But when an employer stiffs her, and her checks bounce, she goes on the lam, hiding out as a maid for a wealthy family at their summer home. That plan goes awry when there’s a murder and Blanche becomes the prime suspect. So she’s forced to use her savvy, her sharp wit, and her old-girl network of domestic workers to discover the truth and save her own skin. Along the way, she lays bare the quirks of southern society with humor, irony, and a biting commentary that makes her one of the most memorable and original characters ever to appear in mystery fiction.

    — A once-fashionable, now fading resort hotel. A spinster Aunt living in an attic. Dirt roads that lead to dead ends. A house full of secrets and old, dusty furnishings, uninhabited for almost half a century. A twelve-year-old girl with a passion for double-chocolate ice-cream sodas, and decaying lake-fronts, and an obsession with the death by drowning of another young girl, forty years before.Like all important events in the past, there are repercussions and ramifications in the present. In the world as seen by Martha Grimes, those repercussions simmer and seethe and wind their way through hearts and souls. The ramifications can be subtle. Or exhilarating. Passionate. And they can also be deadly.Hotel Paradise is a delicate yet excruciating view of the pettiness and cruelty of small town America. It is a look at the difficult decisions a young girl must make on her way to becoming an adult and the choices she must make between right and wrong, between love and truth, between life and death. It is a novel with extraordinary range and depth that ultimately becomes a thrilling morality play.

    Three days before Christmas, Alvirah Meehan, the famous lottery winner and amateur detective, meets Regan in a New Jersey dentist's office. Regan is there in search of her busy father, who is scheduled for a routine visit. However, it is soon apparent that Luke Reilly is not going to keep his appointment, But Regan's worry turns to panic when a call comes through on her cell phone telling her that her father and his driver Rosita Gonzalez, are being held for $1,000,000 ransom. She turns to Alvirah, because although Regan is a licensed detective in L.A., it is Alvirah who has the valuable contacts amongst the ranks of New York's law enforcement community.As Regan and Alvirah desperately try to meet the harsh demands and tough deadline of the kidnappers, Luke and Rosita, held captive on a decrepit houseboatmoored in the Hudson River, are becoming increasingly terrified. And to make matters worse, a winter storm is gathering, putting their lives in even greater danger ...'Deck The Halls' is filled with twists and turns , intrigue and danger, as well as a hearty dose of holiday cheer. Mary and Carol Higgins Clark have created a breathless yet heartwarming story of suspense in their first collaboration - a Christmas classic for many holiday seasons to come.

    Now, it’s their turn. And the price could be their lives.“I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t.” That’s what Allie Whitman tells herself every night as she lies awake. Sometimes she even believes it. But mostly she knows deep down that her inability to make a hard choice has put millions of lives at risk, including her own. Now the only one who can help her is her lawyer, Connor Norman. Unfortunately, Allie’s actions have destroyed Connor’s trust in her—and may destroy much, much more.

    It is 1997, and in a basement flat in Hackney, Isla Green is awakened by a call in the middle of the night: her father phoning from Sydney.  30 years ago, in the suffocating heat of summer 1967, the Greens’ next-door neighbour Mandy disappeared. At the time, it was thought she had fled a broken marriage and gone to start a new life; but now Mandy’s family is trying to reconnect, and there is no trace of her. Isla’s father Joe was allegedly the last person to see her alive, and now he’s under suspicion of murder. Isla unwillingly plans to go back to Australia for the first time in a decade to support her father. The return to Sydney will plunge Isla deep into the past, to a quiet street by the sea where two couples live side by side. Isla’s parents, Louisa and Joe, have recently emigrated from England—a move that has left Louisa miserably homesick while Joe embraces this new life. Next door, Steve and Mandy are equally troubled. Mandy doesn’t want a baby, even though Steve—a cop trying to hold it together under the pressures of the job—is desperate to become a father.   The more Isla asks about the past, the more she learns: about both young couples and the secrets each marriage bore. Could her father be capable of doing something terrible? How much does her mother know? What will happen to their family if Isla’s worst fears are realized? And is there another secret in this community, one which goes deeper into Australia’s colonial past, which has held them in a conspiracy of silence?Deftly exploring the deterioration of relationships and the devastating truths we keep from those we love, The Silence is a stunning debut from a promising literary star.

    She's the town's most beloved surf idol, and it was believed that she could be the next Kelly Slater.As another child, the son of a well-known senator is kidnapped, and the parents receive a disturbing video, FBI profiler Eva Rae Thomas — who has just returned to her hometown, divorced and out of a job — plunges into the investigation, breaking her promise to her children not to do police work again.Local law enforcement, with her old flame Matt Miller in charge, are the ones who ask for her help in a case so unsettling that only she can solve it. But the deeper they dig, the deadlier it becomes for Matt and Eva Rae. Soon, everyone she holds dear is in grave danger as this case hits a little too close to home. DON’T LIE TO ME is the first book in the Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Series and can be read as a standalone.