In his most personal case yet, astrologer-detective David Lowell is asked to find Dr. Ethan Williamson’s dying son’s twin in time for a lifesaving kidney transplant. A rare blood type has made a successful donor impossible to find, and time is running out for the boy. Dr. Williamson presents Lowell with a briefcase containing one million dollars in cash and the promise of another million upon completion of his mission.
With the help of his able staff—gal Friday, vivacious redhead Sarah; master hacker and psychic Mort; and bodyguard-chauffer Andy—Lowell sets out to find the missing boy and his mother, who disappeared shortly after the boys were born. As he gets further into the case, Lowell hires his daughter and prize astrology student, attorney Melinda Lowell, as council to protect his legal status in what appears to be a very complicated case. Lowell has also contacted his ex-wife with the hope of reconciliation, so Andy drives Lowell and Melinda to Woodstock for a family reunion with its own tragic backdrop.
As he pursues the case, Lowell discovers that things aren’t as they seem. He is joined in his search for the truth by Karen Sweeney—an LA police officer investigating the death of her uncle, private detective Mickey Broad—and Luigi, her 150-pound Great Dane–Labrador mix.
Using his astrological expertise and common sense, Lowell uncovers the sordid facts in this story—which owes more than a little to the ancient Greek tragedies—as he follows the path to a shocking and unexpected conclusion.
Armed men invade the Queen apartment, led by Abel Bendigo, brother of one of the world’s most powerful men. King Bendigo of Bodigen Arms is an industrial monster whose tentacles embrace the planet. Someone is threatening to kill the King, and Ellery must take on the task of saving his hated life. Virtual prisoners, Ellery and his father are whisked away to an island “somewhere in the Atlantic.” In a frightening atmosphere of industrial slavery and brute militarism, Ellery comes to grips with a baffling murderer who calmly announces the exact moment of the assassination. The trouble is, Ellery is with the confessed murderer at the time of the crime—so how could he have possibly done it?
First heard on network radio in 1948, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar chronicled the adventures of freelance insurance investigator Johnny Dollar, “the man with the action-packed expense account.” For fourteen years it was one of the most popular detective shows on the air, lasting until the final days of network radio drama in 1962. Each story started with a phone call from an insurance executive calling on Johnny Dollar to investigate an unusual claim. His investigations usually required him to travel to distant locales and often involved murder. The stories were recounted in flashback, as Dollar listed each line item from his expense account: “Item one, $3.75 cab fare to the airport.”
Over the years, many actors portrayed Johnny Dollar, including Charles Russell, John Lund, and Edmund O’Brien. But in 1955 Bob Bailey took over as the series was switching to a new dynamic format of seventy-five-minute storylines told in five fifteen-minute installments, Monday through Friday. While other radio shows were waning in the mid-1950s, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar was at its peak. Experts place these adventures in with the best of the best of radio’s golden age.
Ten years ago, six-year-old Catalina Mateo hid under the porch of her family home while a knife butchered her mother and a bullet killed her father. Now a rough-sleeping orphan, Cat arrives at the house of Detective Jonathan Stride, pleading for protection. Drenched in the icy waters of Lake Superior, she claims to have narrowly escaped a cold-blooded killer.
Stride’s raw instinct is to protect Cat, whose late parents’ case—and his personal guilt associated with it—still sends a shiver down his spine. As a result, he takes the troubled teenager under his wing.
But Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is not convinced. She doubts the sincerity of this beautiful young streetwalker who has so easily won Stride’s trust, and now sleeps in his house with a butcher’s knife under her pillow.
As Stride continues to care for Cat, Maggie’s suspicions solidify, and a single question occupies the void between them: Should Stride be afraid for, or of, this terribly damaged girl?
“A masterpiece of psychological suspense.”—Lisa Gardner, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Since Jimm Juree moved, under duress, with her family to a rural village on the coast of Southern Thailand, she has missed her career as a journalist. In Chiang Mai, she was covering substantial stories and major crimes. But here in Maprao, Jimm has to scrape assignments from the local online journal, the Chumphon Gazette. This time they are sending her out to interview a local farang (European) writer, Conrad Coralbank, who writes award-winning crime novels. At the same time, several local women have left town without a word to anyone, leaving their possessions behind. These include the local doctor, Dr. Sumlak, who never returned from a conference, and the Thai wife of the aforementioned Conrad Coralbank. All of which looks a little suspicious, especially to Jimm's grandfather, an ex-cop who notices Coralbank's interest in Jimm with a very jaundiced eye. And now a major storm is brewing. Who knows what it will blow in for Jimm and her family?
The first case seems simple. A wealthy man's wife has grown distant, and he asks Frank Clemons, a private eye hardened by his past work on Atlanta's homicide beat, to find out why. There are a number of reasons why a young woman might withdraw from her older husband, but the spurned spouse rejects them all. Her jewelry is disappearing, but he insists that she doesn't have trouble with blackmail, drugs, or gambling.
The answer must be more complex, and he begs Frank to find out what it is. Meanwhile, an old woman familiar to Frank from his nights haunting Tenth Avenue has been murdered, and a gypsy priestess claims that she killed her. But Frank is unconvinced, and unearthing these women's secrets will force him deep into the dark side of a city that he still cannot call home.
Ellery had a simple case. A few days of discreet snooping, some choice advice, and the inimitable sleuth would blithely restore domestic harmony to the millionaire couple Dirk and Martha Lawrence. Then came the scarlet letters. And finally the cryptic clue, scrawled in a murdered man’s blood. A simple case? Unless Ellery did some super-fast sleuthing, he’d have nothing to show but a very scarlet face. The case will drag him all over New York as he hunts for the truth.
“The old hand, in top form, this is smart stuff.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
When mere accusation takes the place of evidence, freedom is in peril. What happens after the murder is the story of what Johnny Shinn—late of Army Intelligence and veteran of two wars—in spite of himself, does about it. The tense lynch trial that is the focus of the action is really the trial of Johnny Shinn as an American.
A Manhattan ER doctor is in the local playground with his young son when someone ruthlessly guns him down. Now his young widow, a televison producer, is raising their son alone and is under pressure to come up with a successful TV series. Her new show will focus on cold case files. Revisiting unsolved crimes one at a time, she and her TV crew plan to gather friends and family of the victim who have lived under suspicion of guiilt for many years. By paying them to reenact the crime on television, they will be given a chance to clear their name--unless, of course, they are guilty.....
I've Got You Under My Skin is Mary Higgins Clark writing at her best, in the suspenseful style her fans love.
When Pru Marlowe takes a dog for a walk, she doesn’t expect to find a body. But Spot, a service dog in training, has a good nose that leads her right to the remains of a beautiful young woman. Despite her best instincts, Pru can’t avoid getting involved. The young woman seems to have been mauled by a wild cat, but Pru knows there have been no pumas in the Berkshire woods for years. And while Wallis, Pru’s curmudgeonly tabby, seems fixated on the idea of a killer cat, Spot has been sending strange signals to Pru’s own heightened senses, suggesting that the violent death was something more than a tragic accident. As motives multiply, a cougar of a different sort sets her eyes on Pru’s sometime lover, and another woman disappears. With panther panic growing, Pru may have to put aside her own issues—and her own ideas of domesticity—to solve a savage mystery.
“Simon excels in creating unique and believable animal characters as well as diverse and memorable humans.” —Booklist (starred review), praise for the series
Thirty-year-old Max Maguire, detective with the New York Police Department, finds herself in France again when she is sent as a bodyguard for one of America’s most famous wine critics, who is traveling to Bordeaux to taste some of the most expensive wines in the world. In the tragic circumstances that follow, Max is once again paired with French examining magistrate Olivier Chaumont, with whom she had had a fling the year before while solving a case in Champagne.
In the bicultural duo’s pursuit of a murderer on the loose, they run headlong into a counterfeiting operation. Their investigation sends them to marvelous chateaux in France as well as posh apartments, wine clubs, and auction houses in the United States as they desperately try to prevent more violence.
Max and Olivier sip fine wines and dine in fabulous restaurants as they interrogate French and American suspects, most of whom are wealthy and influential. As they investigate, it is still unclear whether Max will at last unite with her French family or whether she and Olivier will again heat up the night. And considering their cultural and personality differences, will they be able to solve the crime without wanting to kill each other?
Hubbard has created another spine-tingling murder mystery that also offers adventure, travel, romance, and gastronomic delights.
Defending a flashy, big-time Houston lawyer who is accused of killing his wife, Dallas attorney Bino Phillips becomes involved with a sultry blues singer, a vindictive judge, and a hired killer with a cleanliness fetish. Before long Bino will uncover corruption and conspiracies perpetrated by those on both sides of the law. And with all the deals being made, Bino is left to sort it out on his own.
“[Bino Phillips] finally prevails here with brain power and a sweet toughness that readers will find appealing…The plotting and writing are crisp, and Bino serves up the just desserts in fine, funny style. Gray knows Texas, the law, and law enforcement; his fast-moving story is first-rate.”—Publishers Weekly
