South American Mystery

Since the night Atlanta mayor, self-made millionaire, and womanizer Jamison Jackson plummeted from the top floor of a downtown hotel, everyone seems to have profited, from vicious criminals to corrupt politicians. Everyone except his jilted first wife Kerry. Once a socialite, she's now the prime suspect in Jamison's alleged murder. But she swears she's no killer - and surprisingly, Jamison's widow Val agrees. For all they know, it was Coreen, the mother of Jamison's secret love child.

“Dispute in progress, lethal weapons involved.” Deputy Pegasus Quincy takes the call to resolve violence on a Friesian horse ranch in Arizona. Intent on his own personal vendetta, partner Shepherd Malone refuses to declare a murder in a fatal fire at the ranch. Peg unwisely circumvents the law to investigate anyway. Two families feuding over water rights, a Gypsy clan suspected of drug dealing, and a blackmailer on the loose, all lead Pegasus astray on her quest to find the killer in a desert mountain town beset by flash floods and arsenic-laced creeks.

In cosmopolitan Johannesburg, three high-flying couples form the core of the elite Khula Society: part investment group, part social club, with meetings where the champagne flows, the dresses are designer and the one-upmanship is off the scale. Noma, Moshidi, Lerato and their husbands are living the dream—or so it appears from the outside. In reality, the cut and thrust of ‘keeping up with the Khulas’ is taking its toll on all three couples.

As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father's plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who he is sure would not survive life on the plantation. She'll be much safer with him, away from his father's cruelty. And when he discovers Annie's pregnancy, already a few months along, he is all the more certain that he made the right decision. As the years pass, the divide between Moody's assumptions and Annie's reality widens ever further.

Something is exciting and chilling about a pursuit to identify the remains of a murdered victim and the victim’s murderer—especially when the crime was committed 49 years ago in a small Southern town. The remains were found on Great Aunt Hannah’s property after she died, and Vett Brayborn, Great Aunt Hannah’s most trusted niece and executor of her estate, works as an amateur investigator to solve the murder mystery. The mystery must be solved before the sale of Great Aunt Hannah's properties occurs because an unsolved murder has a way of devaluing properties. Needless to say, the ...

“The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” is an Edgar Allan Poe short story that expertly blends his dark perspective with the comic. -This is the original story—only word order and difficult vocabulary have been updated. -End notes, interpretation, and discussion of major themes follow the text. -Biographical information on Edgar Allan Poe is included. -For other classic short stories in easy to understand updated English search for “Simplified for Modern Readers Series.”