Remains silent

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Michael Kurland

> In 1891, Sherlock Holmes, in a struggle with his archenemy, the Napoleon of crime, Professor James Moriarty, plunged with him over Reichenbach Falls to his inevitable death. All of England - indeed, the entire world - mourned the irreplaceable loss of the greatest detective. And that's where things stood until 1894, when Holmes suddenly reappeared in London, revealing himself to his friend Dr. John Watson, and resumed his activities as a consulting detective. Holmes remained very quiet and mysterious on those nearly three years he was missing, never revealing precisely where he'd been or what he'd done in the "hidden years." >Now, in this anthology of original stories, the truth about those thirty-five months is unveiled and Holmes's adventures described. While some of these stories place Holmes in such familiar locations as New York and San Francisco, others find him high in the Himalayas or above the Arctic Circle. With stories from such writers as Rhys Bowen, Peter Beagle, Carolyn Wheat, Michael Collins, and many others, *Sherlock Holmes: The Hidden Years* is a must-have book for every fan who has ever wondered about the untold adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

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Jeffery Deaver

Five feet two inches of slick repartee, near-purple hair, and poetic imagination, twenty-year-old Rune hasn't been in Manhattan for very long. But she's crafty enough to have found a squatter's paradise in an empty TriBeCa loft, and a video store job that feeds her passion for old movies. It's a passion she shares with her favorite customer, Mr. Kelly, a lonely old man who rents the same video over and over. The flick is a noir classic based on a real-life unsolved bank heist and a million missing dollars. It's called Manhattan Is My Beat.That's the tape Rune is picking up from Mr. Kelly's shabby apartment when she finds him shot to death. The police suspect a robbery gone wrong, but Rune is certain the key to solving the murder is hidden somewhere in the hazy, black-and-white frames of Mr. Kelly's beloved movie. But as Rune hits the mean streets of New York to find answers, she gets caught up in a dangerous adventure more chilling than anything Hollywood could dream up. As her story draws to its terrifying conclusion, Rune's final close-up may include the killer of a co-star.From the Paperback edition.

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Tom Turner

Burned out New York homicide cop Charlie Crawford goes south to take it slow. But after six months in steamy Palm Beach, Florida, he's bored out of his mind and desperate for a face-down stiff with a little rigor setting in. One Halloween night, Crawford is first on the scene and finds a twenty-year-old male swinging from a stately banyan tree. This sets in motion colliding plots involving a billionaire with a thing for young girls, a far-reaching art scam with Crawford's girlfriend playing a starring role, and a ruthless hustler passing himself off as the long lost son of one of the richest men in town.

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Patricia Cornwell

It is the week before Christmas. A tanking economy has prompted Dr. Kay Scarpetta – despite her busy schedule and her continuing work as the senior forensic analyst for CNN – to offer her services pro bono to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In no time at all, her increased visibility seems to precipitate a string of unexpected and unsettling events. She is asked live on the air about the sensational case of Hannah Starr, who has vanished and is presumed dead. Moments later during the same telecast she receives a startling call-in from a former psychiatrist patient of Benton Wesley's. When she returns after the show to the apartment where she and Benton live, she finds an ominous package – possibly a bomb – waiting for her at the front desk. Soon the apparent threat on Scarpetta's life finds her embroiled in a surreal plot that includes a famous actor accused of an unthinkable sex crime and the disappearance of a beautiful millionaires with whom Lucy seems to have shared a secret past.Scarpetta's CNN producer wants her to launch a TV show called The Scarpetta Factor. Given the bizarre events already in play, she fears that her growing fame will generate the illusion that she has a "special factor," a mythical ability to solve all her cases. She wonders if she will end up like other TV personalities: her own stereotype.The Scarpetta Factor, the seventeenth in the series, finds the familiar cast of characters together again in New York. Marino is working for the NYPD; Benton Wesley uses his forensic psychological expertise at Kirby and Bellevue; and Lucy continues to dazzle with her expertise in forensic computer investigations as she works yet another case with NY prosecutor Jaime Berger.