When Eleanor Wygant comes to Father Dowling to enlist his help in persuading her niece Jessica to scrap the novel she is writing and concentrate on more earthly pursuits, the venerable priest and counselor has little idea how enmeshed he is about to become in the family's edgy interrelations. Catholic ... more »

When Lew Fonesca's wife died in a senseless auto wreck, he got up and left his old life, and ended up in sunny Sarasota, Florida. He takes small process-serving gigs and various odd jobs helping people out, and he tries, although maybe not as hard as he should, to fix the gaping hole in his heart. But ... more »

Alone . . . Massachusetts State Trooper Bobby Dodge watches a tense hostage standoff unfold through the scope of his sniper rifle. Just across the street, in wealthy Back Bay, Boston, an armed man has barricaded himself with his wife and child. The man's finger tightens on the trigger and Dodge has only ... more »

Carlotta Carlyle, the six foot tall redhead Boston private investigator, thought that working undercover searching out fraud on Boston's Big Dig would be a challenging assignment. After all, the Big Dig, the creation of a central artery highway through downtown Boston, is a $14 billion dollar boondoggle ... more »

A cultured city scarred by war. An eastern émigré with scars and secrets of her own. A young woman who claims to be a Russian grand duchess. A brazen killer, as vicious as he is clever. A detective driven by decency and the desire for justice. A political movement growing in power. . . . Deeply atmospheric ... more »

The President of the United States has hired Kirk McGarvey as interim director of the CIA while his nomination winds its way through congressional hearings. But what should be the culmination of McGarvey's career has activated a twenty year old Russian plot. The Cold War is over, but McGarvey is, and ... more »

An announcement is made at a meeting of the British Intelligence Joint Counter-Terrorist group: "The opposition may be about to deploy an invisible." An "invisible" is CIA-speak for the ultimate intelligence nightmare: a terrorist who is an ethnic native of the target country and ... more »

Attorney Pete Dexter hangs his shingle in a quiet Pennsylvania town, has a few unfortunate clients, and takes the hills strong while triathlon training. But Dexter is no ordinary lawyer. On Sundays, he reads the paper and shuffles around his dark, empty house, trying to forget about a life he has lost ... more »

From Atlanta's wealthiest suburbs to its stark inner-city housing projects, a killer has crossed the boundaries of wealth and race. And the people who are chasing him must cross those boundaries, too. Among them is Michael Ormewood, a veteran detective whose marriage is hanging by a thread-and whose ... more »

Robert Philip Hansen thought he could outsmart the system. In the mid-1980s, the mild-mannered FBI bureaucrat and father of six began selling top secret information to agents of the Soviet Union. A computer expert, Hansen carefully encrypted his stolen files: anyone but his contacts would destroy the ... more »

Master of mystery Robert Barnard, internationally acclaimed for his suspenseful, witty literary gems, cleverly mixes past and present in A Cry from the Dark, an intriguing tour de force sweeping from 1930s Australia to contemporary London. Bettina Whitelaw has come a long way from her childhood in the ... more »

Thomas Bolden grew up on the streets, his childhood a blur of fragmented memories. But now he's managed to put his past behind him, find the woman he wants to share his life with, and carve out a successful career on Wall Street. Until, in the blink of an eye, his world is turned upside down. A bizarre ... more »