Books with author John Connolly

The New York Times bestselling author of A Book of Bones and “one of the best thriller writers we have” (Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author) goes back to the very beginning of Private Investigator Charlie Parker’s astonishing career with his first terrifying case.It is 1999, and someone is slaughtering young women in Burdon County, Arkansas. But no one in the Dirty South wants to admit it. In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. Obsessed with avenging his lost family, his life is about to take a shocking turn. Witness the dawning of a conscience. Witness the birth of a hunter. Witness the becoming of Charlie Parker.

A USA TODAY Bestseller “Complex, pulse-pounding...Connolly’s nuanced characterizations and facility at creating spooky atmospherics make it easy to suspend disbelief about the threat of cosmic horror from other dimensions.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) Private Investigator Charlie Parker returns in this heart-pounding thriller as he seeks revenge against the darkest forces in the world, from the internationally bestselling author of the acclaimed The Woman in the Woods.He is our best hope. He is our last hope. On a lonely moor in northern England, the body of a young woman is discovered. In the south, a girl lies buried beneath a Saxon mound. To the southeast, the ruins of a priory hide a human skull. Each is a sacrifice, a summons. And something in the darkness has heard the call. Charlie Parker has also heard it and from the forests of Maine to the deserts of the Mexican border, from the canals of Amsterdam to the streets of London, he will track those who would cast the world into darkness. Parker fears no evil—but evil fears him. With John Connolly’s signature “blend of crime and supernatural horror” (Crime Reads), A Book of Bones is a terrifying and suspenseful thrill ride that will keep you guessing until the very last page.

“Connolly has crafted one of the most darkly intriguing books this reviewer has encountered in more than three decades of reading crime fiction.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) The second thriller in John Connolly's bestselling, chilling series featuring haunted private investigator Charlie Parker.Charlier Parker, a former New York City detective with a haunted past, befriends a down-and-out mother with a small child. When she turns up dead, Charlie's first suspect is her estranged husband. Charlie follows the man's trail to Maine and there he becomes entangled in a series of strange occurances which all seem to harken back to a string of unsolved murders that took place generations before. The murders were never solved and now Charlie must hunt for a killer and the connection between two crimes that span a century.

The New York Times bestselling author of A Book of Bones and “one of the best thriller writers we have” (Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author) goes back to the very beginning of Private Investigator Charlie Parker’s astonishing career with his first terrifying case.It is 1999, and someone is slaughtering young women in Burdon County, Arkansas. But no one in the Dirty South wants to admit it. In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. Obsessed with avenging his lost family, his life is about to take a shocking turn. Witness the dawning of a conscience. Witness the birth of a hunter. Witness the becoming of Charlie Parker.

“With its singular characters, eerie subject matter, and socko style” (The New York Times), this gripping thriller from the internationally bestselling author John Connolly follows Private Investigator Charlie Parker as he is hired to track down the identity of a dead woman—who apparently died in childbirth—and her missing child.In the beautiful Maine woods, a partly preserved body is discovered. Investigators realize that the young woman gave birth shortly before her death. But there is no sign of a baby. Private detective Charlie Parker is hired by a lawyer to shadow the police investigation and find the infant but Parker is not the only one searching. Someone else is following the trail left by the woman, someone with an interest in much more than a missing child…someone prepared to leave bodies in his wake. And in a house by the woods, a toy telephone begins to ring and a young boy is about to receive a call from a dead woman. With breathless pacing and shivery twists and turns, “this is Connolly’s masterpiece” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

A USA TODAY Bestseller “Complex, pulse-pounding...Connolly’s nuanced characterizations and facility at creating spooky atmospherics make it easy to suspend disbelief about the threat of cosmic horror from other dimensions.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) Private Investigator Charlie Parker returns in this heart-pounding thriller as he seeks revenge against the darkest forces in the world, from the internationally bestselling author of the acclaimed The Woman in the Woods.He is our best hope. He is our last hope. On a lonely moor in northern England, the body of a young woman is discovered. In the south, a girl lies buried beneath a Saxon mound. To the southeast, the ruins of a priory hide a human skull. Each is a sacrifice, a summons. And something in the darkness has heard the call. Charlie Parker has also heard it and from the forests of Maine to the deserts of the Mexican border, from the canals of Amsterdam to the streets of London, he will track those who would cast the world into darkness. Parker fears no evil—but evil fears him. With John Connolly’s signature “blend of crime and supernatural horror” (Crime Reads), A Book of Bones is a terrifying and suspenseful thrill ride that will keep you guessing until the very last page.

Internationally bestselling author John Connolly takes readers into the dark world of private detective Charlie Parker, whose deadly fight against evil begins when the daughter of a South Carolina millionaire is raped and murdered.In South Carolina, a young black man faces the death penalty for the rape and murder of Marianne Larousse, daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the state. It's a case that nobody wants to touch, a case with its roots in old evil, and old evil is private detective Charlie Parker's speciality. But Parker is about to enter a living nightmare, a red dreamscape haunted by the murderous spectre of a hooded woman, by a black car waiting for a passenger that never comes, and by the complicity of both friends and enemies in the events surrounding Marianne Larousse's death. This is not an investigation. This is a descent into the abyss, a confrontation with dark forces that threaten all that Parker holds dear: his lover, his unborn child, even his soul... For in a prison cell far to the north, an old adversary is about to take his revenge on Charlie Parker, its instruments the very men that Parker is hunting, and a strange, hunched creature that keeps its own secrets buried by a riverbank: the undiscovered killer Cyrus Nairn. Soon, all of these figures will face a final reckoning in southern swamps and northern forests, in distant locations linked by a single thread, a place where the paths of the living and the dead converge. A place known only as the White Road.

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 tale about navigating the journey into adulthood, while doing your best to hang on to your childhood.

From #1 internationally bestselling author John Connolly comes Nocturnes, a dark, daring, utterly haunting shot story anthology of lost lovers and missing children, predatory demons, and vengeful ghosts.Connolly’s collection of supernatural novellas and stories echoes the work of some of the masters of the genre while never losing his own distinctive voice. In "The New Daughter," a father comes to suspect that a burial mound on his land hides something very ancient, and very much alive; in "The Underbury Witches," two London detectives find themselves battling a particularly female evil in a town culled of its menfolk. And finally, private detective Charlie Parker returns in the long novella "The Reflecting Eye," in which the photograph of an unknown girl turns up in the mailbox of an abandoned house once occupied by an infamous killer. This discovery forces Parker to confront the possibility that the house is not as empty as it appears, and that something has been waiting in the darkness for its chance to kill again.

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.

“With its singular characters, eerie subject matter, and socko style” (The New York Times), this gripping thriller from the internationally bestselling author John Connolly follows Private Investigator Charlie Parker as he is hired to track down the identity of a dead woman—who apparently died in childbirth—and her missing child.In the beautiful Maine woods, a partly preserved body is discovered. Investigators realize that the young woman gave birth shortly before her death. But there is no sign of a baby. Private detective Charlie Parker is hired by a lawyer to shadow the police investigation and find the infant but Parker is not the only one searching. Someone else is following the trail left by the woman, someone with an interest in much more than a missing child…someone prepared to leave bodies in his wake. And in a house by the woods, a toy telephone begins to ring and a young boy is about to receive a call from a dead woman. With breathless pacing and shivery twists and turns, “this is Connolly’s masterpiece” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

“Connolly has crafted one of the most darkly intriguing books this reviewer has encountered in more than three decades of reading crime fiction.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) The second thriller in John Connolly's bestselling, chilling series featuring haunted private investigator Charlie Parker.Charlier Parker, a former New York City detective with a haunted past, befriends a down-and-out mother with a small child. When she turns up dead, Charlie's first suspect is her estranged husband. Charlie follows the man's trail to Maine and there he becomes entangled in a series of strange occurances which all seem to harken back to a string of unsolved murders that took place generations before. The murders were never solved and now Charlie must hunt for a killer and the connection between two crimes that span a century.