Denise Mina

An upper-class Edinburgh housewife who enjoys listening to the sordid details of true-crime podcasts has her world turned upside down when a new podcast turns out to have connections to her own dark past. Anna McDonald enjoys listening to podcasts-- other people's problems are much better than one's own. But today her husband tells her he's leaving her ... and the podcast is about a murdered family on a sunken yacht. Anna is convinced that she knows...

When three armed men invade a quiet Glasgow home and demand audience with a person who does not live there, Detective Inspector Alex Morrow investigates their apparent mistake, a situation that escalates as violent acts are committed against the hostages.

The domestic dispute in a wealthy suburb seems like nothing unusual. The elegant blonde bleeding in the shadows doesn't want help; and the well-dressed, ingratiating man at the front door tells investigative journalist Paddy Meehan everything's fine. Then he asks her to make sure nothing appears in the paper, slipping cash into her hand. The next morning Paddy sees on TV: the blond woman had been tortured, beaten, and left to die. The untraceable...

A brilliant thriller featuring Paddy Meehan, one of the most praised heroines since Temperance Brennan, from "a rising star in the world of crime fiction" (Laura Miller, Salon).
Paddy Meehan is no stranger to murder — as a reporter she lives at crime scenes — but nothing has prepared her for this visit from the police. Her former boyfriend and fellow journalist Terry Patterson has been found hooded and shot through the head....

When a notorious millionaire banker hangs himself, his death attracts no sympathy. But the legacy of a lifetime of selfishness is widespread, and the carnage most acute among those he ought to be protecting: his family. Meanwhile, in a wealthy suburb of Glasgow, a young woman is found savagely murdered. The community is stunned by what appears to be a vicious, random attack. When Detective Inspector Alex Morrow, heavily pregnant with twins, is called...

"It's the week before Christmas when a lone robber bursts into a busy Glasgow post office carrying an AK-47. An elderly man suddenly hands his young grandson to a stranger and wordlessly helps the gunman fill bags with cash, then carries them to the door. He opens the door and bows his head; the robber fires off the AK-47, tearing the grandfather in two. DS Alex Morrow arrives on the scene and finds that the alarm system had been disabled before the...

In Glasgow, in a tale of exploitation of mental patients, Maureen O'Donnell wakes up to find her therapist boyfriend dead in the middle of her living room and herself a prime suspect. Desperate to clear her name and get to the truth, Maureen traces rumors about a similar murder at a local psychiatric hospital, uncovering a trail of deception and repressed scandal that could exonerate her --or make her the next victim.

The last time Maureen O'Donnell saw Ann Harris, she was in the Glasgow Women's Shelter smelling of a long binge on cheap drink. A month later Ann's mutilated body, stitched into a mattress, is washed up on the banks of the Thames. No-one, except for Maureen and her best mate, Leslie, seems to care about what has happened to her, and Maureen is the only person who thinks Ann's husband is innocent. But solving Ann's murder comes as light relief. Maureen's...

"On the evening of March 9th, 1566, David Rizzio, the private secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, was brutally murdered. Dragged from the chamber of the heavily pregnant Mary, Rizzio was stabbed fifty-six times by a party of assassins. This breathtakingly tense novella dramatizes the events that led up to that night, telling the infamous story as it has never been told before. A dark tale of sex, secrets and lies, Rizzio looks at a shocking historical...

Reimaging the "Bonfire of the Vanities" through a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the fifteenth century, this modern take on a fascinating historical story follows Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican friar who, railing against the vice and avarice of the ruling Medici family, was instrumental in their removal from power.