When a young woman falls down a flight of stairs and is left brain dead, her family agrees to donate her organs. Dr. Jesse Travis oversees the grim task, saving several other seriously ill patients. But one of the organ recipients returns to the hospital with a complication no one could have seen coming-West Nile Virus. Soon, other patients who received organs at Community General begin dying of West Nile-related illnesses, and Jesse is suspected as being at fault... Dr. Mark Sloan knows his friend isn't to blame-and he soon uncovers a conspiracy of greed and personal revenge that may mean the end of his career.

Myrna Yates was cool, attractive--a real society lady--and in trouble. Benny Cooperman, a private eye in Grantham, Ontario, Canada with a hard head and a tender heart, was ready to help her in any way he could. Her concern? Whether her husband Chester was having an affair. But when Ches commits suicide the day Benny begins his investigation, our detective realizes he may be dealing with something beyond a simple "family affair."Probing into the curious circumstances surrounding the death, Benny finds himself in the midst of a strange group of people--one that involves a mysterious psychiatrist, eminent but shady citizens, and soon, a few more suicides. Or are they murders? --

Benny Cooperman's favourite lunch counter and diner have closed down and the fittings have been sold to Americans. The nation mourns the accidental death of its greatest artist, cellist Dermot Keogh. It's April and there's already a heat wave. Things are just not the way they used to be. Alas, not just the plots and settings have changed in Howard Engel's 10th Benny Cooperman mystery. While Canada's favourite fictional detective is still his smart-alecky but unsophisticated self ("Dim Sum may be unknown in Grantham, Mr. Cooperman, but we in Toronto have had it for nearly forty years"), his talents seem washed out, if not washed up, in this nasty little mystery set in the high-tech, high-pressure world of a Toronto TV station far up the road from his native Grantham. All the stock figures are the former high school love goddess who calls at the detective's office wondering if she's in the path of a killer, the small-town lawyer, the slobbish cops, the heavies in dark glasses. What's missing are the gritty small-town ambience and naked class antagonisms that drive best hard-boiled detective fiction, including Engel's early novels. Burdened with the bland homogeneity of the contemporary city and with convoluted literary references, the tale becomes progressively less gripping. In fact Cooperman hasn't been himself since 1990's Dead and Buried , when his creator first fell for the suits and the happy ending. The warning of his first sentence--"I should have seen the writing on the wall"--should have been a message to readers as well. --Robyn Gillam

Benny Cooperman, the working-stiff private eye, is back, this time trying to sort out the kerfuffle surrounding the plumbing, a dead old woman, and a crooked politician. It all starts with a noisy toilet. Benny's janitor, Kogan, is too preoccupied with the death of his girlfriend, Lizzy Oldridge, an elderly woman who appears to have starved to death. Lizzy may have died hungry, but she had plenty of money, and somehow former alderman and mayoralty candidate Thurleigh Ramsden, an unsavoury character if there ever was one, has gained control of it. As Benny gets enmeshed in the case the body count increases alarmingly--but what's happened with the plumbing? Book 8 in the Benny Cooperman Mystery series.

Called to an urgent meeting at a mysterious shack in the middle of nowhere, attorney Bill Angell finds his brother-in-law, traveling salesman Joe Wilson, stabbed. With Joe's dying breath, he manages to convey that his murderer was a veiled woman. Was it the wild-eyed woman who had sped past Bill on his way up the dark road to the shack? To help him unravel the mystery, Bill calls on his old friend Ellery Queen. But first Queen will have to unravel the victim's double life - starting with the shack where he's been found dead, smack dab between two very different worlds.

Beloved private eye Benny Cooperman is ready to hang up his gumshoes after an attack leaves him with lingering memory problems. But then an old chum goes missing Hot on the trail of Jake Grange, a schoolfriend who ran a scuba diving business, Benny heads to Murinam, an exotic place with the feel and look of a former French colony. There, Benny encounters a bon-vivant priest, a pretty marine biologist, and an eccentric Englishman in search of kosher food. Of course any of these charming locals could be responsible for Jake's disappearance. But when dead bodies start to appear under the sunny tropical skies, Benny knows he must be getting somewhere. With its sure-footed plot and trademark wry humour, "East of Suez" proves to be one of Benny Cooperman's most memorable cases."

A MOSES WINE MYSTERY Despite a string of successful cases, despite the fact that his work has, on occasion, garnered national attention, when the opportunity suddenly presents itself for private eye Moses Wine to become head of security at the Tulip Computer Corporation, he jumps at the chance. But then one of Tulip's young geniuses is killed, and Moses quickly finds himself trailing a murderer from Northern California to Los Angeles, then across an ocean to the mean streets of Tokyo. Along the way, he discovers that there's far more to the ins and outs of life in Silicon Valley than corporate in-fighting and bureaucratic bungling -- especially when it involves international computer theft, the Japanese mafia, and the GRU.

Detective Frank Behr finds himself neck deep in white collar crime and facing off with cold-blooded killers more terrifying than anything he's faced before. Bernard "Bernie Cool" Kolodnik is a hard-driving business mogul in the process of making a move into big-time Indiana politics, and it's Frank Behr's job to protect him. When a gunman takes a shot at Kolodnik, Frank does what he does best: saves Kolodnik's life. So why then was he taken off the detail? And why are the usually adept Indianapolis cops making no headway? To discover the truth, Behr navigates a labyrinthine landscape of hardened former Feds, crooked real estate developers, casino magnates, and power seekers feeding on the edge of a dangerous and deadly political scheme.

Feeling out of place in a new job working for an exclusive investigation company, Frank Behr protects his prominent client from an assassination attempt that raises his suspicions when the Indianapolis police force tries to cover up the incident.

From the national bestselling author of Murder Plays House . For private-eye-cum-supermom Juliet Applebaum, business is booming. But there are pros and cons to every assignment. And the con in her latest job is her client, an inmate at Dartmore Prison. She's enlisted Juliet to locate the son she surrendered--as well as the foster parents who've disappeared with him. But this case takes a deadly detour when the desperate young mother is fatally stabbed--allegedly by another inmate. Prison officials dismiss the murder as just one more fatality in lockdown. But Juliet has her doubts. Now she's determined to make the woman's last wish come true, even if it means tracking little Noah--and the killer--through the dark maze of a widespread conspiracy. "A master of smart, snappy repartee." -- Kirkus Reviews "[A] unique, highly likable sleuth." --Judith Kelman "A brassy, funny, quick-witted protagonist."-- Houston Chronicle

From the national bestselling author of The Big Nap and Nursery Crimes. In between planning playdates and playing dress up, Juliet finally gets some much-needed kid-free time, working out at the local health club. It's going well. She's losing weight. She's even happy --until her personal trainer commits suicide. A cheerful aspiring actor, Bobby Katz seemed to have it all--and Juliet can't believe he died at his own hand. She suspects there's a more sinister explanation--and that it may lie with his grieving fiancée, a recovering addict who just fell off the wagon. Or with his birth mother, a woman he recently started to look for. Always up for a task that will get her out of the house, Juliet keeps running down secrets--until, at last, she runs into the truth. "Smoothly paced and smartly told."-- The New York Times Book Review "Sparkling . . . swift and engaging."-- Publishers Weekly "Juliet's got charm, spunk, and . . . a reason to get out of the house."-- Kirkus Reviews

Jim Bishop is a hard man, as cold as the wind off the water and tough to the point of brutality. Scott Weiss is Bishop's boss, a world-weary ex-cop who runs a private detective agency out of a concrete tower in the heart of San Francisco. In this powerfully original series debut by award-winning and bestselling author Andrew Klavan, Weiss sends Bishop to investigate corruption at a Northern California airport-and so sets events in motion that will lead both men on a desperate hunt for a master assassin. Bishop's assignment is to investigate the airport and report back to Weiss. But Bishop prefers to make up the rules as he goes along. He's willing to beat any man into the ground and draw any woman into his bed in order to get the answers he's after. A pilot himself, he takes to the air to check out the illegal flights of a thug names Chris Wannamaker. Then he coolly seduces Wannamaker's lonely wife in order to find out more. Back in the city, as Weiss struggles to rein Bishop in, he begins a connected investigation of his own. A death in a mansion in Presidio Heights, a seemingly random murder South of Market, an apparent suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge, all seem to bear the mark of Weiss' old nemesis, an expert gun-for-hire who goes by the name of the Shadowman. It's a trail of blood, and each step of it seems to bring Weiss closer to Julie Wyant, a mysterious beauty who captures the imagination of every man she meets. Soon Bishop has found his way into the center of a massive criminal conspiracy, a plan set to climax with an act of audacious violence and a murder that would be impossible for any killer but one. And with his operative's wife in danger, Weiss begins a race against time to outsmart the murderer who stalks his nightmares and to rescue the woman who haunts his dream. If you like your tough guys really tough, your femme fatale and your action explosive-welcome to Dynamite Road.

When Frank Behr’s friend and mentor is murdered without any apparent motive, he thirsts for answers and retaliation. But before he can make headway in the dead-end investigation, a private firm approaches him with a delicate proposition: two of its detectives have gone missing, and the firm wants Behr to find out what happened to them. The search for the missing detectives takes Behr into the recesses of Indianapolis’s underworld, a place rife with brutality and vice where Behr uncovers a shocking thread connecting the missing detectives to his friend’s brutal murder, and, in the process, an ominous, deadly new breed of crime family.

A Nick Hoffman / Academic Mystery, Book 6 - It's winter, but academic madness is in full bloom at the State University of Michigan. Untenured professor Nick Hoffman is desperately trying to keep out of the way as three senior professors battle to be the chair of his department. They all hate each other and all demand his support in an atmosphere of intense crisis. The situation implodes when an emergency meeting turns the department upside down. Nick is left desperate to make a quick getaway, so his partner Stefan suggests an idyllic week at a Caribbean Club Med. The island of Serenity, however, proves to be anything but serene. Once again, Edith Wharton scholar Nick Hoffman, who grew up in New York City and was never even mugged, finds himself face-to-face with murder. In this sixth novel in the series, Lev Raphael, Lambda Award winner, amuses and delights on campus and on vacation. Included in this new edition, a foreword by Anthony Bidulka (Russell Quant Mysteries). "Author Lev Raphael knows quite a lot about the dismal swamps of academe and the sunlit beaches of the Caribbean. The time he has obviously spent in these places make it possible for him to write vividly - and wittily - about both, with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek." - Lambda Book Report "Funny, cynical, and bittersweet, the new Nick Hoffman mystery will be eagerly pounced on by Raphael's many fans." - Lauren Henderson, My Lurid Past "Lev Raphael has done it again - another mordantly witty mystery featuring everyone's favourite acerbic English professor, Nick Hoffman. Relax with Tropic of Murder and take an entertaining, exotic Club Med vacation without even having to get out of your favorite chair." - Dean James, Decorated to Death "Beguiling and funny." - Washington Post "Raphael keeps us turning pages with mouthwatering descriptions of buffets and a paradise brimming with cheerful attendants; he ratchets up tension with rumors of ghosts and some very substantial fellows threatening to trade blows." - Booklist "Raphael's wit is sharp as ever." - Kirkus Reviews

Mark Sloane receives a package full of incriminating evidence from a case being investigated by private eye Nick Stryker, who includes the cryptic message, If you are reading this, I'm dead. Original.

Christmas in New York. The city's legendary Ramsey's Department Store is suffering its worst season in years. General manager Barnaby Tischler knows it's because their rival, Weatherly's superstore, is scaring off the store's customers--with bomb threats! But when Ramsey's Santa-for-hire is found in a utility closet shot through the heart, Tischler's only hope lies in his old buddy, Mayor Ed Koch.

An unidentifiable body is found in an Indianapolis park, deliberately arranged so that police know it's not just a random crime. Former cop Frank Behr, now a P.I. with no cases, no money and no options, finds himself chasing down the disappearance of a wayward young woman who's been missing for months in a futile attempt to collect a reward. With assistance from his few remaining contacts on the force, Behr follows the tenuous thread of his case into the world of small-time prostitution-and discovers a possible connection to the body in the park. When another murder victim turns up, it's clear there's a serial killer at work, but this predator seems to be invisible, camouflaged by his perfectly normal-looking life. Behr's relentless quest for the missing girl and his parallel pursuit of the killer become entangled with the official police investigation. Ultimately, Behr's obsession with the truth will lead him into the darkest places, and force him to make an unavoidable and devastating decision.

Jack Cooper is an unhappy man-mind, body, and spirit. He has lost his longstanding job to the economy, his mother to illness, and his wife to her secret lover. All in the blink of an eye. Beaten, broken and crippled by tragedy, Jack withdraws into total isolation, narrowing his life down to the simplest routines to block out the pain. His day begins with a strenuous workout at the Bethesda Health Club, his oasis. There, his mind and body can be free. His day ends in his tiny apartment, where he escapes from reality with his books until he can lose himself in sleep. Rinse and repeat. That is until he meets the enigmatic Mike Parrish. Parrish has no official identification. He was stolen from the hospital as a newborn and passed around from household to household. To the government and the world at large, he does not exist. He is an anonymous drifter but also the first person who breaks through Cooper's emotional confinement. Cooper finds solace in his friendship with Parrish, a man who understands his plight and is sympathetic to his pain. But then Parrish suddenly disappears, leaving Cooper to search for a virtually invisible man. As he looks for clues as intangible as ghosts and chases down leads as fleeting as shadows, his search leads him back to the one place he called his refuge: the Bethesda Health Club. How much can be taken from a man before he has nothing to lose?

Just as the dust from the case of the White Bulldog begins to settle in the small Russian town of Zavolzhsk, it is shaken up once again by the arrival of a stranger: this time, a desperately frightened monk from the island monastery of New Ararat, who seeks the help of the bishop, Mitrofanii.The monks have been troubled by visions of a dark, hooded figure: a figure that appears to walk on the waters of the vast Blue Lake surrounding their monastery. Sceptical of ghost stories and dismissive of rural superstitions, Mitrofanii dispatches Alexei Lentochkin, his clever young ward, to investigate the mystery, only for Lentochkin himself to appear to fall victim to the phantom. With sightings of the Black Monk occurring with disturbing frequency, and rumours of suspicious deaths reaching his ears, the Bishop decides to send two more of his most trusted advisors, in turn, to New Ararat, but they too meet with unexpected fates.Finally, Sister Pelagia takes matters into her own hands, and, adopting a number of ingenious disguises, she ventures across the Blue Lake in search of answers, and in pursuit of the Black Monk. But as she delves deeper into the layers of secrecy that cloak the island and its strange population, and as the body count continues to rise, Pelagia begins to realise that an encounter with a ghost may be the least of her problems...