A strange crime gets V.I. Warshawski involved with some of Chicago’s most rich and powerful players in this thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky. When a group of Chicago tweens holds a ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse—stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying. V.I. Warshawski arrives on the scene to escort the girls home–but protecting them places her at the tangled center of the investigation. And the girls include daughters of some of Chicago’s most powerful families: the grandfather of one, Chaim Salanter, is among the world’s wealthiest men; the mother of another, Sophy Durango, is running for the United States Senate. For V.I., the questions multiply faster than the answers. Is the killing linked to a hostile media campaign against Durango—or to Salanter’s childhood in Nazi-occupied Lithuania? As V.I. struggles to find an answer, she finds herself fighting enemies who are no less terrifying for being all too human.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST "A proper hero for these times . . . To us, V.I. is perfect." -- THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "Sara Paretsky's gloriously kick-ass private eye, V.I. "Vic" Warshawski, is back . . . in a political-rot thriller that's the definition of perfection in the genre." -- THE WASHINGTON POST Chicago's legendary detective, V.I. Warshawski, knows her city's rotten underbelly better than most, but she's unable to avoid it when her goddaughter drags her into a fight over lakefront land use, in this propulsive novel from New York Times bestseller Sara Paretsky. Chicago may be the city of broad shoulders, but its political law is "Pay to Play." Money changes hands in the middle of the night, and by morning, buildings and parks are replaced by billion-dollar projects. Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals through her impetuous goddaughter, Bernie Fouchard. Bernie tries to rescue Lydia Zamir, a famed singer-songwriter now living on the streets; Zamir's life fell apart when her lover was murdered next to her in a mass shooting at an outdoor concert. Not only does Bernie plunge her and V.I. headlong into the path of some ruthless developers, they lead to the murder of the young man Bernie is dating. He's a computer geek working for a community group called SLICK. V.I. is desperate to find a mysterious man named Coop, who roams the lakefront in the middle of the night with his dog. She's sure he holds the key to the mounting body count within SLICK. Coop may even know why an international law firm is representing the mass murderer responsible for Lydia's lover's death. Instead, the detective finds a terrifying conspiracy stretching from Chicago's parks to a cover-up of the dark chapters in America's meddling in South American politics. Before she finds answers, this electrifying novel pushes V.I. close to the breaking point: People who pay to play take no prisoners.

Among the first, and perhaps the most compelling, female private investigators of contemporary fiction, Sara Paretsky's incomparable character V. I. Warshawski at last returns to the page in her first full-length appearance since 1994's "Tunnel Vision." Hard Time is the work of a master--a riveting novel of suspense that is indisputably Paretsky's best V.I. Warshawski novel yet. Multimedia conglomerate Global Entertainment has purchased the "Chicago Herald-Star," forcing the paper's staff to scramble to stay employed. Reporter Murray Ryerson, V.I.'s longtime friend and sometime rival, manages to reinvent himself as the host of a television show on Global's network. On her way home from a party celebrating Murray's debut, V.I. almost runs over a woman lying in the street. Stopping to help, V.I. soon learns that her Good Samaritan act will drop her squarely in a boiling intrigue. In a case that forces her to go head-to-head with one of the world's largest providers of private security and prison services, a case that exposes dark hidden truths behind the razzle-dazzle of the entertainment industry, V.I. will be ahead of the game if she gets out alive.

“V.I. Warshawski is back—intelligent, tough, sarcastic and trouble-prone as ever.... Body Work isn’t just a satisfying whodunnit; it’s a rich, well-written why-dunnit, striking some surprising chords that will resonate long after you finish the final page.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch Chicago’s Club Gouge attracts an eclectic audience, from bohemian types to Ukranian mobsters to young men just back from the war. And tonight, V.I. Warshawski is in the crowd too. The edgy stage show stars The Body Artist, who invites audience members to draw on her naked flesh. But things get a lot edgier when a woman sketches a picture on the Body Artist—and one of the veterans flies into a drunken rage. Next thing V.I. knows, she’s cradling the woman’s dying body in an alley, and a PTSD-stricken soldier is presumed guilty. But he’s also comatose after a drug overdose, and the mystery of what exactly set him off—and what kinds of shady activities are really happening at Club Gouge—will lead V.I. to a truth as explosive as the IEDs that lurk on the roadsides of Iraq. Bonus in this Edition: A Short Story Featuring V.I. Warshawski

Chicago politics—past, present, and future—take center stage in this complex and compelling V.I. Warshawki novel from New York Times bestselling author Sara Peretsky. Tracking down missing persons is part of V.I. Warshawski’s job. But Lamont Gadsden has been missing for more than forty years—last seen heading out into the 1967 blizzard, in the midst of Chicago’s racial unrest. V.I. figured the search would be futile. She didn’t realize it would be lethal...or lead to troubling discoveries about her own family. And when her young cousin Petra disappears, an angry preacher, a jailed gangbanger, and politics from both past and present interconnect—and plunge V.I. into a mystery as unsettling as the ’60s themselves. A New York Times Notable Crime Book of the Year One of NPR’s Top Five Crime Novels of the Year

Chicago’s V. I. Warshawski confronts crooked politicians and buried family secrets in this gritty mystery from New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky. No one would accuse V. I. Warshawski of backing down from a fight, but she’d happily avoid tangling with Chicago political bosses. Yet that’s what she ends up doing when she responds to a plea for help from an old high school flame, Frank Guzzo. Frank’s mother Stella was convicted of killing his kid sister, but now that she’s out of prison, she’s looking for exoneration. Even though the Warshawskis and Stella never got along, V. I. agrees to make a few inquiries after she sees how hard life has been on Frank and her other childhood friends. Only, that small favor leads her straight into the vipers’ nest of Illinois politics—and soon her main question isn’t about Stella’s case but whether or not she’ll make it out of this investigation alive... A Washington Post Best Mystery of 2015 Includes a Bonus Short Story!