by Sonya Hartnett (2003)
While the residents of his town concern themselves with the disappearance of three children, a lonely, rejected nine-year-old boy worries that he may inherit his mother's insanity.
Melissa Kantor
When new and unconventional high school student Amada Valentino disappears, her three closest friends, who are all from vastly different circles, band together and, using enigmatic clues that seem to come from Amanda herself, try to find her.
Richard Price
A white woman, her hands gashed and bloody, stumbles into an inner-city emergency room and announces that she has just been carjacked by a black man. But then comes the horrifying twist: Her young son was asleep in the back seat, and he has now disappeared into the night. So begins Richard Price's new novel, a tale set on the same turf - Dempsy, New Jersey - as Clockers. Assigned to investigate the case of Brenda Martin's missing child is detective Lorenzo Council, a local son of the very housing project targeted as the scene of the crime. Under a white-hot media glare, Lorenzo launches an all-out search for the abducted boy, even as he quietly explores a different possibility: Does Brenda Martin know a lot more about her son's disappearance than she's admitting? Right behind Lorenzo is Jesse Haus, an ambitious young reporter from the city's evening paper. Almost immediately, Jesse suspects Brenda of hiding something. Relentlessly, she works her way into the distraught mother's fragile world, befriending her even as she looks for the chance to break the biggest story of her career. As the search for the alleged carjacker intensifies, so does the simmering racial tension between Dempsy and its mostly white neighbor, Gannon.
Mark F. Davis
Disguised as a foreign exchange student from a well-to-do family, Sara Morgan presents herself as a young hopeful interested in her university studies, all the while keeping her true purpose secret. Set primarily in Washington State, Tigress tells the story of a woman's life in the world of espionage.
Marilyn Singer
Philip Barlowe, bumbling detective, and Sam Spayed, his intelligent dog, are hired to investigate the will of a woman who has left her vast wealth to her cat.