Between a rock and a hard paddle Mandy Tanner and her fiancé Rob are leading an offseason rafting-climbing trip in Utah’s remote Canyonlands. Experienced guides, Mandy and Rob know they have to keep their cool after one of their group, Alex Anderson, appears to have become bear bait. Walled off from the outside world with eleven shell-shocked clients and miles of Colorado River whitewater ahead, Mandy’s nerves threaten to unravel when she learns that Alex’s death was not the work of a homicidal grizzly. Whether it was a crime of passion or the random act of a psychopath, Mandy fears that if they don’t root out the river rat among them, another camper will be running the rapids in a body bag. Praise: “A remarkable book by an author who clearly knows and loves her territory. Don’t miss it!”—William Kent Krueger, New York Times bestselling author of the Cork O’Connor series “Once again, Groundwater, mixing mystery with outdoor adventure, comes up with an excursion that will please most comers.”—Kirkus Reviews “A thrilling journey . . . filled with river lore, vivid descriptions . . . and loving depictions of the varied characters.”—Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

Fatal Descent by John Dickson Carr and Cecil Street (writing as Carter Dickson and John Rhode) Carr and Street “are such expert mystery-mongers that their collaboration could scarcely fail to produce something extra special in the bafflement line. Fatal Descent is all of that.”—The New York Times “London publisher shot in automatic elevator. Dr. Horatio Glass and Insp. Hornbeam pool wits—and humor—to spot the killer. Neat variation of good old ‘hermetically sealed room’ problem, with two authors—and their sleuths—working beautifully in harness. Verdict: Top Drawer”—The Saturday Review A seemingly impossible murder in a private elevator draws two sleuths to the case. Inspector Hornbeam and Dr. Horatio Glass are at odds from the beginning, each dismissive of the other’s theories, thus creating an atmosphere as much of competition as cooperation. From the novel: The elevator was perhaps six feet square by eight feet high, with steel walls painted to imitate bronze. Sir Ernest Tallant sat very quietly in the rear right-hand corner. His legs were outthrust stiffly, his back bent a little forward; and the brim of the rakish gray hat shaded his face. He might have been a grotesque parody of Little Jack Horner, if it had not been for the widening bloodstains on the left breast of his jacket. His umbrella lay beside him, also looking oddly childish like his posture. Under each roof corner of the elevator there was a tiny electric light; these four little lights illumined even the wrinkles on the backs of the man’s hands, and glittered on the pieces of broken glass. Published in the United Kingdom as Drop to His Death

A bibliography of various mystery novels published between November 1976 and Fall 1992.

Testing the boundaries between food, poison and medicine is a public show made into a continuing drama of risk and survival. This book is the first to explore the tradition of deliberate poison eating, its practitioners, and the substances that might nourish or kill them. Readers interested in the human history of drugs and medicine, in feats of endurance usually survived and in the play of controlling and regulatory authorities that always accompanies drug and poison use will find Poison Eaters especially appealing.

The novel's central character is Etienne Lantier, previously seen in L'Assommoir (1877), a young migrant worker who arrives at the forbidding coalmining town of Montsou in the bleak far north of France to earn a living as a miner. Sacked from his previous job on the railways for assaulting a superior - he befriends the veteran miner Maheu, who finds him somewhere to stay and gets him a job pushing the carts down the pit. Etienne is portrayed as a hard-working idealist but also a naïve youth; Zola's genetic theories come into play as Etienne is presumed to have inherited his Macquart ancestors' traits of hotheaded impulsiveness and an addictive personality capable of exploding into rage under the influence of drink or strong passions. -- from http://www.barnesandnoble.com (Jan. 21, 2014).

Traces the misfortunes of the Kennedy family from the 1830s to the present to consider the author's theories about the family's biological inclinations toward trouble.