Elaine Viets

Helen Hawthorne's latest dead-end job is in acountry club's complaint department, dealing withthe gripes of the rich and spoiled. Then Rob, herdeadbeat ex-husband, sails back into her life aboardthe yacht of his new lady, Marcella—known as theBlack Widow for her string of dead spouses. Thenext day Rob's reported missing. If the Black Widowhas such a murderous reputation, then why is Helenled from the club in handcuffs?When Marcella helps Helen get released, the twoform an uneasy alliance to find out what reallyhappened. Helen's barely begun digging when a clubpatron is discovered beaten to death with a golf club—his membership permanently expired. Someonegot more than a little teed off and it's up to Helen toget to the truth—without getting clubbed herself…

A humbug of a Shopping mystery...From The Anthony and Agatha Award-Winning Author of Accessory to MurderIncludes insider shopping tips!Mystery shopper Josie Marcus doesn’t get the appeal of the year-round Christmas shop. But when three such holiday houses pop up within two blocks, she’s assigned to rate them anonymously.Easy enough, Josie thinks, until she realizes that shoppers at one store are finding a strange—even deadly—secret ingredient in their holiday cake. And Josie must get to the bottom of it all before someone else becomes a Christmas spirit.

Helen Hawthorne has no choice but to take on a series of dead-end jobs to make ends meet. Unfortunately, they're exposing her to a lot of people who end up dead. Her latest gig at the Pampered Pet Boutique isn't proving to be a warm and furry exception-and now she's got a murder to solve and a kidnapped pup to find, all before a Category 3 hurricane hits.

Working at Sybil’s Full Moon Hotel in Fort Lauderdale is keeping Helen Hawthorne bothfinancially and physically fit. But when a maid turns up dead in a Dumpster, no one feels safe—especially not Helen. To make matters worse, her philandering ex just checked into the very hotelwhere she works. The cops don’t seem to care much about a murdered maid, but they have noticedthere’s something shady about Helen. And if she doesn’t manage to dodge their questions and shakeoff her ex, it could be checkout time...

Helen takes a job at an upscale bridal salon. When a rich, obnoxious mother-of-the-bride is killed, Helen's fingerprints are found on the muder weapon -- a wedding dress.

While making the best of her new telemarketing job, Helen Hawthorne thinks she hears a murder on the other end of the line-and must avoid a close call with a killer.

In the exclusive, gated enclave of Olympia Forest Estates, death investigator Angela Richman watches a mansion go up in a fiery blaze. With it, seventy-year-old financier Luther Delor, a drunken, bed-hopping rhinestone cowboy. Embroiled in a bitter divorce, Delor may have scandalized Chouteau Forest, but his murder has united it against the accused: Delor's twenty-year-old girlfriend, Kendra Salvato, an "outsider." With an engagement ring bigger than Chouteau County, she's being railroaded straight to death row as a gold-digging killer. All there is against Kendra is vicious gossip and anti-Mexican rage, and both are spreading like wildfire. Meanwhile, Angela is trying to douse the flames with forensic work that's putting the Forest on edge. After all, facts could implicate one of their own. Now, sifting through the ashes of a vicious crime--and the guilty secrets of the privileged--only Angela can get to the truth, and prevent an innocent woman from getting burned.

Helen has a new job "off the books" at Page Turners bookstore in Fort Lauderdale...until the owner is murdered. But since the arrogant Page Turner III had so many enemies, Helen will have to read between the lines to uncover the truth about a clever killer.

Once on the fast track to success, Helen Hawthorne is now going nowhere fast. She traded in her chic life for a shabby one. And now she's on the run, jumping from city to city and dead-end job to dead-end job, trying to stay one step ahead of her past...After two weeks as the new salesclerk at Juliana's, Fort Lauderdale's ultra-exclusive clothing boutique, Helen still feels out of fashion. And since the only crime likely to be committed around here is being old-or worse, looking old-Helen figures she's safe. Until she discovers the manager has been embezzling money and selling designer drugs along with the designer clothes. Add murder to the mix-and Helen's dead-end job is downright deadly.

Someone has killed Halley Hardwicke, the hot young designer of thousand-dollar Italian silk scarves, in the mall parking lot-and police have their eye on Jake, the husband of Josie's best friend Alyce. The couple lived near the wrap maven, but it seems Halley and Jake were a little too neighborly.So Josie decides to do what she does best to help out her friend-go undercover and see if she can find some clues. Because this time, there's a lot more at stake than a scarf, even if it's to die for...

Never-before-published vampire stories by Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, Kelley Armstrong, and many others.Suspenseful, surprising, sometimes dark, sometimes humorous-these all-new stories will ensure that readers never think of vampires (or birthdays) in quite the same way again.In New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris's "Dracula Night," Sookie Stackhouse is the only human at the annual commemoration of Dracula's birth. But this year, the Prince of Darkness actually shows up-and finds Sookie to be a tasty-looking present.New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher's crime-solving wizard Harry Dresden, of the Dresden Files novels, heads to a role-playing party to give his vampire brother a birthday present in "It's My Birthday Too," only to discover there are some bloodthirsty party crashers who don't share their brotherly love.In "Twilight," Cassandra DuCharme, who appeared in New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong's Dime Store Magic, knows she has to kill to live as a vampire another year-but finds herself disturbingly disinterested in the hunt.Plus ten more bloody good birthday stories that take the cake.