The woman on the bed was barely out of her teens. She hadn’t been exactly beautiful, but she’d tried to make the most of her looks. Now, defiled and alone in a seedy beachfront motel, she was dead. And Paradise police chief Jesse Stone doesn’t even know her name.

Whoever she is, she didn’t deserve to die. State police captain Healy’s resources turn up nothing helpful, and Gino Fish, who knows his way around dark places, is characteristically uncooperative. Unwilling to take no for an answer, Jesse continues digging on his own, only to find himself caught in the crosshairs of a bitter turf war between two ruthless pimps, Thomas Walker and Fat Boy Nelly, a beautiful woman to whom they both lay claim. Jesse tries for a diplomatic solution, but before it’s over, more blood will spill.

Jesse Stone, still reeling from the murder of his fiancée by crazed assassin, must keep his emotions in check long enough to get through the wedding day of his loyal protégé, Luther “Suitcase” Simpson. The morning of the wedding, Jesse learns that a gala seventy-fifth birthday party is to be held for folk singer Terry Jester, has spent the last forty years in seclusion after the mysterious disappearance of his magnum opus, The Hangman’s Sonnet.That same morning, an elderly Paradise woman dies while her house is being ransacked. What are the thieves looking for? And what’s the connection to Terry Jester and the missing tape? Jesse’s investigation is hampered by hostile politicians and a growing trail of blood and bodies, forcing him to solicit the help of mobster Vinnie Morris and a certain Boston area PI named Spenser. While the town fathers pressure him to avoid a PR nightmare, Jesse must connect the cases before the bodies pile up further.

Dave Robicheaux is a haunted man.Between his recurrent nightmares about Vietnam, his battle with alcoholism, and the sudden loss of his beloved wife, Molly, his thoughts drift from one irreconcilable memory to the next. Images of ghosts at Spanish Lake live on the edge of his vision.During a murder investigation, Dave Robicheaux discovers he may have committed the homicide he’s investigating, one which involved the death of the man who took the life of Dave’s beloved wife. As he works to clear his name and make sense of the murder, Robicheaux encounters a cast of characters and a resurgence of dark social forces that threaten to destroy all of those whom he loves. What emerges is not only a propulsive and thrilling novel, but a harrowing study of America: this nation’s abiding conflict between a sense of past grandeur and a legacy of shame, its easy seduction by demagogues and wealth, and its predilection for violence and revenge. James Lee Burke has returned with one of America’s favorite characters, in his most searing, most prescient novel to date.

To most of the people in La Mesa, Rose French’s only claim to fame was the brilliant explosiveness of her periodic binges. Frank Clyde and a few others knew that she had been a great star in the days of silent pictures, had married and left five husbands, and that Rose at sixty still had the vitality of a force of nature. Frank was a young social worker who sometimes let his feelings color his work, and Rose was his favorite case history. When that history came to a sudden end in a deserted garden, Frank was deeply affected.

The coroner’s jury pronounced Rose dead of natural causes, but Frank had his doubts. They deepened when her past began to emerge in the present. One of the shadowy five to whom she had once been married turned up in La Mesa, prosperous and aggressive. Then the implausibly moronic couple in whose garden the body was found began to behave like people with something to hide. Frank became a detective in spite of himself.

The Editor of a monthly crime and detection magazine assigns to two of his staff writers, Sladen and Low, the investigation of the strange disappearance of an unknown showgirl. The disappearance was reported fourteen months earlier, but the trail is cold. The police, with nothing to work on, have lost interest. The assignment doesn’t look hopeful.

However, the investigators start asking questions and almost immediately things begin to happen. Witnesses arc murdered, an attempt is made to do away with the investigators. The police once more open the case. The disappearance of the showgirl is found to be only a minor part of a ruthless murder plot.

Safer Dead has the authentic James Hadley Chase touch, which has deservedly earned him the title of “Master of the Art of Deception”. It moves with the pace and power of forked lightning.

Cal Innes is fresh out of prison and ducking a past muddied with ties to local gang lord «Uncle» Morris Tiernan. But when Tiernan finds out Innes is working as an unlicensed PI and calls in a favor Innes doesn't owe, Innes is thrust into a cat-and-mouse game with Tiernan's psychotic son, Mo. Ordered to track down a rogue casino dealer who's absconded with a hefty chunk of cash, Innes finds that the case points north to Newcastle. With Tiernan's son on his tail and a Manchester cop determined to put Innes back in jail, Saturday's child has to work hard to keep living.

For years he had craved a different life. And one day he dared to start living it!

Now there were no more games of “Frigid Woman” with the scheming temptress he had married.

Now there were bouts of pleasure with eager sex kittens like Brenda, who cleaned his apartment and catered to his love whims — for a price. And bouts of passion with Annie, the black-haired tigress who plunged him into a world of raw sensuality.

She was blind — but eventually there were many things she could see clearly — for instance, who had murdered her son!