But it couldn’t be her. Sophie’s dead…Ever since we locked fingers and swore to be best friends at school, Sophie was there for me. When she married my brother, I followed her down the aisle as her bridesmaid, thrilled that we were becoming family. We laughed together and cried together. We shared everything. At least I thought we did.And then she was gone. The terrible accident that took her life devastated me, and though everyone else has moved on, I can’t. She was so quiet, those last few months. I keep thinking there is something I don’t know…Now I’m standing on the beach we visited when we were younger and there’s a woman with long blond hair a few metres away, playing with a dog in the sunshine. She turns, and I see Sophie. Heart racing, I struggle to my feet, but before I can reach her she’s vanished, leaving only footprints in the sand.It can’t be Sophie… Can it? And do I want to know what she was running from, if the answer means I can no longer trust the people I love?

    A heart - a human heart - slithering down outside the window of a train travelling between London Bridge and Blackfriars. Someone must have thrown it out from a carriage in front. Kumiko is determined to find out who - and why. But Skelton was sitting next to Kumiko on the train and he saw it too, so he also wants to get to the bottom of the mystery. Or he says he does, but really he just wants Kumiko back, because she's walked out on him, just like that, and left him heartbroken. Each for their own reasons, Kumiko and Skelton set out - separately - on a bizarre trail of discovery. Darting between dingy student pubs, the roofs of Borough Market and the corridors and car-parks of Guy's Hospital, they become embroiled in the seedy world of young medical students, until eventually the gossip and the stories lead them both to the hospital's infamous dissection lecturer - known behind his back as 'King Death'...

    His latest case is intriguing and he gets perhaps a little too involved. Libby Richmond doesn’t believe in ghosts, messages from beyond the grave or any other superstitious nonsense – but when she returns to the old Derbyshire farmhouse to nurse her Great Aunt Lillian through the last stages of terminal illness, she finds all her beliefs turned upside down. Lil wants to discover the truth behind a long-ago family scandal before she dies – and Libby finds herself being drawn in until she too is obsessed with the outcome. Decima Watkins was hanged in 1859 for poisoning three of her older sisters. Now it seems she wants revenge! Libby realizes that there can be no happy ending to this story. Either Decima was a pathetic victim of her father’s fury and a gross miscarriage of justice, or she was the cold-blooded murderess of her own siblings. Whatever the truth, she appears to be taking out her anger on Libby, even managing to inflict physical harm on her hapless descendant. But what is really happening at Hill Farm? Libby has upset quite a few people by supporting Lil when the general opinion is that she should go quietly to a hospice and die there. Is the culprit one of those angry with Libby’s interference? Is it Brendan, the boyfriend she dumped to run off to Derbyshire to be with Lil? Or is Libby simply losing her grip on reality? DI Piper is the one who has to discover the truth when he arrests her and listens to her incredible tale.

    Or at least she thought it was…until two police officers showed up at her door with devastating news. Her husband of eight years, the one who should have been on a business trip to Kansas, had suffered a fatal car accident in Hawaii. And he wasn’t alone.For Jacks, laying her husband to rest was hard. But it was even harder to think that his final moments belonged to another woman—one who had left behind her own grieving and bewildered fiancé. Nick, just as blindsided by the affair, wants answers. So he suggests that he and Jacks search for the truth together, retracing the doomed lovers’ last days in paradise.Now, following the twisting path of that fateful road, Jacks is learning that nothing is ever as it seems. Not her marriage. Not her husband. And most certainly not his death…

    He's young. He's bright. He's ambitious. Mitch could have the pick of the big firms in New York and Chicago, but he's chosen the Memphis tax firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke. They're selective. They pay outrageous salaries. They have a turnover rate of zero. And Mitch is about to find out why.Several events fuel Mitch's growing suspicions: two of the partners die in a suspicious diving accident off Grand Cayman; the senior partners seem unduly proud of the fact that no one has ever resigned; and security measures at the office are, even for a company with billionaire clients, more than a little extreme. Then Mitch makes an explosive discovery: The firm is owned and operated by the most powerful organized crime family in Chicago. Even as Mitch discovers the truth, he finds himself caught between the FBI, who wants an informant inside the firm, and the firm itself, which will make him a very rich man—or a very dead one.The ChamberAdam Hill is in his first year at a top Chicago law firm. He volunteers for the toughest assignment any lawyer could ask for. His prospective client doesn't want Adam or his law firm. He is an unrepentent and outspoken racist with a violent past. He is on Death Row for the murder of two Jewish children in a horrific bombing in 1967.Why would he take on Adam, a complete novice, to defend him? And why would Adam want his case so desperately? The answer lies in the past, in a twenty-year-old secret buried in the madness of another time...

    Written in the author's wry and masterful voice, these evocative stories are infused with all the peculiar customs, ironies and humor so special to the South.The twelve stories in this collection include "Red Clay," which won an Edgar Allen Poe Award, in which a local girl from Thermopylae becomes a movie star who moves back to her sleepy North Carolina home town and is tried for murdering her unfaithful husband. Her trial causes the town and one man in particular to look back with longing and nostalgia at this exquisite Southern belle who captivated-and sometimes manipulated-every man she met."Fast Love," the recipient of an O. Henry Award, is the story of a man who chases down his future wife after seeing her jog past. As he gets closer to his quarry, he also gains the courage to stand up for what he wants and to champion what he believes.In "Blue Cadillac," Marie, blonde and beautiful, shares dinner and her love of Elvis with a high-tech sales rep on his way home to Memphis. Along the way and on the road, they have exquisite sex and decide to part, Marie in her blue Cadillac. As he rings the bell at his mother's house, the young man discovers that he has been robbed of his wallet and his whole life on cards.Self-contained masterpieces, each of these short stories has the impact and power of a full-length novel.Stella : red clay --Marie : blue Cadillac --Precious : winners and losers --Charmain : white trash noir --Lucy : maniac loose --Flonnie : the rising of the South and Flonnie Rogers --Patty : love and other crimes --Meredith : fast love --Angie : the power --Mona : Miss mona's bank --Betty : a deer on the lawn --Mattie : invitation to the ball

    Shapiro gives the reader a bit of mystery, a bit of romance, a ghost story and social history both contemporary and pre-Civil War. The diary of Sarah Harden provides insight into the courage, convictions and trials endured by Underground Railroad sympathizers in Lexington, Mass., while a parallel story marks the progress (or lack of) that haunts Lee Seymour, a descendant of the Hardens, a proud abolitionist family. As Sarah's diary reveals details of the tragic love that developed between her and a runaway slave, Silas Person, in the late 1850s, Lee is busy helping her grandmother oversee the paperwork, repairs and reconstruction necessary to have Harden House made part of the Harriet Tubman Network to Freedom National Park. Assisting Lee is Trina Collins, a recovering addict from the Cambridge rehabilitation center where Lee works, SafeHaven. Activities both ghostly and human affect the progress being made on Harden House, and the violent past hidden for more than 100 years seems to have given birth to a new cycle of violence. An effective writer, Shapiro handles the strains of her story quite well, though her reliance on the paranormal aspects of her plot may not appeal to mystery purists. Agent, Nancy Yost.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

    When research suggests how to harness brain evolution, a hunt ensues for a missing link―one that allows to design humans with skills that prodigies of old would have envied.As germline engineering and biological enhancement have become routine, ancient doubts have emerged under new guises: Who are we? Is there a purpose to life? Why is there so much suffering? When faith and science fail to answer these questions, personal greed and national interest quickly fill the void. But gene selection is expensive, and many are excluded from its benefits. The stage is set for tribalism and social discontent on a scale without precedent, and those caught in the fray, whether by choice or by chance, must play roles not always to their liking in the struggle of all creatures against the arbitrariness of existence.

    Within minutes, she and her family hastily pack up their belongings and abandon their home. Where did the family go and why? Det. Roberta Hobbs has been assigned to uncover the family's whereabouts. Hobbs is a confident, intelligent police veteran. However, each passing day brings her closer to her unresolved past. When Hobbs digs deeper into the mystery, all leads point to her own longtime ex-boyfriend - a former drug dealer turned philanthropist named Steven Vance -- as the primary suspect. This riveting dual-timeline suspense novel takes us back to 2004 -- the year Greta Carpenter first realizes something is wrong with her young son, John. Over the course of his childhood, John's learning disabilities become apparent. Greta's unfaltering advocacy on his behalf puts her at odds with the school system and strains her relationship with her husband Griffin. Eventually Greta and Griffin's marriage falls apart, and during the divorce trial, Greta reveals that she was a teenage runaway, and a local entrepreneur named Steven Vance rescued her from the streets. Vance is certainly a man of many shades - a local celebrity for his philanthropy, a cunning CEO who sits atop a questionable mini-empire, a benevolent former father figure to Greta and a lying, evasive former companion to Hobbs. It seems that only Vance has the power to make people disappear in this small town and he emerges as the most obvious suspect...but Hobbs remains uncertain of his role. While her colleagues question whether she can truly be impartial, Hobbs realizes she has a reason to suspect them as well. Nothing is obvious in this thrilling mystery...except that Hobbs must race to solve the mystery before it's too late.

    

    When her every attempt to rekindle romance and affection with her husband--a prominent local doctor--fails, she finds herself turning to the friendship of Charlie Cobb, a new man in town. But as their relationship becomes more intimate, smalltown tongues start wagging, and their starcrossed affair leads to a shocking public murder.

    But another group has entered the park, too. They’re in cars, for pleasure and for vengeance. In Earl Emerson’s gripping new novel, a grudge turns an idyllic setting into a terrifying landscape of men and nature at their most dangerous.Zak Polanski doesn’t do long-term relationships, doesn’t like rich people, and, after saving Nadine Newcastle from an accident scene, isn’t ready to be loved back. When the improbable affair sours, Zak returns to his old ways. But Nadine’s former boyfriend, William Potter III, can’t let it go. Potter knows that Zak is one of five mountain bikers at an isolated camping ground at Panther Creek, and has come for a little payback.What starts as a nasty prank soon escalates. Someone has a gun. Someone makes a move. And a spark ignites amid a volatile mix of anger and alcohol, pride and betrayal. Now, men and women cut off from their urban environment are making choices, choosing sides, facing one another’s demons and their own. And when human hatred merges with nature’s fury, the only goal is to get out alive.A mesmerizing novel that weaves the story of a charged love affair with a drama of sheer survival, Primal Threat is a thriller delivered with the brawny, vivid, and lyrical style that makes Earl Emerson one of the most compelling storytellers of our time.

    

    Betrayed by his employer and left for dead, Kovac decides to lie low in Tokyo.His plan? Revenge...But when a young woman asks him to protect her from the yakuza, Kovac feels duty-bound to help. She’s a victim of abuse, and long experience tells him if he doesn’t step in tonight she’ll be a corpse before dawn.As Kovac works to uncover the truth of his last job, he finds himself drawn into a conspiracy which goes well beyond the yakuza to a new and terrifying multinational cartel. One that will stop at nothing to control the global drug trade.The kingpins are certain they’ve covered all bases. They're well-funded and utterly ruthless. But they’ve failed to account for one man – John Kovac.SHADOW KILL is the first in a fast-paced, unflinching thriller series that won't in any way shortchange you on action. Perfect for fans of Lee Child, Mark Greaney and Mark Dawson.

    Tock.When a series of bombings rock the Pacific Northwest, FBI Agent Blake Wilder leaps into action.The investigation though, brings her back into contact with an ATF agent she has clashed violently with in the past.Their theories clash as hard as their personalities and Blake opts to run her own concurrent investigation. What she uncovers is a twisted tale twenty years in the making. The story, as they uncover it, is full of twists, turns, and explosive revelations. All the while, Blake’s renewed rivalry with ATF Agent Winslow is threatening to derail everything.The bombs continue to explode, and the bodies continue to mount as Blake races to find the killer before he’s able to kill anybody else. At the same time, she’s forced to fend off the vengeful attacks coming from within the law enforcement community itself as well as the strife within her own team.Old enemies resurface and new ones lurk in the shadows, waiting for their moment to step forward and strike. The knives are out, and Blake must dodge them all to keep a serial bomber from burning the city to the ground.Time is running out.Blake must either find the killer or become his next victim…