When the naked, mutilated body of a man is found in a Notting Hill graveyard and the police investigation led by Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster and his colleague Detective Superintendent Heather Jenkins yields few results, a closer look at the corpse reveals that what looked at first glance like superficial knife wounds on the victim's chest is actually a string of carved letters and numbers, an index number referring to a file in city archives containing birth and death certificates and marriage licenses. Family historian Nigel Barnes is put on the case. As one after another victim is found in various locations all over London, each with a different mutilation but the same index number carved into their skin, Barnes and the police work frantically to figure out how the corresponding files are connected. With no clues to be found in the present, Barnes must now search the archives of the past to solve the mystery behind a string of 100-year-old murders. Only then will it be possible to stop the present series of gruesome killings, but will they be able to do so before the killer ensnares his next victim? Barnes, Foster, and Jenkins enter a race against time - and before the end of the investigation, one of them will get much too close for comfort.Dan Waddell is a journalist and author who lives in west London with his son. He writes about the media and -popular culture, and has published ten non-fiction books, including the bestselling Who Do You Think You Are?, which tied in with the BBC TV series. This is his first novel.

** Two families. One courtroom showdown. • John Grisham's most gripping thriller yet. • "A legal literary legend." -- *USA Today*** **The #1 *New York Times* bestselling author returns to Mississippi with the riveting story of two sons of immigrant families who grow up as friends, but ultimately find themselves on opposite sides of the law. Grisham's trademark twists and turns will keep you tearing through the pages until the stunning conclusion.** 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. Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood...

In this remarkable novel, Margaret Millar returns to the themes of death and terror which first made her reputation as a writer. It concerns a New York family who rented a house on the California coast in the hope of a tranquil summer. Mark Banner was a young, successful publisher. His wife. Evelyn. was bright and competent, and very much afraid of losing her husband. When Janet Wakefield returned from her travels to take inventory in the house she had rented to the Banners, Evelyn recognized an enemy at sight. The covert struggle between the two women for the possession of Evelyn’s husband, and her daughter, Jessie, gradually became a fight to the death.

The story covers only three days, but it has the compactness of an ancient tragedy. It strikes deep into the life of its characters, and into the past which had changed a strong and beautiful woman to a figure of frightening evil. Much of it is seen through the eyes of the child. Jessie, who is Mrs. Wakefield’s first convert and her final victim. The dark relation between the imaginative eight-year-old and the desperate woman mounts gradually toward a peak of intensity. But at the end the terror is subtly changed to pity. Mrs. Wakefield is not a villainess of melodrama, but a woman whom we pity because we understand her.

Margaret Millar’s new novel is daring, deeply disturbing, yet marked by unusual beauty. Its love passages between Mark Banner and Janet Wakefield are real and moving.

Black Dove...The identity of the notorious criminal, Black Dove, still baffles the officers of Interpol, the Surete and Scotland Yard. But there is nothing to connect him with Peter Churchman, an Englishman living quietly in Southern Spain with his bright new love. Until Angela reappears, fragile and evil, with her old power over him and her old craving for money...

The first two bodies were found in a lover’s lane... His girl friend, still alive, described the stick-up artist as mild-mannered, courteous, of medium build and wearing glasses. It was a description that fitted half the male population of Los Angeles. It was almost the only clue Joe Friday and Frank Smith had to catch the murderer.

The courteous killer struck again! Then again! This time Joe Friday was waiting for him with a gun. But the criminal escaped with only a bullet wound.

When Joe Friday opened his mail, there was an unsigned, misspelled note. It read: “You chink your a smart badge. Nobody burns me and lives, cop. Start swetting.”

Dusty Detwiller and his Sandmen were undoubtedly the most-hoodooed aggregation of hot-lickers that ever jammed a number from a bandshell. It kept the Warden of the Mad House jumping, trying to furnish substitutes for the swingsters who apparently Dutched it after each of those fatal jam-sessions. But a smart dick who didn’t know the Bolero from Dinah, and the little blonde who canaried it for the band proved even the cagiest murderer can go kill-corny once too often.

Her one request: “Treat me like a tramp.”

Boone, Ill.  Tuesday, P.M.My dearest Louise:Louise, the goddamndest thing happened here about an hour ago.I was killing time here in the office trying to keep warm; was pushed back in the old swivel chair with my feet on the desk, as a matter of fact, when this husky stranger eased in.For several minutes I had been trying to decide where to go for lunch, unable to choose between chasing across the street to Thompson’s or going over to Milkshake Mike’s on the other side of the courthouse square.* * *That’s the way The CHINESE DOLL starts.If you’re kind of reader who peeks of the end, restrain yourself. You’ll lose the fun of the chose from Boone to Chicago and back, of the ride in the train to Croyden and back by ambulance to Boone, of uncovering a very neat double-cross; and, above off, of proving that you’re as smart on the author.There’s a trick here that Mr. Tucker has planted, and planted well. You ought to be able to figure it out for yourself, but don’t blame us if you can’t.