by Lisa Miscione (2003)
Fifteen and gorgeous, Tatiana Quinn disappears from her Miami bedroom sometime after midnight. Her backpack, $160 stashed in her jewelry box, and her favorite clothes are also missing. The police conclude she ran away. Her wealthy father quickly posts a million-dollar reward for her safe return. But the beautiful teen has not been found. Then Pulitzer Prize-winning true crime writer Lydia Strong gets an audio tape in the mail. Becoming a celebrity has made Lydia a magnet for requests from psychotics, prisoners, and the desperate families of murder victims. Cautiously she plays the tape and hears a girl calling herself Tatiana pleading for help. Now Lydia and her lover P.I. Jeffrey Mark, an ex-FBI agent, rush to Florida...and enter into a nightmare. Something seems fishy about the Quinn household. Something seems strange about the original investigation. And someone very powerful wants to kill the case. Simplest method? Make sure a nosy writer is good...and dead.
Jessica Auerbach
A mother's frantic search for a stolen baby. Single parent Sylvie leaves her girl unattended for five minutes to shop at the corner store. On her return the baby is gone and police suspect she arranged the kidnaping. Fortunately, there is Detective Chad Martinson and he is prepared to help. By the author of Painting on Glass.
Lisa Jackson, Nancy Bush, Rosalind Noonan
Three teenaged girls splash in the lake on a sweltering summer evening. Shiloh, Kat, and Ruth are unaware of the man who spies on them from the woods. They have no idea how their lives will be changed by the brutal violence that follows--and the vow of secrecy they take. Fifteen years later, Ruth and Shiloh have both returned to Prairie Creek, Wyoming, where Kat is deputy sheriff. Though they've tried to leave their shared past behind, each has the feeling that someone is lurking in the shadows. When a local girl vanishes, Kat is convinced there's a connection to that long ago night. But as the friends unite to find the missing teenager, a killer sends a chilling message
Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
Nancy Taylor Rosenberg's earlier works, Mitigating Circumstances and Interest of Justice were suspense masterpieces with strong female characters. Now she's created one of her most sympathetic heroines in Ann Carlisle, a probation officer in danger from an unknown enemy who wants to harm her and her teenage son. What Ann doesn't know is whether this has something to do with one of her earlier cases -- or something to do with her husband, who vanished mysteriously four years ago. A drug dealer who saves her from a bullet has some grisly secrets of his own to hide, and Ann's lover grows more and more distant. Soon Ann realizes that she can trust no one, and must find her attacker alone.
Jenny White
Rich in sensuous detail, this first novel brilliantly captures the political and social upheavals of the waning Ottoman Empire. The naked body of a young Englishwoman washes up in Istanbul wearing a pendant inscribed with the seal of the deposed sultan. The death resembles the murder by strangulation of another English governess, a crime that was never solved. Kamil Pasha, a magistrate in the new secular courts, sets out to find the killer, but his dispassionate belief in science and modernity is shaken by betrayal and widening danger. In a lush, mystical voice, a young Muslim woman, Jaanan, recounts her own relationships with one of the dead women and her suspected killer. Were these political murders involving the palace or crimes of personal passion? An absorbing tale that transports the reader to nineteenth-century Turkey, this novel is also a lyrical meditation on the contradictory desires of the human soul.