When his mentor’s niece rips off a local organised crime syndicate and disappears, Adam Park – a former private investigator and security consultant – has little choice but to return home to help track her down. As he commences his investigation, it becomes clear the troubled young woman was acting under the influence of a domineering boyfriend and, using cutting edge technology, Adam tracks the pair to Paris. Here, he learns not only have they involved themselves in a criminal venture that may now cost them their lives, but elements back home are also seeking revenge upon them. Pursuing them from the UK to Paris, then out into the wider world, Adam will confront an international network of criminals for whom human life is nothing but another business commodity. If he is to survive, return the girl safely, and protect the people he cares for most, he must delve into the darkest recesses of his soul, and blur his previously-solid concepts of right and wrong.

    Overnight, her promising new start becomes a nightmare. At stake is her job, her reputation, her license to practice, and her already battered sense of self-worth.Dot resolves to find out not just what led Ben to kill himself, but why her psychologist ex-husband, the man she most wants to avoid, recommended that Ben be hired in the first place. Ben’s surviving family and everyone else connected to him are determined to keep Ben’s story a secret, by any means necessary. Even Ben, from the grave, has secrets to keep.Right from the start, Dot’s investigation efforts get her into trouble. First she alienates Ben’s training officer, who is barely managing to hold onto his own job. With the police chief watching over her shoulder, she tries to help the officer with disastrous consequences. After reaching out to console Ben’s pregnant—and slightly sociopathic—widow, Dot winds up embroiled in the affairs of her incredibly dysfunctional family. Dot’s troubles are compounded by a post-divorceromance, the ex who still has a hold over her, and an unwelcome visit from his new wife. By the time she uncovers the real reasons behind Ben’s suicide and brings the people responsible to justice, Dot has not only resurrected belief in herself, she has also acquired some surprisingly useful new skills: impersonating a public official, burglary, and assault with a deadly weapon.

    She’ll end it.FBI special agent Clarke Sinclair doesn’t give up easily. She’s spent years tracking serial killer Simon Cross, forced to follow his twisted clues and photographs across the country. Clarke knows that Cross selects only redheaded women and that he doesn’t target another victim until Clarke discovers the previous one.He’s never broken pattern…until now.A girl has already gone missing in upstate New York when a second one is kidnapped—a blonde. The killer’s MO has changed, sending Clarke back to the drawing board. The closer she gets to the truth, the deeper she’s drawn into an inescapable trap made just for Clarke. Whatever Cross’s ultimate game is, it ends with her.

    For sophisticated booklover Julia Kydd, life’s too short for politics. With her cropped hair and penchant for independent living, Julia wants only to launch her own new private press. But as a woman, Julia must fight for what’s hers—including the inheritance her estranged half brother, Philip, has challenged, putting her aspirations in jeopardy.When her friend’s sister, Naomi Rankin, dies suddenly of an apparent suicide, Julia is shocked at the wealthy family’s indifference toward the ardent suffragist’s death. Naomi chose poverty and hardship over a submissive marriage and a husband’s control of her money. Now, her death suggests the struggle was more than she could bear.Julia, however, is skeptical. Doubtful of her suspicions, Philip proposes a glib wager: if Julia can prove Naomi was in fact murdered, he’ll drop his claims to her wealth. Julia soon discovers Naomi’s life was as turbulent and enigmatic as her death. And as she gets closer to the truth, Julia sees there’s much more at stake than her inheritance…

    financial system.From the sweltering streets of Seoul to the sex-and-drug-driven underbelly of Greenwich Village, attempts at silencing a leak in an international counterfeiting operation leave a trail of butchery that leads inevitably to Wall Street, pitting a counter-culture heroine against a ruthless state-sponsored assassination team that will stop at nothing to achieve its lethal ends.As the body count climbs, Tess is assisted by Detective Ron Stanford, a NYPD homicide specialist tracking a brutal serial killer whose ritualistic cycle of murder and mutilation targeting bike messengers is escalating to fever pitch.Tess's battle to survive propels her into a deadly underworld where she must become judge and executioner, challenging her core beliefs about morality, justice and love.

     That’s the delicious underpinning of this sprawling, exuberant, generous-spirited cozy mystery series with a yummy side of international adventure. A little bit chick lit, a touch of cozy mystery, a whole lot of humor, romance, suspense—all in one box set! These two books continue the adventures of the five lawyer sisters that started with Blackbird Fly. On to The Girl in the Empty Dress, Give Him the Ooh-la-la, and The Things We Said Today... (also available in box sets) to these two stories that follow Merle Bennett's journey from the US to France, with her French boyfriend, Pascal. THE FRENCHMAN Ooh-la-la, who doesn't love a Frenchman? Merle Bennett goes back to France -- and her Frenchman -- in this fifth installment of the Bennett Sisters mysteries. Sure that La Belle France will cure all her ills, and help her write a novel about the French Revolution, she sets out to prove her theory correct. Pascal, her Frenchman, scoffs at this. As a policeman he knows France is pretty to look at but not all that pretty under the surface. While Merle writes and renovates her stone cottage, Pascal encounters an old enemy, a man he put in prison years before. When Pascal disappears Merle isn't sure if their relationship is over, or something terrible has happened. A soupçon of danger, a brush with 'madame guillotine,' and the quirky characters of the French countryside, all collide in this installment of the Bennett Sisters Mysteries, set in la belle France-- where, obviously, wine, sunshine, sunflowers, and Frenchmen cure all ills. Or do they? ODETTE AND THE GREAT FEAR A Gothic Romance by 'Merle Bennett' Deep in the French countryside-- as the country reels through rebellion, beheadings, and starvation-- a goat-herder named Odette is trying to survive. Just that-- survival is on her mind. Since she marched to Versailles with a group of Parisian women to protest the high prices of wheat, her life has spun out of control. She's fled the capital for the countryside. But what will happen to her? Can she stay in the Dordogne where the kindly farmers have taken pity on her? 'Odette and the Great Fear' is a novella from the novel, 'The Frenchman,' by Lise McClendon. Merle Bennett, the main character, is writing a novel. Here the story is fleshed out, characters come into focus, and outcomes are decided. Will Odette and her handsome stranger find each other? How did the Count get his horrible scar? Will the villagers burn out the nobles for good? All these delicious details, mixed with a terrifying and exhilarating time in history, make 'Odette and the Great Fear' a quick but intriguing read. Next up in the series is 'Blame it on Paris,' Bennett Sisters Mystery #8, after the Sister's French Cookbook, filled with delicious recipes inspired by the series. Get the cookbook for free by signing up for the newsletter at the author's website: LiseMcClendon.com - I hope you enjoy the books.

    Too bad his body didn't!Advertising copywriter Leigh Koslow doesn't pack heat--just a few extra pounds. And she doesn't go looking for trouble. When she moved into her cousin Cara's refurbished Victorian house, she wasn't planning on discovering a corpse--certainly not one that had been embalmed ten years before. But as anyone in the small Pittsburgh borough of Avalon could tell her, her cousin's house has a history attached. A history dating back to two mysterious deaths in the summer of 1949.Someone wants Leigh and Cara out of the house--someone who has something to hide. But that someone doesn't know Leigh's impetuous cousin, and when Cara digs her heels in, Leigh looks to her old college chum, local policewoman Maura Polanski, for help. But the answers the trio find only point to more questions. Were the scandalous deaths of fifty years ago really an accident and a suicide? Or were they murder?The nearer the women get to the truth, the more desperate someone becomes. Because some secrets are better off kept. Especially when they hit close to home!

    Five months later, the mayor is dead, found collapsed in his mine. His widow asks Flint to investigate. He agrees to help her as a favor but expects to find that Joe died of natural causes.To Flint's horror, he discovers instead that Joe was hiding a terrible secret from his wife and the town. Joe's unexpected death pulls back a curtain and exposes a criminal enterprise thriving in Hallelujah's dark and remote mines.Human monsters roam those hidden corridors, torturing and killing innocent victims. And when more murders follow, the town turns to the marshal they once cast aside, praying for him to save them all.

    American genealogist Jefferson Tayte is hired to find out what happened, but it soon becomes apparent that a calculated killer is out to stop him.In the Blood combines a centuries-old mystery with a present-day thriller that brings two people from opposite sides of the Atlantic together to uncover a series of carefully hidden crimes. Tayte's research centres around the tragic life of a young Cornish girl, a writing box, and the discovery of a dark secret that he believes will lead him to the family he is looking for. Trouble is, someone else is looking for the same answers and will stop at nothing to find them.In the Blood is the first in the Jefferson Tayte mystery series.

    Her life is organized and predictable, revolving around her husband and two children. All that changes the day she stops at the grocery store for some carrots. As the cashier rings up her purchases, a gunman is busy robbing the bank inside the store. When a customer grabs the robber's mask, he is shot and everyone runs for cover. Everyone except Shelby, who finds herself face to face with the killer. The next thing she knows, she's lying on the floor with a bullet wound to her head. Luckily, the bullet only grazes her scalp, and she doesn't suspect any lasting affects until later, when she suddenly 'hears' what people are thinking. With this uncanny ability, her life takes on a whole new dimension. Her kids think she's bossy and too old to understand them, but that's nothing compared to her husband. He says he loves her, but what is it about the redhead at work that he doesn't want her to know? As if that isn't enough, the gunman knows she can identify him, and he's out to silence her forever. In her fight to stay alive, she is saved from certain death by a handsome hit-man with ties to organized crime. This pulls Shelby even deeper into danger, where knowing someone's thoughts can not only hurt her feelings, but get her killed.

    . .  It’s the hot and humid East Coast summer of 1931 and seven years since Dr. Haley Higgins’ brother Joe was murdered. The case is cold. The Boston Police Department may have given up on finding Joe Higgins’ killer, but Haley never will. She’s serious and savvy and has what it takes to hold up under depressive times. At least she finds some satisfaction doing her part as the city pathologist’s assistant in solving other crimes.Investigative reporter Samantha Hawke ~ byline Sam Hawke ~ is blond, beautiful and broke, no thanks to her no good husband who’s been on the lam for over six years. Her position at the Boston Daily Record is more than a job ~ it’s payback.When a man is found dead at the Bell in Hand Tavern on Union Street, Haley and Samantha are both working the case. Haley’s looking for justice and Samantha’s after recognition and a raise. They may want the same thing ~ to catch a killer ~ but it turns out they may need each other to solve this case before becoming the next victims.

    It doesn't take long for Knighthorse to realize that not all is as it seems at tranquil Huntington High, from a band director who preys on the innocent to a vice-principal with a secret agenda of her own. Not to mention someone's hired a professional killer to keep Knighthorse permanently off the case.As the investigation continues, Knighthorse's personal life is shattered by the discovery of new evidence relating to his mother's unsolved murder, a murder dating back twenty years. Reeling from the discovery, a determined Jim Knighthorse sets out to bring two killers to justice.

     Constantine can no longer hide in Europe. As he discovers a century-old secret, he must flee back to Moscow, chased by assassins. Only one man can save him. Eugene Sokolov: an officer in the world's most elite rescue unit, a martial arts legend… and Constantine's brother. They face an enemy unlike any other. In a game run by a KGB spymaster, the fate of Russia will depend on their survival.

    Did one of them kill to get it?Prep school sweethearts Ian and Andi Copeland are envied by everyone they know. They have successful businesses, a beautiful house in St. Louis, and their eldest daughter, Cassidy, is following in their footsteps by attending prestigious Glenlake Academy. Then, a submerged car is dredged from the bottom of a swimming hole near the campus. So are the remains of a former writer-in-residence who vanished twenty years ago—during Ian and Andi’s senior year.When Cassidy’s journalism class begins investigating the death, Ian and Andi’s high school secrets rise to the surface. Each has a troubled link to the man whose arrival and sudden disappearance once set the school on edge. And each had a reason to want him gone. As Cassidy unwittingly edges closer to the truth, unspoken words, locked away for decades, will force Ian and Andi to question what they really know—about themselves, about the past, and about a marriage built on a murderous lie.

    Which should be easy, given his assignment is a routine protection detail for Stanley Tuchek, the California Governor’s son. But on the first morning of protection an intruder breaks into Chase’s home. When the cops arrive and discover Chase’s unusual collection of weapons, he’s taken to the local police station for questioning. By the time Chase catches up with the governor’s son, Stanley gets shot, and Chase starts to suspect this might all have something to do with his own murky black-ops past. Though he’s pulled off protection, and ordered to stay away from Stanley, Chase won’t let the case go. Desperate to figure out what’s going on, Chase begins an unofficial investigation that takes him from a bullet ridden confrontation with a government hitman to a conspiracy that reaches to the highest level of American intelligence. With no-one to trust, and the line between good and evil becoming increasingly blurred, Garrison Chase must do everything in his power to uncover the truth, stop the conspiracy, and bring down the players involved.