National Network for Equitable Library Service

One day in 1952, the strangled body of 10-year-old Cathy Lake is discovered in a public park. A homeless suspect, Albert Jay Smalls, is arrested and held for interrogation. Now, Officers Norman Cohen and Jack Pierce have only 24 hours to make the sullen young man talk before he's released. How far are they willing to push him to get a confession?

When the victim of a murder at a motel turns out to be the wife of a prominent lawyer, the news comes as a thunderclap. People begin looking suspiciously among themselves for the culprit Judge Deborah Knott learns that her cousin has a powerful motive.

The governor of North Carolina has appointed Deborah to a judicial seat in the District Court Division. On her weekends, the fledgling judge has been helping an all-woman building crew complete a home for a needy single mother. Her attempts to gain positive P.R. go awry when her niece is found battered and half-naked in the partially completed home, with Deborah's own bloody hammer lying nearby.

On the North Side in December of 1968, Cassandra Perry feels stifled by her doting granduncle and grandaunt, Woody and Ivy, and longs for a change. She moves into a multiracial commune for free spirits working for the good of humankind. But then something unfathomable happens: the commune is rocked by the discovery of two well-liked activists' mutilated bodies. With Woodie and Ivy backing her up, Cassandra begins to investigate only to find herself falling into the trap of the deadly, political hatchet man.

Cassandra, grandniece to Woodson and Ivy Lisle, is a college student caught up in the highly charged atmosphere of the days following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. When the granddaughter of Woodson and Ivy's friends goes missing, Cassandra is sucked into a dangerous mystery that threatens to expose long-buried secrets and jeopardize the life of anyone who asks too many questions.

Carlotta is eating pizza when two cases are dumped into her denim-clad lap. One will take her into a combat zone of hookers and pimps, the other onto the campus of a wealthy prep school.

Goldy looks forward to whipping up a sumptuous dinner for two wealthy clients, but when one of the men disappears, and her best friend is accused of murder, Goldy must find out who has turned the feast into a fiasco.

Caterer Goldy Bear's wedding day becomes a nightmare when her groom, homicide detective Tom Schulz, calls her from a murder scene and then vanishes.

The local Anishinaabe Indian tribe is furious to discover that Karl Lindstrom's lumber mill is after a grove of trees sacred to tribal lore. So when the mill gets bombed, killing a man, the tribe is blamed. But ex-sheriff Cork O'Connor has a different theory.

Still troubled by an ambush that leaves his deputy lingering near death, Sheriff Cork O'Conner must investigate the mutilation murder of a Chicago businessman. Soon Cork finds himself distracted by the lovely female shadowing him and the handsome man stalking his wife.