Hothouse orchid

Sample

J.A. Jance

Sheriff Joanna Brady is the law in Cochise County, and she will never allow her personal trials to interfere with the job she was elected to do -- especially now that death has invaded Bisbee, Arizona, and has shattered the small desert town's fragile peace. A gun dealer has died violently, and his stock of high-powered weapons has been cleaned out. Suspicion falls upon rancher Alton Hosfield, an armed separatist at war with the federal government and the local law--with everyone, in fact, whom he perceives as a threat to his independent way of life.Joanna Brady suspects the solution is not so cut-and-dried--especially when the cold-blooded slaying is followed by a series of others, equally horrific and perplexing. At best, an incendiary "Ruby Ridge" situation is brewing. At worst, a maniacal serial killer has come to feed on her unsuspecting community. But Joanna's preoccupation with bringing a murderer to justice could take a terrible toll on her private life...and unravel threads of family, love, and responsibility that might never again be retied.

Sample

Richard Steinberg

The last man standing...At the height of the cold war, a few elite secret agents earned the title of "4 Phase Man." From Berlin to the Middle East, only two of them survived....The first man in...Once he was a man with a family and a home. Then Gerald Goldman rose through the ranks of the CIA with his ability to survive in any situation, and to kill. Now he is called Xenos, the outsider, the exile. But Xenos has just come in from the cold, searching for a missing young man and finding an astounding conspiracy to co-opt the United States government. Between a tough and beautiful U.S. congresswoman who is being forced to betray her country and a deep-cover spy who is aiming at the second-highest office in the land, Xenos finds himself at war. And standing against him is the one man as deadly as Xenos himself: the only other 4 Phase Man in the world....From the Paperback edition.

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Robin Caroll

A dedicated FBI agent and a forensic scientist search for clues in an investigation involving the murder of the daughter of a prominent Tennessee politician.

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James Lee Burke

Sadistic serial killer Asa Surette escaped the death penalty for a string of heinous murders while capital punishment was outlawed in Kansas. Dave Robicheaux's daughter Alafair wrote a series of damning articles about possible other crimes committed by Surette that could put him on death row. Now, the killer has escaped from a prison transport van and headed to Montana - where the unsuspecting Robicheaux family has gone to take in the sweet summer air.