Mystery writer Kimberly Sawyer lives alone and likes it that way. But when she is threatened by a hooded figure, and a blood-red rose with a needle thrust into its heart is left on her doorstep, she knows she needs protection. So it seems like perfect timing when Napa Valley vineyard owner Darius Cavenaugh returns to Kimberly's life, offering help and a place to stay. But how did he know she needed him? Was it the deep, intuitive intimacy of a soulmate...

Ali's longtime friend and Taser-carrying nun, Sister Anselm, rushes to the bedside of a young pregnant woman hospitalized for severe injuries after she was hit by a car on a deserted Arizona highway. The girl had been running away from The Family, a polygamous cult with no patience for those who try to leave its ranks. Something about her strikes a chord in Sister Anselm, reminding her of a case she worked years before when another young girl wasn't...

"Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, Claire Keegan now gifts us three exquisite stories together forming a brilliant examination of gender dynamics and an arc from Keegan's earliest to her most recent work. In "So Late in the Day," Cathal faces a long weekend as his mind agitates over a woman with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently; in "The Long and Painful Death" a writer's arrival at the seaside home of Heinrich Böll...

Former Army cavalryman Quill McKenna takes pride in protecting the most powerful man in Stonechurch, Colorado: Mr. Ramsey Stonechurch himself. But the mine owner has enemies, and after several threats on his life, mines, and family, Quill decides to hire someone to help guard the boss's daughter. Calico Nash, who knows more about scouting and shooting than cross-stitching, agrees to pose as Ann's private tutor. But between escalating threats and their...

Radio talk show host Eve Reilly is used to backlash from her pot-stirring on-air commentary and interviews, but now it seems a disgruntled listener is resorting to more than angry words to express their displeasure. When a suspicious package arrives on her doorstep, Eve turns to law enforcement for help. Police detective Brent Lange can't find any evidence to link the string of unsettling incidents that follows, but he's convinced they're connected....

"Innocent? Ten years have passed, but everyone remembers the Angel Killer. Sebastian Croll was just eleven years old when accused of murdering his playmate. Criminal solicitor Daniel Hunter helped prove Sebastian's innocence in a trial that gripped the nation, and now the past is being unearthed when he gets a call from his old client. Or guilty? Sebastian's university professor has been brutally murdered and everyone who knew her is in the frame....

Mountweazel n. the phenomenon of false entries within dictionaries and works of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement. Peter Winceworth is a lexicographer in Victorian-era London, toiling away at the letter 'S' for a multi-volume Encyclopaedic Dictionary. Secretly, he begins to insert unauthorized fictitious entries into the dictionary in an attempt to assert some artistic freedom. In the present day, Mallory is a young...

Teenager Olivia Danvers knows that the previous residents at 16 Olcott Place moved out in the middle of the night, but nobody really knows why; the new family, the Donahues, have three children including a daughter, Janie, Olivia's age, and the two becomeclose friends--but when the threatening letters start arriving from the "Sentry of Glennon Heights" the two girls realize that the house and town are hiding sinister secrets, which could tear their...

After twenty months in a Chinese prison, Jack Bauer is suddenly returned to the United States. But instead of being free, Jack's release is part of a secret deal: his life in return for the location of Hamri Al-Assad, the leader of a terrorist organization that has unleashed a wave of terror across the country. A broken man, physically and mentally, Jack agrees to the exchange. But when he learns that his new captor, Abu Fayed, is actually the man...