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A professor becomes enchanted with a girl who carries a dangerous jinxHistory student Sarah Shepherd does not look like a killer. She is shy, but her writing so impresses Professor David Wakeley that he asks her to become his research assistant. Terrified, she begs him to stay away. For Sarah Shepherd is stalked by death, and the professor could be her next victim. For years, people close to her have died: an office colleague, a coworkers mother, and Sarahs husband, who dropped dead on their wedding day. David doesnt believe her until a few days later, when his parked car rolls down a hill, seemingly under its own power, and kills a stranger. Something is tormenting this young girl, and David suspects it may be her family. To Sarahs relatives, a group of old vaudevillians, deceit and even murder are second nature.

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A millionaire is in danger from his murderous family in this "difficult to put down" tale from the Edgar Awardwinning author (The Boston Globe).

 

Alice Brennan is going to marry a millionaire. She has caught the eye of her boss, Innes Whitlock, but before they can tie the knot she must meet his sisters: three women who are so awful that no amount of money is worth enduring their company. One is blind, one is deaf, one is missing an arm, and they all want their brother dead.


 


The accidents begin as soon as Alice and Innes arrive at the sisters' creaky old Michigan country house. A lamp falls from the ceiling, narrowly missing Innes's head. When he goes for a drive, a detour sign disappears, sending him off the road and nearly killing him. Before the sisters can finish the job, Alice contacts her old history professor, MacDougal Duff, who makes his living solving murders. He is the only one who can save Alice's millionaire from his murderous family.

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Investigating her mysterious birth leads a bright young artist into perilFor a few hours after her birth, Amanda Garth had two fathers. One was John, the kind, forthright man who would raise her. The other was Tobias Garrison, a well-known California artist who, because of a mix-up in the hospitals nursery, briefly thought Amanda was his. The confusion was straightened out, and the misunderstanding is forgotten for twenty-three years, when questions about her birth cause Amanda to approach the Garrisons. This could prove a deadly mistake. Someone in that poisonous family is plotting a murder, and the last thing they want is another heir to the massive Garrison fortune. The quest for truth could mean death for the girl whose birth was shrouded in secrecy.

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MacDougal Duff falls in with a strange familyand senses murderA sudden cloudburst forces MacDougal Duff to stop his car in front of the home of Mary Moriarty. The history professor turned detective is reclining in his seat, waiting out the torrential rainstorm, when Mary knocks on the car window holding a feverish child and jabbering about a dead woman. After years investigating murders, Mac Duff is not fazed by a dead body, but the sick child moves his heart. He speeds to the hospital, and while the doctor is seeing to the child, he asks Mary about the dead woman. Her name was Brownie, Mary says, and she was poisoned. Unable to resist an interesting death, Mac Duff moves in with the family, pretending to be a distant relation. To his delight, he finds a home corrupted by secrets, whose residents do not hesitate to kill.

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This conspiracy thriller from an Edgar Awardwinning author is jet-paced, revved up for action before the first page is flipped over (The Pittsburgh Press). Bernie staggers off the airplane from Honolulu, a lei around his neck and blood seeping from the wound in his chest. He stumbles to the terminal gift shop, and demands the cashier point him to a payphone. As his life seeps away, Bernie calls Harry Fairchild, his old fraternity brother. Dying or not, he has a job to do. Harry is a playboy, the scion of an oil-rich family known throughout California. Bernie was in Honolulu working for Harrys father, and he has a message to give the old man before he expires. Baffled, Harry races to the airport, arriving just as Bernie is being taken to the hospital, where he dies on the operating table. Somehow Harrys father is mixed up in the murder, and Harry is going to find out how, even if it means risking a knife to his own gut.

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In this chilling novel by an Edgar Awardwinning author, a former mental patient seeks revenge against the powerful family that framed him (The New York Times).   After years in a mental hospital, Harold Page has just been released. Now, hes looking for closure, hoping to confront those who put him away: his ex-wifes family. Instead, hes greeted at the Whitman home by a total stranger. But Edie, an empathetic visiting relative, knows all about Harold.   Hes the unfortunate soul the influential Whitman clan had institutionalized after an alleged assault. Hes the madman police are hunting in a recent brutal crime. Hes also an unwitting pawn in a dangerous family plot. Edie is certain of it. And theres only one way she can protect him: Hide Harold in the unused turret room of the Whitman mansion, only a heartbeat away from those who want to destroy him.   As they collude to turn the tables on the family and unveil every secret and lie behind the Whitmans deception, Edie fears the sanctuary shes given Harold could be the ultimate trap for both of them . . .   Chilling . . . beautifully calculated . . . with a nicely adjusted sense of exactly when and how to turn the screw. The New York Times  

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A middle-aged widow makes a new life in a strange apartment houseNona Henrys husband is dead, and with him the life they spent years building in New York City. Unable to bear the Manhattan winter without him, Nona goes west to Pasadena, California, land of sun, sand, and rebirth. She finds a picture postcard advertising a boarding house called Sans Souci and, charmed by the elegant hotels stately patio, makes a one-month reservation. Reality does not live up to the postcard. Sans Souci is dingy, cramped, and dark, a claptrap hotel full of shabby rooms whose windows overlook a run-down neighborhood. But Nona will not give in. Sixteen other widows live in the hotel. Some are lifers, some just passing through. In this eclectic mix of women whose men have gone, Nona finds a niche, and learns that the end of her old life cant stop her from beginning again.

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To catch a murderous theater impresario, a young woman takes a deadly new role in this mystery with suspense enough to spare (The New York Times).   Why did Rosaleen Wright hang herself in a soundproof room? She left an unsigned note, peppered with stiff religious references and no trace of her trademark vitality or wit. The police believe it was suicide, but Rosaleens best friend, Jane, is suspicious. To prove Rosaleen was murdered, she takes a job with the man who killed her.  Luther Grandison, Rosaleens boss, is a New York theatrical impresario with a lethal charm. To the world at large, hes powerful and charismatic, but Rosaleens letters to Jane described a greedy man who stole from his adopted daughter when his bank account ran low. Jane thinks Grandison killed her to protect his secret, but to prove it she will have to face down one of the finest murderers Broadway has ever seen.

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Gen. Douglas MacArthur enlists the help of a discreet private detective in one of the sprightliest of the [Toby Peters] series (Time).   Its September 1942, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur believes hes got what it takes to win the war in the Pacificbut hes got a personal problem to take care of first. An aide has run off with his war chest, his donor list, and a handful of embarrassing private letters: a haul that would make the general a perfect target for blackmail and derail the post-war presidential run hes planning. This is one battle he cant afford to lose.   So the general enlists Det. Toby Peters, who has built a reputation for discretion among Hollywoods elite, not to mention the White House. Forming a surprising alliance with former Pinkerton agent and legendary crime novelist, Dashiell Hammett, Peters follows the trail to Angel Springs, California, and a mysterious millionaire whos definitely no angel. In protecting the general from blackmail, Peters hopes to avoid paying the ultimate price himself.   Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky has a delightfully original mind enrichingrather than just borrowing froman old literary form (Los Angeles Times).

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Winner of the Edgar Award: A letter tips off a Denver narcotics detective to a colossal smuggling ring Once, Denvers small-time pushers sold nothing harder than dime bags of bad California grass. But in the last year, heroin has appeared on the streets of the Mile High City, and the police department has responded by forming a narcotics division. Detective Gabe Wager and his rookie partner spend their nights trailing dealers, making buys, and acquiring informants, in the hope that a small arrest could turn into a major case. After months picking up scraps, a stray piece of information is about to put Wager on to the biggest bust of his career. A letter from the Seattle DEA says that an informant has named Denvers Rare Thing Import Shop as a front for nearly a thousand pounds a week of smuggled marijuana. The case could make Wagers careerif the smugglers dont kill him first.

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Scholar/sleuth Homer Kelly comes to the aid of his artist niece, whos implicated in a death, in this taut, suspenseful, and absorbing whodunit (Kirkus Reviews).  Life has not always been fair to Annie Swann. A bad marriage sullied her youth, but since her divorce she has made enough money illustrating childrens books to add a wing to her house. The new additions focal point will be a thirty-five-foot blank wall, where Annie plans an elaborate mural of the fairy tale characters who pay her bills. But as she paints, mysterious markings appear on the mural: first splotches, then a womans face, ringed with blond hair and covered in blood. It seems to point to the disappearance of Pearl Small, a Harvard student who took classes from Annies aunt Mary. As Mary and her husband, professor and ex-cop Homer Kelly, look for Pearl, Annie continues painting, unaware that with each brushstroke, she marks her wall with another layer of evil.

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An unidentified body points Wager to a radical religious sectA year ago, homicide detective Gabe Wager had a man killed. Though Wager feels no guilt at doing away with an evil man, his partner, Max Axton, is disgusted, and has hardly spoken to him for a year. Now Wager and Axton have to work together to solve a baffling crime that takes them to the border of Coloradoand the limits of human faith. They find the body on Denvers outskirts, stripped of identifying marks and clutching a drawing of a sword-bearing angel. The picture is a clue: the calling card of a boastful killer. It leads Wager and Axton to the states desolate fringe, where a radical Mormon group refuses to follow its church into the modern world, killing to protect their way of life.

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When a stripper is murdered, Gabe Wager turns the red-light district inside outMore than any other establishment on Denvers red-light strip, the Cinnamon Club has taken advantage of the new law allowing all-nude dancing. What was once confined to back rooms now takes center stage, and the activities in the clubs private section grow ever more depraved. Annette Sheldon is the Cinnamon Clubs rising star until her body is found dumped in an alley, eyes pecked out by scavenging magpies. Homicide detective Gabe Wager and his partner pull Annettes husband in for questioning, and though they dont think he killed her, they do think hes lying about something. When a second dancer is murdered, Wager goes undercover on the strip, searching for the man with the violent fetish. The more questions he asks, though, the more he risks becoming the killers next target.

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Now working homicide, Wager lands a gruesome case in the botanic gardenHomicide cops are always suspicious of the drug enforcement division, so when ex-narcotics detective Gabe Wager arrives on the murder squad, his first assignment is the graveyard shift. His new commanding officer hopes that the late shift will keep Wager out of trouble, and give him a chance to learn the byzantine regulations that govern murder investigations. But two days later, a call comes in just after dawn reporting a death at Denvers botanic gardens. Wager could leave it for the morning shift, but he is hungry to prove himself, and legs it over to the scene of the horrid crime. The young womans head has been left inside the gardens, her body nowhere to be found. Without any way of identifying her, Wager is stuck without a lead. But when her torso surfaces in a junkyard, he begins the slow grind of finding the murderer who dismembered this once beautiful model.

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The FBI asks Wager to clean up a mess on an Indian reservationPressure is rising at Colorados Squaw Point Reservation, and the area is about to explode. After a federal agent is murdered and several park rangers are attacked, a mess of federal agencies descends on the area, hopelessly muddying the situation. To put a local face on the investigation, the FBI recruits Denver homicide detective Gabe Wager. When he arrives on the reservation, he finds a local populace thats too frightened to talk to the police. A survivalist militia called the Constitutional Posse has taken control of the area, and threatens harm to anyone stupid enough to question its agenda. When Wager pushes against the Posse, they push back, giving him a savage thrashing. To beat them, hell have to remind the locals that no militia is as terrifying as a determined cop.

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With clever storytelling shifting between past and present, the final Homer Kelly mystery has the scholar/sleuth solving the puzzle of a missing church (Booklist).  Somehow, against all odds, Homer Kelly has become famous. After decades toiling in academic obscurity, the Harvard professor has a book on the bestseller list. To capitalize on his sudden fame, Homers editor demands another book, and fast. Homer is working on Steeplechase, a tour of churches in and around his little patch of Massachusetts, and at his editors request he goes searching for some ancient gossip to spice up his new work. What he finds is a baffling Reconstruction-era mystery. Hot-air balloons, nursery rhymes, and the great chestnut tree in the village of Nashoba all form part of Homers ancestors thrilling story. As the tale shifts between 1868 and the present day, a picture emerges of a small-town Massachusetts thats hardly changed, and a secret which, if it werent for Homer, may have stayed buried for all time.

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To get his agency off the ground, security expert Devlin Kirk takes a dangerous caseSabotage threatens the profits of industrial giant McAllister Enterprises. Twice already, accounting errors have forced the company to drop out of $100 million deals, and both times a competing firm, the Aegis Group, swooped in to take over. The CEO suspects industrial espionage, and the obvious suspect is division director Austin Haas, who declined a job offer from Aegis six months ago but may be working for them from the inside. Before firing Haas, the CEO wants to be sure. In this industry, when you want to be sure, you call Devlin Kirk. Kirk, an ex-Secret Service agent, is struggling to establish his new private security agency. He doesnt like McAllister and he doesnt like the case, but debts are mounting against his small firm, and his client list is too short to say no. When Haas is found shot in an apparent suicide, things move from legal to lethal.

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Prompted by his wife, Mary, Harvard scholar/sleuth Homer Kelly looks into the suspicious death of a folk singer in this enormously appealing mystery (Publishers Weekly). Each year, the beautiful Sarah Bailey marks the winter solstice by organizing a pageant of drama and song for the citizens of Harvard University. Last year, the star of the show was Henry Shady, an Appalachian folk singer whose homespun charm won the eye of every young woman in Cambridge. On the eve of this years Revels, the singer is struck down in the street by an SUV driven by Sarahs husband. The police dismiss it as a freak accident, but Mary Kelly, who witnessed the singers death, is not so sure. Her husband, Harvard professor and sometime sleuth Homer, dismisses her suspicion. But when more of the revelers suffer untimely deaths, Homer sees a pattern. Winter has gripped Cambridge,  and Sarahs husband may have been seized with murderous jealousy.

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The award-winning authors rare gift of genius is on display as her scholar/sleuth investigates a suspicious death from asthma and yellow jackets (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).  John Hand visits the Heron house looking for a summer job. What he finds is a family in mourning. A few minutes after he is hired by Mrs. Heron and her daughter, Virginia, a neighbor, Buddy, finds Mr. Heron lying dead in the orchard, choked to death by asthma and bee stings. As Buddy comforts the grieving family, John feels out of place. But as he begins to suspect that Buddy knows more about Mr. Herons death than hes letting on, he goes to the only person who can help: his uncle, Professor Homer Kelly. After years teaching students about Thoreaus famous sojourn at nearby Walden Pond, the famed transcendentalist scholar feels his memory beginning to slip. But nothing sharpens the mind better than murder, and Homers nephew has stumbled on a fine one.

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A botched coke bust forces Wager to go undercover for the first time in yearsFor six months, the Denver narcotics team and the DEA have built a case against a cocaine-dealing heavy named Farnsworth. When Detective Reitman makes the final buy, he runs a field test to make sure the package of powder hes just purchased is really cocaine. The test is positive, and the bust goes down. Afterwards, the DEAs lab says that Reitman was wronghed just bought two and a half pounds of harmless, legal lactose. The case is thrown out, Reitman is busted down to uniform work, and Gabe Wager has to pick up the pieces. The department asks Detective Wager to go undercover and build a new case against Farnsworth. It has been years since Wager impersonated a drug addict, and undercover works heady mix of lies and fear has ceased to hold any appeal. Reluctantly, he dons his new identity, and hopes that his colleagues screw-up doesnt cost him his life.