Frank Carlson Library

"Here is Marcia Muller's stalwart heroine Sharon McCone as you've never seen her before, in a new novel set in California's high desert country"--Provided by the publisher.

The Globe Apartments, six stories of decaying brick and concrete, rises above San Francisco's volatile Tenderloin district. The seedy former hotel, once a haven for the city's down and out, now houses Vietnamese families striving to improve their lives. But private eye Sharon McCone believes that someone from the Tenderloins shadowy underworld is determined to drive the newcomers out. The suspects range from the colorful to the dangerous: a poetry-loving...

"Sharon gets a request from her former neighbors the Curleys. Their usually dependable daughter, Chelle, hasn't answered their calls in over a week. Would Sharon check on her? Chelle, a house flipper, has been living at her latest rehab project: a Prohibition-era nightclub known as the Breakers, formerly a favored watering hole for San Francisco's elite, now converted into a run-down apartment building. There's something sinister about the quirky...

Since the Gold Rush, California prospectors have siphoned off the waters of isolated Tufa Lake, exposing the fragile, otherworldly mineral formation of the lake basin. Now a local environmental group seeks to block the latest incursion by developers - a massive mining operation funded by TransPacific, a U.S.-Hong Kong interest that seems to be behind a series of break-ins, disappearances, and shady land deals. Into this stark lunar landscape walks...

When her father is left in a coma by a racially driven beating during the holiday season, private investigator Sharon McCone resolves to bring the attackers to justice, only to find herself targeted by hate-filled, racist threats.

To tourists, bay-windowed Victorian mansions are quaint, peaceful symbols of old San Francisco, but on the secluded hill above Steiner Street, the gingerbread has sparked a bitter battle. Ambitious developers are pushing for restoration, and residents are fighting for their homes—until a controversial restorationist is found dead on the job, awash in garish house paint.

Private investigator Sharon McCone is called in only to discover

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"Finally settled into their new home after losing their house in a fire, and fully established in their new shared offices, private investigator Sharon McCone and her business partner husband Hy are starting to feel comfortable. That calm is shattered when Hy's former colleague Gage Renshaw--a shady troublemaker who they had presumed dead reappears, and it's unclear what he wants from his prosperous former associate. Meanwhile, Sharon has a new client...

San Francisco’s toughest private eye, Sharon McCone, is back and fighting for her life in Marcia Muller’s acclaimed series.
Sharon McCone’s detective agency is growing and the future is looking bright. But when one of her employees—the streetwise and savvy Julia Rafael—is arrested for stealing a credit card from a client, the entire firm’s reputation could be ruined. Although the evidence against her...

"For the firm of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services, stopping extortionists is not only grand, but excitingly lucrative. When a pleasant afternoon's bicycling through Golden Gate Park with a friend ends with the revelation of threatening letters, followed by a gunshot in a mansion garden, Sabina Carpenter knows this is a case that demands her immediate and undivided attention. The questions her partner John Quincannon has to...

"The Body Snatchers Affair: The latest in the Carpenter and Quincannon historical mystery series from Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini. Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown's opium dens. For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite...