to be read

Behind the prim gates of the Greenwich, Connecticut, McMansions, Wall Street whizzes turn their attentions from mortgages to another possible profit source: the $25 trillion life-insurance industry. By securitizing the policies of the old and sick, they hope to make another financial killing. At the same time, Natalie Savondnik and Ronald Goodall-two exceptional yet aloof medical residents-are working closely with their medical center's premier scientist...

4.8 stars

"Attorney Clayton Gladwell keeps 'special' cases in blue folders that only he can access, but when Gladwell announces his impending retirement, someone decides that Blue Folder secrets aren't safe unless everyone connected to them is dead. From a long-dead movie star, the owner of a trendy art gallery, and an Algonquin Roundtable personality to a senile resident in a nursing home and a broken-down cleaning woman, Lt. Harald must figure out who hated...

4.6 stars

"Margaret Maron is back with a new mystery featuring her critically acclaimed sleuth Judge Deborah Knott"--Provided by publisher. Conflicts between family farmers and real estate developers in Colleton County lead to the murder of a controversial commissioner and pulls Judge Deborah Knott and her husband, sheriff's deputy Dwight Bryant, into the fray.

3.3 stars

Her name is Elise Freeman, and her chilling cry for help comes too late to save her. On a DVD found near her lifeless body, the emotionally and physically battered woman chronicles a long ordeal of abuse at the hands of three sadistic tormentors. But even more shocking is the revelation that the offenders, like their victim, are teachers at one of L.A.'s most prestigious prep schools. Homicide detective Milo Sturgis is assigned to probe the hallowed...

4.5 stars

Anna takes on a position as district park ranger of the Mississippi Natchez Trace Parkway. Once there she faces an angry staff. But she pushes that difficulty aside when she stumbles over the body of a teenage girl, shrouded in a hood reminiscent of the KKK.

4 stars

In a plot to overthrow the U.S. government, Montana neo-Nazis abduct the daughter of the nation's top general and her male companion. The companion is Jack Reacher, a former military policeman and he turns the tables on the captors.

4.8 stars

A German shepherd police dog witnesses a killing and, if his owner is convicted of the crime, the dog could be put down. No one loves man's best friend more than attorney Andy Carpenter, and he decides to represent the poor canine. As Andy struggles to convince a judge that this dog should be set free, he discovers that the shepherd and his owner have unwittingly become involved in a case that is much bigger than a murder charge. Now Andy will have...

5 stars

Major Bing, the nephew of Inspector O and the long-suffering chief of the Chinese Ministry of State Security operations on the border with North Korea is faced with a highly sensitive assignment to bring back from the North a long missing Chinese security official. Inspector O reluctantly helps him navigate an increasingly complex and deadly maze, one that leads down the twisted byways of his homeland.

4 stars

After an old university friend and fellow archeologist's murdered, forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway travels to Lancashire to examine the bones he found, which reveal a shocking fact about King Arthur, and discovers a campus living in fear of a sinister right-wing group called the White Hand.

3 stars

Two little girls banished from a neighborhood birthday party take a wrong turn down an unfamiliar Baltimore street, and encounter an abandoned stroller with an infant inside. What happens next is shocking and terrible, and three families are irreparably destroyed. Seven years later, Alice Manning and Ronnie Fuller, now eighteen, are released from "kid prison" to begin their lives over again. But the secrets swirling around the original crime continue...