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A Song of Shadows: A Charlie Parker Thriller
A Time of Torment: A Charlie Parker Thriller
The Unquiet: A Charlie Parker Thriller
Ebook series20 titles

Charlie Parker Series

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this series

Chaos and murder arrive in Charlie Parker’s hometown of Portland, Maine, with two connected crimes in the latest novel in #1 nationally bestselling author John Connolly’s “flawless and highly suspenseful” (PopSugar) series.

New York Times bestselling author John Connolly pits Parker against two separate—but vitally connected—investigations, which prove to be among the most complicated of his entire career in this “must-read for the author’s fans and a good introduction to the series for newbie” (Booklist).

In The Sisters Strange, criminal Raum Buker arrives in Portland, only for a shocking act of theft to threaten not only his own existence but those of his former lovers—the enigmatic sisters Strange.

And in the title novel, The Furies, Parker must protect two women under threat as Portland shuts down in the face of a global pandemic. But it may be that those clients are more capable of taking care of themselves than anyone could have imagined.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 23, 2006
A Song of Shadows: A Charlie Parker Thriller
A Time of Torment: A Charlie Parker Thriller
The Unquiet: A Charlie Parker Thriller

Titles in the series (20)

  • The Unquiet: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The Unquiet: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The Unquiet: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    Haunted private detective Charlie Parker returns in this “not to be missed” (Bookreporter) thriller by New York Times and internationally bestselling author John Connolly. Daniel Clay, a once-respected psychiatrist, has gone missing, following revelations about the harm done to children in his care. Now, a killer obsessed with finding the truth about his own daughter’s disappearance is seeking revenge, and Charlie Parker finds himself trapped between those who want the truth about Clay to be revealed, and those who will go to any lengths to keep it hidden. As with his previous novels, John Connolly masterfully intertwines mystery, emotion, and violence in this gripping page-turner. Fast-paced, hypnotic, and elegantly written, The Unquiet is John Connolly at his chilling best.

  • A Song of Shadows: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    A Song of Shadows: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    A Song of Shadows: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    Still recovering from his life-threatening wounds, private detective Charlie Parker investigates a case that has its origins in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II in this “all-out thrill ride” (Suspense Magazine). Parker has retreated to the small Maine town of Boreas to regain his strength. There he befriends a widow named Ruth Winter and her young daughter, Amanda. But Ruth has her secrets. Old atrocities are about to be unearthed, and old sinners will kill to hide their sins. Now Parker is about to risk his life to defend a woman he barely knows, one who fears him almost as much as she fears those who are coming for her. His enemies believe him to be vulnerable. Fearful. Solitary. But they are wrong. Parker is far from afraid, and far from alone. For something is emerging from the shadows…

  • A Time of Torment: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    A Time of Torment: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    A Time of Torment: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    #1 internationally bestselling author John Connolly delivers a masterful combination of “the hard-boiled with the supernatural” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) with this return of dangerous and driven private investigator Charlie Parker as he battles an old evil that haunts a strange and isolated community. Jerome Burnel was once a hero. He intervened to prevent multiple killings, and in doing so damned himself. His life was torn apart, imprisoned and brutalized. But in his final days, with the hunters circling, he tells his story to private detective Charlie Parker. He speaks of the girl who was marked for death, but was saved; of the ones who tormented him, and an entity that hides in a ruined stockade. Parker is not like other men. He died, and was reborn. He is ready to wage war. Now he will descend upon a strange, isolated community called the Cut, and face down a force of men who rule by terror, intimidation, and murder. All in the name of the being they serve. All in the name of the Dead King.

  • The Wolf in Winter: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The Wolf in Winter: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The Wolf in Winter: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    New York Times bestselling author John Connolly is a master of the supernatural thriller—“a genre of one” (Bookreporter)—whose eerie and electrifying Charlie Parker mystery turns a small town in Maine into an unforgettable character that threatens to destroy the brooding private investigator. The isolated community of Prosperous, Maine, has always thrived. While others suffered, the people there have remained fortunate, wealthy, secure, and insular throughout the centuries. Miles to the south, in Portland, a homeless man dies, and the disturbing manner of his death brings Prosperous to the attention of the private investigator Charlie Parker. He is a dangerous man, driven by compassion, rage, and the desire for vengeance. Prosperous and its townsfolk recognize that he poses a threat to their security that runs deeper than any in their long history. But this community has its own way of protecting itself, and its sheltered residents have marked Charlie for death so that Prosperous may survive. Prosperous, and the secret that is buried beneath it…

  • The Lovers: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The Lovers: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The Lovers: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    New York Times bestselling author John Connolly writes an “unfailingly compelling” (New Orleans Times-Picayune) and lyrical tale that forces Private Investigator Charlie Parker to examine his haunting past and all that he has ever believed true about his beloved parents—and himself. Charlie Parker is a lost soul. Deprived of his private investigator's license and under scrutiny by the police, Parker takes a job in a Portland bar. But he uses his enforced retirement to begin a different kind of investigation: an examination of his own past and an inquiry into the death of his father, who took his own life after apparently shooting dead two unarmed teenagers. It's a search that will eventually lead Parker to question all that he believed about his beloved parents, and about himself. But there are other forces at work: a troubled young woman who is running from an unseen threat, one that has already taken the life of her boyfriend; and a journalist-turned-writer named Mickey Wallace, who is conducting an investigation of his own. And haunting the shadows, as they have done throughout Parker's life, are two figures: a man and a woman who seem driven to bring an end to Charlie Parker's existence. Haunting, lyrical, and impossible to put down, The Lovers is John Connolly at his best.

  • A Game of Ghosts: A Thriller

    A Game of Ghosts: A Thriller
    A Game of Ghosts: A Thriller

    “An epic supernatural suspense that will forever reset your standards for summer thrillers. From secret realms and horrific homicides to hauntings and criminal empires, there isn’t a single dull sentence found in the pages of A Game of Ghosts—and you’ll love it.” —Redbook: 10 Books You Have to Read This Summer Books Every Dad Will Love This Father’s Day—PopSugar Internationally bestselling author John Connolly returns with another “superb fusion of noir and the supernatural” (My Bookish Ways) in this latest thriller in his gripping Charlie Parker series. It is deep winter and the darkness is unending. A private detective named Jaycob Eklund has vanished and Charlie Parker is assigned to track him down. Parker’s employer, Edgar Ross, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has his own reasons for wanting Eklund found. Eklund is no ordinary investigator—he is obsessively tracking a series of homicides and disappearances, each linked to reports of hauntings. Now Parker is drawn into Eklund’s world: a realm in which the monstrous Mother rules a crumbling criminal empire, in which men strike bargains with angels, and in which the innocent and guilty alike are pawns in a game of ghosts...

  • Dark Hollow: A Novel

    Dark Hollow: A Novel
    Dark Hollow: A Novel

    “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.

  • Every Dead Thing: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    Every Dead Thing: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    Every Dead Thing: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    Tortured and brilliant private detective Charlie Parker stars in this thriller by New York Times bestselling author John Connolly. Former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker is on the verge of madness. Tortured by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, he is a man consumed by guilt, regret, and the desire for revenge. When his former partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker finds himself drawn into a world beyond his imagining: a world where thirty-year-old killings remain shrouded in fear and lies, a world where the ghosts of the dead torment the living, a world haunted by the murderer responsible for the deaths in his family—a serial killer who uses the human body to create works of art and takes faces as his prize. But the search awakens buried instincts in Parker: instincts for survival, for compassion, for love, and, ultimately, for killing. Aided by a beautiful young psychologist and a pair of bickering career criminals, Parker becomes the bait in a trap set in the humid bayous of Louisiana, a trap that threatens the lives of everyone in its reach. Driven by visions of the dead and the voice of an old black psychic who met a terrible end, Parker must seek a final, brutal confrontation with a murderer who has moved beyond all notions of humanity, who has set out to create a hell on earth: the serial killer known only as the Traveling Man. In the tradition of classic American detective fiction, Every Dead Thing is a tense, richly plotted thriller, filled with memorable characters and gripping action. It is also a profoundly moving novel, concerned with the nature of loyalty, love, and forgiveness. Lyrical and terrifying, it is an ambitious debut, triumphantly realized.

  • The Black Angel: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The Black Angel: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The Black Angel: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    To those who have been forsaken, hell has no geography. The Black Angel begins with the disappearance of a young prostitute from one of New York City's seamiest neighborhoods. Like so many tormented souls before her, the girl's mother is inevitably drawn to Charlie Parker's doorstep desperate for redemption and revenge. Despite the danger that his chosen profession imposes on his wife and newborn daughter, Parker knows that the woman and her troubles cannot be ignored. As always, he is driven as much by the evil that simmers in the hidden honeycomb world as he is by the ties of friendship and blood. As Parker gets closer to the girl's captors, he discovers that her disappearance is linked to a church of bones in Eastern Europe, to the slaughter at a French monastery in 1944, and to the myth of an object known as the Black Angel -- an object considered by evil men to be beyond priceless. But the Black Angel is not a legend. It is real. It lives. It dreams. And the mystery of its existence may contain the secret of Parker's own origins.

  • The Wrath of Angels: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The Wrath of Angels: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The Wrath of Angels: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    In the depths of the Maine woods, the wreckage of a plane is discovered. There are no bodies, and no such plane has ever been reported missing, but men both good and evil have been seeking it for a long, long time. What the wreckage conceals is more important than money. It is power: a list of names, a record of those who have struck a deal with the devil. Now a battle is about to commence between those who want the list to remain secret and those for whom it represents a crucial weapon in the struggle against the forces of darkness. 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. Something has survived the crash. And it is waiting. . . .

  • The Burning Soul: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The Burning Soul: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The Burning Soul: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? “There are some truths so terrible that they should not be spoken aloud, so appalling that even to acknowledge them is to risk sacrificing a crucial part of one’s humanity, to exist in a colder, crueler world than before.” Randall Haight has a secret: He is a convicted murderer, a man with the blood of a young girl on his hands. He has built a new life for himself in the small Maine town of Pastor’s Bay, but someone has discovered the truth about him. He is being tormented by anonymously sent reminders of his crime. He wants private detective Charlie Parker to make them go away. But another girl has gone missing, this time from Pastor’s Bay itself, and her family has its own secrets to protect. Now, in a town built on blood and shadowed by old ghosts, Parker must unravel a twisted history of violence and deceit involving the police and the FBI, a doomed mobster and his enemies, and Randall Haight himself. Because Randall is telling lies. . . .

  • The Reapers: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The Reapers: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The Reapers: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    Darkly brilliant and intuitive private detective Charlie Parker returns in the next thrilling installment of the New York Times bestselling series by John Connolly about an elite group of killers. The Reapers are the elite of killers, the best at their trade, and Louis, confidante of troubled private detective Charlie Parker, is one of their number. Now the sins of his past are about to be visited upon him, for someone is hunting Louis, targeting his home, his businesses, and his partner, Angel. The instrument of his revenge is Bliss, the killer of killers, the most feared of assasins, and a man with a personal vendetta against Louis. But when Louis and Angel decide to strike back, they disappear, and their friends are forced to band together to find them. They are led by Parker, a killer himself, a reaper in waiting... The harvest is about to begin.

  • The Woman in the Woods: A Thriller

    The Woman in the Woods: A Thriller
    The Woman in the Woods: A Thriller

    “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).

  • The Killing Kind: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The Killing Kind: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The Killing Kind: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    Troubled ex-cop turned private investigator Charlie Parker returns in the latest “compulsively readable” (Publishers Weekly) thriller from #1 internationally bestselling author John Connolly. John Connolly takes battered ex-cop Charlie Parker on his third outing after Every Dead Thing and Dark Hollow. Still struggling with the horrific ghosts of his past, Parker is now a disillusioned private eye hired to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Grace Peltier—which neither her father nor a former US Senator believe was suicide. The trail leads to a mass grave in northern Maine where a Baptist community disappeared forty years earlier. The deaths of the Baptists and Grace are connected and point in the direction of a shadowy organization known as the Fellowship. With the assistance of some idiosyncratic and murderous acolytes, Parker soon confronts the Fellowship's demonic leader and finds himself caught in a situation more gruesome than even he could ever have imagined.

  • The Furies: A Thriller

    The Furies: A Thriller
    The Furies: A Thriller

    Chaos and murder arrive in Charlie Parker’s hometown of Portland, Maine, with two connected crimes in the latest novel in #1 nationally bestselling author John Connolly’s “flawless and highly suspenseful” (PopSugar) series. New York Times bestselling author John Connolly pits Parker against two separate—but vitally connected—investigations, which prove to be among the most complicated of his entire career in this “must-read for the author’s fans and a good introduction to the series for newbie” (Booklist). In The Sisters Strange, criminal Raum Buker arrives in Portland, only for a shocking act of theft to threaten not only his own existence but those of his former lovers—the enigmatic sisters Strange. And in the title novel, The Furies, Parker must protect two women under threat as Portland shuts down in the face of a global pandemic. But it may be that those clients are more capable of taking care of themselves than anyone could have imagined.

  • The Whisperers: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The Whisperers: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The Whisperers: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    “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. . . .

  • A Book of Bones: A Thriller

    A Book of Bones: A Thriller
    A Book of Bones: A Thriller

    Private Investigator Charlie Parker returns in this heart-pounding thriller as he seeks revenge against the darkest forces in the world, from “one of the best thriller writers we have” (Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and the internationally bestselling author of the acclaimed The Woman in the Woods. He is our best hope. He is our last hope. He is our only 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. “A seamless, expansive, and chilling blend of police procedural and gothic horror tale” (Kirkus Reviews), A Book of Bones will keep you guessing until the very last page.

  • The White Road: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    The White Road: A Charlie Parker Thriller
    The White Road: A Charlie Parker Thriller

    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.

  • The Dirty South: A Thriller

    The Dirty South: A Thriller
    The Dirty South: A Thriller

    “Mr. Connolly’s slam-bang thriller is studded with memorable characters and boasts cliffhangers within cliffhangers.” —The Wall Street Journal “Brilliant...Connolly is writing at the top of his game.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review 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 1997, 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.

  • The Nameless Ones: A Thriller

    The Nameless Ones: A Thriller
    The Nameless Ones: A Thriller

    “One of the best thriller writers we have.” —Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author From the international and instant New York Times bestselling author of The Dirty South, the white-knuckled Charlie Parker series returns with this heart-pounding race to hunt down the deadliest of war criminals. In Amsterdam, four bodies, violently butchered, are discovered in a canal house, the remains of friends and confidantes of the assassin known only as Louis. The men responsible for the murders are Serbian war criminals. They believe they can escape retribution by retreating to their homeland. They are wrong. For Louis has come to Europe to hunt them down: five killers to be found and punished before they can vanish into thin air. There is just one problem. The sixth. With John Connolly’s trademark “dark, haunting, and beautifully told” (Booklist) prose and breathless twists and turns, The Nameless Ones is an unputdownable thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Author

John Connolly

John Connolly was born in Dublin in 1968. He worked as a bartender, local government official and journalist before publishing his first novel, Every Dead Thing, in 1999. He is the winner of a number of literary prizes for his work, including the Edgar, Shamus and Anthony awards, and a CWA Dagger.

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Reviews for Charlie Parker

Rating: 3.929024787593768 out of 5 stars
4/5

1,733 ratings3 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Charlie Parker series is one of my all-time favorites. I found that the first two books were like many other author's series in that they took a bit of time to get into but were smooth sailing after that.

    If you're new to this series and prefer to read them in chronological or publication order you can get a list for this series and most any other here: https://www.orderofbooks.com/

    It is a free site and I have no affiliation with it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Loved the book! I’ve been a fan of this author for a long time. Plus being from Arkansas, it was a great honor to have him write a damn good novel about it.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great series. Kind of slows as you get into it, but the last few have been good. I love the first few, when you're getting introduced to these characters and phenomenon. It's nice to see them all grow and change. Charlie from the first book to the latest really goes through a lot and how he interacts and talks reflects that. That's something I appreciate from authors that do series.

    1 person found this helpful