From the Back Cover: Mary Daheim’s bestselling novels, set in Alpine, a picturesque village tucked away in the Cascade Mountains, have charmed a generation of mystery lovers with suspenseful tales of the peril that bubbles up from below the serene surface of small-town life.

An ill wind blows through Alpine, but Advocate publisher Emma Lord and Sheriff Milo Dodge seem immune to the prevailing angst. The newlyweds’ domestic idyll is most definitely over when a dead man is discovered near the fish hatchery and nobody has a clue as to his identity. Vida Runkel may have insight, but Emma’s redoubtable House & Home editor is mad at the world and saying little. Moreover, whispers of scandal travel through the quaint streets when some high school girls mysteriously take a walk on the wild side. And then Milo’s dedicated deputy, Sam Heppner, a true yeoman, suddenly goes AWOL.

What’s happening in Alpine? If Milo knows, he’s not telling Emma. And Emma’s again headed for trouble when she starts snooping. The situation grows even more fraught when a shocking link is revealed between the mystery corpse and one of Alpine’s own, unearthing a long-buried dark secret. Tongues are wagging on Front Street—and the gossip contains an air of menace. Meanwhile, Mary Daheim has written her best book yet.

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About the Author: Mary Richardson Daheim started spinning stories before she could spell. Daheim has been a journalist, an editor, a public relations consultant, and a freelance writer, but fiction was always her medium of choice. In 1982, she launched a career that is now distinguished by sixty novels. In 2000, she won the Literary Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. In October 2008, she was inducted into the University of Washington’s Communication Alumni Hall of Fame. Daheim lives in her hometown of Seattle and is a direct descendant of former residents of the real Alpine, which existed as a logging town from 1910 to 1929, when it was abandoned after the mill was closed. The Alpine/Emma Lord series has created interest in the site, which was named a Washington State ghost town in July 2011. An organization called the Alpine Advocates has been formed to preserve what remains of the town as a historic site.

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By the Same Author: The Alpine Menace (2000, Fawcett).

A mystery set in Seattle, Washington. As Darcy and her fiance, Mick, are preparing for their wedding, their planning and their lives are interrupted when a good friend mysteriously disappears. Soon, Darcy finds herself in Seattle immersed in the world of domestic partners, alternative reproductive technology, and social bigotry. A shocking child abduction and two murders leave authorities with few clues, as Darcy tries to help and becomes a victim herself.

From the Dust Jacket: An anonymous tip about a crime in Upper Manhattan proves to be a setup. An officer is taken down—and, despite the attackers’ efforts, it’s not Michael Bennett.

New York’s top cop is not the only one at risk. One of Bennett’s children sustains a mysterious injury. And a series of murders follows, each with a distinct signature, alerting Bennett to the presence of a professional killer with a flair for disguise.

Bennett taps his best investigators and sources, and they fan out across the five boroughs. But the leads they’re chasing turn out to be phantoms. The assassin takes advantage of the chaos, enticing an officer into compromising Bennett, then luring another member of Bennett’s family into grave danger.

Michael Bennett can’t tell what's driving the assassin. But he can tell it’s personal and that it’s part of something huge. Through twist after twist, he fights to understand exactly how he fits into the killer’s plan, before he becomes the ultimate victim.

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About the Author: James Patterson received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Laterary Community at the 2015 National Book Awards. He holds the Guinness World Record for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers, and his books have sold more than 350 million copies worldwide.

James O. Born is an award-winning crime and science fiction novelist as well as a career law-enforcement agent. A native Floridian, he still lives in the Sunshine State.

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By the Same Author: Michael Bennett Series: Step on a Crack (with Michael Ledwidge) (2007); Run for Your Life (with Michael Ledwidge) (2009); Worst Case (with Michael Ledwidge) (2010); Tick Tock (with Michael Ledwidge) (2011); I, Michael Bennett (with Michael Ledwidge) (2012); Gone (with Michael Ledwidge) (2013); Burn (with Michael Ledwidge) (2014); Alert (with Michael Ledwidge) (2015); Bullseye (with Michael Ledwidge) (2016); Haunted (2017); Blindside (2020); The Russian (2021); and Shattered (2022).

Other titles featuring Michael Bennett: Chase (with Michael Ledwidge) (2016) and Manhunt (2017).

Other Books by James Patterson: Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar (with Lisa Papademetriou; 2013); Private L.A. (with Mark Sullivan; 2014); and Private India (with Ashwin Sanghi; 2014), among many, many others.

Hank Hyer is a hard boiled detective who adopted a little girl refugee from Spanish civil war.

From the Dust Jacket: Jake Carlson, a correspondent for the TV news show American Outrage, inhabits a world of sensational trials and crazed celebrities. One of the nation’s top television journalists, he’s used to dragging himself through the dirt to get to the truth. When his adopted son, Sam, asks him to use his muckraking talents to find his birth mother, Jake is stunned by the ugly secrets he unearths: an international crime syndicate, a horrifying child trafficking ring, and a corrupt politician, the patriarch of an old New York financial dynasty.

Initially galvanized by a career-making exclusive, Jake—and his son—are soon the victims of brutal violence and the targets of Jake’s fellow reporters, who dog them for their story. Concerned for the survival of his family, Jake realizes some sins of the past should never be uncovered...

Filled with an insider’s knowledge of tabloid news and the experience of an adopted son seeking his biological parents, American Outrage proves to be Tim Green’s best, most personal thriller yet.

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About the Author: Tim Green is the bestselling author of eleven previous thrillers and two works of nonfiction, including the New York Times bestseller The Dark Side of the Game. After playing eight years in the NFL and becoming a lawyer, he worked as a featured commentator on A Current Affair, Good Morning America, NPR, and FOX Sports. Tim lives with his family in upstate New York.

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By the Same Author: A Man and His Mother: An Adopted Son’s Search (1997, Regan Books) and Pinch Hit (2012, Harper).

FBI Agent Audra Wheeler has been haunted for the last thirteen years by a paranormal attack that left her sister, Kendra, in a coma. Mentored by FBI Assistant Director Jonathan Cordero to investigate crimes committed by specters, Audra believes she is on the trail of a “serial killer” specter with a MO very similar to her sister’s attacker. The investigation takes her to a small town of Specter, Georgia; a haven for ghosts who exist among the living.

From the Publisher: When an arsonist destroys her Cincinnati home, Kit Blume loses everything. All that remain are her annoying neighbor, a cryptic letter from her father, and the disturbing flashbacks and nightmares about her childhood that involve a killer with a gun. Determined to reveal the truth about her life prior to adoption, Kit discovers that some memories should be left in the dark. She joins forces with residents of the economically blighted town of Moose Creek, Minnesota, to unearth the truth about her past and her link to a fire that destroyed an inn decades ago. The harder Kit presses to uncover the facts, the closer the killer moves to silence her and the people who want to help her.

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About the Author: Knowing that survivors of trauma and abuse often feel broken beyond repair, Cheryl Denton encourages and inspires readers through her mystery, humor, and self-help books. She often creates characters with underlying mental health problems who find a way to rise above life’s challenges. Early in her career, she served as a teacher with neglected and abused children, using her writing skills to develop intervention programs for them. Working as a magazine and book editor provided her with more valuable experience, which she brings to her current writing. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, as well as the University of Central Florida, and holds BA and MA degrees in education. The wife of a hospital chaplain, she has served as a Stephen Minister, worship leader, and women’s ministry facilitator. When she is not writing, she is motivating audiences by sharing how her faith helped her to overcome the pain of her past.

From the Dust Jacket: Attorney Seymour Lipp had noticed the teenage girl wheeling a baby carriage along the promenade in Brooklyn Heights several times. But when Tricia Morrissey finally approaches Seymour, it is with an empty baby carriage and a plea for help. Tricia’s father, Paul, persuaded her to give up her baby for adoption weeks ago, and Tricia has now changed her mind.

When Seymour meets with Paul Morrissey, he discovers that getting Tricia’s baby back won’t be easy. Morrissey arranged the adoption through a lawyer with dubious connections, giving custody of his grandchild to Jack Lowry, a reclusive Vietnam vet, and his wife, Rachel. Soon Morrissey is found murdered. Have Seymour’s inquiries pushed Lowry, never very stable, over the edge? With the help of his girlfriend, Rosalie, who’s yearning to start a brood of her own, Seymour begins to probe into the legality of the adoption. Before long, however, other motives for murder emerge. Despite rumors that he was approaching insolvency, Paul Morrissey was a prosperous developer with a sizeable estate to leave either to Tricia or the middle-aged woman with whom he was for many years in love. Tricia claims that she wants to marry her baby’s father, a construction worker named Tom, and settle down. But what about Tom—could he have sought a quick means of getting access to his future father-in-law’s estate?

Seymour’s search for the truth sets him looking for a homeless street saxophonist whom he thinks he saw entering Morrissey’s office building the day he was killed, and finally back to Morrissey’s office itself, where he discovers a clue in a most unusual place.

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About the Author: Stephen Lewis teaches English at Suffolk Community College in New York. And Baby Makes None is his second novel for Walker, following The Monkey Rope, which also features attorney Seymour Lipp. Dr. Lewis lives in Centereach, New York, with his wife and daughter.

Once again in the Camilla Swenson amateur-sleuth series, Camilla ventures deeply into another one of her special crusades. But this time it’s for one of her welfare clients who is alive and needs her help in a different way. Jackie Graham ends up missing when Camilla stops by Jackie’s apartment during one of her surprise visits to see how the new single mother is doing with her infant son, Cooper. Camilla, the quintessential social worker, had expected the call to be routine. It turns out to be anything but, when the downstairs neighbor informs her that Jackie was last seen leaving her third-floor apartment with a man who was carrying Cooper. Now what’s that all about? Camilla has to backtrack to find out the why, the where and the who about Jackie and this mystery man who carried her son out of the apartment building. She starts with Jackie’s mother and sister, who think the man is Mitch Wellesley, the putative father of Cooper. So, there is a connection between the man and Jackie’s sudden exit with him and her son. The story is off and running when Camilla gets a phone call from Jackie. She reports that she’s out of town somewhere, but doesn’t know exactly where. Mitch has been vague about telling her exactly where, as if she doesn’t really need to know. What’s that all about? Jackie gives Camilla certain sign landmarks seen during the automobile ride to their destination. The names help Camilla get an idea of the general area where Mitch is keeping Jackie and Cooper. Jackie now realizes Mitch has conned her into going with him and she is now his prisoner, of sorts. He’s informed her about his gambling debt to some dangerous people. It means he needs a cash bonanza to bail him out—and soon—in the person of Cooper who’s worth thousands of dollars in the illegal adoption business. Jackie can’t believe it. She’s desperate for help to save her from losing Cooper and getting free of Mitch. Camilla assures her that she’s not alone. Camilla assures Jackie that she will do what’s necessary to rescue her and Cooper. Camilla is the bulldog type, because when she latches onto a cause, she never lets go until its mission accomplished. And let the humanitarian crusade begin, with help from Camilla’s live-in lover Hatchley “Hatch” Gerard Flambeau II, late of New Orleans. He may be undersized, but he’s got an arsenal of weapons that would impress an army ranger or a navy seal. And when Camilla asks for his help, he can’t say no. Hey, they’re a team in every way, and this caper with its Christian overtones of helping your neighbor in need, is too essential to ignore. It’s Camilla and Hatch to the rescue.

From the Back Cover: Eleven-year-old Lauren O’Neil vanished one sunny afternoon as she walked home from school. Six years later, her parents Rachel and Dan still tirelessly scour their Oregon hometown and beyond, always believing Lauren will be found. Then one day, the call comes.

Lauren has been rescued from a secluded farm mere miles away, and her abductor has confessed. Yet her return is nothing like Rachel imagined. Though the revelations about what Lauren endured are shocking, most heartbreaking of all is to see the bright-eyed, assertive daughter she knew transformed into a wary, polite stranger.

Lauren’s first instinct is to flee. For years she’s been told her parents forgot her; now she doubts the pieces of her life can ever fit together again. But Rachel refuses to lose her a second time. Little by little they must relearn what it means to be a family, trusting that their bond is strong enough to guide them back to each other.

Intensely moving and absorbing, this is an extraordinary story told with sensitivity and grace, and filled with the depth and breadth of a mother’s love.

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About the Author: Rosalind Noonan grew up in suburban Maryland and enjoyed being part of a large family. “With my four siblings, Saturday mornings were a blast,” she says. “There was festival seating on the living room floor where we tuned into cartoons and passed the Sugar Pops.”

She graduated from Wagner College in Staten Island and continued to live in New York City for twenty-five years. She currently lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she writes in the shade of two-hundred-year-old Douglas firs.

From the Dust Jacket: Barbara was bright, beautiful, strangely naïve—and thirty-one years younger than Andrew Pailles. She intrigued him as no other woman ever had, certainly not his first wife, who had helped him make his vast fortune.

Barbara and Andrew were married for three idyllic years when Andrew suffered the heart attack which left him a pale shadow of the active, virile man he had been. He seemed uncaring, disinterested, almost hostile to both Barbara and his adopted son, Claude. His body had stopped living ... but his mind had never been so sharp, so cunning, so obsessed with the planning of a deadly act.

From the Dust Jacket (U.S. edition): To the reader a little wearied by his travels through today’s world of realistic and hard-boiled books The Angelic Avengers seems to offer the solace of a cool spring in a breathless wood. Its exquisite style, its strange, slanting beauty of phrase, the Victorian primness of its beginning—these all say, “Reader, here you may rest a while.” Rest, yes, but do not allow yourself to be lulled out of watchfulness or you may be very badly frightened indeed.

In the romantic opening chapters two lovely, warm-hearted, and innocent young girls are discovered against the background of Jane Austen’s nineteenth-century England, that wealthy and fashionable England which now it takes something of a magic touch to evoke. You are irresistibly drawn to these artless heroines; you want them to be happy; they are so charming and so innocent. But as you fall more and more in love with them there suddenly appear premonitions of danger, and with surpassing skill the story changes from swift-flowing romance to a tale of terror and horror worthy of Poe.

The ultimate triumph of virtue and dignity, the overthrow of one of the most murderously evil forces in literature, make this an enthralling and satisfying tale. Yet only thinly veiled beneath its perfect style and its author’s pseudonym there is a symbolism that has already sounded like a trumpet call to all oppressed peoples. It is a bold and noble condemnation of those enemies of the world’s spirit who, though smoothly plausible at first, turned out to be the very embodiment of evil.

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About the Author: Pierre Andrézel, whose name appears on this novel, is described as a young Frenchman, born in Rouen 1915, and educated at Oxford where he wrote stories for English magazines.

His original publication of The Angelic Avengers in Copenhagen in 1944 may be explained by the state of France at that time, and the less oppressive conditions of the Danes, whom the British Prime Minister dubbed “the Gangster’s Canary Birds.” The use of this phrase in the book can hardly fail to be an allusion, and may have a certain significance, although it would be an error to regard the book as in any serious way allegorical. Pierre Andrézel has not been heard of since the appearance of his novel in Denmark.

The setting of The Angelic Avengers is England and France 1840-41, when a romantic school of fiction still carried on something of the flamboyance and mystery of the Gothic Revival.

Thirteen-year-old Anthony Wolff recalls the fear that paralyzed his prosperous, postwar prairie town after the savage murder of two boys. When Anthony’s parents hurry their son away to the safety of a Quaker boarding school, he meets Steve Booth, an inquisitive fifteen-year-old who stumbles on a connection between the murders and an illustrious alumnus of the school. By term’s end, Anthony has become known to the killer.

From the Back Cover: Three unlikely events explode thrusting young lawyer Jennifer Lane into a roller coaster ride filled with breathtaking success and deep secrets she’d rather not know.

Bio-Medical researcher Gilbert Irwin is killed when his car is forced off the Sunshine Skyway Bridge by an unidentified driver in a dark blue Jaguar. Ronald and Lila Walden’s daughter disappears from her Tampa apartment. Jenny Lane is mysteriously plucked from obscurity for the case of a lifetime when she’s hired to get back a stolen drug formula worth billions.

Jenny falls into a disastrous romance with dangerously handsome Blake Denton, the stolen formula owner’s nephew and heir. A bewildering maze of betrayal, intrigue, and murder, put Jenny’s license to practice law, her heart, and her very life on the line.

Can Jenny find the stolen cure for a deadly disease, save her career, her lover, and herself before it’s too late?

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About the Author: Diane Capri is a lawyer and multi-published author. She’s a snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers and is hard at work on her next novel.

Dublin, Ireland, summer 2013. It’s the middle of a heatwave, and things are heating up for Moss Reid. He’s the kind of downscale private eye who likes to have the right priorities in life: eat, drink and investigate—in that order. But the Stoneybatter sleuth has way too much on his plate this week: an adoption trace, a missing person, a couple of cheating spouses, a series of thefts at a top Dublin restaurant, and someone has nicked his laptop. So what’s he doing sitting in an interrogation room, being grilled (and boiled and finely diced) by the Murder Squad? Another Case in Cowtown is the first in Irish writer Mel Healy’s series about Moss Reid, the gastronomic detective whose main patch is Dublin’s urban village of Stoneybatter.

From the Dust Jacket: The prospects for the 1907 archaeological season in Egypt seem fairly dull to Amelia Peabody. Despite her adored husband’s brilliant reputation in his field, his dashing-yet-less-than-diplomatic behavior has Professor Radcliffe Emerson ignominiously demoted to examining only the most boring tombs in the Valley of the Kings—mere leftovers, really. All the Peabody Emersons profess stiff upper lips and intend to make the best of a bad situation, but this year the legendary land of the pharoahs will yield more than priceless artifacts for the Emerson expedition. For the desert guards even deeper mysteries that are wrapped in greed—and sealed by murder.

In a seedy section of Cairo, the youngest members of the expedition purchase a mint-condition papyrus of the famed Book of the Dead, the collection of magical spells and prayers designed to ward off the perils of the underworld and lead the deceased into everlasting life. But for as long as there have been graves, there have also been grave robbers—as well as those who believe tomb violators risk the wrath of gods like Thoth, the little baboon who protects the scales used to weigh such precious commodities as hearts and souls.

Besides facing the ire of ancient deities, their adventure into antiquity also puts Amelia and company in the sights of Sethos, the charismatically compelling but elusive Master Criminal whose bold villainies have defied the authorities in several countries. In truth, Amelia needn’t have worried: this season is about to turn from dull to deadly. Soon, she will need all her remarkable skills of detection and deduction to untangle a web woven of criminals and cults, stolen treasures and fallen women—all the while under the unblinking eye of a ruthless, remorseless killer.

With this captivating tale, Elizabeth Peters once again demonstrates the brilliance and wit that have ensured her place in the exclusive pantheon of America’s greatest mystery novelists.

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About the Author: Elizabeth Peters was born and brought up in Illinois, and earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago’s famed Oriental Institute. An Agatha Award-winning author, Ms. Peters was named Grandmaster in the inaugural Anthony Awards in 1986, and the Mystery Writers of America named her Grandmaster at the 1998 Edgar Awards. A frequent lecturer at museums and libraries, she lives in an historic farmhouse in Frederick, Maryland, with six cats and two dogs.

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By the Same Author: The Sea King’s Daughter (writing as Barbara Michaels) (1975, Dodd, Mead); Search the Shadows (writing as Barbara Michaels) (1987, Atheneum); The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog (1992, Warner); The Hippopotamus Pool (1996, Warner); The Falcon at the Portal (1999); He Shall Thunder in the Sky (2000, Morrow); Lord of the Silent (2001, Morrow); The Golden One (2002, Morrow); Children of the Storm (2003, Morrow); Guardian of the Horizon (2004, Morrow); The Serpent on the Crown (2005, Morrow); Tomb of the Golden Bird (2006, Morrow); A River in the Sky (2010, Morrow); ​and The Painted Queen (2017, Morrow), among many others.

When the Everests, a wealthy American couple, decide to have their children conceived and raised to a specified age at Parenting4U in Manila, a terrifying chain of events occurs that will haunt them forever. Twenty-seven years later a young, handsome, blue-eyed Afghan man named Sami is in New York on important business. Suddenly he is diverted by his business partner to Geneva, because something momentous has been discovered. Sami finds the revelations earth-shattering. But more importantly, his life is now in grave danger as his old foes resurface and are determined to finish the job they began years ago. It is also curious that a beautiful, married Arab princess, with whom Sami once had a passionate romance, is in New York, looking for him ... with a gun in her handbag. In this imaginative thriller, greed, religion, and sex are all interwoven with murder and retribution.

Out-of-work architect Nick Fellows never suspects a job interview will lead to a fight for his life. It begins when he receives an email he discovers is encoded with numerological numbers, sent to him from a mysterious company named Atlantis Revisited. Against his better judgment, he accepts an interview with them in a park in Manhattan. He’s met by their strikingly beautiful recruiter, Lisa, who’s only allowed to tell him that the company’s primary focus is civilization building ... and that their last architect was murdered. Immediately following the interview both of their lives are put in danger. But what could the company possibly be building, and who wants them dead because of it? The only thing Nick and Lisa know for sure is that they need to get to a place called Aquarius and Aquarius is rising.

From the Dust Jacket: West Crosse, educated at Yale, member of the ultra-elite Order of Skull and Bones, is a stunningly brilliant, strikingly handsome architect with a love of ideal beauty and a commitment to achieving it at any cost. But his clients don’t know his dark side: Crosse can’t stop at designing their dwellings. He needs to make their lives more perfect too, even if it means reshaping the structure of their families, even if the final designs take years to achieve—murdering an abusive spouse, a toxic lover, a predatory business partner, or an unwanted child.

As Crosse is about to embark on the masterwork of his creative life, the FBI puts forensic psychiatrist Dr. Frank Clevenger on the case, and the ultimate cat-and-mouse game begins. Clevenger’s investigation will lead him toward still-open murder cases around the nation, into the darkest corners of a madman’s soul, and face-to-face with his own demons.

Passion, political intrigue, and psychopathic acts combine into the perfect storm in The Architect, Keith Ablow’s most gripping novel to date—an unforgettable tour de force that takes readers inside the mind of a masterful serial killer.

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About the Author: Keith Ablow, like his protagonist, is a forensic psychiatrist who has testified in some of the nation’s most highly publicized trials. He has written five other Frank Clevenger novels, Denial, Projection, Compulsion, Psychopath, and Murder Suicide. Ablow lives in Massachusetts.

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By the Same Author: Compulsion (2002); Psychopath (2003); Murder Suicide (2004).

From the Dust Jacket: Consider Ariel Jardell, an adopted twelve-year-old girl driven by jealousy—her mother thinks—and by forces far more bizarre—as you will discern—to a precocious excursion into evil from mere mischief to malevolence beyond compare...

Haunting as The Turn of the Screw, chilling as The Bad Seed, Ariel spins a complex web of demonic circumstance with a fascinating, terrifying child at its center, giving new definition to the age-old conflict of good and evil, sane and insane.

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About the Author: Lawrence Block is the author of numerous novels, including The Sins of the Fathers, Time to Murder and Create and most recently, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling. He is a contributing editor of Writer’s Digest. The father of three daughters, he makes his home in New York City.

Lacy Dahl never questioned her past until the deaths of her adoptive parents and her husband. A husband who wasn’t what he seemed. Her research uncovers secrets about the mother she never knew; secrets that dispute the identity of her father and threaten her life. Sheriff Chance Meadowlark is still haunted by the murder of his wife and the revenge he unleashed in the name of justice. When he meets Lacy he is determined not to become involved, but their pasts may make that impossible. As they move closer to the truth, saving Lacy may be his only salvation. Lacy begins to think the present is more important than her past ... until Chance’s connection to her mother and a murder spin her deeper into danger and further from love. Will the truth destroy Lacy and Chance or will it be the answer that frees them?

From the Dust Jacket: The victims are all found face-down in the murky waters of the creek that runs through Cherokee Pointe, Tennessee. They are naked, except for the black satin ribbon tied around their necks. And each murdered woman shares a single characteristic ... they are all redheads...

Socialite Reve Sorrell has come to Cherokee Pointe seeking answers about her family history and her shocking connection to wrong-side-of-the-tracks Jazzy Talbot. With their stunning good looks and shining red hair, the two are mirror images of each other-twins abandoned at birth and raised in very different worlds. And whoever left them for dead on a cold night thirty years ago isn’t about to let them uncover the truth now...

As a serial killer leaves another chilling calling card in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, Reve turns to Sheriff Jacob Butler to help her unravel the potentially deadly secrets of her past. But someone will do anything to stop her ... someone who won’t make the same mistake twice ... someone more cunning than she knows ... and closer than she ever could imagine...

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About the Author: USA Today bestselling author Beverly Barton has written over thirty contemporary romance novels and created the popular “The Protectors” series for Silhouette’s Intimate Moments line. This sixth-generation Alabamian is a two-time Maggie Award winner, a two-time National Reader’s Choice Award winner, and a recipient of a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Series Romantic Adventure. She is currently working on her next novel of romantic suspense for Zebra Books.

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By the Same Author: Out of Danger (1991, Silhouette Books); After Dark (2000); and Every Move She Makes (2001), among many others.

Austin struggles to control the telekinetic and telepathic abilities of the beast in his mind. Having watched his abusive father murder his mother, he struggles for a normal life, something others simply will not let him have. When pushed too far, his abilities are uncaged and justice is served without mercy.

From the Back Cover: Tracy wanted nothing more than to live the life she had always dreamed of. She thought that all of her dreams would come true, but that dream faded on the day she went back to show her family her childhood home. With her past unfolding right before her very eyes, she found herself caught between being the loving wife and mother or taking back what was not others to take. Tracy lived for her children and husband and went out of her way to make sure that they were all happy, but deep down inside she wanted nothing more than to see the ones that had done her wrong pay the ultimate price. In the end, Tracy found herself wanting to prove that she was willing to die to ensure that she was not going to leave this world until they felt the pain and the suffering that they had inflicted on her for all those years.

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About the Author: Cher’elle D. Plummer is a loving wife and mother who worked full time to make her dream a reality. Cher’elle takes pride in all that she does and those who know her will agree. She was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and still lives in southern Ontario. Cher’elle has had to overcome many bumps in the road to get to where she is today but at the end of the day she has proven not only to herself but to her children that dreams can and do come true if you are willing to fight for what you truly believe in. Her only wish was to be a strong female role model not only for her family but others as well. Cher’elle also thinks that it is important that women show the world that they too can be creative when it comes to writing thrillers.

Mary Nell Floyd received an unexpected challenge when a box of yellowed typewritten pages is delivered to her. By trying to “set things right” she gets the opportunity to solve an old mystery and learn more about herself in the process. The people of this little town will capture your imagination. From the five-year-old tap dancer to the retired bull-riding cowboy and the clumsy teenager in love, you’ll find someone to like in Blue Fork, Arkansas. Sit down with these folks at Betty’s Main Street Café and eavesdrop on The Ladies who know and talk about everything that happens in town including all the scandals real or imagined.

From the Publisher: Adoption attorney/country club tennis pro, Toby Dillon, is hired by a wealthy and powerful couple being blackmailed over the illegal adoption of their daughter sixteen years ago. No one—not even their own daughter—knows the truth... except the birth mother. But Toby’s search for her leads only to dead bodies, one of them almost his own, as he learns there may be more buried secrets than even his clients know—secrets people are killing to keep. Combining compassionate characters, wry humor, romance and a shocking triple-twist ending, Hicks has produced another great mystery, told at a thriller’s pace.

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About the Author: Randall Hicks is a practicing California adoption attorney, and the author of several highly acclaimed non-fiction adoption books: Adopting in America and Adoption Stories for Young Children. He was the host of the PBS series, Adoption Forum, and has been featured on countless national TV and radio shows as an adoption expert. His victories in courts as high as the U.S. Supreme Court have created laws protecting the rights of adoptive parents and children. Baby Crimes is the second book in the Toby Dillon series.

From the Back Cover: Something is very wrong in the town of Shelter, Kentucky.

Deep in the hills of Appalachia, someone is stealing babies. Without a trace or a reasonable explanation, pregnant women are disappearing, targeted for the precious commodity they carry.

Emma Weston is a modern midwife in the tradition-bound town. Raised in Shelter, she understands the women she’s trying to help. And when her best friend seems involved and her own sister becomes endangered, Emma is determined to reveal the truth.

There’s only one man she can trust. Though their views of modern medicine clash, Griff Cusak, the new town doctor, and Emma share one thing: a deep sympathy for their patients. Battling resistance from a town locked in the past and an increasing danger from an unknown enemy, the two stumble into a dark world of terror in an effort to expose ... the baby farm.

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About the Author: Karen Harper is the author of bestselling historical romances written under her own name, Karen Harper, and her pseudonym—Caryn Cameron. Karen has recently added gripping contemporary romantic suspense novels to her list of writing credits. This popular author is a former high school and college English teacher who, much to the joy of her fans, now writes full-time. She divides her time between Ohio and Florida and, with her husband, enjoys traveling and tracing family genealogy. Karen also plays the piano and keeps in shape the traditional Scottish way—with Highland dancing.

How much is a baby worth? Career politician Vann Willis is on track to find out when a blast rips through her electoral office. Her Inquiry into forced adoptions and surrogacy stirs up bad blood and uncovers crooked deals. To get to the truth she forms an unlikely partnership with journalist Seth VerBeek. Together, they explore the seamy side of Maidenhead, a gothic homestead that was once a country hideaway for pregnant teenagers. Now, enclosed in an electrified fence, it has become an enterprise that is far more sinister. For Vann and Seth each step unleashes a new challenge. Dark secrets emerge. Threats are made on Vann’s life. One relationship ends while another blossoms. At the heart of the mystery is the baby farm.

From the Dust Jacket: It had once been a cattle farm in a barren, dusty corner of rural Texas where its owner, Herb Huston, lived a quiet life with his wife ... until a fire destroyed house and barn ... and her.

Then Huston met another woman—Hester—and his life, and the lives of dozens of young girls, would never be the same. His ranch was back in business, only this time the product wasn’t cattle ... it was human livestock!

Babies!

Huston and his mistress knew that the highways of Texas were home to countless runaway teenagers. It didn’t take much to get the girls to the farm ... smooth talk and the promise of food and shelter did the trick. And if those techniques didn’t work, force did!

Once at the baby farm, each girl was confined to a crib-like cell and impregnated by Hustor, sometimes willingly on her part, usually by rape on his. Then, for the next nine months they were under Hester’s watchful eye, jailed like criminals until they gave birth. For Huston had learned that babies were a viable commodity on the market. He would sell the babies, give the mothers a small piece of the money received and send them on their way, sworn to secrecy and unaware of the location in which they had lived for nine months or longer.

Fred Raven and Leroy Higgins were New York City detectives who had worked many cases together. Because of an unfortunate blunder in shaking down the wrong pimp, Raven found himself suspended from the force. With Higgins’s help he became a private investigator, working for a wealthy industrialist whose daughter had given birth to his only grandchild—on the baby farm. And Raven was instructed to find the baby and return it to its grandfather.

An almost impossible assignment, but too lucrative to dismiss. Raven’s adventures on his journey from the streets of Manhattan across the country to the back roads of Texas are the backdrop for this realistic, chilling and wildly thrilling novel. It is packed with the same kind of salty incidents and characters which made Mike Lundy’s first novel, Raven, so dramatically gripping and entertaining.

Baby Farm, with its non-stop action, will please Raven fans and enlist new admirers among those meeting him for the first time.

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About the Author: Mike Lundy is a former New York City detective who, for obvious reasons, must write under a pseudonym. His first novel was an instant success, introducing the most gutsy and engaging character in recent fiction: Fred Raven.

From the Dust Jacket: New attorney Toby Dillon takes little in life seriously, except his tennis game. He’s a graduate of UCLA. The only problem is his UCLA stands for Uncle Charlie’s Law Academy. Maybe that explains why Toby’s office is the former storage room of a country club’s Pro Shop, which Toby barters for serving as the Assistant Tennis Pro. At least he owns a tie, even if it is a clip-on.

But beneath Toby’s wry view of life, and despite his attempts to hide it, is someone who truly likes to help people—so his legal specialty of adoptions serves him perfectly. His idyllic life changes, however, when his two best childhood friends, Brogan and Rita, now filmdom’s newest glamour couple, turn to Toby for help to adopt a baby. Although initially the adoption is the media’s feel good story of the year and Toby basks in his temporary fame, things change quickly when the baby is kidnapped.

When the expected ransom demand never arrives and the police turn up nothing, Toby, Brogan and Rita are left to try to find answers on their own. Initially, they think the baby’s birth mother is responsible, but suddenly she’s missing too, and their other suspects start turning up dead. They soon learn there’s more at stake than a kidnapping, and the answers may trace back to the childhood they shared, putting friendships—and lives—at risk.

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About the Author: Randall Hicks is a practicing California adoption attorney, and the author of several highly acclaimed non-fiction adoption books: Adopting in America and Adoption Stories for Young Children. He was the host of the PBS series, Adoption Forum, and has been featured on countless national TV and radio shows as an adoption expert. His victories in courts as high as the U.S. Supreme Court have created laws protecting the rights of adoptive parents and children. The Baby Game is his first novel. He is working on the second book in the Toby Dillon series, Baby Crimes.