Blood Orchid is the third adventure of one of Stuart Woods's most engaging characters, Chief of Police Holly Barker. This time out, Holly is trying to get her life back together after the shattering loss of her fiancé. With the help of her wily Doberman, Daisy, and her father, Ham, she throws herself back into the job with a vengeance. At a local restaurant, Holly and Ham meet a gentleman new to the area, rich and dapper developer Ed Shine, who has found an evocative name for both his favorite flower and his latest real-estate venture: the "Blood Orchid."But before Holly can settle into her routine again, bullets crash into the home of a friend and a floater is found bobbing in the Intercoastal Waterway. Holly connects these events to the death-by-sniper-fire of two Miami businessmen and a man evading questions at a Federal agency-but she can't imagine how these violent occurrences could be related to her own quiet, unspoiled town of Orchid Beach. Joining forces with a handsome FBI agent, she tracks the clues straight to their source, only to find a scam more lucrative and more dangerous than any this idyllic town-or Holly-has ever seen.

Someone is out to kill the nation's high-level politicos in this electrifying new thriller in the bestselling Will Lee series.Will Lee, the courageous and uncompromising senator from Georgia, is back – now as President of the United States, in this fifth book of the New York Times bestselling series. When a prominent conservative politician is killed inside his lakeside cabin, authorities have no suspect in sight. Then two more seemingly isolated deaths-achieved by very different means-are feared to be linked to the same murderer. With the help of his CIA director wife, Kate Rule Lee, Will is thrust in the middle of the deadly game to catch the most clever and professional of killers before he can strike again.From a quiet D.C. suburb to the corridors of power to a deserted island hideaway in Maine, Will, Kate, and the FBI track their man and set a trap with extreme caution and care-and await the most dangerous kind of quarry, a killer with a cause to die for.

Chuck Chandler, a Key West tennis pro, tends to choke in his big matches, a tendency he must overcome when he meets Harry Carras and his beautiful wife Clare, and becomes a suspect in Harry's death.

On the Gold Coast of Florida, Stone Barrington hunts a master of disguise and deceit in this latest thriller in his compulsively readable, bestselling series."Stuart Woods is a no-nonsense, slam-bang storyteller." – Chicago TribuneCop-turned-investigator Stone Barrington has the street-smarts, dry wit, and debonair charm his fans love, and Palm Beach -the setting of his new adventure-is his most glamorous scene-of-the-crime yet. In Cold Paradise, he becomes reacquainted with a case he thought was buried years ago-and must settle romantic entanglements that haunt him still.Luxuriating in the winter warmth of a Palm Beach cafŽ, Stone is stunned to recognize someone he thought was dead: the beautiful Allison Manning, a woman he had defended against a murder charge on a Caribbean island in Dead in the Water. Allison is alive and well-and suddenly very rich. And she needs a favor: Might Stone help her square a charge of insurance fraud that's been hanging over her head for years?But first, Stone must find the man who is stalking her. He suspects more than one man: an elusive writer who never shows his face; an enigmatic businessman with a past he won't reveal; and even Allison's former husband-whom they have all thought dead since those days in the Caribbean. Only Stone can thwart the sly and greedy plan to steal the millions at stake in this crafty new thriller.

Stone Barrington investigates the secrets of a CIA officer's suicide in this next thriller in the bestselling series.Stuart Woods's newest bestseller, Dark Harbor, brings us the perfect mix of sexy intrigue and swift suspense that have earned him legions of fans over the years. In this latest thriller, Stone enters the picturesque town Dark Harbor off the coast of Maine, where the shocking deaths of three people have cast a long shadow over this island haven-a locale as mysterious as it is exclusive.Stone Barrington hasn't heard from his cousin, Dick Stone, in years-though he has fond memories of a teenage summer spent at his house in Maine. Then, Lance Cabot of the CIA interrupts an otherwise pleasant meal at Elaine's with news of Dick's death-apparently by his own hands. It seems that Dick Stone, a quiet family man who doubled as a CIA agent, methodically executed his wife, daughter, and then himself-or did he? What would cause a loving father and husband to murder his family as they slept? Before his death, Dick had appointed Stone executor of his will, giving him full control of the disposition of a sizable family estate. Was Dick preparing for his suicide, or forewarning Stone of his murder?With the help of his ex-partner, Dino, and his friend Holly Barker, Stone must settle the estate and piece together the elusive facts of his cousin's life and death as a CIA operative. At every step Stone knows he is being watched by Dick's family-and one of them just may be a killer.

New York lawyer and private investigator Stone Barrington comes to the aid of a lovely woman accused of the murder of her missing, wealthy husband.

The tables have turned on ice-queen gossip columnist Amanda Dart: someone is faxing the scathing details of her sexual indiscretions to national opinion makers. Amanda turns to Stone Barrington – ex-cop, fulltime lawyer, and sometime investigator – for help.

With Dark Harbor, Stuart Woods proved yet again that he is the master of the popular crime novel. Now he outdoes himself with the newest addition to the series. Stone Barrington embarks on his most dangerous adventure yet when he takes on a job as a lawyer for a sleazy and clueless con man – and ends up getting embroiled in the underworld of the New York mafia. It started out as just another late night at Elaine’s, where Stone was eating a porterhouse steak and enjoying the company of his friends. But when Herbie Fisher, a notoriously not-so-sharp swindler, walked in, the pleasant atmosphere turned to ice. Herbie convinces Bill Eggers, the managing partner of Woodman Weld, to sign him on as a client – with the goal of taking down the infamous mafia boss Carmine Datilla. And even though Stone doesn’t want to have anything to do with Herbie – or the mafia, for that matter – he is soon coerced into being Herbie’s lawyer. With the help of his ex-partner, Dino, Stone investigates “Datilla the Hun,” and the rest of the mob family, encountering intrigue and danger at every turn. Will Stone finally take a stand, or will he end up at the bottom of Sheepshead Bay? With the swift action, razor-sharp characters, and crackling dialogue that are Stuart Woods’s hallmarks, Fresh Disasters is Woods at the very height of his storytelling powers.

Ex-DEA agent Jesse Warden has seen enough of the inside of a solitary confinement cell to last him a lifetime. Or two lifetimes, which is the sentence he’s serving after being convicted of a plan he was planning to commit, but never did. So when an old buddy shows up with a deal that could spring him from his hell behind bars, he’s ready to listen.To gain his freedom, Jesse must infiltrate a dangerous and reclusive religious cult that has been stockpiling weapons and eliminating those sent to investigate. From the moment he arrives in the Idaho mountain town where the cult is centered, Jesse finds every aspect of life dictated by the group’s eerie, imposing leader. Pitted against not only the cult, but also the feds who sent him, Jesse feels control of his own life slipping away, and must make a final,desperate attempt to regain it — or die trying.

One night at Elaine’s, Stone Barrington – back in Manhattan after chasing down the bad guys in the Caribbean – meets Barton Cabot, older brother of his sometime ally, CIA boss Lance Cabot. Barton’s career in army intelligence is even more top secret than his brother’s, but he’s suffering from amnesia following a random act of violence. Amnesia is a dangerous thing in a man whose memory is chockfull of state secrets, so Lance hires Stone to watch Barton’s back. As Stone discovers, Barton is a spy with a rather unusual hobby: building and restoring antique furniture. The genteel world of antiques and coin dealers at first seems a far cry from Stone’s usual underworld of mobsters, murderers, and spies. But Barton also is a man with a past, and one event in particular – in the jungles of Vietnam more than thirty years earlier – is coming back to haunt his present in ways he’d never expected. Stone soon finds out that Barton, and some shady characters of his acquaintance, may be hiding a lot more than just a few forged antiques.

A brand-new page-turning Holly Barker novel from the perennially entertaining New York Times-bestselling author Stuart Woods.After Special Agent Holly Barker lets international terrorist Teddy Fay slip through her fingers for a second time, the CIA thinks she might want a long vacation, at least until Teddy is captured and the bad publicity has blown over. So Holly returns to her hometown of Orchid Beach, Florida, where she had been police chief for many years. But a very unpleasant surprise awaits her. Many years earlier, Holly and another female army officer had brought charges against their commanding officer for sexual harassment, attempted rape, and rape. Holly had managed to fight him off, but the other woman, a young lieutenant, had not. The officer in question was acquitted of all charges, and has also left the army – for a job as Orchid Beach 's new police chief.Will Holly return to the CIA? Or will she challenge her old nemesis for control of the Orchid Beach Police Department?

From Publishers WeeklyThough Woods's (Heat) latest caper provides all the credibility of a soap opera, the novel also offers some of the guilty pleasures attendant to that TV format. When wine merchant Sandy Kinsolving meets art dealer Peter Martindale on a flight from London to NYC (the novel's primary locations), they are inspired by watching Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train to hatch their own version of that classic plot-in which two strangers each agree to commit murder for the other. It seems that both men have "troublesome" wives, so why doesn't Sandy kill Peter's spouse and Peter return the favor? After one lady is duly offed, however, events careen out of control. In fact, so many subsequent episodes occur (many of them preposterous and too tidily handled) that the murder pact gets lost. As often happens in the world of soaps, a glossy veneer lends an air of sophistication-a corner suite at London's Connaught Hotel, a cashier's check for $28 million-and, also, of unreality. (Even the dialogue begins to smack of Noel Coward.) Enjoyable for a time, the tony tinsel is overtaken by a blandness that ultimately undercuts the novel's would-be dramatic and psychological aspects. BOMC, QPB alternates; Harper Audio.

From Publishers WeeklyHaving ditched her Orchid Beach, Fla., police chief post, returning supersleuth Holly Barker opts for a CIA career in Woods's by-the-numbers thriller, the fourth in the Barker series (Blood Orchid). Barely through basic training at a highly regimented CIA "training farm," Barker's class is suddenly enlisted to track down calculating killer (and opera buff) Teddy Fay (first seen in Woods's Capital Crimes). An ex-CIA agent himself, Fay uses insider information to continue assassinating international political figures who also happen to be enemies of the U.S. Barker stakes out the Metropolitan Opera House, and narrowly misses Teddy in disguise in several contrived set pieces. The narrative accelerates from a somewhat sluggish first half when CIA operatives' solid deliberation moves Barker ever closer to nabbing the elusive Fay-who, by the way, lives mere blocks away from her. But Fay dupes the CIA again, with the help of a Santa Claus costume, and assassinates a Saudi prince before vanishing. Woods's latest lacks the urgent plotting and bracing thrills needed to make it truly memorable, and though Barker is a tough, formidable protagonist, the question remains why she, after absconding with over $5.5 million in untraceable drug money, bothers to clock in at all. Only Barker's dog, Daisy the Doberman, knows for sure.

Stone Barrington is back in New York, and after a rather harrowing sojourn in Key West, he's looking to stay closer to home and work on some simple divorce and custody cases for Woodman Weld. But when he crosses paths with a fetching Broadway actress-and sometime lip model- Stone gets a little more deeply involved with business than he'd expected. When his new lady love turns out to be a lady with a shady past, Stone and downtown cop Dino Bacchetti realize that her beauty may have an unusually high price…

Amazon.com ReviewStuart Woods is a master of the glitzy, high-concept, suspense thriller, and Stone Barrington, hero of five previous mysteries, is the kind of private cop who glides gracefully between lavishly detailed dinners, private jets, fancy parties, sexy assignations in luxury hotels, and the occasional murder investigation. Occasionally he gets his hands dirty, but more often it's his sheets. L.A. Dead finds him in Venice, where he's about to marry the beautiful (but seriously crazy) daughter of a high-ranking Mafioso, whose other daughter happens to be married to Stone's best friend-an NYPD cop, naturally. The civil ceremony's over, but the church wedding is only hours away when Stone is called to L.A., where his former lover has just discovered her husband's dead body. The lover is Arrington (an oddity, given Stone's surname; did Woods just run out of imagination here?), the dead husband is a famous movie star, and everyone believes she killed him. Everyone except Stone, who's still in love with Arrington. He has a helluva time interviewing (and bedding) all the women in her circle, including the dead husband's private secretary, Arrington's best friend, her lawyer's mistress, and a number of Hollywood wives. Jackie Collins does the ladies better, but Stone manages to save the damsel in distress, get rid of his nutty near-wife without offending her father, and wrap up all the details except the most important one. No doubt he's saving that for the next book. In the meantime, Woods's many fans will snap this up and spend the interim wondering: if Stone marries the woman of his dreams, will that make her Arrington Barrington?

A brand-new page-turning Stone Barrington novel from the perennially entertaining New York Times-bestselling author.It seems like just another quiet night at Elaine's. Stone Barrington and his former cop partner, Dino, are enjoying some pasta when in walks former client and all around sad sack Herbie Fisher…with a briefcase containing $14 million in cash.Herbie claims to have won the money on a lucky lotto ticket, but he also says he needs a lawyer-and after a single gunshot breaks the window above his head and sends diners scrambling, Stone and Dino suspect Herbie might need a bodyguard and a private investigator, too.

From Publishers WeeklyWoods's latest (after Palindrome) is a slick thriller set in Manhattan's Upper East Side, the stomping ground of Stone Barrington, a well-bred but unpretentious detective who, in a city of several million people, always ends up in the right place at the right time. Late one evening, as Stone trudges home from Elaine's Restaurant, popular TV newscaster Sasha Nijinsky plummets 12 stories from her terrace and lands on a heap of dirt 20 yards away from him-remarkably, still alive. Stone fails to apprehend the person who flees Sasha's penthouse and, after the ambulance carrying her collides with a fire truck, Sasha herself disappears. Despite the fact that no corpse is in evidence, the baffled NYPD eagerly pins a murder rap on Sasha's distraught lesbian lover. Stone refuses to accept his colleagues' pat solution and even maintains that Sasha might have survived thanks to skydiving training and her billowing, parachute-like robe. Bed-hopping TV newspeople, a sexy blonde judge sporting a red dress beneath her robes, a serial killer targeting cabbies and a creepy med-school dropout turned mortician who idolizes Sasha romp through this calculatedly melodramatic crime story all the way to its grisly B-movie finale. 75,000 first printing; $125,000 ad/promo; author tour.

Chief of Police Holly Barker-the heroine introduced in the New York Times bestselling Orchid Beach-returns with her trusty Doberman, Daisy, to track an unusual band of thieves in this second thriller in Stuart Woods's newest and most captivating series."Holly Barker-tough and tight-lipped-is fun to watch as she maneuvers among city politicians and wary colleagues, one of whom may be a murderer." (Entertainment Weekly review of Orchid Beach)Holly is on her way to be married to Jackson Oxenhandler, her steady beau, when her wedding day is shattered by a serious crime that takes place very close to home. A highly disciplined team of men hit a bank in Orchid Beach, Florida, and the waves from this robbery nearly capsize Holly's life. She vows to find these men-who have been careful enough to leave nothing behind except the corpse of a bank customer-and quickly, she discovers evidence that leads her into the midst of what appears to be a politically motivated clan. Her father, Ham, a retired army chief master sergeant, is her ticket into this strange world, and what Ham inds there stuns both Holly and her FBI contact, Harry Crisp.Holly and Ham find themselves sucked into a whirlpool of crazed criminality and, in the end, the FBI can do little to help them. This time, Holly, Ham, and Daisy are on their own, and they wouldn't have it any other way.

After divorcing her physically abusive NFL superstar husband, photographer Liz Barwick accepts an assignment on an idyllic island and begins a romance while her ex-husband plots murderous revenge.

Cop-turned-lawyer Stone Barrington tracks a mobster hiding deep inside the witness protection program in this next thriller in the New York Times-bestselling series.Stone Barrington is, once again, right at home in New York City; but this time he is joined by the tenacious Holly Barker from Orchid Blues, the lady police chief of Orchid Island, Florida. In Reckless Abandon, Holly finally makes it to Manhattan, hot on the trail of an evil fugitive from her jurisdiction. Stone is, well, glad to see her, right up until the moment when her presence creates a great danger to both of them-and to their surprise, she becomes the pursued, not the pursuer.From Publishers WeeklyIt's double the pleasure and double the fun as Woods brings series character Holly Barker, chief of the Orchid Beach, Fla., police department (of Orchid Blues, etc.), onstage to co-star with PI Stone Barrington (of Dirty Work, etc.) in his latest adventure. Holly's come to New York hot on the trail of Trini Rodriguez, a bad guy she thought she'd stabbed to death in an earlier adventure. He's currently wanted for (among other things) blowing up a dozen people by hiding bombs in the caskets of two of his earlier victims and detonating them at the funeral. But finding him won't be so simple: he's been placed in the FBI Witness Protection Program and is working with the Feds and the CIA to catch an Arab terrorist group trying to employ the Mafia in a money-laundering scheme. Shortly after Holly takes up residence in Stone's guest room, the two of them are hip deep in the dangerous caseâ€"and likewise each other. They go at it so often it's hard to say what's going to kill Stone first: the Mafia, Arab terrorists or the athletic, all-night sex. Cross-pollinating all these characters from various books makes for some heavy-handed background exposition at times, but readers with no previous experience will still enjoy this amusing, full-throttle sex and crime romp. Stone's ex-partner and best pal, Dino Bachetti, head of the detective squad at the 19th precinct, sums up Stone's appeal, and that of the entire series, when he says of his friend: "Wherever you go, people drop dead, and women take off their underwear." That's it in a nutshell.