A Prey Novel

Latest release: April 9, 2024
Series
34
Audiobooks
9
Special editions

About this audiobook series

The "maddog" murderer who is terrorizing the Twin Cities is two things: insane and extremely intelligent. He kills for the pleasure of it and thoroughly enjoys placing elaborate obstacles to keep police befuddled. Each clever move he makes is another point of pride. But when the brilliant Lieutenant Lucas Davenport--a dedicated cop and a serial killer's worst nightmare--is brought in to take up the investigation, the maddog suddenly has an adversary worthy of his genius.
Rules of Prey
Book 1 · Feb 2013 ·
4.8
The "maddog" murderer who is terrorizing the Twin Cities is two things: insane and extremely intelligent. He kills for the pleasure of it and thoroughly enjoys placing elaborate obstacles to keep police befuddled. Each clever move he makes is another point of pride. But when the brilliant Lieutenant Lucas Davenport--a dedicated cop and a serial killer's worst nightmare--is brought in to take up the investigation, the maddog suddenly has an adversary worthy of his genius.
Shadow Prey
Book 2 · Jun 2012 ·
4.3
New York Times best-selling author John Sandford's Minneapolis police officer Lucas Davenport is an icon of literary suspense the world over. In the series' second entry, Shadow Prey, Native American activists launch a murderous campaign targeting public officials known to have a record of prejudice against Native Americans. Partnering with no-nonsense cop Lily Rothenburg, Davenport is set on the case -- but soon they both drift into the sights of the killers.
Eyes of Prey
Book 3 · Apr 2012 ·
5.0
The "Prey" novels by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist John Sandford consistently make the best-seller lists, but they are not for the faint of heart. Featuring Minneapolis Lieutenant Lucas Davenport, these thrillers are raw, graphic, and impossible to put down. In Eyes of Prey, a depressed and unfocused Davenport takes on a macabre case, tracking down a serial killer who maims the eyes of his victims after he has murdered them.
Silent Prey
Book 4 · Apr 2012 ·
4.6
In Eyes of Prey, Bekker, an insane pathologist who experiments with his patients' pain thresholds, is finally brought down by an unrelenting Lucas Davenport, who brutally maims the doctor's beautiful face but leaves him alive. "You should have killed me," were Bekker's parting and prophetic words. In this sequel to Eyes of Prey, Bekker endures the indignities and horrors of imprisonment, taking comfort in the fact that it is only a matter of time before he will make Lucas Davenport pay.
Winter Prey
Book 5 · Apr 2012 ·
4.8
Few writers have explored the human dark side with as much insight and power-and in Winter Prey, his shattering New York Times best-seller, Sandford tells his most ice-blooded tale of all. Minneapolis Lieutenant Lucas Davenport has tracked killers in cities across America. But even he may be unprepared to face the savage murderer hunting human prey in the Wisconsin woods this winter.
Night Prey
Book 6 · Jul 1994 ·
4.2
John Sandford's bestselling Lucas Davenport series continues with the fast-paced, compelling thriller, Night Prey. A series of deaths leads to the possibility of a brutal serial killer of unusual skill and savagery. And if Lucas is right, the killer is just getting warmed up...
Secret Prey
Book 9 · Oct 2012 ·
4.8
The company chairman lay on the cold ground of the woods, his eyes unseeing, his orange hunting jacket punctured by a rifle bullet at close range. Around him stood the four executives with whom he had been hunting, each with his or her own complicated agenda, each with a reason not to be sorrowful about the man's death. If he read it in a book, Lucas Davenport thought, it would seem like one of those classic murder mysteries, the kind where the detective gathers everyone together at the end and solves the case with a little speech.

But it wasn't going to be that easy, he knew. There were currents running through this group, hints and whispers of something much greater than the murder of a single man. He had felt this way not long before, sensed the curling of an indefinable evil, and not only had it nearly gotten him killed, it had lost him his fiancee, who?d never been able to recover from the violence of the encounter. Sometime soon, unless he could stop it, there would be another death, and then still another, and Davenport couldn't help but wonder if maybe this time, the final death might not be his own. . . .

John Sandford has written extraordinary thrillers before, but nothing to top the startling twists and unrelenting suspense of Secret Prey.

Certain Prey
Book 10 · Oct 2012 ·
5.0
Clara Rinker is twenty-eight, beautiful, charmingly southern—and the best hit woman in the business. She just goes about her business, collects her money, and goes home. Her latest hit sounds simple: a defense attorney wants a rival eliminated. No problem—until a witness survives. Clara usually knows how to deal with loose ends: cut them off, one by one, until they're all gone. This time, there’s one loose end that’s hard to shake.

Lucas Davenport has no idea of the toll this case is about to take on him. Clara knows his weak spots. She knows how to penetrate them, and how to use them. And when a woman like Clara has the advantage, no one is safe.
Easy Prey
Book 11 · Jun 2004 ·
0.0
In life she was a high-profile model. In death she is the focus of a media firestorm that’s demanding action from Lucas Davenport, because one of Davenport's own men is a suspect in her murder. But when a series of bizarre, seemingly unrelated slayings rock the city, Davenport suspects a connection that runs deeper than anyone had imagined—one that leads to an ingenious killer more ruthless than anyone had feared. . . .
Easy Prey
Book 11 · Oct 2012 ·
5.0
In life she was a high-profile model. In death she is the focus of a media firestorm that’s demanding action from Lucas Davenport. One of his own men is a suspect in her murder. But when a series of bizarre, seemingly unrelated slayings rock the city, Davenport suspects a connection that runs deeper than anyone had imagined—one that leads to an ingenious killer more ruthless than anyone had feared....
Chosen Prey
Book 12 · Jun 2004 ·
5.0
A New York Times bestseller!

Lucas Davenport returns in the most harrowing and unexpected Prey novel yet—the story of a congenial man, and his most uncongenial obsession...

Art history professor James Qatar’s hobby was taking secret photographs of women. At night when he was all alone he’d dream about them and indulge his fantasies. Then one day his fantasy went too far. Now it’s Qatar’s turn to become an obsession—of Davenport’s. And for both men there’s no turning back.

Mortal Prey
Book 13 · Jun 2004 ·
4.9
From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author!
 
Years ago, Lucas Davenport almost died at the hands of Clara Rinker, a pleasant, soft-spoken, low-key Southerner, and the best hitwoman in the business. Now retired and living in Mexico, she nearly dies herself when a sniper kills her boyfriend, the son of a local druglord, and while the boy’s father vows vengeance, Rinker knows something he doesn’t: The boy wasn’t the target—she was—and now she is going to have to disappear to find the killer herself. The FBI and DEA draft Davenport to help track her down, and with his fiancée deep in wedding preparations, he’s really just as happy to go, but he has no idea what he’s getting into. For Rinker is as unpredictable as ever, and between her, her old bosses in the St. Louis mob, the Mexican druglord, and the combined, sometimes warring, forces of U.S. law enforcement, this is one case that will get more dangerous as it goes along. And when the crossfire comes, anyone standing in the middle won’t stand a chance. 
 
Filled with the rich characterization and exceptional drama that are his hallmarks, Mortal Prey proves that John Sandford just keeps getting better.
 
“Masterfully paced, absorbing.”—People
Mortal Prey
Book 13 · Jun 2004 ·
0.0
Years ago, Lucas Davenport almost died at the hands of Clara Rinker, a pleasant, soft-spoken, low-key Southerner, and the best hitwoman in the business. Now retired and living in Mexico, she nearly dies herself when a sniper kills her boyfriend, the son of a local druglord, and while the boy's father vows vengeance, Rinker knows something he doesn’t. The boy wasn’t the target. She was, and now she is going to have to disappear to find the killer herself. 
 
The FBI and DEA draft Davenport to help track her down, and with his fiancée deep in wedding preparations, he’s really just as happy to go—but he has no idea what he’s getting into. For Rinker is as unpredictable as ever, and between her, her old bosses in the St. Louis mob, the Mexican druglord, and the combined, sometimes warring, forces of U.S. law enforcement, this is one case that will get more dangerous as it goes along. And when the crossfire comes, anyone standing in the middle won’t stand a chance.

Filled with the rich characterization and exceptional drama that are his hallmarks, Mortal Prey proves that John Sandford just keeps getting better.
 
“Sandford’s eye for the tell-all character quirk remains finely tuned, as does his deadpan humor, rivaled by few in the crime-drama ranks.”—Publishers Weekly
Naked Prey
Book 14 · Oct 2012 ·
5.0
In Naked Prey, John Sandford puts Lucas Davenport through some changes. His old boss, Rose Marie Roux, has moved up to the state level and taken Lucas with her, creating a special troubleshooter job for him for the cases that are too complicated or politically touchy for others to handle. In addition, Lucas is now married and a new father, both of which are fine with him: he doesn't mind being a family man. But he is a little worried. For every bit of peace you get, you have to pay—and he's waiting for the bill.

It comes in the form of two people found hanging from a tree in the woods of northern Minnesota. What makes it particularly sensitive is that the bodies are of a black man and a white woman, and they're naked. "Lynching" is the word that everybody's trying not to say—but, as Lucas begins to discover, in fact the murders are not what they appear to be, and they are not the end of the story. There is worse to come—much, much worse.

Filled with the rich characterization and exceptional drama that are his hallmarks, this is Sandford's most suspenseful novel yet.

Hidden Prey
Book 15 · Oct 2012 ·
5.0
Six months ago, Lucas Davenport tackled his first case as a statewide troubleshooter, and he thought that one was plenty strange enough. But that was before the Russian got killed. On the shore of Lake Superior, a man named Vladimir Oleshev is found shot dead, three holes in his head and heart, and though nobody knows why he was killed, everybody - the local cops, the FBI, and the Russians themselves - has a theory. And when it turns out he had very high government connections, that's when it hits the fan." A Russian cop flies in from Moscow, Davenport flies in from Minneapolis, law enforcement and press types swarm the crime scene - and, in the middle of it all, there is another murder. Is there a relationship between the two? What is the Russian cop hiding from Davenport? Is she - yes, it's a woman - a cop at all? Why was the man shot with ... fifty-year-old bullets? Before he can find the answers, Davenport will have to follow a trail back to another place, another time, and battle the shadows he discovers there - shadows that turn out to be both very real and very deadly.
Broken Prey
Book 16 · Feb 2005 ·
5.0
Lucas Davenport confronts a living nightmare, in one of the scariest Prey novels yet from the number-one bestselling author. The "Big Three" are a trio of inmates locked up in the Minnesota Security Hospital over the years, each a particularly vicious serial killer, each with his own distinct style and propensities. Everybody feels much safer knowing that they're behind bars. Except . . . there's a new killer on the loose. And his handiwork bears a disturbing resemblance to some of the finer points practiced by the Big Three, details that never even made the papers. Davenport and his team quickly home in on a possible suspect, a man named Charlie Pope, who was released from the same hospital prison a few weeks earlier, and who now seems to have cut himself free from his court-imposed ankle bracelet and disappeared. But is he really the one? And why do the Big Three look so agitated? Brilliantly suspenseful, consistently surprising-once again, Sandford has outdone himself.""
Invisible Prey
Book 17 · May 2007 ·
4.6
Lucas Davenport returns in one of the most startling Prey novels yet from the number-one-bestselling author.
Phantom Prey
Book 18 · May 2008 ·
4.7
“Chalk up another winner for [John Sandford] and his all-too-human hero” (Richmond Times-Dispatch) in the #1 New York Times bestselling Prey series.
After one troubled college-age student disappears and two are found slashed to death, Lucas Davenport finds himself hunting what appears to be a modern-day Jack the Ripper. Unfortunately the clues aren’t adding up—and then there’s the young Goth girl who keeps appearing and disappearing. Where does she come from? Where does she go every night? And why does Lucas keep getting the sneaking suspicion that there is something else going on here? Something very bad, very dark, and as elusive as a phantom…
Wicked Prey
Book 19 · May 2009 ·
4.7
For twenty years, John Sandford's novels have been beloved for their "ingenious plots, vivid characters, crisp dialogue and endless surprises" (The Washington Post), and nowhere are those more in evidence than in the sudden twists and shocks of Wicked Prey.Out of Lucas Davenport's past comes a psycho nursing a violent grudge. But why go after Davenport for revenge when Davenport's young daughter is so close-and so vulnerable?
Storm Prey
Book 20 · May 2010 ·
5.0
Abridged CDs, 5 CDs, 6 hours

Read by Richard Ferrone

The brilliant new Lucas Davenport thriller from the #1 New York Times-bestselling author.
Secret Prey
Book 1 · Jun 2004 ·
4.7
A wealthy banker is dead, shot once in the chest during a hunting trip. There are many reasons for him to be killed, and many people who would do the deed. But who did? Lucas Davenport has an idea. But this routine murder investigation is about to turn into something different. A cat-and-mouse game with a killer who does not hesitate to take the fight to Lucas himself. And those he loves. . . .
Certain Prey
Book 2 · Jun 2004 ·
4.5
Clara Rinker is twenty-eight, beautiful, charmingly southern—and the best hit woman in the business. She just goes about her business, collects her money, and goes home. Her latest hit sounds simple: a defense attorney wants a rival eliminated. No problem—until a witness survives. Clara usually knows how to deal with loose ends: cut them off, one by one, until they're all gone. This time, there’s one loose end that’s hard to shake.

Lucas Davenport has no idea of the toll this case is about to take on him. Clara knows his weak spots. She knows how to penetrate them, and how to use them. And when a woman like Clara has the advantage, no one is safe.
Chosen Prey
Book 3 · Jun 2004 ·
4.7
A New York Times bestseller!

Lucas Davenport returns in the most harrowing and unexpected Prey novel yet—the story of a congenial man, and his most uncongenial obsession...

Art history professor James Qatar’s hobby was taking secret photographs of women. At night when he was all alone he’d dream about them and indulge his fantasies. Then one day his fantasy went too far. Now it’s Qatar’s turn to become an obsession—of Davenport’s. And for both men there’s no turning back.

Hidden Prey
Book 4 · Apr 2005 ·
4.5
Six months ago, Lucas Davenport tackled his first case as a statewide troubleshooter, and he thought that one was plenty strange enough. But that was before the Russian got killed. On the shore of Lake Superior, a man named Vladimir Oleshev is found shot dead, three holes in his head and heart, and though nobody knows why he was killed, everybody - the local cops, the FBI, and the Russians themselves - has a theory. And when it turns out he had very high government connections, that's when it hits the fan." A Russian cop flies in from Moscow, Davenport flies in from Minneapolis, law enforcement and press types swarm the crime scene - and, in the middle of it all, there is another murder. Is there a relationship between the two? What is the Russian cop hiding from Davenport? Is she - yes, it's a woman - a cop at all? Why was the man shot with ... fifty-year-old bullets? Before he can find the answers, Davenport will have to follow a trail back to another place, another time, and battle the shadows he discovers there - shadows that turn out to be both very real and very deadly.
Broken Prey
Book 5 · Feb 2005 ·
4.6
Lucas Davenport confronts a living nightmare, in one of the scariest Prey novels yet from the number-one bestselling author. The "Big Three" are a trio of inmates locked up in the Minnesota Security Hospital over the years, each a particularly vicious serial killer, each with his own distinct style and propensities. Everybody feels much safer knowing that they're behind bars. Except . . . there's a new killer on the loose. And his handiwork bears a disturbing resemblance to some of the finer points practiced by the Big Three, details that never even made the papers. Davenport and his team quickly home in on a possible suspect, a man named Charlie Pope, who was released from the same hospital prison a few weeks earlier, and who now seems to have cut himself free from his court-imposed ankle bracelet and disappeared. But is he really the one? And why do the Big Three look so agitated? Brilliantly suspenseful, consistently surprising-once again, Sandford has outdone himself.""
Invisible Prey
Book 6 · May 2007 ·
4.8
“A crackling addition to [the] Prey series” (Entertainment Weekly) from #1 New York Times bestselling author John Sandford.

In a wealthy Minneapolis neighborhood, two elderly women are bludgeoned to death. They are apparent victims of a random robbery, though nothing of value appears to have been stolen. But when Lucas Davenport looks deeper, he fears that the victims weren’t so random, and the items stolen were far from invaluable.

As a pattern emerges it leads Lucas to…certainly not where he expected. Which is too bad, because the killers are expecting him. And that’s only the first surprise…
Phantom Prey
Book 7 · May 2008 ·
5.0
“Chalk up another winner for [John Sandford] and his all-too-human hero” (Richmond Times-Dispatch) in the #1 New York Times bestselling Prey series.
After one troubled college-age student disappears and two are found slashed to death, Lucas Davenport finds himself hunting what appears to be a modern-day Jack the Ripper. Unfortunately the clues aren’t adding up—and then there’s the young Goth girl who keeps appearing and disappearing. Where does she come from? Where does she go every night? And why does Lucas keep getting the sneaking suspicion that there is something else going on here? Something very bad, very dark, and as elusive as a phantom…
Wicked Prey
Book 8 · May 2009 ·
5.0
Abridged CDs * 5 CDs, 6 hours

Danger stalks Lucas Davenport at work and all too close to home, in the superlative new thriller by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author.
Storm Prey
Book 9 · May 2010 ·
4.8
The brilliant new Lucas Davenport thriller from the #1 New York Times best-selling author.

"Sandford's track record as a best-selling author is amazing, but it's not an accident," wrote Booklist of Wicked Prey. "His plotting is sharp, his villains are extraordinarily layered, and his good guys are always evolving.

And this time, there's a storm brewing...Very early, 4:45, on a bitterly cold Minnesota morning, three big men burst through the door of a hospital pharmacy, duct-tape the hands, feet, mouth, and eyes of two pharmacy workers, and clean the place out. But then things swiftly go bad, one of the workers dies, and the robbers hustle out to their truck-and find themselves for just one second face-to-face with a blond woman in the garage: Weather Karkinnen, surgeon, wife of an investigator named Lucas Davenport.

Did she see enough? Can she identify them? Gnawing it over later, it seems to them there is only one thing they can do: Find out who she is, and eliminate the only possible witness...

Latest releases

Toxic Prey
John Sandford
Book 34•Mystery & thrillers
4.8
$22.50$14.95