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#3 in the Detective Elouise Norton Series
On a rainy spring day in Los Angeles, homicide detective Elouise "Lou" Norton is called away from a rare lunch date to Bonner Park, where the body of thirteen-year-old Chanita Lords has been discovered. When Lou and her partner, Colin Taggert, take on the sad task of informing Chanita's mother, Lou is surprised to find herself in the apartment building she grew up in. Chanita was interested in photography and, much like Lou, a girl destined to leave the housing projects behind. Her death fits a chilling pattern of exceptional girls--dancers, artists, honors scholars-gone recently missing in the same school district, the one Lou attended not so long ago. Lou is valiantly trying to make a go of life after her divorce and doing everything she can to avoid her long estranged father. She races to catch a serial killer, but he remains frustratingly out of her reach, sending cryptic cyphers and taunting clues that arrive too late to prevent the next death.Thisone is personal, and it's only a matter of time before he comes after Lou herself.
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#3 in the Tracy Crosswhite Series
Detective Tracy Crosswhite has a skill, and a soft spot, for tackling unsolved crimes. Having lost her own sister to murder at a young age, Tracy has dedicated her career to bringing justice and closure to the families and friends of victims of crime. So when Jenny, a former police academy classmate and protégé, asks Tracy to help solve a cold case that involves the suspicious suicide of a Native American high school girl forty years earlier, Tracy agrees. Following up on evidence Jenny's detective father collected when he was the investigating deputy, Tracy probes one small town's memory and finds dark, well-concealed secrets hidden within the community's fabric. Can Tracy uphold the promise she's made to the dead girl's family and deliver the truth of what happened to their daughter? Or will she become the next victim?
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#15 in the Women's Murder Club Series
As she settles into motherhood and a happy marriage, Lindsay Boxer thinks she has found domestic bliss. But when a beautiful woman with links to the CIA disappears from the scene of a brutal murder at a downtown luxury hotel, Lindsay's life begins to unravel. Before she can track down the woman for questioning, a plane crash plunges San Francisco into chaos and Lindsay's husband Joe vanishes. The deeper she digs, the more Lindsay suspects that Joe shares a secret past with the mystery blonde. Thrown into a tailspin and questioning everything she thought she knew, Lindsay turns to the Women's Murder Club for help as she tries to uncover the truth.
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#5 in the Lomax & Biggs Series
Hollywood homicide Detective Mike Lomax is at a routine medical appointment when an assailant with a shotgun kills a respected Los Angeles fertility doctor and then himself. But the murder makes no sense. The killer and the victim don't know one another. When a traffic accident turns out to be a second murder, and again the killer and victim are strangers, Lomax and his partner Terry Biggs have to connect the dots to uncover the shocking motive behind the killings.Laced with twists, turns, and Karp's trademark biting cop humor, readers may start rooting for the killers: cancer patients willing to kill to earn a half million dollars for the loved ones they will leave behind. The trail of bloodshed leads to a ringleader with a taste for Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Ayn Rand, and Nancy Drew; victims being dropped to their deaths from a helicopter; and the powerful and malevolent forces of Big Pharma. As the body count mounts Lomax and Biggs realize that they are uncovering a plot that leads to the corporate boardroom and maybe to a cabinet secretary. Detective Lomax, at the same time, faces a personal health scare, life-changing decisions regarding his girlfriend Diana and their foster daughter Sophie, and, as always, his well-meaning but meddling father Big Jim.
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#11 in the Private Series
When Jack Morgan stops by Private's Paris office, he envisions a quick hello during an otherwise relaxing trip filled with fine food and sightseeing. But Jack is quickly pressed into a mission: to track down his client's young granddaughter who is on the run from a brutal drug dealer. Before Jack can locate her, several members of France's cultural elite are found dead-murdered in stunning, symbolic fashion. The only link between the crimes is a mysterious graffiti tag. As religious and ethnic tensions simmer in the City of Lights, only Jack and his Private team can connect the dots before the smoldering powder keg explodes.
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#2 in the Promise Falls Series
After the screen of a run-down drive-in movie theater collapses and kills four people, the daughter of one of the victims asks private investigator Cal Weaver to look into a recent break-in at her father's house. Cal discovers a hidden basement room where it's clear that salacious activities have taken place—as well as evidence of missing DVDs. But his investigation soon becomes more complicated when he realizes it may not be discs the thief was actually interested in.... Meanwhile, Detective Barry Duckworth is still trying to solve two murders—one of which is three years old—he believes are connected, since each featured a similar distinctive wound. As the lies begin to unravel, Cal is headed straight into the heart of a dark secret as his search uncovers more startling truths about Promise Falls. And when yet another murder happens, Cal and Barry are both driven to pursue their investigations, no matter where they lead. Evil deeds long thought buried are about to haunt the residents of this town—as the sins of the past and present collide with terrifying results.
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#10 in the Zailer & Waterhouse Mysteries Series
What if having a best friend could put you in the crosshairs of a killer? A psychopath the police have dubbed "Billy Dead Mates" is targeting pairs of best friends, and killing them one by one. Before they die, each victim is given a small white book. For months, detectives have failed to catch Billy, or figure out what the white books symbolize and why the killer leaves them behind. The police are on edge; the public in a panic. Then a woman, scared by what she's seen on the news, comes forward. What she reveals shocks the investigators and adds another troubling layer to an already complex case. Stand-up comedian Kim Tribbeck has one of Billy's peculiar little books. A stranger gave it to her at a gig she did last year. Was the stranger Billy, and is he targeting her—or is it something more nefarious? Kim has no friends and trusts no one, so how—and why—could Billy Dead Mates want to target her? If it's not her, then who will be the next to die?
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#4 in the NYPD Red Series
It's another glamorous night in the heart of Manhattan: at a glitzy movie premiere, a gorgeous starlet dripping in millions of dollars' worth of jewelry makes her way past a horde of fans and paparazzi. But then there's a sudden loud noise, an even louder scream, and a vicious crime with millions of witnesses and no suspect. Enter NYPD Red: the elite task force assigned to protect the rich and famous in the city where crime never sleeps. Detective Zach Jordan and his partner and former girlfriend, Kylie MacDonald, are the best that Red has to offer: brilliant and tireless investigators who will stop at nothing to crack a case, even if it means putting their own complicated lives on the back burner. From celebrity penthouses to the depths of Manhattan's criminal underworld, Zach and Kylie are soon in hot pursuit of a cold-blooded killer with everything to lose, and millions to gain if he can just shake the detectives on his trail. With the city on edge, the mayor out of patience, and the flames of their personal relationship threatening to reignite and ruin everything, Zach and Kylie are facing down their worst fears—and their most dangerous enemy yet.
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#3 in the Archer & Bennett Series
The first victim—young, female, beautiful—is discovered on the edge of the park, her face utterly destroyed. Sydney homicide detective Frank Bennett suspects that this is a first kill. And it won't be the last. To stop a serial killer in the making, Frank will have to place his faith in his partner Eden Archer—a cop who moonlights as a killer . . . Eden knows the temptation of evil. Her intimate knowledge of the relentless forces that drive a killer gives her a unique edge. But with each jogger found brutally murdered in Sydney's pristine parks, Eden can see where the investigation is headed. And it gives her a feeling she hasn't felt in a long time. A fear she's never known. A fear she can't escape. A fear that, after all these years, she will have to face . . .
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#1 in the Detective Max Rupert Series
Who was James Putnam? Answering that question may mean salvation for Alexander Rupert, a Minnesota detective whose life is in a serious downward spiral. A Medal of Valor winner, Alexander is now under subpoena by a grand jury on suspicion of corruption. He's been reassigned to the Frauds Unit, where he is shunned by his fellow detectives, and he fears his status-seeking wife may be having an affair. When he happens across a complex case of identity theft, Alexander sees an opportunity to rehabilitate his tattered reputation. But the case explodes into far more than he could have expected, putting him in the path of trained assassin Drago Basta, a veteran of the Balkan wars who has been searching for "James Putnam" for years. As his life spins out of control, Alexander's last hope may be his older brother, Max, a fellow police detective who steps in to try to save his brother from the carnage his investigation has let loose.
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#1 in the Wonderland Series
Welcome to Wonderland. By day, it's a magical place boasting a certain retro charm. Excited children, hands sticky with cotton candy, run frenetically from the Giant Octopus ride to the Spinning Sombrero, while the tinkling carnival music of the giant Wonder Wheel--the oldest Ferris wheel in the Pacific Northwest--fills the air. But before daybreak, an eerie feeling descends. Maybe it's the Clown Museum, home to creepy wax replicas of movie stars and a massive collection of antique porcelain dolls. Or maybe it's the terrifyingly real House of Horrors. Or...maybe it's the dead, decaying body left in the midway for all the Wonder Workers to see. Vanessa Castro's first day as deputy police chief of Seaside, Washington, is off to a bang. The unidentifiable homeless man rotting inside the tiny town's main tourist attraction is strange enough, but now a teenage employee--whose defiant picture at the top of the Wonder Wheel went viral that same morning--is missing. As the clues in those seemingly disparate crimes lead her down a mysterious shared path of missing persons that goes back decades, she suspects the seedy rumors surrounding the amusement park's dark history might just be true. She moved to Seaside to escape her own scandalous past, but has she brought her family to the center of an insidious killer's twisted game?
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Trying to escape her troubled past and rehabilitate a career on the rocks, former New York City cop Jenna Murphy hardly expects her lush and wealthy surroundings to be a hotbed of grisly depravity. But when a Hollywood power broker and his mistress are found dead in the abandoned Murder House, the gruesome crime scene rivals anything Jenna experienced in Manhattan. And what at first seems like an open and shut case turns out to have as many shocking secrets as the Murder House itself, as Jenna quickly realizes that the mansion's history is much darker than even the town's most salacious gossips could have imagined. As more bodies surface, and the secret that Jenna has tried desperately to escape closes in on her, she must risk her own life to expose the truth-before the Murder House claims another victim.
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#2 in the Tracy Crosswhite Series
Homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite has returned to the police force after the sensational retrial of her sister's killer. Still scarred from that ordeal, Tracy is pulled into an investigation that threatens to end her career, if not her life. A serial killer known as the Cowboy is killing young women in cheap motels in North Seattle. Even after a stalker leaves a menacing message for Crosswhite, suggesting the killer or a copycat could be targeting her personally, she is charged with bringing the murderer to justice. With clues scarce and more victims dying, Tracy realizes the key to solving the murders may lie in a decade-old homicide investigation that others, including her captain, Johnny Nolasco, would prefer to keep buried. With the Cowboy on the hunt, can Tracy find the evidence to stop him, or will she become his next victim?
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#1 in the Mark Novak Series
Markus Novak just wants to come home. An investigator for a Florida-based Death Row defense firm, Novak's life derailed when his wife, Lauren, was killed in the midst of a case the two were working together. Two years later, her murderer is still at large, and Novak's attempts to learn the truth about her death through less-than-legal means and jailhouse bargaining have put his job on the line. Now he's been all but banished, sent to Garrison, Indiana to assess a cold case that he's certain his boss has no intention of taking. As Novak knows all too well, some crimes never do get solved. But it's not often that the man who many believe got away with murder is the one calling for the case to be reopened. Ten years ago, a teenaged girl disappeared inside an elaborate cave system beneath rural farmland. Days later, Ridley Barnes emerged carrying Sarah Martin's lifeless body. Barnes has claimed all along that he has no memory of exactly where—or how—he found Sarah. His memory of whether she was dead or alive at the time is equally foggy. Tired of living under a cloud of suspicion, he says he wants answers—even if they mean he'll end up in the electric chair. But what's he really up to? And Novak knows why he's so unhappy to be in Garrison—but why are the locals so hostile towards him? The answers lie in the fiendish brain of a dangerous man, the real identity of a mysterious woman, and deep beneath them all, in the network of ancient, stony passages that hold secrets deadlier than he can imagine. Soon Novak is made painfully aware that if he has any chance of returning to the life and career he left behind in Florida, he'll need to find the truth in Garrison first.
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#9 in the Zailer & Waterhouse Mysteries Series
She's a wife. She's a mother. She isn't who you think she is. Nicki Clements has secrets, just like anybody else—secrets she keeps from her children, from her husband, from everyone who knows her. Secrets she shares with only one person: A stranger she's never seen. A person whose voice she's never heard. And then Nicki is arrested for murder. The murder of a man she doesn't know.
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#8 in the Michael Bennett Series
New Yorkers aren't easily intimidated, but someone is doing their best to scare them, badly: why? After two inexplicable high-tech attacks, the city that never sleeps is on edge. Detective Michael Bennett, along with his old pal, the FBI's Emily Parker, have to catch the shadowy criminals who claim responsibility—but they're as good at concealing their identities as they are at wreaking havoc. In the wake of a shocking assassination, Bennett begins to suspect that these mysterious events are just the prelude to the biggest threat of all. Soon he's racing against the clock, and against the most destructive enemy he's faced yet, to save his beloved city—before everyone's worst nightmare becomes a reality.
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#10 in the Private Series
When the CEO of a research company disappears without a trace, the Private team must catch a brutal killer—who's headed straight to the victim's door. Craig Gisto has promised Eliza Moss that his elite team at Private Sydney will investigate the disappearance of her father. After all, as CEO of a high-profile research company, Eric Moss shouldn't be difficult to find. Except it's not just the man who's gone missing. Despite the most advanced technology at their disposal, they find every trace of him has vanished too. And they aren't the only ones on the hunt. Powerful figures want Moss to stay "lost," while others just as ruthlessly want him found. Meanwhile, a routine background check becomes a frantic race to find a stolen baby and catch a brutal killer—a killer Private may well have sent straight to the victim's door ... Originally published with the title Private Sydney
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#1 in the Promise Falls Series
After his wife's death and the collapse of his newspaper, David Harwood has no choice but to uproot his nine-year-old son and move back into his childhood home in Promise Falls, New York. David believes his life is in free fall, and he can't find a way to stop his descent. Then he comes across a family secret of epic proportions. A year after a devastating miscarriage, David's cousin Marla has continued to struggle. But when David's mother asks him to check on her, he's horrified to discover that she's been secretly raising a child who is not her own—a baby she claims was a gift from an "angel" left on her porch. When the baby's real mother is found murdered, David can't help wanting to piece together what happened—even if it means proving his own cousin's guilt. But as he uncovers each piece of evidence, David realizes that Marla's mysterious child is just the tip of the iceberg. Other strange things are happening. Animals are found ritually slaughtered. An ominous abandoned Ferris wheel seems to stand as a warning that something dark has infected Promise Falls. And someone has decided that the entire town must pay for the sins of its past...in blood.
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#4 in the Dr. Samantha Owens Series
Waking to sirens in the night is hardly unusual for Sam Owens. No longer a medical examiner, she doesn't lose sleep over them, but a routine police investigation in her neighborhood has her curious. When her homicide detective friend, Darren Fletcher, invites her to look over the evidence, she immediately realizes the crime scene has been staged. What would seem to be a clear case of murder/suicide is anything but. The discovery of toxic substances in hidden vials indicates that something much more sinister is at play... As Fletch and Sam try to understand what and who they are dealing with, they are summoned to a meeting at the State Department. High-level officials are interested in what they know and, as the threat of bioterrorism is exposed, seem to be keeping secrets of their own. Unsure who to trust, Sam and Fletch find themselves up against very powerful people at every stage in the investigation. It's Sam's most complex case yet, and the terrifying reality is beyond anything she could have imagined.
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#2 in the Detective Elouise Norton Series
Los Angeles homicide detective Elouise "Lou" Norton and her partner, Colin Taggert, arrive at the scene of a tragic house fire. Juliet Chatman perished in the blaze, along with her two children. Left behind is grieving husband and father Christopher Chatman, hospitalized after trying to rescue his family. Chatman is devastated that he couldn't save them. Unless, of course, he's the one who killed them. Neighbors and family friends insist the Chatmans were living the dream. But Lou quickly discovers the reality was very different. The flames of adultery, jealousy, scandal, fraud, and disease had all but consumed the Chatmans' marriage before it went up in smoke. Lou's own marriage hangs by a thread. Soured by the men in her life, Lou is convinced that Chatman started the fire. Her colleagues worry that her personal issues are obscuring her judgment. With very little evidence regarding the fire—and rising doubts about her husband's commitment to monogamy—Lou feels played by all sides. Was the fire sparked by a serial arsonist known as The Burning Man? Or by the Chatmans' son, who regularly burned his father's property? Searching for justice through the ashes of a picture-perfect family, Lou doesn't know if she will catch an arsonist or be burned in the process.
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#14 in the Women's Murder Club Series
With a beautiful baby daughter and a devoted husband, Detective Lindsay Boxer can safely say that her life has never been better. Things seem to be going well for a change when all the members of the Women's Murder Club gather to celebrate San Francisco Medical Examiner Claire Washburn's birthday. But the party is cut short when Lindsay is called to a gruesome crime scene, where a woman has been murdered in broad daylight. As Lindsay investigates, shocking video footage of another crime surfaces: the video is so horrific that it shakes the city to its core. Their faces obscured by masks, the cold blooded criminals on the tape could be anyone—and now all of Lindsay's coworkers are suspects. As a rash of violence sweeps through San Francisco, and public fear and anger grows, Lindsay and her friends must risk their lives in the name of justice, before it's too late.
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#8 in the Taylor Jackson Series
Before she becomes Nashville's most celebrated homicide lieutenant, Taylor Jackson is a detective haunted by a fatal mistake, desperate for a way to move on. When a female Vanderbilt student is murdered in a ritualistic killing, Taylor is assigned a new partner: brooding FBI profiler John Baldwin. Baldwin may be battling demons of his own, barely holding himself together at times, but he's also brilliant. As more young women are slain, he and Taylor realize the killer is staging murders straight out of the Book of Revelation. And with another student's life on the line, they follow a trail of poisoned victims, cryptic prophecies, and disturbing connections to an ailing classics professor. As their case intensifies, so does the spark between the two lost souls, each recognizing something broken in the other. Taylor finally confronts the trauma she's been running from—and Baldwin discovers a reason to live.
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#4 in the Ty Hauck Series
Leading a tour down the rapids outside Aspen, Colorado, whitewater guide Dani Whalen comes upon the dead body of a close friend. Trey Watkins's death is ruled an accident. Finding evidence that seems to back up her suspicions that it wasn't, she takes her case to Wade Dunn, the local police chief and her ex-stepfather, with whom she shares some unresolved history. Wade insists the case is closed, but Rooster, a hot air balloon operator in town, claims he saw something from the air she should know. When he suddenly dies in a fiery crash, Dani threatens to take her suspicions public, goading Wade into tossing her in jail. When an old friend contacts Ty Hauck and says his daughter is in trouble, he doesn't hesitate to get involved. Together, the two step into a sinister scheme running deep beneath the surface of a quiet, Colorado town that has made a deal with the devil to survive. But in the square off between giant energy companies and beaten-down ranchers and farmers, one resource is even more valuable in this drought-stricken region than oil. They both will kill for it—water.
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Two years after being tossed from the detective bureau for using questionable tactics while catching a child molester, deputy Tim Hallett's life is finally on track. Assigned to a special K-9 unit with the best partner in the world, a Belgian Malinois named Rocky, Hallett has finally learned to balance police work with his family life. But that all changes in the heat of a Florida sugarcane field. While searching for a kidnapper, Rocky locks onto the scent of a predator unlike anyone has ever seen. Or have they? The more Hallett digs, the closer he comes to his old issues when the case that ended his career as a detective appears to be the key to a series of kidnappings. When the trail turns to murder, Hallett risks everything to catch the killer, even if it means clearing the child molester who drove him to violence and ruined his career. Along the way, Hallett and his partners learn the true meaning of loyalty and courage as their canine companions take police work to a new level and show that instinct means more than training.
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#3 in the NYPD Red Series
NYPD Red is the elite, highly trained task force assigned to protect the rich, the famous, and the connected. And Detective Zach Jordan and his partner Kylie MacDonald-the woman who broke his heart at the police academy-are the best of the best, brilliant and tireless investigators who will stop at nothing to deliver justice. Zach and Kylie's New Year's celebrations are cut short when they're called to the home of billionaire businessman Hunter Alden, Jr. after he makes a grisly discovery in his townhouse garage. When Alden's teenage son goes missing soon afterwards, and his father seems oddly reluctant to find him, Zach and Kylie find themselves in the middle of a chilling conspiracy that threatens everyone in its wake-especially their city's most powerful citizens.
