Absent Friends

Sample

John Clarkson

"Olivia Sanchez--smart, driven, and beautiful--started at the bottom and worked her way up the ranks of a brokerage firm only to be unjustly, brutally fired, then blackballed. With no place else to go, she turns to her cousin, Manny Guzman, ex-con and ex-gang leader, for help. Manny's first instinct is to hit back. Hard. But his partner, James Beck knows that out in the real world, things aren't done that way. Beck, with a tight group of three other ex-cons, works out of a discreet base of operations in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook. To help Manny, he and his partners, along with a network of close "associates," offer to look into what happened to Olivia, and fix it. But nothing is as simple as it first appears, and Beck and his men end up going to war against a formidable list of enemies: the politically connected CEO of a Manhattan brokerage firm; a Russian arms dealer; a small army of Bosnian war criminals; a ruthless gang of Russian mobsters; and, last but not least, the NYPD. With too many foes coming at them from too many angles, Beck and his men are going to have to survive against impossible odds, avoid being sent back to prison, and in the process, steal $116 million dollars"--

Sample

S.J. Rozan

Private detective Bill Smith is hurtled headlong into the most provocative - and personal - case of his career when he receives a chilling late night telephone call from the NYPD. They're holding his fifteen-year-old nephew Gary. But before he can find out what's going on, Gary escapes Bill's custody and disappears into the dark streets...

Sample

Helen MacInnes

In 1945, with their thousand-year empire falling around them and the Allies on their heels, the Nazis hide a sealed chest in the dark, forbidding waters of the Finstersee - a lake surrounded by the brooding peaks of the Austrian Alps. There it lies for twenty-one years, almost forgotten, until a British agent decides to raise it from the depths. The secrets he uncovers are far- reaching and lethal, and in Salzburg, Bill Mathison, a New York attorney on the trail of a missing colleague, finds himself drawn into the shadowy underworld of international espionage. Not knowing who to trust amidst the chaos, he is drawn to two beautiful women, one of whom will betray him.

Sample

Lisa Scottoline

This time, justice is blonde. . . .New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline delivers a riveting page-turner about love and murder that starts in the elite chambers of a sexy female judge and ends on the cold, gritty streets of Philadelphia.Cate Fante is strong and smart, but when she becomes a federal judge, even she wonders if she can do the job justice. She's in her thirties, so she feels as though she's joining the world's most exclusive retirement village. She worries inwardly that she only looks the part, in a designer suit donned like overpriced armor. After all, a job described in the United States Constitution would intimidate anybody.But Cate keeps her doubts a secret. And, as it happens, much else. For she leads a dark double life that she hides from everyone, even her best friend.Then a high-profile case in her courtroom explodes into a shocking murder-suicide, and it blasts her cover wide open. Overnight the tabloids tell her secrets, her boyfriend dumps her, and her new career hangs in tatters. But Cate's troubles are only beginning. An enemy no one anticipated sends her running for her life -- -embarking on a journey that begins in the mystery of her own childhood, where she first learned to lie. She'll have to fight her way back to the truth, or die trying.Dirty Blonde is Lisa Scottoline's most suspenseful and gripping thriller to date. Mixing poignancy with her trademark wit and wonderfully compelling characters, it showcases her remarkable talents as never before, and questions whether law and justice are always the same thing.