MAYDAY! When Christine Bennett is invited on a sightseeing trip to Arizona, she jumps at the chance for a little adventure. But the excursion reminds her of a former high school classmate, Heinz Gruner, who died twenty years earlier on Cinco de Mayo while hiking Picacho Peak near Tucson. Chris decides to contact Heinz’s mother, who has been wondering all these years how her beloved son, an experienced hiker, plunged to his death. Her one wish is to find out the truth–whether it was an accident, as the police report claimed, or murder. So Chris begins sleuthing–tracking down anyone and everyone connected to her old classmate. Determined to unravel a mystery, if there is indeed one to unravel, Chris will stop at nothing to uncover the dire secrets that exist about that fateful day in May.

Robert George is the new president, placed there after the sudden death of his predecessor. A controversial veto of the Omnibus Immigration and Border Control Act has California taking the border troubles into their own hands. Cascading events including a deadly bombing bring federal agents to the scene. A fast-paced investigation by treasury inspector Richard Ringo Starr and his team, including US Deputy Marshal Manny LaRussa, a San Diego native drafted into the investigation, begin to expose the depth of the conspiracy and certainty of traitors in government. How to stop terrorists and their weapons becomes the focus. Israels Mossads most successful agent, Levi, enters the fray with the knowledge that God is with him. Levis secret information is President Georges best chance to save America. The breakneck pace of the race to save the country and Israel moves from San Diego to Los Angeles to Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico, and eventually to Washington, DC. Richard Starr and his team spare nothing to stop Juan Carlos Kluver, the spirit of Adolph Hitler, and his weapons of mass destruction.

Like other fictional characters, female sleuths may live in the past or the future. They may represent current times with some level of reality or shape their settings to suit an agenda. There are audiences for both realism and escapism in the mystery novel. It is interesting, however, to compare the fictional world of the mystery sleuth with the world in which readers live. Of course, mystery readers do not share one simplistic world. They live in urban, suburban, and rural areas, as do the female heroines in the books they read. They may choose a book because it has a familiar background or because it takes them to places they long to visit. Readers may be rich or poor; young or old; conservative or liberal. So are the heroines. What incredible choices there are today in mystery series! This three-volume encyclopedia of women characters in the mystery novel is like a gigantic menu. Like a menu, the descriptions of the items that are provided are subjective. Volume 3 of Mystery Women as currently updated adds an additional 42 sleuths to the 500 plus who were covered in the initial Volume 3. These are more recently discovered sleuths who were introduced during the period from January 1, 1990 to December 31, 1999. This more than doubles the number of sleuths introduced in the 1980s (298 of whom were covered in Volume 2) and easily exceeded the 347 series (and some outstanding individuals) described in Volume 1, which covered a 130-year period from 1860-1979. It also includes updates on those individuals covered in the first edition; changes in status, short reviews of books published since the first edition through December 31, 2008.

When Debra Moerke and her husband decided to become foster parents, they never imagined how their lives would change. Debra became especially close to one little girl: four-year-old Hannah. She loved her and did everything she could to help Hannah learn to trust and teach her to feel safe. But when Hannah went back to her birth mother, Karen, it wasn't long before one of Debra's worst fears came true. Overwhelmed with horror and grief, Debra didn't think she could take anymore, but then she received a phone call from prison. Karen, facing a life sentence, was pregnant, and she had a shocking question to ask ...

A guide to series fiction lists popular series, identifies novels by character, and offers guidance on the order in which to read unnumbered series.

Why is Cinco de Mayo—a holiday commemorating a Mexican victory over the French at Puebla in 1862—so widely celebrated in California and across the United States, when it is scarcely observed in Mexico? As David E. Hayes-Bautista explains, the holiday is not Mexican at all, but rather an American one, created by Latinos in California during the mid-nineteenth century. Hayes-Bautista shows how the meaning of Cinco de Mayo has shifted over time—it embodied immigrant nostalgia in the 1930s, U.S. patriotism during World War II, Chicano Power in the 1960s and 1970s, and commercial intentions in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, it continues to reflect the aspirations of a community that is engaged, empowered, and expanding.

Commissaire Dupin is back in The Fleur de Sel Murders, this Brittany mystery from international bestselling author Jean-Luc Bannalec. The old salt farmers have always said that the violet scent of the Fleur de Sel at harvest time on the salt marshes of the Guérande Peninsula has been known to cause hallucinations. Commissaire Dupin also starts to believe this when he’s attacked out of the blue in the salt works. He had actually been looking forward to escaping his endless paperwork and taking a trip to the “white country” between the raging Atlantic Ocean and idyllic rivers. But when he starts snooping around mysterious barrels on behalf of Lilou Breval, a journalist friend, he finds himself unexpectedly under attack. The offender remains a mystery, and a short time later, Breval disappears without a trace. It is thanks to his secretary Nolwenn and the ambition of the prefect that Dupin is assigned to the case. But he won’t be working alone because Sylvaine Rose is the investigator responsible for the department—and she lives up to her name... What’s going on in the salt works? Dupin and Rose search feverishly for clues and stumble upon false alibis, massive conflicts of interest, personal feuds—and ancient Breton legends.

Even though the Newtown, Connecticut, police listed Helle Crafts' disappearance as a routine missing person case, Keith Mayo, a private investigator, knew the Danish-born mother of three hadn't skipped town nine days before Thanksgiving.. Rita Buonanno remembers the words exactly: "If anything happens to me don't think it was an accident." Helle Crafts was last seen on November 18, 1986. In the style of a brilliant detective novel, Arthur Herzog skillfully re-creates the hour-by-hour circumstantial details that inform this grisly true-crime narrative. We observe dispassionate Richard Crafts as he buys a truck with a pintle hook for towing heavy equipment, promised for delivery before November 18. A day later he reserves a Badger Brush Bandit woodchipper.

One day I was a happy mother of three with a great husband, wonderful job, and looking toward the future. The next, I was a devastated zombie who was hardly able to talk in complete sentences. My mother had been murdered. As a counselor and writer, I began to journal to try to help myself. After several years, these were packed away, but never forgotten. As the years went by, I often found myself counseling others who were going through the same type of grief. I pulled out my journals to see if there was anything in my writing that might possibly help others. It was then I realized I could put my words in a book and write about the techniques I learned to get me through each of my stages of grief. My Mother Was Murdered: A Survival Story was born. It is my hope that my words can somehow help other wounded souls through their own personal journey. My heart holds a lot of love and I am sending it out to all of you, my fellow survivors. God Bless, Pamala

Edgar Award Finalist: The true story of a serial killer who terrorized a midwestern town in the era of free love—by the coauthor of The French Connection. In 1967, during the time of peace, free love, and hitchhiking, nineteen-year-old Mary Terese Fleszar was last seen alive walking home to her apartment in Ypsilanti, Michigan. One month later, her naked body—stabbed over thirty times and missing both feet and a forearm—was discovered, partially buried, on an abandoned farm. A year later, the body of twenty-year-old Joan Schell was found, similarly violated. Southeastern Michigan was terrorized by something it had never experienced before: a serial killer. Over the next two years, five more bodies were uncovered around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan. All the victims were tortured and mutilated. All were female students. After multiple failed investigations, a chance sighting finally led to a suspect. On the surface, John Norman Collins was an all-American boy—a fraternity member studying elementary education at Eastern Michigan University. But Collins wasn’t all that he seemed. His female friends described him as aggressive and short tempered. And in August 1970, Collins, the “Ypsilanti Ripper,” was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. Written by the coauthor of The French Connection, The Michigan Murders delivers a harrowing depiction of the savage murders that tormented a small midwestern town.