Hilma Bryant

For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia.

Christmas in the charming seaside village of Molena Point, California, has always been a traditional affair - but not this holiday season. Instead of singing carols and climbing into Christmas trees, Joe Grey, feline P.I., is faced with his most difficult case yet - and that's saying a lot for a wily tomcat who for years has been solving crimes the police can't even crack. A stranger lies dead beneath the village Christmas tree, with a little child the only witness to the shooting.

The beautiful, serene village of Molena Point, California is the type of place where people go to get away from the harsher realities of life - which is what attracted classic film star Patty Rose to buy the village inn and settle down to enjoy her golden years. But as the town gathers to celebrate and honor the beautiful, aging actress with a festival of her old films, Patty is brutally murdered - to the horror and shock of this peaceful burg.

Two blood-spattered strangers awake, locked in the trunk of a car - with a murdered cop and the smoking gun. Aside from raging headaches and no idea what's happened, they appear to have nothing in common. Troy thinks it's 2001 and he's still a combat surgeon fighting terrorists in Afghanistan. Emmy believes it's 2002 and she's still grifting a living from the streets of L.A.

Billy Todd has always been different. Most people called him odd, and those were the nice people. Though he was born with a learning disability, Billy's parents never allowed him to consider himself disabled. Raised to be self-sufficient, Billy might not be as smart as some, but he was a lot smarter than people realized.

Mary and O’Neil frequently marveled at how, of all the lives they might have led, they had somehow found this one together. When they met at the Philadelphia high school where they’d come to teach, each had suffered a profound loss that had not healed. How likely was it that they could learn to trust, much less love, again? Justin Cronin’s poignant debut traces the lives of Mary Olson and O’Neil Burke, two vulnerable young teachers who rediscover in each other a world alive with promise and hope.

A judge’s first murder trial. A defense attorney in over his head. A prosecutor out for blood and glory. The accused, who is possibly innocent. And the killer, who may have just committed the perfect crime.

Meet Peter Brown, a young Manhattan emergency room doctor with an unusual past that is just about to catch up with him. His morning begins with the quick disarming of a would-be mugger, followed by a steamy elevator encounter with a sexy young pharmaceutical rep, topped off by a visit with a new patient - and from there Peter's day is going to get a whole lot worse and a whole lot weirder.

Michael Gresham is a criminal attorney with a brother who won't take his meds, an ex-wife who wants him to finance her fertility costs, and a client accused of murdering the wife of a judge. As the story progresses, the brother is being hunted down by MexTel, a huge conglomerate that wants him dead, and the ex-wife's new husband wants to borrow money, while the judge whose wife was murdered suddenly tries to hire Michael Gresham for himself.

.Lucas Davenport has seen many terrible murder scenes. This is one of the worst. In the small Minnesota town of Deephaven, an entire family has been killed - husband, wife, two daughters, dogs. There’s something about the scene that pokes at Lucas’s cop instincts - it looks an awful lot like the kind of scorched-earth retribution he’s seen in drug killings sometimes. But this is a seriously upscale town, and the husband was an executive vice president at a big bank. It just doesn’t seem to fit.