No Description Available

When a doctor investigating fraud in a visiting New Age cult winds up dead, hotel detective Am Caulfield scours the premises for clues while struggling to keep a group of swingers under control, in the sequel to The Hotel Detective. From Publishers WeeklyThe hospitable Am Caulfield is beset by more hostility in this amusing sequel to The Hotel Detective. Now house detective at San Diego's Hotel California, Am is enduring new Japanese owners, staff peccadilloes, bizarre conventions and a murder or two. Dr. Kingsbury, a guest who has made a career of debunking fraudulent New Age mentalists?some of whom are attending a Union of Near Death Experiences Retreat at the hotel?has been poisoned. Am joins forces (and karma) with comely reporter Marisa Donnelly to dig into Kingsbury's less-than-estimable past. At the same time, the house dick struggles to keep the portly new manager, Hiroshi, from imposing Japanese efficiency on the hotel's eccentric ambience. East finally meets West after Hiroshi falls for Am's beloved station wagon, a surfer's woody that runs well only near the ocean, and the hotel detective and the fat innkeeper become allies in tracking the killer. Russell and his readers have great fun as he contrasts Californian and Japanese philosophies, and likable Am bumbles along, holding true to his ex-surfer's outlook on life. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library JournalPhlegmatic Hotel California security director Am Caulfield resents the Japanese who purchased the historic oceanfront property and transformed his job. A beached whale in front of the hotel and a murder within exacerbate the already problematic communications between Caulfield and his Japanese boss. Life in the ritzy hotel cosmos continues, though, when Caulfield sabotages a swingers' "swap meat," digs into the background of the murder victim, and interrogates conventioneers who have had near-death experiences. The protagonist's banter, while not always humorous, remains light-handed, especially in scenes involving Japanese circumspection. From the author of The Forest Prime Evil (LJ 3/1/92); for larger collections.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Closed Casket: The New Hercule Poirot Mystery

The third thrilling installment in the bestselling Under Suspicion series from #1 New York Times bestselling author and "Queen of Suspense" Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke—television producer Laurie Moran puts everything on the line to help a woman she thinks was wrongfully convicted of murder.Casey Carter was convicted of murdering her fiancé—famed philanthropist Hunter Raleigh III—fifteen years ago. And Casey claims—has always claimed—she's innocent. Although she was charged and served out her sentence in prison, she is still living "under suspicion." She hears whispers at the grocery store. She can't get a job. Even her own mother treats her like she's guilty. Her story attracts the attention of Laurie Moran and the Under Suspicion news team—it's Casey's last chance to finally clear her name, and Laurie pledges to exonerate her. With Alex Buckley taking a break from the show—cooling his potential...

A ROGER SHERINGHAM MYSTERY. In a typical English country house, a murder is committed. The wealthy Victor Stanworth, who'd been playing host to a party of friends, is found dead in the library. At first it appears to be suicide, for the room was undoubtedly locked. But could there be more to the case? As one of the guests at Layton Court, gentleman sleuth Roger Sheringham begins to investigate. Many come under suspicion, but how could anyone have killed the man and gotten out of the room, leaving it all locked behind?

Dodgers is a dark, unforgettable coming-of-age journey that recalls the very best of Richard Price, Denis Johnson, and J.D. Salinger. It is the story of a young LA gang member named East, who is sent by his uncle along with some other teenage boys--including East's hothead younger brother--to kill a key witness hiding out in Wisconsin. The journey takes East out of a city he's never left and into an America that is entirely alien to him, ultimately forcing him to grapple with his place in the world and decide what kind of man he wants to become. Written in stark and unforgettable prose and featuring an array of surprising and memorable characters rendered with empathy and wit, Dodgers heralds the arrival of a major new voice in American fiction.From the Hardcover edition.

George H. Doran Company , New York

Port Mortuary, the title of Patricia Cornwell's 18th Scarpetta novel, is literally a port for the dead. In this fast-paced story, a treacherous path from Scarpetta's past merges with the high tech highway she now finds herself on. We travel back to the beginning of her professional career, when she enlisted in the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt and found herself ensnared in a gruesome case of what seemed to be vicious, racially motivated hate crimes against two Americans in South Africa. Now, more than twenty years and many career successes later, her secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base, where she has been immersed in a training fellowship to master the art of CT-assisted virtual autopsy--a procedure the White House has mandated that she introduce in the private sector. As the chief of the new Cambridge Forensic Center in Massachusetts, a joint venture of the state and federal governments and MIT, Scarpetta is confronted with a case that could shut down her new facility and ruin her personally and professionally. A young man drops dead, apparently from a cardiac arrhythmia, eerily close to Scarpetta's new Cambridge home. But when his body is examined the next morning, there are stunning indications that he may have been alive when he was zipped inside a pouch and locked insider the Center's cooler. Various 3-D radiology scans reveal more shocking details about internal injuries unlike any Scarpetta has ever seen. These suggest the possibility of a conspiracy to cause mass casualties. She realizes that she is fighting a cunning and cruel enemy that is invisible as she races against time to discover who and why before more people die. In Port Mortuary, Patricia Cornwell brings Scarpetta together with Marino, Benton, and Lucy in an intimate way that is reminiscent of the early novels, and we welcome a voice we haven't heard in years. The point of view is Scarpetta's, and this is her story.