Platinum Mystery Series

Based on true events, Magic City is the powerful story of two people who unwittingly lit the match that burned the community of Greenwood to the ground and erased it from the history books. Jewell Parker Rhodes imagines this tragedy through the eyes of Joe Samuels and Mary Keane, two people fundamentally divided by race but forever joined by fate. When Joe, a young man entranced by Houdini, is falsely accused of rape, he must perform his greatest escape by eluding a bloodthirsty lynch mob. Haunted by the mystery of his brother's death and the dark truth behind his father's success, Joe soon learns that he has been running all his life and that this may actually be the moment to turn and fight. Mary, the motherless daughter of a poor farmer who tries to marry her off to the farmhand who viciously raped her, is barely able to imagine what life could be like outside the prison of her own home. Now, however, she must unlock the courage to help exonerate the man she has accused with her panicked cry. Magic City, a mythic tale of violent revenge, is a portrait of an era, climaxing in the heroic but doomed stand that ultimately pitted the National Guard against a small band of black men determined to defend the town they had built into the "Negro Wall Street." Depicted against a backdrop of jail escapes, ghosts, family betrayal, and lost loves, it is a tale at once harrowing and redemptive.

Parker is on the run after a country town bank robbery goes wrong. He is confronted by a local citizen with a shotgun. But this citizen is not out to arrest him: he wants Parker to help him carry out a robbery of his own.

The hunt is on in this new installment of Rita Mae Brown's clever and engaging series. Only instead of chasing foxes into their dens, the locals must track down a killer and save the life of one of the most beloved folks in town. It's February, prime foxhunting season for the members of Virginia's Jefferson Hunt Club. The girls at Custis Hall are finishing their last semester before heading off to college, the entrepreneurially shrewd Crawford Howard is still smarting from January's breech in hound etiquette, and the Casanova Hunt Club is hosting their annual ball. New neighbors bring new friendships, and romance is in the air. Then a shocking event alarms the community. A woman is found brutally murdered, stripped naked, and meticulously placed atop a horse statue outside a tack shop. The theft of a treasured foxhunting prize inside the store may be linked to the grisly scene, and everyone is on edge.With few clues to go on, "Sister" Jane Arnold, master of the Jefferson Hunt Club, uses her fine-tuned horse sense to try to solve the mystery of this "Lady Godiva" murder. The septuagenarian still has a strong spring in her step and her wits about her, but that may not be enough. As Sister gets closer to the truth, she could become the killer's next victim. But humans aren't the only ones equipped to sniff out the trail. The local foxes, horses, and hounds have their own theories on the whodunit. If only these peculiar people could just listen to them, they'd see that the killer might be right under their oblivious noses.Once again, this charming southern community finds itself caught up in a bone-chilling tale of murder and greed. It's up to everyone, two- and four-legged alike, to band together, beat the bushes, and bring to bay the evil forces that have declared the Jefferson Hunt Club fair game--because foul play is never in season.From the Hardcover edition.

While presiding over a rape case, Judge George Mason questions his professional abilities and the law itself. Life would seem to have gone well for George Mason. His days as a criminal defence lawyer ("Personal Injuries") are long behind him. At fifty-nine, he has sat as a judge on the Court of Appeals in Kindle County for nearly a decade. Yet, when a disturbing rape case is brought before him, the judge begins to question the very nature of the law and his role within it. What is troubling George Mason so deeply? Is it his wife's recent diagnosis? Or the strange and threatening emails he has started to receive? And what is it about this horrific case of sexual assault, now on trial in his courtroom, that has led him to question his fitness to judge? In "Limitations," Scott Turow, the master of the legal thriller, returns to Kindle County with a page-turning entertainment that asks the biggest questions of all. Ingeniously, and with great economy of style, Turow probes the limitations not only of the law, but of human understanding itself.

"For years the local ladies of Lehigh, Pennsylvania, have wished aloud that Debbie Shatsky would meet an untimely end-so they could get their hands on Phil Shatsky, sports-hating, dinner-cooking, massage-giving husband extraordinaire. But when Debbie gets hair extensions at the House of Beauty and dies from a reaction to the glue, it's salon owner Sandy who gets the blame. Her best friend Bubbles Yablonsky, reporter and sleuth, is determined to investigate-despite distractions from the two men in her life. And from a mysterious Santa Claus, who warns Bubbles not to cry, not to pout and not to scream ... when he tries to kill her."--Publisher's website. IF YOU LIKE SCREWBALL MYSTERIES YOU WILL LOVE BUBBLES. Wise-cracking, big-haired reporter Bubbles Yablonsky, while dealing with her boyfriend, her persistent ex-husband, and a mysterious Santa Claus, must prove that Sandy, the owner of the House of Beauty, did not kill Debbie Shatsky, who met her demise at the hands of hair glue.

Struggling to work as a graphic artist, former master forger Tom Fairchild accepts a precarious but lucrative job from the millionaire father of his former girlfriend only to discover that the assignment involves a dubious ulterior motive.