Stone. Then his oldest nemesis, the brilliant Kyle Craig, escapes and resurfaces — with a new face and a single obsession: destroying Cross.

Alex Cross and John Sampson set out on a wilderness canoe trip to clear their heads, but their old enemy M has other plans. Stalked through the Montana backcountry by snipers and drones, the two friends fight for their lives, while Bree pursues a dangerous trafficking case of her own back home.

Thierry Mulch has Alex Cross's entire family — Bree, Nana Mama, and the children — and forces Cross to dance to his commands or watch them die. Desperate and half-broken, Cross must obey a madman's escalating demands while racing to find the people he loves before it's too late.

After Michael Bennett helps capture a ruthless South American crime lord, the man swears vengeance from his cell — and makes good on it. With his family in danger, Bennett flees the city for a small town upstate, but his enemy's reach is long, and the war he has started will not stay behind him.

A town in the Nevada desert is wiped off the map as a demonstration of power, and a mastermind threatens to destroy the world's great cities unless he is paid billions. Alex Cross joins forces with MI6 and Interpol to stop the Wolf — and the returning Weasel — in a globe-spanning race against catastrophe.

A killer who signs emails 'Mary Smith' is murdering Hollywood stars and sending taunting accounts of each crime to a celebrity reporter. Alex Cross, pulled from a family vacation, hunts a murderer whose motive proves more painful and personal than the glamorous victims suggest.

A meticulous killer who calls himself the Teacher is murdering New York's rich and entitled, punishing the rude and the privileged in a campaign of class rage. Detective Michael Bennett must stop him before the lessons turn into a citywide bloodbath — all while raising ten children at home.

Patients are dying at a San Francisco hospital under circumstances that look less like misfortune than murder, each death marked by a strange symbolic token. As Lindsay Boxer hunts a killer hiding behind a white coat, Yuki Castellano fights a wrenching malpractice trial with the hospital — and the truth — on the line.

A gunman opens fire on a crowded San Francisco commuter ferry, and one of the wounded is someone Lindsay Boxer loves. As the club races to understand the shooter, a separate horror unfolds: children are vanishing from wealthy neighborhoods, taken by someone who knows exactly how to disappear.

A killer is murdering young mothers and their children in San Francisco parking garages, terrorizing the city. At the same time, a brazen jewel thief is robbing the rich and famous — and the two cases pull Lindsay Boxer in directions that test her judgment, and Yuki's, to the breaking point.

Alex Cross's first case as an FBI agent pits him against the Wolf, a Russian crime lord running a business that abducts people to order and sells them to the highest bidder. As Cross learns the Bureau's ropes, a custody battle over his youngest son threatens the family he is fighting to protect.

A string of murders — a federal judge, a lawyer, others who should have had nothing in common — draws Alex Cross and John Sampson into a conspiracy that reaches toward the highest levels of power. As Cross weighs a life-changing career decision, a familiar shadow returns to test him one more time.

A killer is murdering entire families in their homes, vanishing without a trace, and the press has dubbed him the most meticulous murderer in history. As Alex Cross hunts him, a celebrated true-crime writer who has made Cross his subject inserts himself into the investigation — with an agenda of his own.

A kidnapper is abducting the children of New York's wealthiest families and quizzing them on the suffering of the poor — and when they fail his lessons in inequality, they die. Detective Michael Bennett and FBI agent Emily Parker race to stop a killer who has turned class guilt into a death sentence.

Newly married, Lindsay Boxer barely has time for a honeymoon before a newborn baby vanishes and a terrified teenager stands accused. As Lindsay races to find the missing child, Yuki prosecutes a brutal assault case and Lindsay's own marriage is tested by the relentless pull of the job.

Severed heads are unearthed in the garden of a San Francisco mansion, and a vigilante is executing the city's drug dealers with a gun stolen from the police evidence locker. Newly pregnant and stretched thin, Lindsay Boxer must solve two cases that both seem to point uncomfortably close to home.

Lindsay Boxer gives birth just as three cases collide: a professor who dreams murders before they happen, a corpse that vanishes from the morgue, and a star athlete accused of a brutal killing. New motherhood and the relentless job pull Lindsay in every direction at once.

Brutal crimes are being committed by people in San Francisco police uniforms, and the evidence points inside Lindsay Boxer's own department. As the corruption spreads and trust collapses, Lindsay must investigate the colleagues she works beside every day — and decide who, if anyone, she can still believe.

Healthy men are dropping dead of sudden heart attacks that prove to be murders, the work of a killer with an intimate, deadly method. As Lindsay Boxer hunts the cause, she also faces the trial of a man accused of a devastating bombing — and the wreckage of her own marriage after Joe's betrayal.

A young mother and her baby daughter vanish, and all eyes turn to the husband — a man whose calm is unnerving and whose story doesn't add up. As Lindsay Boxer races to find the missing pair, the case twists toward something darker and stranger than a simple domestic tragedy.

Guns are flowing north across the border and San Francisco cops are turning up dead, the two facts tangled in a conspiracy bigger than anything Lindsay Boxer has faced. As the body count rises and the danger reaches her own circle, Lindsay races to expose a network that wants her silenced.

New York is reeling from a series of escalating, high-tech terror attacks, and no one can predict where the next blow will fall. As the city teeters on the edge of panic, Michael Bennett races against a sophisticated enemy who seems always one step ahead — and whose endgame could be catastrophic.

Alex Cross is hunting multiple killers at once — a meticulous murderer of beautiful women, a savage 'beating' killer, and a vengeful plastic surgeon Cross once arrested. As the cases multiply, Cross finds himself the target, framed and pursued, with his name and freedom suddenly on the line.

A tip leads to a trap, and a detective dies in Michael Bennett's place. Someone has marked Bennett for death, and as the attempts on his life escalate and reach toward his children, he must find the enemy hunting his family before the next ambush succeeds.

The mayor of New York makes Michael Bennett an offer he can't refuse: find the mayor's missing daughter, and the city will go easy on Bennett's own son, who is in serious trouble of his own. But the search pulls Bennett into a dangerous web of cybercrime and foreign intrigue with stakes far beyond one missing girl.

An assassin is in New York with the most audacious target imaginable: the President of the United States, in the city for a high-stakes summit. As world leaders gather and tensions with Russia simmer, Michael Bennett has only days to find a killer before an assassination triggers global catastrophe.

After Alex Cross watches a killer he helped convict go to his execution, a new murder appears bearing the dead man's signature — and a taunting note signed simply 'M.' As the killings mount and grow personal, Cross must wonder whether he sent an innocent man to die, or whether something far more cunning is at work.

Alex Cross is gravely wounded and out of action, leaving John Sampson to carry the weight. As a coordinated wave of attacks threatens the capital and the people Cross loves, Sampson must protect his oldest friend, hold the line, and stop a conspiracy — all without the partner who has always had his back.

A glamorous Washington socialite and a private-school headmaster are found shot dead in a car outside a gala, their secret connection a mystery. Alex Cross knew the dead woman — and as he investigates her hidden life, the case pulls him into a web of power, money, and old secrets that someone will kill to protect.

In witness protection on the California coast, Michael Bennett thought distance would keep his family safe from crime lord Manuel Perrine. He was wrong. Perrine's reign of terror reaches across the country, and Bennett must hunt the man who has sworn to destroy everything he loves.

The President's two children vanish, and Alex Cross is thrown into a frantic search under impossible pressure. At the same time, a lone operative is moving to poison Washington's water supply — two catastrophes converging on a city, and on a detective who can't be everywhere at once.

It's Christmas Day, and Alex Cross wants nothing more than to spend it with his family. Instead he's called to two crises at once — a desperate man holding his own family hostage, and a terrorist plot poised to strike Washington during the holidays — forcing Cross to choose, again, between his home and his duty.

When Michael Bennett's close friend, FBI agent Emily Parker, vanishes in Washington, D.C., he drops everything to find her. Far from home and outside his jurisdiction, Bennett uncovers that the woman he thought he knew had powerful enemies — and that her disappearance is only the beginning.

The President of the United States is assassinated, plunging Washington into chaos and crisis. Alex Cross is drafted onto the high-pressure task force hunting the killer — but as the investigation unfolds, it becomes clear that Cross himself is somehow at the center of a far larger conspiracy.

Someone is murdering San Francisco's homeless, and the case leads Lindsay Boxer somewhere she never expected. As a mysterious illness saps her strength and Yuki Castellano takes a bold new turn in her career, the club confronts a killer whose identity overturns every assumption.

Three schoolteachers vanish on their way home, and one turns up dead. Meanwhile a witness insists she has seen a man who should not exist: a Serbian war criminal long believed dead, now walking the streets of San Francisco. Lindsay Boxer and Joe pursue two hauntings of the present and the past.

As San Francisco prepares for the holidays, a whisper reaches the police: a criminal mastermind known only as Loman is planning something enormous for Christmas. With the clock ticking toward the big day, Lindsay Boxer and the Women's Murder Club race to uncover a plot that keeps shifting shape.

On a single morning, drug kingpins are gunned down by snipers in three different cities at once. As Lindsay Boxer works the San Francisco killing and Cindy Thomas chases the story nationwide, the club uncovers a coordinated network of vigilante assassins — and a moral question with no easy answer.

Detective Lindsay Boxer leads the Women's Murder Club into the high-profile murder investigation of a wealthy San Francisco couple, a case that draws intense scrutiny and personal danger. As the pressure mounts, the question is whether Lindsay, Cindy, Claire, and Yuki will all be standing when it's over.

A glittering San Francisco socialite couple is found dead with no apparent cause — no wound, no poison the lab can name. As Lindsay Boxer chases a killer who leaves no trace, Cindy Thomas pursues a story everyone else ignores: the murder of a beloved homeless street preacher known as Bagman Jesus.

Days before his long-awaited wedding to Mary Catherine, Michael Bennett's life is upended by a series of grisly murders that announce the arrival of a methodical assassin known only as the Russian. As the killings mount, Bennett must hunt a ghost — and protect the future he has finally let himself imagine.

A killer is recreating New York's most infamous murders, staging copycat crimes that pay homage to the city's darkest history. With a family vacation shattered and the body count rising, Michael Bennett must decode the pattern — and reckon with FBI agent Emily Parker — before the killer's grand finale.

People are dying horribly after eating tainted fast food, an act of terror with no obvious motive, just as a killer from Lindsay Boxer's past resurfaces with a personal grudge. Then a honeymoon cruise turns into a trap, and the Women's Murder Club faces danger on more than one front.

Home in New York and back at Manhattan North Homicide, Michael Bennett catches a case that begins with reports of a grotesque occult ritual and a burned body. As he digs, the trail leads into a hidden world of the wealthy and depraved, where money buys the freedom to indulge the darkest appetites.

The massacre of a family Alex Cross once loved sends him chasing a brutal warlord known as the Tiger — a trail that leads off the streets of Washington and into the war-torn heart of West Africa, where Cross faces child soldiers, corruption, and a brand of violence beyond anything he has known.

Burned out and in need of a break, Michael Bennett takes his family to a quiet town in Maine — and walks straight into a wave of drug-fueled violence the locals would rather keep buried. As bodies pile up and no one will talk, Bennett finds his vacation turning into the most isolating case of his career.