Frank Carlson Library

He had always wanted to be famous. When he kidnapped two well-known rich kids it was headline news. Then one of them was found--dead. For such a high-profile case, they needed Alex Cross, police psychologist, and Jezzie Flanagan, a Secret Service agent, and even they were no match for the killer.

With his resignation from the Washington Police interrupted by a case involving a friend who has been framed for murder, Alex Cross and partner John Sampson journey deep across military lines to confront the most brutal killer of their careers.

"Officer Denny Rakestraw, "Negro Officers" Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith, and Sergeant McInnis have their hands full in an overcrowded and rapidly changing Atlanta. It's 1950 and color lines are shifting and racial tensions are simmering. Black families-including Smith's sister and brother-in-law-are moving into Rake's formerly all-white neighborhood, leading some residents to raise money to buy them out, while others advocate a more violent solution....

D.C. Detective Alex Cross has seen a lot of crime scenes. But even he is appalled by the gruesome murders of two joggers in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, killings that look more like the work of savage beasts than humans. Local police are horrified and even the FBI is baffled. Then, as Cross is called in to take on the case, the carnage takes off, leaving a trail of bodies across America and sweeping him to Savannah, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Los...

"After years of working as an FBI agent, Titus Crown returns home to Charon County, land of moonshine and cornbread, fist fights and honeysuckle. Seeing his hometown struggling with a bigoted police force inspires him to run for sheriff. He wins, and becomes the first Black sheriff in the history of the county. Then a year to the day after his election, a young Black man is fatally shot by Titus's deputies. Titus pledges to follow the truth wherever...

"Responding to orders from on high, the Atlanta Police Department is forced to hire its first black officers, including war veterans Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith. The newly minted policemen are met with deep hostility by their white peers: they aren't allowed to arrest white suspects, drive squad cars, or set foot in the police headquarters. When a black woman who was last seen in a car driven by a white man turns up dead, Boggs and Smith suspect...

Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves appears as one of "eight notable Oklahomans," the "most feared U.S. marshal in the Indian country." That Reeves was also an African American who had spent his early life as a slave in Arkansas and Texas makes his accomplishments all the more remarkable. Bucking the odds ("I'm sorry, we didn't keep black people's history," a clerk at one of Oklahoma's local historical societies answered a query), Art T. Burton sifts...

The trhilling follow-up to the award-winning Bluebird, Bluebird: Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is on the hunt for a boy who's gone missing - but the boy's family of white supremacists is the real target. Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have headed home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes black. Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind...