Category: Catalog

A master ninja and a Portuguese priest investigate the murder of a samurai in medieval Kyoto.

May 1564: When a samurai is brutally murdered in a Kyoto teahouse, master ninja Hiro has no desire to get involved. But the beautiful entertainer accused of the crime enlists the help of Father Mateo, the Portuguese Jesuit Hiro is sworn to protect, leaving the master shinobi with just three days to find the killer in order to save the girl and the priest from execution. The investigation plunges Hiro and Father Mateo into the dangerous waters of Kyoto’s floating world, where they learn that everyone from the elusive teahouse owner to the dead man’s dishonored brother has a motive to keep the samurai’s death a mystery. A rare murder weapon favored by ninja assassins, a female samurai warrior, and a hidden affair leave Hiro with too many suspects and far too little time. Worse, the ninja’s investigation uncovers a host of secrets that threaten not only Father Mateo and the teahouse, but the very future of Japan.

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Hugo Marston, head of security for the U.S. Embassy in Paris, puts his life in danger when he investigates the murder of a celebrated artist, all the while fending off an assassin looking to settle an old score against him. Hugo Marston accompanies his boss, US Ambassador J. Bradford Taylor, to the first night of an art exhibition in Montmartre, Paris. Hugo is less than happy about going until he finds out that the sculptures on display are made from his favorite medium: books. Soon after the champagne starts to flow and the canapes are served, the night takes a deadly turn when one of the guests is found murdered. Hugo lingers at the scene and offers his profiling expertise to help solve the crime, but the detective in charge quickly jumps to his own conclusions. He makes an arrest, but it’s someone that Hugo is certain is innocent. Meanwhile, his best friend, Tom Green, has disappeared to Amsterdam, hunting an enemy from their past, an enemy who gets the upper hand on Tom, and who then sets his sights on Hugo. With an innocent person behind bars, a murder to solve, and his own life in danger, Hugo knows he has no time to waste as one killer tries to slip away, and another gets closer and closer.

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When Phoenix police detective Alex Mills is called to a lavish mansion to investigate the homicide of a high-flying socialite, he knows the case is going to get complicated.

High society maven Viveca Canning is dead, and a priceless painting by the legendary artist Salvador Dalí is missing. With no known enemies, the beloved heiress was an unlikely candidate for murder … or was she?

With the help of his partner, psychic to the stars Gus Parker, Alex starts digging through evidence and interviewing suspects, including Viveca’s playboy son and estranged daughter — who may not be telling everything they know … Meanwhile Gus is troubled by visions of his own, about a exotic seas, a perilous journey, and a doomed flight.

Smart, sexy, and fast, Valley of Shadows takes the reader on a whirlwind ride through the sun-bleached suburbs and starry deserts of the Southwest, where nothing is ever quite as it seems.

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A multimillion-dollar plot and a perpetrator who will kill to keep it secret.

What starts as a routine security assignment turns out to be anything but for
down-on-his-luck private eye Eli Paxton. Hired to guard the high-priced yearlings of “Trojan,” a recently retired classic winner in Lexington, Kentucky, Paxton is no sooner on the job than he must respond to a fracas in the horse barn. Rushing in, he’s just in time to thwart a vicious attack on a young groom. The assailants get away, leaving the groom bloodied and too terrified to talk. The next day he doesn’t show up for work, and the Trojan colt that was in his keeping sells for a record price.

Now assigned to investigate the boy’s disappearance, Paxton focuses on the Lexington breeding farm. It turns out that two other staff members have disappeared in the past couple of months. And the owner of the farm, while denying it, appears to be in financial straits.

As Paxton worries that all three missing boys may never be found, he runs smack into a multimillion-dollar plot that the perpetrator will kill to keep secret.

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The quintessential outsider—with a price on his head in two cities.

Jersey Leo is the quintessential outsider—an albino of mixed race. Known as “Snowball” on the street, he makes a living as the bartender at a mob-run speakeasy in Prohibition-era Hell’s Kitchen. Being neither black nor white, he has no group to call his own. His own mother abandoned him as a baby. And his father—a former boxing champ with his own secrets—disapproves of Jersey’s work at a dive owned by one of New York’s most notorious gangsters.

So when he inadvertently purchases counterfeit moonshine (“sugar pop moon”) with his boss’s money—a potentially fatal mistake—he must go undercover to track down the bootlegger who took him in. The clues lead to Philadelphia, where he runs into a cleaver-swinging madman out for his femurs and a cold-blooded gangster holed up on a Christmas-tree farm. Now with a price on his head in two cities, Jersey seeks help from the only man he can trust, his father. As the two delve into the origins of the mysterious sugar pop moon, stunning secrets about Jersey’s past come to light. To ensure his future, Jersey must face his past, even if it means that life will never return to normal.

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Ellie Stone, a young newspaper reporter in 1960s’ upstate New York, investigates a double murder at an abandoned stud farm near glamorous Saratoga Springs.

August 1962. A suspicious fire claims a tumbledown foaling barn on the grounds of the once-proud Tempesta Stud Farm, halfway between New Holland and Saratoga Springs, NY. The blaze, one of several in recent years at the abandoned farm, barely prompts a shrug from the local sheriff. That is until “girl reporter” Ellie Stone, first on the scene, uncovers a singed length of racing silk in the rubble of the barn. And it’s wrapped around the neck of one of two charred bodies buried in the ashes. A bullet between the eyes of one of the victims confirms it’s murder, and the police suspect gamblers. Ellie digs deeper.

The double murder, committed on a ghostly stud farm in the dead of night, leads Ellie down a haunted path, just a stone’s throw from the glamour of Saratoga Springs, to a place where dangerous men don’t like to lose. Unraveling secrets from the past—crushing failure and heartless betrayal—she’s learning that arson can be cold revenge.

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December 21, 1960, the shortest day of the year: Fifteen-year-old Darleen Hicks slips away from her school bus as it idles in the junior-high parking lot, waiting to depart.

Moments later the bus rumbles away without her, and she is never seen again.

New Year’s Eve 1960: The small upstate town of New Holland, New York, is in the grips of a severe cold snap, when Ellie Stone receives a late-night caller—Irene Metzger, the grieving mother of Darleen Hicks. She tells Ellie that the local police won’t help her, that they believe Darleen has run off with some older boy and will return when she is ready. Irene has read Ellie’s stories in the paper on an earlier murder case and believes Ellie is her last hope.

Stone Cold Dead takes Ellie Stone on a chilling journey to a place of uncertainty, loss, teenage passion, and vulnerability—a place where Ellie’s questions are unwanted and her life is in danger.

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American novelist Helen Hancock is in Paris to research her work-in-progress and teach a writing class when she discovers a spy camera hidden in her room at the luxury Hotel Sorbonne. Hancock notifies the US embassy, which dispatches former FBI profiler Hugo Marston to investigate.

Almost immediately the stakes are raised when a bell-hop is found dead in the hotel’s stairwell. Police tell Hugo they have discovered evidence on the dead man’s computer suggesting that he was the one who bugged Hancock’s room.

The next day things become even more complicated when a salacious video clip explodes across the Internet showing Hancock in the embrace of Ambrosio Silva, one of her writing students—both are naked and nothing is left to the imagination. But when Hugo tries to find him, his investigation leads only to Silva’s dead body. He too has been murdered.

Through a series of sharp deductions, Hugo uncovers new evidence pointing to the most surprising suspect of all. A close call with a dark figure on the steps of his own apartment building proves that he’s on the right track and leaves no doubt that he is next on the hit list.

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Introducing a new line of Carolyn Hart Classics

Beijing, 1941: The ancient bones of the famed “Peking Man” are placed in two wooden crates for shipment to the United States to escape the invading Japanese army. The bones are never seen again.

New York City, 1970s: a mysterious woman offers to sell the bones to an unknown man on top of the Empire State Building. But when someone takes a photograph, she makes a hasty retreat and disappears forever. San Francisco, 1980s: The greatest treasure in the history of paleontology remains missing—until a frantic stranger named Jimmy calls on noted anthropologist

Ellen Christie and shares a scintillating secret with her: he has evidence of the bones in his backpack. She becomes convinced that he is right. But when she visits his Chinatown home, Jimmy must flee with the evidence, as a couple of thugs are also after the treasure.

As Ellen and Jimmy’s brother, Dan, navigate the treachery of the city’s elite criminals, her dreams of academic stardom draw closer. Unfortunately, so does danger.

Can Ellen really trust Jimmy? And if she can’t, will her own ambition and her growing attraction to Dan lead her astray? Ellen will soon discover that the real world is greyer than the black-and-white lines of science, and the blurrier the lines, the more fun they are to cross!

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Marjorie Trumaine, a freelance indexer from rural North Dakota in the 1960s, risks her life to help local law enforcement track down a missing, disabled girl.

Dickinson, North Dakota, 1965. It’s a harsh winter and freelance indexer Marjorie Trumaine struggles to complete a lengthy index while still mourning the recent loss of her husband, Hank. The bleakness of the weather seems to compound her grief and then she gets more bad news: a neighbor’s fourteen-year-old disabled daughter, Tina Rinkerman, has disappeared. Feeling she needs to do something to help the Rinkerman family, Marjorie joins Sheriff Guy Reinhardt in the search for the missing girl. Their investigation quickly leads to a shocking discovery and further complications. Not far from the Rinkerman’s house, the body of grocery store manager Nils Jacobsen is found with a bullet in his head.

Despite a looming deadline for the book index, Marjorie is more and more distracted by the disturbing events surrounding the hunt for Tina Rinkerman. Instead of focusing on her work, she follows leads that take her all the way to the Grafton State School, some five hours away. Until recently, Tina had been a resident there. The information she uncovers raises more questions, but it ties together the murder of Nils Jacobsen and the girl’s disappearance.

On a treacherous drive home to Dickinson, she becomes aware that someone doesn’t want her to return. She fears the person who murdered Nils will not hesitate to silence her, now that she knows an age-old secret.

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