These Lily Bard novels stand out among traditional cozy mysteries because of the noirish spin Harris puts on the seemingly typical charming southern town of Shakespeare, AR, on her heroine. Lily Bard makes a compelling amateur sleuth. Here she heads home to Bartley, AR, for her sister Varenas Christmas wedding. But soon after she arrives, Lilys private-detective boyfriend shows up too: hes investigating a 4-year-old unsolved kidnapping. Lily cant help but get involved when she discovers that the case hits dangerously close to home – for Varenas new husband is the widowed father of a girl bearing a remarkable resemblance to the vanished child.
Shakespeare, Arkansas, is a small Southern town with plenty of secrets, and Charlaine Harris's Lily Bard is just one more of its residents – albeit one harboring a few secrets of her own – with a desire to live quietly. Lily keeps to herself, between her job as a cleaning woman for several townspeople and her visits to the gym, where she's a devotee of karate and bodybuilding. These two pursuits seem a bit odd for the petite Southern woman, but as work and play, they keep her focused and balanced. When a fellow gym member is found dead after a workout with a barbell across his throat, Lily wants to believe it's an accident. But looking at the incident against the background of other recent events in Shakespeare, including a few incidents that appear to be racially motivated, she's afraid it could be a part of something much, much bigger – and much more sinister.
Cleaning woman and karate expert Lily Bard is a woman with a complicated past. Trying her best to cope with her terrifying memories and horrible nightmares, she decides to join a weekly group therapy session in her hometown of Shakespeare, Arkansas. At first, Lily can hardly believe the number of her fellow Shakespeareans that share her life experiences.As it turns out, the group members' feelings aren't the only things that need sorting out – they assemble for a session and find a woman dead, killed in bone-chilling fashion and deliberately left on display to send a twisted message. ...
Lily Bard is a loner. Fiercely protective of her independence, she concentrates on her karate skills and her work as the proprietor of a cleaning and errand-running service, and pays little attention to the town around her. When her landlord is murdered, though, she looks like the prime suspect. Uncovering the real killer may be the only way to prove her innocence, and Lily realizes that she must focus on the other residents of tiny Shakespeare. Her job gives her easy access to people's private lives, and she begins to snoop, finding plenty of skeleton-filled closets, and exposing herself to the unwanted attentions of a murderer.
Welcome back to Shakespeare – a charming Arkansas town with endless back roads, an eclectic mix of residents, and a dollop of noir. Featuring cleaning woman/karate expert Lily Bard." "Lily discovers lifelong Shakespeare resident Deedra Dean murdered inside a car parked in a woodsy area outside town. Determined not to get involved, Lily wants to leave the police work to Sheriff Marta Schuster and her team of deputies, and concentrate on cleaning, high kicks, and her boyfriend Jack's impending visit. But when Deedra's notoriously promiscuous lifestyle provides an extensive list of suspects but very few clues, Lily has no choice but to resume the role of amateur detective and join the investigation.
John Pellam had been in the trenches of filmmaking, with a promising Hollywood career – until tragedy sidetracked him. Now he's a location scout, travelling the country in search of shooting sites for films. When he rides down Main Street, locals usually clamour for their chance at fifteen minutes of fame. But in a small town in upstate New York, Pellam experiences a very different reception. His illusionary world is shattered by a savage murder, and Pellam is suddenly centre stage in an unfolding drama of violence, lust and conspiracy in this less-than-picture-perfect locale.
Two women are trapped by a past that won't let them go. As Maj-Britt festers malevolently in her hermetic apartment, appeased only by an endless supply of food, Monika blots out her pain by ceaselessly working, punishing herself unforgivingly for any failure. They have nothing in common but the determination to obliterate their memories and be left alone – but when a letter and a tragic accident force each of them to confront the past, their lives become inextricably intertwined. As the emotional void of their lives threatens to engulf them, each woman proves the catalyst for the other's destruction – or salvation. A taut psychological thriller, "Shame" subtly explores the devastating powers of fear, oppressive religion and forbidden sexuality. With all the elements of classic noir, Alvtegen has written her finest book to date.
In Shell Game, O’Connell raises the standard once again. It is fall in New York City. On live television, the re-creation of a legendary magic trick goes horribly awry – a terrible accident, everyone agrees. But two people know it is not. One is an aged magician in a private hospital in the northern corner of New York state. What a worthy performance, he thinks, murdering a man while a million people watch.The other is Kathleen Mallory. Once a feral child, loose on the city streets, she is now a New York City policewoman, and not much ...
Mickey Bolitar's year can't get much worse. After witnessing his father's death and sending his mom to rehab, he's forced to live with his estranged Uncle Myron and switch high schools. A new school comes with new friends and new enemies, and lucky for Mickey, it also comes with a great new girlfriend, Ashley. For awhile, it seems like Mickey's train-wreck of a life is finally improving – until Ashley vanishes without a trace. Unwilling to let another person walk out of his life, Mickey follows Ashley's trail into a seedy underworld that reveals that this seemingly sweet, shy girl ...
Set initially in a future shanty town in America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being dissembled for parts by a rag tag group of workers, we meet Nailer, a teenage boy working the light crew, searching for copper wiring to make quota and live another day. The harsh realities of this life, from his abusive father, to his hand to mouth existence, echo the worst poverty in the present day third world. When an accident leads Nailer to discover an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, and the lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl, Nailer finds himself at a crossroads. Should he strip the ship and live a life of relative wealth, or rescue the girl, Nita, at great risk to himself and hope she'll lead him to a better life. This is a novel that illuminates a world where oil has been replaced by necessity, and where the gap between the haves and have-nots is now an abyss. Yet amidst the shadows of degradation, hope lies ahead.
Cutting-edge technology and personal greed converge in this spine-tingling novel of medicine run amok. Deborah Cochrane and Joanna Meissner, students and close friends, spot a campus newspaper ad that promises to solve their financial problems: an exclusive, highly profitable fertility clinic on Boston's North Shore is looking for donors. Deborah and Joanna figure they can perform a good deed in helping infertle couples, while earning some money for themselves. Although rumours Surface of a fellow donor's unexplained disappearance, they remain undeterred. The procedures seem to go smoothly, but second thoughts and curiosity prompt the two women discover more, Stymied by the clinic's veil of secrecy, Deborah and Joanna obtain employment there to continue their probe. Working under aliases, they soon discover the horrifying true aims of Dr Windgate's research, immediately putting their lives – and their sanity – irrevocably at risk.
"Enormously entertaining and enormously authentic." – John Sandford“BORN IS THE REAL THING.”-Elmore Leonard“A NEW STAR.”-W. E. B. Griffin“Born owns not only the know-how to spin a good story but also has the stylistic chops to back it up. By turns funny and suspenseful.”- Chicago Sun-Times“Born shows his skill at mixing quirky characters and wry humor into a serious plot in his second novel… Once again, Born excels at blending the police procedural with the caper novel.”- Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel“Born’s latest novel bombards us with a ...
The thought of working with a hot-shot producer and her TV crew is about as appealing to Abby as sticking her hand in a bucket of leeches. But "Reality Check" is a program that claims to turn American dreams into the real thing, and Abby figures that if anyone deserves that kind of bonanza, it's Emma Lopez, who has been raising her three younger siblings since her mother disappeared. Abby is determined to help Emma realize her dream of a reunion-even when it becomes clear that someone out there doesn't believe in happy endings.
In the newest addition to the bestselling series, Stone Barrington and Holly Barker pursue a master spy and murderer in a tropical paradise where very little is as it seems.Teddy Fay, a rogue agent last seen escaping an imploding building in Iron Orchid, has been considered dead for some time now. But President Will Lee thinks Teddy may still be alive. In a top-secret Oval Office meeting, Stone learns that he and his cohorts, Holly Barker and Dino Baldachetti, are being sent to the beautiful Caribbean island of St. Marks, courtesy of the CIA, to track down Teddy once and for all.St. Marks is a vacationer’s paradise, but its luxurious beach clubs and secluded mountain villas are home to corrupt local politicians and more than a few American ex-pats with murky personal histories. Stone and Holly soon discover that in St. Marks, everyone is hiding something, and Teddy Fay may just be hiding in plain sight.
Author's 4th novel. As a former RAF pilot, a former Air Correspondent for The Sunday Times, Lyall certainly knows about flying.Combining his expertise with fast-paced, well-written plots has made him one of the most popular writers of action thrillers. An adventure story, influenced by the works of Hammett and Chandler. In this one, Keith Carr, piloting cargo around the Carribean, finds himself mixed up with potentially lethal local politics.
Short Straw reintroduces Santa Fe lawyer Ed Eagle, who first appeared in Stuart Woods's 1992 thriller, Santa Fe Rules. In his first adventure, Ed fell in love with the seductive Barbara Kennerly, and married her-against his better judgment.Turns out that Ed should have listened to his intuition. Ed Eagle awakens the morning after his fortieth birthday to find that Barbara has vanished, and Ed's money-from his business, his bank, and his brokerage accounts-has been wired to the Cayman Islands. Barbara, it appears, had drugged his birthday wine, neatly cleaned him out and then fled to Mexico, from where ...
An anthology of storiesThese all-new short stories of movies, music, murder, and mayhem by today's brightest talents will take you from vaudeville to Vegas, and make it chillingly clear that in the world of entertainment, if you want to make it, you may have to step on some people-or over their dead bodies…Includes first-run stories from€ Carolyn Wheat€ John Lutz€ Elaine Viets€ Parnell Hall€ Stuart M Kaminsky€ Edward D Hoch€ Annette Meyers€ Angela Zeman€ David Bart€ Bob Shayne€ Mark Terry€ Gary Phillips€ Suzanne Shaphren€ Libby Fischer Hellman€ Charles Ardai€ Gregg Andrew Hurwitz€ Steve Hockensmith€ Shelley Freydont€ Robert Lopresti€ Mat Coward
Summer, 1954.U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them.But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems.And neither is Teddy Daniels.Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumors of Ashecliffe’s radical approach to psychiatry? An approach that may include drug experimentation, hideous surgical trials, and lethal ...
