Mystery Bestsellers for the Week Ending September 23rd, 2011

A list of the top 15 mystery hardcover bestsellers for the week ending September 23rd, 2011 has been posted by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books.

Reassuming the top spot after several weeks is The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the third and final thriller in the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson. Three new titles debut on the lists.

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New at number 8 is Heat Rises, the third mystery featuring NYPD homicide detective Nikki Heat by Richard Castle of the ABC crime drama Castle.

The bizarre murder of a parish priest at a New York bondage club opens Nikki Heat's most thrilling and dangerous case so far, pitting her against New York's most vicious drug lord, an arrogant CIA contractor, and a shadowy death squad out to gun her down. And that is just the tip of an iceberg that leads to a dark conspiracy reaching all the way to the highest level of the NYPD.

But when she gets too close to the truth, Nikki finds herself disgraced, stripped of her badge, and out on her own as a target for killers with nobody she can trust. Except maybe the one man in her life who's not a cop. Reporter Jameson Rook.

In the midst of New York's coldest winter in a hundred years, there's one thing Nikki is determined to prove: heat rises.

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At number 13 is the 16th Stone Barrington thriller, Son of Stone by Stuart Woods.

After an eventful trip to Bel-Air and a reunion with his sophisticated (and very wealthy) former love, Arrington Calder, confirmed bachelor Stone Barrington is looking to stay in New York and cash in on his partnership at Woodman & Weld. Not only is he a rain-maker of one of the richest white-shoe law firms, in town, he’s back in his element. Manhattan, after all, is his home, and no one is better than Stone at navigating both its shadowy underworlds and its chic high society.

But Arrington has other plans for Stone, and his life is about to take a turn he never imagined …

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Finally, at number 14 is the stand-alone thriller Lethal by Sandra Brown.

When her four year old daughter informs her a sick man is in their yard, Honor Gillette rushes out to help him. But that "sick" man turns out to be Lee Coburn, the man accused of murdering seven people the night before. Dangerous, desperate, and armed, he promises Honor that she and her daughter won't be hurt as long as she does everything he asks. She has no choice but to accept him at his word.

But Honor soon discovers that even those close to her can't be trusted. Coburn claims that her beloved late husband possessed something extremely valuable that places Honor and her daughter in grave danger. Coburn is there to retrieve it — at any cost.

From FBI offices in Washington, D.C., to a rundown shrimp boat in coastal Louisiana, Coburn and Honor run for their lives from the very people sworn to protect them, and unravel a web of corruption and depravity that threatens not only them, but the fabric of our society.

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