Frank Carlson Library

Seventeen years after the discovery of a female murder victim near Small Plains, Kansas, the girl's grave has become the source of strange miracles and legends, until the return of prodigal son Mitch Newquist threatens to bring old secrets to light.

From New York Times best-selling author Faye Kellerman comes an extraordinary anthology of her best short writing. Here the backdrop of contemporary California becomes fertile ground for Kellerman's riveting tales of murder, mystery, and family ties most sinister and deadly. Among the first-rate short mysteries in this collection: the brand new "Garden of Eden" and "Open House" feature the famous sleuthing duo Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus; "Bull's-Eye"...

Massachusetts police chief Jesse Stone's investigation of a violent series of car thefts is complicated by political pressures, the summer tourist season, and the questionable goals of an ambitious PR executive.

Where there's smoke there's fire, and no one knows this better than New Jersey bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum. The bail bonds office has burned to the ground, and bodies are turning up in the empty construction lot. To make matters worse, Stephanie is working out of a motor home she shares with a dancing bear, and Joe Morelli's old-world grandmother has declared a vendetta against her. And just when Stephanie decides it might be time to choose between...

A collection of three holiday-themed novellas includes Leslie Meier's "Christmas Card Murder," in which the discovery of an old Christmas card with a nasty message finds Lucy Stone investigating a decades-old murder.

When a pregnant tennis star reports that her rock-artist husband has gone missing amid scandalous rumors, Myron Bolitar is forced to confront deep secrets about his client's past while struggling with fatherhood roles in his personal life.

This collection represents the best of Alcotts adult oeuvre, starting with A Modern Mephistopheles, a dark Faustian tale inspired by A Long Fatal Love Chase. The stories in this volume display dramatic intensity and thrilling, suspenseful plots that show Alcott to be a complex and passionate writer. Readers will discover within this maelstrom of murder, deceit, obsessive desire, treachery, duplicity, and betrayal that love and honor can still conquer...

In the stories and novellas he wrote for Black Mask and other pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, Dashiell Hammett took the detective story and turned it into a medium for capturing the jarring textures and revved-up cadences of modern American life. In this volume, The Library of America collects the finest of these stories: 24 in all, along with some revealing essays and an earlier version of his novel The Thin Man. Mixing melodramatic panache...