Murder in paradise! The body on a lakeside dock. The investigation in the hands of an inexperienced sheriff and a vacationing professor who is attracted both to her and to the crime.

Crooked Lake, Sask., is a small town where everyone knows everyone else's business. John (Bart) Bartowski doesn't like to poke his nose into things that don't concern him. He's got a fishing lodge to run, one that may just have to close because the government won't renew his lease. When his best friend is fired as greens-keeper at the local golf course, Bart is incensed. He's a director of the golf club, and the firing was done while he was out of town. Then the man who orchestrated the firing is beaten to death with a golf club.

Travelling alone in the depths of winter, Morlock Ambrosius (bitterly dry drunk, master of all magical makers, wandering swordsman, and son of Merlin Ambrosius and Nimue Viviana) is attacked by an unknown enemy. To unmask his enemy and end the attacks he must travel a long crooked way through the world: past the soul-eating Boneless One, past a subtle and treacherous master of golems, past the dragon-taming Khroi, past the predatory cities of Sarkunden and Aflraun, past the demons and dark gnomes of the northern woods. Soon he will find that his enemy wears a familiar face, and that the duel he has stumbled into will threaten more lives than his own, leaving nations shattered in its chaotic wake. And at the end of his long road waits the death of a legend.

A DEATH ON CROOKED LAKE is the story of the murder of a wealthy and arrogant man who has moved to a peaceful lake in upstate New York as owner of one of the region's premier wineries. His arrival quickly upsets the lives of many of the lake's residents. T

No-Body Homicides: The Evolution of Investigation and Prosecution examines how police and prosecutors have become more successful in obtaining convictions for homicide when the remains of the victim are unavailable as evidence. Based on an examination of over 600 cases in the United States and Canada, this book shows the length some killers will go to avoid punishment and the determination of police and prosecutors to bring them to justice. For over 300 years, murderers in the United States and Canada could avoid prosecution by successfully disposing of the body of their victim. No-Body Homicides provides the reader with a historical overview of prosecutions in which a killer destroyed or hid the body of the victim. It explains why prosecutions were once extremely rare, and how legal, attitudinal, and technical changes have made them more common. The book also explores how the logic of no-body homicide prosecutions differs from body-present homicides. It allows police and prosecutors to draw on the accumulated experience of hundreds of prosecutions. For criminology students, it provides fascinating insights into the process of investigating and prosecuting homicides – as well as a glimpse into the motivations and practices of killers who are so determined to avoid punishment that they remove the bodies of their victims. No-Body Homicides will be of practical interest to police or prosecutors confronted with a missing person’s case that could be sinister. It is also written to be appropriate as a supplementary text in an undergraduate criminology class or for an aficionado of “True Crime.”