From the Dust Jacket: Tempted by the idea of domesticity and motherhood despite strong misgivings about giving up her career as a detective, Norah Mulcahaney desperately longs for a child. But adoption seems the only solution for Norah and her husband, Lieutenant Joe Capretto of the New York Police Department, when Norah is unable to become pregnant. Starting adoption proceedings herself while Joe investigates ominous rumblings in the underworld, Norah is stymied by a maze of bureaucratic red tape.

But social worker Janet Price’s casual mention of private adoption raises Norah’s hopes while she stifles her skepticism about these often unethical “baby mills.” Certainly Norah’s sudden opportunity to adopt three-year-old Mark through an unexpected source appears to be a godsend—until brutal murder and an anonymous caller threaten to expose the illegality of Mark’s adoption.

From the Back Cover: Everybody liked Esperanza ...

... her neighbors, her teenaged friend Graciela, the doctor at the fertility clinic where she had worked. Everybody but the person who beat and strangled her and tossed her body off the ocean bluff like so much garbage.

Port Silva chief of police Vince Gutierrez, struggling to keep his rain-weary and economically depressed town from crumbling into chaos, at first suspects Espy’s death is another in a recent string of domestic crimes, and sets up a search for her missing husband and children. Then Graciela, sixteen years old and pregnant, disappears....

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About the Author: Janet LaPierre came to northern California from the Midwest via Arizona, and knew that she was home. After raising two daughters in Berkeley, LaPierre and her husband began to explore the quiet places north of the Bay Area: the Mendocino area, the Lost Coast, Trinity County. Often working on a laptop computer in a twenty-five-foot travel trailer in the company of a yellow Labrador named Emmitt Smith, LaPierre has tried to give her award-nominated mystery novels a strong sense of these far-from-the-city places.

When inner city school teacher Terri Davies’ star pupil is left home alone, she’s reluctant to alert the authorities and the messy bureaucratic nightmare it entails. Instead she turns to her sister, Detective India Kane, to quietly locate the missing single mother. It doesn’t take long—India finds her sectioned in a psychiatric hospital, making wild claims her new born baby was stolen by a leading paediatrician. With no record of a baby ever being born, are her claims the ramblings of a mentally disturbed mind, or, does the baby really exist, as Terri insists? And if he does, where is he? Under pressure from her sister with reminders of her own haunted past, India sets out to find the truth. As head of the Met’s Paedophile Unit, Detective Chief Inspector AJ Colt has seen it all. But even he isn’t prepared for what his team encounters during a raid on a Hollywood heart-throb’s London home. With an elite predatory paedophile ring at large, the last thing he needs is for young girls to start disappearing from Social Services care. When the same names start cropping up in both their investigations—Kane and Colt’s cases become entwined, plunging them deep into the secretive world of the Family Court system, an institution whose secrets some will kill to keep. When it comes to children, who can you really trust?

From the Publisher: As a thirty-two-year-old, single restaurant manager, Jenna McClure is all too aware of her ticking biological clock. Elizabeth Demauer, a fertility clinic doctor, helps her patients bear children—a joy she can never share. But these two women have more in common than just a yearning for motherhood. When they cross paths, Elizabeth sees not only the sister she never knew existed but the once-in-a-lifetime chance to realize her deepest desire ... by any means necessary. Together with her lover—a rogue physician and charismatic cult leader—Elizabeth masterminds the ultimate theft. But their carefully laid plans could be derailed by Eric Troutman, the heroic reporter who’s fallen in love with Jenna and will stop at nothing to solve her sudden disappearance. And the more his relentless investigation tightens the noose around Elizabeth and David, the more their “victimless crime” threatens to become anything but.

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About the Author: L.J. Sellers writes the bestselling Detective Jackson mystery/thriller series—a Readers Favorite award winner—as well as provocative standalone thrillers. Her novels have been highly praised by Mystery Scene, Crimespree, and RT Reviews, and her Jackson books are Kindle bestsellers as well as top-ranked novels.

L.J., who resides in Eugene, Oregon where her novels are set, is also an award-winning journalist who earned the Grand Neal. When not plotting murders, she enjoys standup comedy, cycling, social networking, and attending mystery conferences. She’s also been known to jump out of airplanes.

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By the Same Author: Thrilled to Death (2010), among others.

From the Publisher: What does unconditional love mean?

Baby’s Breath is a groundbreaking novel about a mother-daughter relationship shattered by a crime so horrific that even in our jaded culture few speak of it without an involuntary shudder. None of us thinks it could happen in our family. Leah Pacey, however, is not allowed the luxury of such denial. For her, the only notion more unthinkable than Alyssa’s act is that of abandoning her daughter.

Leah’s search for understanding is as halting as our own. She persists only because she must.

As we all must.

Baby’s Breath is an unprecedented story of human suffering and human redemption. Sometimes art takes us where we have not imagined, where we do not go of our own accord, and in doing so becomes an instrument of social change. In this meticulously researched work, Hugo and Villegas patiently open our hearts to see beyond the surface of one girl, beyond the surface of sensational headlines. Important literature is rarely easy and this novel is no exception.

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About the Author: Lynne Hugo and Anna Tuttle Villegas first collaborated on the novel Swimming Lessons, which was published before they had their first face-to-face meeting. While they were writing it—collaborating by fax, phone and e-mail—the two mothers of college-age children became concerned about the increasing number of news accounts about hidden pregnancies and left-to-die newborns and the then-absence of attempts to understand the phenomenon of neonaticide. That concern led to Baby’s Breath.

Hugo is also the author of two collections of poetry, has received fellowships in poetry and prose from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Ohio Arts Council, and is with the latter’s Artists in Education program. A resident of Ohio, she is a licensed psychotherapist and former clinical director of a residential treatment center for adolescents.

Villegas’ debut novel, All We Know of Heaven, was published in 1997 and translated into 10 languages. Her essays, poems and short stories have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies. A fifth-generation Californian, she lives in the Central Valley and has taught college and university English for the past 25 years.

Struggling with its past, Cape Town is a city of shifting allegiances. A place where children go missing and remain gone. Law and order is an interesting concept in the Mother City but not a helpful one. Living on the edge emotionally, rogue investigator Ray Blessing must face her own tragedy as she searches for six missing children, hoping to find part of herself in the process.

From the Dust Jacket: The year is 1979. Maggie Ryan, the feisty, independent sometime-sleuth who appears seven previous crime novels by P.M.Carlson, is brought face-to-face with a long-buried secret that she must try to keep in the dark as she brings a killer to light.

Maggie Ryan is a statistician and mother, married to an often out-of-work actor named Nick O’Connor. Coming home from work one autumn day, they find on their doorstep a troubled and angry runaway teenager. The girl is wanted for questioning about the murder of John Spencer, a widower popular with the bridge-playing ladies of the local church.

Disguised as a reporter, Maggie plunges into the underside of the teenager’s outwardly placid Washington, D.C., suburban home and uncovers drug abuse, blackmail, fraud, dark family secrets, and fierce family attachments that finally add up to the vicious murder of a polite, well-liked old gentleman.

With a twisty plot, and insightful probing of the social and family conflicts of the ’70s, Bad Blood continues the high standards of excellence of a series that has become famous for its engaging, perceptive female sleuth.

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About the Author: P.M. Carlson earned a Ph.D. in the psychology of language. Like her heroine Maggie Ryan, she combined motherhood and statistics, co-authoring a textbook called Behavioral Statistics while raising two children. Carlson’s mysteries have been selected for the Drood Review Editor’s Choice list and as finalists for the Macavity, Agatha, and Anthony Awards. Her previous Maggie Ryan mysteries include the highly acclaimed Murder Unrenovated, Murder in the Dog Days, and Murder Misread.

From the Back Cover: Meet Kit Finnegan, crime reporter on a remote island in Southeast Alaska. Someone has attacked Kit’s best friend. Kit is going after them, and they, in turn, are coming after her. She’s ferociously determined, fond of danger, and on a losing streak with love.

Meet Doug Quinn. Hired by a renowned energy scientist to do an unusual job, he arrives on this remote island to learn his new boss has disappeared. Quinn is a big, calm, capable man, except when it comes to matters of the heart. Then he has trouble seeing straight.

When they realize they’re after the same bad guys, Kit and Quinn team up. But instead of helping, their alliance backfires. The bad guys are on the brink of escape, and innocent lives hang in the balance. Can Kit and Quinn quit fighting long enough to stop them?

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About the Author: Carole Gibb (née Healy) has been a staff writer for the Juneau Empire, an editor with Alaska’s state wildlife bureau, and has contributed essays to the public radio program AK. Her articles have also appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Today’s Chicago Woman, and the Washington Post.

Gibb has also authored a memoir, Fishing for Courage: Mishaps and Magic on Alaska’s Outer Coast, detailing her time on an isolated Alaskan island, where she copes with a number of unusual challenges.

She is presently at work on her next book.

From the Back Cover: When a blood spattered Mercedes belonging to the daughter of a prominent psychologist is found abandoned, there are few clues to her whereabouts but a million dollars’ worth of reasons why someone might want her dead.

Confronted with a list of suspects—a philandering boyfriend with a checkered past, the victim’s estranged sister who has a penchant for mysteries and drugs, an angry man whose adopted Colombian son committed suicide, and a shady lawyer who cant be trusted—Santana’s search for answers leads him to the photo of a mysterious woman who may hold the key to solving the crime. But to find her he must return to Colombia and face the ghosts of his past and the man who has vowed to kill him.

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About the Author: Christopher Valen is the award-winning author of three novels featuring Homicide Detective John Santana, He lives in Minnesota with is wife, Martha.

From the Dust Jacket: Philadelphia police detectives Kevin Birne and Jessica Balzano are working a new beat: the Special Investigations Unit, aka the cold case squad. Ironic, given that it’s the height of a blazing hot August. But even these hardened homicide veterans are chilled to the bone as a dormant murder case stirs to life leading Birne and Balzano into the dark heart of their city, their souls. and a psyche of pure evil.

Months before, a teenage runaway’s body was found in the desolate, dangerous North Philly district dubbed the Badlands. Dead runaways were no novelty on these mean streets, but the Caitlin O’Riordan case was different. Her corpse was found in the basement of a rancid tenement apartment, the inexplicable cause of death: drowning. In the end, nothing was solved and the case was closed.

Now a confession to the bizarre murder on the police tipline sends Byrne and Balzano rushing to make an arrest. But instead of a killer, they discover a ghastly scene: a jar containing human remains along with a cryptic clue leading to an unlikely witness. Laura Somerville lives far from the squalor of the Badlands, and seemingly light-years from any connection to a murdered runaway. But moments after discussing the case with this elegant lady, Byrne and Balzano make another grisly discovery, and find an enigmatic word spelled out in Scrabble tiles.

Across town, another victim’s shallow grave reveals deeper mysteries. Her secret diaries portray a woman haunted by a shocking past and obsessed with finding a depraved killer.

Now, as the body count grows, a terrifying design literally takes shape. Pieces of a gruesome puzzle are being set into place by the cruel hands of a madman using the city as his game board. His playthings are the innocent, and his opponents—and pawns—are Byrne and Balzano, who must, before time runs out, decipher the truth about a shadowy house of horrors and its elusive master.

Acclaimed author Richard Montanari works his black magic to spine-tingling perfection in Badlands, conjuring all the relentless suspense, dark twists of intrigue, and full-throttle action that make his brilliant, engrossing novels required reading for thriller fans.

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About the Author: Richard Montanari is a novelist, screenwriter, and essayist. His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and scores of other national and regional publications. He is the OLMA-winning author of the internationally acclaimed thrillers Merciless, The Skin Gods, The Rosary Girls, Kiss of Evil, Deviant Way, and The Violet Hour.

From the Dust Jacket: At the Beechy Grove Mennonite Church’s annual pancake breakfast, Minerva J. Jay, known for her prodigious appetite, slumps over dead after ingesting stacks and stacks of hotcakes. Police Chief Chris Ackerman wonders whether the serving of the fatal flapjacks is a case of assault and batter. Magdalena has her own bun in the oven, but that doesn’t stop the chief from asking for her help with the investigation.

Before Magdalena can begin, however, she has to make a special delivery of her own....

But being a new mother doesn’t mean Magdalena is going to quit her sleuthing—and it won’t stop her from grilling the members of the Men’s Club, who organized the breakfast as a fund-raiser. And just when she thinks she’s found her number-one suspect, he turns up dead, squished flatter than a pancake by a driverless cement truck. Now, to stop the killer from cooking up another crime, Magdalena has no choice but to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

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About the Author: Tamar Myers, who is of Amish background, is the author of the Pennsylvania Dutch mysteries and the Den of Antiquity series. She lives in North Carolina with her husband.

When his father plays the sax, he blows crowds away. But when Dorsey Duquesne picks up a guitar, he simply blows. Though he’s a wealthy software entrepreneur, music just isn’t in his blood—and neither is his father’s DNA. When his neurotic, overprotective mother Cherry reveals (at his father’s funeral, of all places) he was adopted at birth, suddenly Dorsey’s tin ear makes sense. But it also leaves the 40-year-old questioning his identity. Emotionally adrift, he hires a one-eyed strip-mall detective, hoping the missing pieces will lead him to the peace he’s been missing. Meanwhile, Cherry, along with Dorsey’s wife and best friend, are colluding to keep him from finding the long-buried truth about his “adoption.” A yellowed, anonymous letter leads the vulnerable Dorsey to a dusty vineyard in the Black Forest—and straight to a jitterbugging, strudel-baking redhead named Mitzi, who claims to be his birth mother. Employing a well-rehearsed charm, she slowly wins him over—and away from his family. While in Germany, and with the help of the axe-wielding village night watchman, Dorsey does some long-overdue growing up. But will his eyes open in time to see his new “mom” has a darker agenda? And will he realize the true definition of family before it’s too late? Battle Axe is an offbeat, suspenseful novel in the tradition of Janet Evanovich and Carl Hiaasen that places quirky, flawed characters in unwelcome situations. Adopted or “normal,” readers will find something to relate to and someone to root for.

From the Dust Jacket: Throughout his years with the LAPD, Peter Decker has handled a number of tough cases and strange killers. But few of his previous assignments compare to his latest case—the most bizarre of his storied career.

When Hobart Penny is found dead in his apartment, the cops think that his pet cat—an adult female tiger—attacked the reclusive elderly billionaire. But it soon becomes clear that the beast that killed the eccentric inventor is all too human. Digging into the victim’s life, Decker and his colleagues, Detectives Marge Dunn and Scott Oliver, discover that Penny was an exceptionally peculiar man with exotic tastes, including kinky sex with call girls.

Following a trail of clues that leads from a wildlife sanctuary in the San Bernardino Mountains to the wild nightlife of Las Vegas, the LAPD detectives are left juggling too many suspects and too few answers. To break open a case involving the two most primal instincts—sex and murder—Decker wrestles with a difficult choice. Should he turn to a man with expert knowledge of both, Chris Donatti, the dangerous man who also happens to be the father of Decker’s foster son, Gabriel Whitman, a boy not without his own problems?

As their work and intimate worlds collide, Decker and his wife, Rina, find themselves facing tough questions. It just might be that family crises and work-related responsibilities prove too much for Decker’s career. A confluence of ordeals can stress even the most intact of families. And when all these shocking truths come out, exactly how well will Decker and Rina cope, and will they survive?

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About the Author: Faye Kellerman lives with her husband, New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Kellerman, in Los Angeles, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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By the Same Author: The Ritual Bath (1986); Sacred and Profane (1987); Milk and Honey (1990); Day of Atonement (1991); False Prophet (1992); Grievous Sin (1993); Sanctuary (1994); Justice (1995); Prayers for the Dead (1996); Serpent’s Tooth (1997); Jupiter’s Bones (1999); Stalker (2000); The Forgotten (2001); Stone Kiss (2002); Street Dreams (2003); The Burnt House (2007); The Mercedes Coffin (2008); Blindman’s Bluff (2009); Hangman (2010); Gun Games (2012); Murder 101 (2014); The Theory of Death (2015); Bone Box (2017); Walking Shadows (2018); The Lost Boys (2021); and The Hunt (2022).

Beautiful Evil Winter is about an international adoption in one of the most dangerous countries in the world. When Sophia and her husband Ethan set off to Russia to adopt a baby boy, little do they realize they are headed straight into the open arms of the Mafia. To make matters worse, an untrained, inexperienced adoption coordinator orchestrates the effort to complete the task and keep the American couple safe as they deal with ironfisted syndicate control of orphaned children. Beautiful Evil Winter is a modern-day odyssey about the human capacity for hope, the traumas that shape our lives, and the hardship we’ll endure for love. What will devoted parents do for their child? Anything.

From the Dust Jacket: If Ridley Jones had slept ten mutes later or had taken the subway instead of waiting for a cab, she would still be living the beautiful lie she used to call her life. She would still be the privileged daughter of a doting father and a loving mother. Her life would still be perfect—with only the tiny cracks of an angry junkie for a brother and a charming drunk with shady underworld connections for an uncle to mar the otherwise flawless whole.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, those inconsequential decisions lead her to perform a good deed that puts her in the right place at the right time to unleash a chain of events that brings a mysterious package to her door—a package which informs her that her entire world is a lie.

Suddenly forced to question everything she knows about herself and her family, Ridley wanders into dark territory she never knew existed, where everyone in her life seems like a stranger. She has no idea who’s on her side and who has something to hide—even, and maybe especially, her new lover, Jake, who appears to have secrets of his own.

Sexy and fast-paced, Beautiful Lies is a true literary thriller with one of the freshest voices and heroines to arrive in years. Lisa Unger takes us on a breathtaking ride in which every choice Ridley makes creates a whirlwind of consequences that are impossible to imagine ...

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About the Author: Lisa Unger lives in Florida with her husband and is at work on her next novel.

This story, whose title is taken from a line in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, won the 1991 Best Novella Award from the Horror Writers of America. It tells the story of a man who, after his parents are both killed in a horrific automobile crash caused by a drunk driver, discovers surrender papers for two children, executed one week before his own birth, by a woman whose name he does not recognize, in a town in California, among the papers of his dead father who, like himself, was a lawyer. Not being able to imagine why his father would keep such a document among his personal papers in a safe deposit box, he asks the obvious question: Am I adopted? Against the advice of his family, he seeks the answer to this troubling question, and finds something even more horrible than he could ever have imagined.

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About the Author: David Morrell was born in Canada. He is a former Professor of American Literature at the University of Iowa. He now lives in Santa Fe, NM. Mr. Morrell is a multiple bestselling author, with over fifteen million copies of his books in print, translated into 22 languages. His novels include First Blood (basis for the Sylvester Stallone action movie Rambo), Testament and Blood Oath, and, more recently, Extreme Denial and Double Image. In the Foreword to his collection of short stories, Black Evening, David Morrell wrote that his fiction often reveals his inmost fears: “... I grew up with a morbid fear of war, that economic necessity [which] forced my mother to put me in an orphanage for a time, [and] I could never be sure whether the woman who reclaimed me was the same person who had given me up.”

From the Publisher: After Greer Cannon discovers that shoplifting can be a sport and sex can be a superpower, her parents pack her up and send her off to McCracken Hill-a cloistered academy for troubled teens. At McCracken, Greer chafes under the elaborate systems and self-help lingo of therapeutic education. Then Greer meets Addison Bradley. A handsome, charismatic local, Addison seems almost as devoted to Greer as he is to the 12 steps. When he introduces Greer to his mentor Joshua, she finds herself captivated by the older man’s calm wisdom. Finally, Greer feels understood.

But Greer starts to question: Where has Joshua come from? What does he want in return for his guidance? The more she digs, the more his lies are exposed. When Joshua’s influence over Addison edges them all closer to danger, Greer decides to confront them both. Suddenly, she finds herself on the outside of Joshua’s circle. And swiftly, she discovers it’s not safe there.

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About the Author: Eireann Corrigan is the author of the poetry memoir You Remind Me of You, and the novels Splintering, Ordinary Ghosts, and Accomplice, which Publishers Weekly called “haunting and provocative” in a starred review. She lives in New Jersey.

After being married for six years, Gwen and Lucas DeStefano are dealing with the pain of a childless marriage and trying to trust God for their future. On a weekend getaway to the Poconos, they attempt to relax and renew their marriage, but witness an event that turns their lives upside down. They see a body dump in the woods while they are on a hike and their lives become entangled in a web of suspense and God’s ultimate blessing in the form of a little baby girl, named Bella Lucia. Will Gwen learn to trust God with childlike faith and wholeheartedly accept His plan? Det. Marc Abrams is assigned to the murder investigation of Sabrina Reysen and he will do whatever it takes to find her killer. He has his suspicions and is pleasantly surprised when he meets Samantha “Sam” Collins, the attractive US Marshall assigned to protect one of the witnesses in this case. Will Det. Abrams find the killer before it’s too late and is the attraction between him and Sam strong enough to survive?

From the Dust Jacket: In Palermo the Luciano family gather at the magnificent Villa Revira to celebrate the marriage of the Don’s granddaughter. The wedding will coincide with the opening of the biggest Mafia trial in history. More than five hundred criminals have been arrested, and scrawled on the jail house walls are the words MAFIOSO FINITO.

The narcotics dealer Paul Carolla, Luciano’s long time adversary is captured in his mountain hideout. Witness after witness disappears, statements are withdrawn, and Carolla is confident he will never be charged, until he discovers the main witness for the prosecution is Don Roberto Luciano.

If Don Roberto takes the stand, Paul Carolla will never be released. Luciano is breaking Mafia law, committing the sin of Omerta and he must be held up as an example, a warning to any member who dares go against the organization.

The nightmare retaliation begins, and the Luciano family pay a terrible price. To destroy the head of the family is not enough. Don Roberto Luciano, his three sons, his two grandsons, and his nephew are murdered.

Five widows are all that remain of the formidable Luciano clan. They represent no threat and are helpless to stop the blatant looting and destruction of their inheritance...

Five pampered women, protected and excluded from the violent nature of their husband’s “profession,” are finally encouraged by Graziella, Mama Luciano, to fight back. They begin the awesome task of regaining their inheritance from the most dangerous Mafioso in the world.

Graziella, Rosa, Teresa, Moyra and the beautiful Sophia Luciano become the Bella Mafia, unwittingly bringing into their lives a professional killer, whose thirst for revenge, whose psychotic madness and tragedy is heartbreakingly linked to their own.

Once the revenge has begun it is terrifying and it is unstoppable...

Bella Mafia is a sensational thriller, enthralling adventure, romance and brutal violence combined. It is Lynda La Plante’s masterpiece.

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About the Author: Lynda La Plante was born in Liverpool in 1946. She trained for the stage at RADA and work with the National Theatre and RSC company led to a career as a television actress. She turned to writing—the phenomenally successful TV series Widows was her breakthrough. The Legacy, her first novel, was an international bestseller.

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By the Same Author: Entwined (1992).

From the Publisher: Adopted as a small child, Willow Malone has spent a lifetime battling the unknown. When she finds out she is pregnant, she can’t deny the curiosity she has about her childhood—about her biological parents and where she came from. With the help of her fiancé, Detective Trace McCall, she begins a trip back in time in search of the answers that she can no longer live without. What she doesn’t realize is that a sleeping monster lies in wait. And the minute she starts getting answers to her questions, that monster is awakened. Thirty-one years ago, a small community was put through a night of terror. Unbeknownst to her, Willow was at the center of that terror. Time has not healed and evil hearts have not forgotten. Soon, rather than Willow being the searcher, she becomes the searched. Terror fills her nightmares and her reality, and eventually she finds herself in a fight just to stay alive.

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About the Author: Jennifer Hayden lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and their beloved English Bulldog. Mystery/Suspense with a twist of Romance has always been her writing passion. She currently has 54 books available including the bestselling Seattle and Portland 911 series, as well as The Callahans, Hide and Seek and The Meadows.

From the Dust Jacket: It is a chance encounter with an unknown and drunk American in a restaurant in Mexico City that results in young, British-born Steven Rutland meeting Dolores Sanchez-Mejia and being witness shortly afterwards to a brutal murder. It is their common interest in the pre-Colombian civilisation known as Chintu-Huachi—Steven has just done a television programme on it—that makes her take him to visit her adopted parents, Pablo and Denise d’Alcala, in their palatial villa at Cuernavaca. By this time Steven, charming, amoral, on the make, has fallen in love.

Who are these d’Alcalas? How are they so rich? Gradually some of their life’s pattern is revealed to Steven by Pablo’s elder son Marcel. They are members of a syndicate engaged in smuggling Chintu-Huachi figures from the South American country of Caragua to New York. The rewards are very great but the penalty for being caught is death at the hands of the Caraguense authorities. Head of the syndicate is the mysterious Benjamin Seven, whom no one has ever seen. Pablo d’Alcala is his chief lieutenant.

Would Steven like to join the syndicate, which also includes Marcel and Dolores? He accepts, and adopts a life of crime. What this involves Mr. Kerr reveals in a story of increasing pace, excitement and ingenuity. Robbery, violence, blackmail and a finale in which virtue is far from triumphant are among the ingredients; and Mr. Kerr’s plot involves the sinister South American Indian Juan, Pablo’s bodyguard and strong-arm man, a leading Hungarian archaeologist, a mad impresario, a gay pianist, while Steven’s torrid love affair with Dolores is played out against the backgrounds of New York, Mexico, Caragua and Buenos Aires.

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About the Author: Michael Kerr was born in Trinidad and educated at Uppingham School and later in Paris. He had been a theatre designer and has worked widely in television, including six years in New York. He is at present a writer and producer for television in London.

From the Back Cover: Darcy Campbell might have expected life in a small Oklahoma town nestled in the beautiful Ozark foothills to be as idyllic as the scenery. That, however, is not what she finds when she returns to her hometown of Levi after the death of her husband.

One autumn morning, Darcy and her mother, Flora Tucker, are enjoying a cup of coffee in their hundred-year old farmhouse when Darcy gets an urgent telephone call. The contractor who is digging the foundation for their new home insists that Darcy drop everything and come to the building site as quickly as she can. He has found a mysterious object deep in a hand-dug well and he needs Darcy’s help in retrieving it.

The ancient, crumbling package pulled from the well contains two items that are as shocking as they are inscrutable. In trying to decipher the meaning of these long-buried objects, Darcy and Flora discover a dark secret from their family’s past.

A kidnapping, a brush with death, and a stranger’s greed add to the mix. The era of World War I becomes enmeshed with the present day as Darcy and Flora unravel a tangled web of deceit that has ensnared their family.

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About the Author: In her previous life, Blanche Day Manos was a kindergarten teacher, part-time writer of feature stories for a newspaper, and writer of stories and poems for children’s and Christian magazines. Now, she lives in a bustling Arkansas town near her family. In between writing books, she enjoys painting and playing the piano.

Blanche specializes in clean mysteries that have middle-aged women protagonists with a tendency to become involved in strange and mysterious happenings in their hometowns.

From the Dust Jacket: Kyle Malachi, better known by his mystery critic pseudonym of Stokes Moran, is enjoying a quiet evening at home with his literary agent wife Lee Holland and his dog Bootsie when a simple knock on the door announces a series of surprises that change Kyle’s life forever.

Standing on the threshold is Kyle’s spitting image. The visitor, Derek Winslow, claims he is Kyle’s twin brother, a twin Kyle never knew existed. Even more shocking to Kyle, Derek says Kyle was adopted.

Far from welcoming the prodigal brother, Kyle rejects his claims and orders him off his property. Surely his assertions could not be true!

Or could they? Calmed by Lee, Kyle realizes that perhaps he acted too rashly. He should give Derek another chance. But it’s too late. When Kyle arrives at Derek’s motel, Derek is dead.

Who could have wanted to kill the man Kyle now believes may have been his brother? There is one way to find out: Kyle will assume Derek’s identity and move into his world. Won’t the killer be surprised when Kyle/Derek reappears on the scene, healthy and vigorous and eager to trap a villain?

While in no way betraying the series’ entertaining and lighthearted tone, author Neil McGaughey (who is himself adopted) nevertheless adds to this third Stokes Moran novel a more subtle and thought-provoking dimension. Mixing his acknowledged mastery of plot with a new-found depth of character, McGaughey proves that this season The Best Money Murder Can But is the best money readers can spend.

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About the Author: Neil McGaughey (rhymes with McCoy) is the author of Otherwise Known as Murder and And Then There Were Ten. A full-time writer and nationally known mystery critic, he reviewed mysteries for the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger for more than ten years. A member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters-in-Crime, he now lives in Florida where he is at work on the fourth Stokes Moran mystery.

From the Dust Jacket: After Olivia found out she was adopted—not the child of a privileged Chicago family, as she’d always thought, but of a notorious pair of serial killers—her life exploded. She fled her home, not knowing where to turn, and eventually found refuge in the secluded but oddly welcoming town of Cainsville, Illinois. Working with Gabriel Walsh, a fiendishly successful lawyer with links to the town, she discovered the truth about her parents’ crimes in an investigation that also revealed the darker forces at work in the place that had offered her a haven. As if that wasn’t enough, she also found out that she, Gabriel, and her biker boyfriend, Ricky, were not caught in an ordinary sort of love triangle, but were hereditary actors in ancient drama in which the elders of Cainsville and the mysterious Huntsmen who opposed them had a huge stake.

Now someone is killing street kids in the city, and the Chicago police have tied Ricky to the crimes. Setting out with Gabriel’s help to clear Ricky’s name, Olivia once again finds her own life at risk. And soon the three of them become entangled in a web of betrayals that threatens their uneasy equilibrium and pushes them toward a hard choice: either they fulfill their destinies by trusting each other and staying true to their real bonds, or they succumb to the extraordinary forces trying to win an eternal war by tearing them apart.

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About the Author: Kelley Armstrong is the #1 bestselling author of the new crime thriller City of the Lost, the bestselling Cainsville novels, as well as the groundbreaking thirteen-book Women of the Otherworld series. Those indelible characters inspired the hit TV series Bitten and also inhabit Otherworld Chills, her fifth collection of stories and novellas, which completes the Otherworld canon. She lives with her family in rural Ontario.

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By the Same Author: Dime Store Magic (2004, Bantam Books); Waking the Witch (2010, Dutton); The Gathering (2011, Doubleday); The Calling (2012, Doubleday); The Rising (2013, Doubleday); Omens (2013); Visions (2014); and Deceptions (2015), among many others.

Irene Turner may become Mommie Deadest. Since Irene arrived in Denver, Colorado to meet the grown daughter who was stolen from her at birth, she’s been beaten up in her hotel room and accused of killing her estranged husband. Her daughter, high school soccer coach Kinsey Masters, adores the wealthy parents who raised her and has no reason to doubt she’s their child-although some suspicious details are starting to surface about Mom’s pregnancy and Dad’s acquaintanceship with Irene back in the day. Mom may have something to hide-or she may be on the killer’s target list herself. Detective Nate Paxton will do everything to protect Kinsey and solve the sordid mystery, but he’s also badge-deep in an investigation that could unseat one of Denver’s biggest drug lords—who’s eyeing Kinsey as Nate’s weak spot. A mother, told her baby’s death was a lie. A daughter, rocked by her true identity. A detective, risking his life to protect them both. All three of them ... betrayed.

From the Dust Jacket: Dana Stabenow, “Alaska’s finest mystery writer” (Anchorage Daily News), has given readers a hero to cheer for. Alaska state trooper Sergeant Liam Campbell is the figure of law and order in the fishing village of Newenham, yet he struggles to keep his own life on an even keel. Now he delves into a case of a past frozen in time—just when his future is starting to heat up....

A string of recent successes has put Liam back on the fast track—to Anchorage. But he’s started making a life for himself in Newenham. He has friends, and the beginnings—with pilot Wyanet Chouinard and her foster son—of a new family.

But before he has time to focus on questions about his future, the grisly discovery of a dismembered hand leads Liam to the site of a crashed World War II army plane—frozen precariously in a calving glacier. Stretching back more than sixty years, the case will pit Liam against his father, Colonel Charles Bradley Campbell of the United States Air Force, whose very presence makes Liam question what secrets the glacier holds—and who exactly was on that ill-fated flight...

In a novel as compelling as the landscape it’s set against, Dana Stabenow captures the essence of the real Alaska, where not everything is seen in black and white. Sometimes the truth is found in between—and is better left to rest....

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About the Author: Dana Stabenow is the Edgar Award-winning author of Fire and Ice, So Sure of Death, Nothing Gold Can Stay, and several other acclaimed mysteries. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.

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By the Same Author: Nothing Gold Can Stay (2000, Dutton) and A Taint in the Blood (2004, Minotaur).

From the Publisher: Evie Kavoonah, a young mother-to-be, and her fiancé, Dr. Todd Brenner, are on a flight over the Brooks Range when their bush plane runs out of gas and hits a ridge, instantly killing them both. Chukchi police chief Nathan Active doubts he’ll find anything amiss when his close friend, Cowboy Decker, asks him to look into the possibility of foul play. Evie was like a daughter to Cowboy, who trained her to fly, and he insists there’s no way his protégée made a fatal mistake that day. Nathan reluctantly plays along and discovers that Cowboy’s instincts are correct—the malfunction that led to the crash was carefully planned, and several people in the village have motives for targeting the pair.

Meanwhile, Nathan’s wife, Gracie, is pregnant, but so scarred by memories of domestic abuse that she isn’t sure she should have the baby. Nathan must support her and their adopted daughter, Nita, while managing an increasingly complex and dangerous murder case.

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About the Author: Stan Jones is a native of Alaska and a former bush pilot. He has worked as an award-winning journalist and environmentalist. He is the coauthor of the nonfiction book The Spill, as well as the author of five other mysteries in the acclaimed Nathan Active series, including White Sky, Black Ice; Shaman Pass; Frozen Sun; Village of the Ghost Bears; and Tundra Kill. He and Patricia Watts are collaborating on the next Nathan Active mystery.

Patricia Watts began writing fiction after a 20-year career as a journalist in Texas, Hawaii, and Alaska, and a decade as a human rights investigator in Anchorage. She is also the author of Watchdogs and The Frayer, noir suspense novels set in Fairbanks, Alaska. She now lives in San Diego, where she is working on her next novel.

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By the Same Author: White Sky, Black Ice (1999, Soho Press); Shaman Pass (2003, Soho Press); Frozen Sun (2008, Bowhead Press); Village of the Ghost Bears (2009, Soho Press); Tundra Kill (2016, Bowhead Press); and Ghost Light (2021, Bowhead Press).

From the Dust Jacket: Los Angeles, 1950. Red crosscurrents: the Commie Scare and a string of brutal mutilation killings. Movieland leftists on a collision course with a grand jury investigation team. A young homicide detective obsessed with capturing a murderer of unparalleled viciousness—even though the price may be horrific self-revelation. Gangsters and cops and fixers and Hollywood grotesques in a noir novel of epic scope and depth.

The Big Nowhere is the story of three men caught up in massive web of ambition, perversion and deceit. Danny Upshaw is a Sheriff’s deputy stuck with a bunch of snuffs nobody cares about; they’re his chance to make his name as a cop—and to sate his darkest curiosities. Mal Considine is D.A.’s Bureau brass, climbing on the Red Scare bandwagon to advance his career and to gain custody of his adopted son—a child he saved from the horror of postwar Europe. Buzz Meeks—bagman, ex-Narco goon and pimp for Howard Hughes—is fighting Communism for the money. All three have purchased tickets to a nightmare.

The Big Nowhere is dark, brutal, tender and powerful; it is a remarkably vivid portrait of a remarkable time and place. With his best-selling The Black Dahlia, James Ellroy established himself as the modern master of noir fiction; The Big Nowhere establishes him as a major American novelist.

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About the Author: James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of seven previous novels, including the Edgar-nominated Clandestine, Suicide Hill, and The Black Dahlia—called “high intensity prose” by Elmore Leonard and “an absolute masterpiece” by Jonathan Kellerman.

Ellroy lives near New York City and is at work on his next novel.

From the Dust Jacket: To celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Harry and Deb Ralston go out to dinner at the Bird Cage, a restaurant in downtown Fort Worth. Its fancy dinners are complemented by a floor show featuring a young woman on a flying trapeze, reminding Deb nostalgically of the three-ring circus she and her family visited when she was a girl.

The romance of the evening is ruined, however, when the performer plummets to her death—an “accident” caused by deliberate cuts in the ropes suspending her in midair forty feet above the tables. Once again, Deb Ralston—Detective Deb Ralston—must put her personal life on hold because duty calls.

Well, sort of on hold: Another murder only means this working mother must juggle taking care of the baby, the teenager, and the pit bull (not to mention the husband and the recently divorced partner, who confesses he’s developed a crush on Deb) with her increasingly time-consuming and dangerous job.

Lee Martin brings us another winning puzzler, this time set in the high-pressure world of traveling performance artists, close-knit circus families—and, of course, plain, old-fashioned murder. Bird in a Cage promises to be the latest entry in the long line of successful Deb Ralston mysteries that prompted Booklist to call Deb “a believable sleuth in a superior series.”

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About the Author: Lee Martin a former policewoman, currently lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, with her family. Bird in a Cage follows Inherited Murder in her series featuring Deb Ralston, who was a mother long before she was a detective—and who is now superb as both.

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By the Same Author: Too Sane a Murder (1984), A Conspiracy of Strangers (1986), Murder at the Blue Owl (1988), Death Warmed Over (1988), Hal’s Own Murder Case (1989), Deficit Ending (1990), The Mensa Murders (1990), Hacker (1992), The Day That Dusty Died (1994), Inherited Murder (1994), Genealogy of Murder (1996) and The Thursday Club (1997); as well as The Buzzards Must Also Be Fed (1990) (writing as Anne Wingate).

From the Publisher: Tony Freeman rescued Mersiha when she was fighting for her life in war-torn Yugoslavia. Now she’s his adopted daughter, the perfect all-American girl, and it seems like her past is another country.

But Mersiha has been trained to kill. And when she discovers that Freeman’s company is being subjected to a sinister takeover bid, she decides to help - whatever the risks.

The consequences of her actions are lethal, for Mersiha has unearthed a conspiracy of terrifying proportions...

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About the Author: Stephen Leather was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London’s Burning, The Knock and the BBC’s Murder in Mind series.