In Double, the “Nameless Detective” and Sharon McCone — reunited at a private eye convention in sunny San Diego — team up to tangle with kinky lifestyles, double dealing and multiple murder. When Elaine Picard, head of security at the posh Casa del Rey hotel and an old friend of Sharon’s, falls to her death from a hotel tower, “Nameless” is a distant witness. And when McCone’s zealous pursuit of clues lands her in jail, it’s “Nameless” who posts bail. While Sharon continues to risk her life trying to unravel the mystery of Elaine’s death, “Nameless” puts his own on the line investigating the odd disappearance of a little boy and his mother who’ve vanished from the Casa del Rey without a trace. The two detectives are swiftly drawn into a treacherous maze of past duplicity and present danger.

The action races from the Casa del Rey to an ominous menagerie in the hills outside of town, a pornographic curio shop, a political campaign headquarters, a villa on the Mexican seacoast, and an isolated desert mansion with a strange history that belies its even more bizarre current goings on.

Double is a crackling and complex thriller from two premier mystery writers.

A collection of 21 crime stories by women writers, including Sara Paretsky, Amanda Cross, Liza Cody and Gillian Slovo. The stories include old favourites such as V.I. Warshawski, Jemima Shore and Kate Fansler.

Traumatized by a recent life-or-death investigation, Sharon McCone flees to her ranch in California's high desert country to contemplate her future. Deep depression shadows her days and nights, and a chance encounter with a troubled, highly secretive Native American woman begins to haunt her dreams. Even though she is determined not to investigate anything during her stay-and perhaps not ever again-McCone is drawn into the plight of the young woman and her dysfunctional family. A murder and traces of violence at a deserted resort lead her across the desert and into Nevada, and finally to a remote and isolated ranch, where danger lies closer that she expects and where her future and life itself may hang in the balance.

A collection of stories

In this Spur Award-winning story, a Pinkerton detective, a couple on the run, a wanted man, and a traveling salesman with mysterious wares all converge on the banks of Crucifixion River to take shelter from an impending storm.

A Sharon McCone mystery, in which the detective is hired by a reclusive photographer to find his missing roommate, and when she is found dead, McCone has to confront numerous suspects.

Shot in the head by an unknown assailant, San Francisco private eye Sharon McCone finds herself trapped by locked-in syndrome: almost total paralysis but an alert, conscious mind. Since the late-night attack occurred at her agency's offices, the natural conclusion was that it was connected to one of the firm's cases. As Sharon lies in her hospital bed, furiously trying to break out of her body's prison and discover her attacker's identity, all the members of her agency fan out to find the reason why she was assaulted. Meanwhile, Sharon becomes a locked-in detective, evaluating the clues from her staff's separate investigations and discovering unsettling truths that could put her life in jeopardy again.

As the case draws to a surprising and even shocking conclusion, Sharon's husband, Hy, must decide whether or not to surrender to his own violent past and exact fatal vengeance when the person responsible is identified.

Creator of the modern female private eye story, Marcia Muller has been writing novels and short stories about Sharon McCone since 1977. In the process McCone has gained a host of associates and formed her own detective agency. Some seven years ago, Marcia Muller decided to show readers different views of her sleuth by relating cases through the eyes of McCone's colleagues.

McCone and Friends contains three stories told by McCone herself, as well as a novella and a short story narrated by the agency's investigator Rae Kelleher, a story from the viewpoint of its office manager Ted Smalley, an investigation conducted by McCone's nephew Mick Savage, and one by her long-term lover Hy Ripinsky. The settings range from small planes to a sweatshop which puts Asian women into virtual slavery, and the mysteries surround a 1950's jukebox in a rundown hotel, a sculpture welded together by a long-missing and now very-dead artist. In perhaps the most moving story of all, a teenage girl has vanished leaving as a clue only a collage on her wall.

The McCone Files shows why Marcia Muller is one of the greatest mystery writers of our generation.

"The Body Snatchers Affair: " The latest in the Carpenter and Quincannon historical mystery series from Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini.

Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown's opium dens.

For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of Bing Ah Kee.

Meanwhile, his partner, Sabina Carpenter, unsure of the dark secrets her suitor might be concealing, searches for the corpse of a millionaire, stolen from a sealed family crypt and currently being held for ransom.

With the threat of a tong war hanging over the city (a war perhaps being spurred on by corrupt officials), Carpenter and Quincannon have no time to lose in solving their cases. Is there a connection between the two body snatchers? Or is simple greed the answer to this one?

And why is the enigmatic Englishman who calls himself Sherlock Holmes watching so carefully from the shadows?

Hillerman, author of the Joe Leaphorn mysteries, and Herbert, editor of The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, trace this short-story genre from its beginnings in the hands of Edgar Allen Poe through its development by the likes of Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Roberts Rinehart and Anthony Boucher to its current practice by such masters as Marcia Muller. Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which established a great many of the whodunit conventions, is indispensable to such an overview. Raymond Chandler's "I'll be Waiting" emits a doom-laden atmosphere right from the first line; William Faulkner shows unexpected economy of language?and a transparent plot?in "An Error in Chemistry." Ed McBain scores high marks in "Small Homicide," in which the tiny details of a baby's untimely death resonate uncomfortably. As represented in this competent, unstartling collection, Linda Barnes ("Lucky Penny") easily outsasses Sue Grafton ("The Parker Shotgun"). Hillerman makes a solid appearance with "Chee's Witch," and in "Benny's Space" Muller captures the full subtle force of her novel-length vision.

In 1895 San Francisco young debutantes don’t commit suicide at festive parties, particularly not under the eye of Sabina Carpenter. But Virginia St. Ives evidently did, leaping from a foggy parapet in a shimmer of ghostly light. The seemingly impossible disappearance of her body creates an even more serious problem for the firm of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.

Sabina hadn’t wanted to take the assignment, but her partner John Quincannon insisted it would serve as entrée to the city’s ultra rich and powerful. That means money, and Quincannon loves the almighty dollar. Which is why he is hunting the bandit who robbed the Wells, Fargo office of $35,000.

Working their separate cases (while Sabina holds John off with one light hand), the detectives give readers a tour of The City the way it was. From the infamous Barbary Coast to the expensive Tenderloin gaming houses and brothels frequented by wealthy men, Quincannon follows a danger-laden trail to unmask the murderous perpetrators of the Wells, Fargo robbery. Meanwhile, Sabina works her wiles on friends and relatives of the vanished debutante until the pieces of her puzzle start falling into place. But it’s an oddly disguised gent appearing out of nowhere who provides the final clue to both cases — the shrewd “crackbrain” who believes himself to be Sherlock Holmes.

Fans of Marcia’s Muller’s bestselling Sharon McCone novels and Bill Pronzini’s Nameless Detective series will applaud The Spook Lights Affair and future exploits from the annals of Carpenter and Quincannon, Professional Detective Services.

Hot-tempered curator Elena Oliverez threatens to kill her boss, Frank DePalma, when he orders her to put a particularly hideous piece of sculpture-donated by a wealthy patron of the new Museum of Mexican Arts-on display for the museum opening. So when someone kills Frank with the sculpture, Elena must conduct her own investigation to clear her name-or die trying.

When a former sixties radical is murdered during a string of random sniper attacks, the All Souls Legal Cooperative must settle his surprisingly large estate. Then private investigator Sharon McCone comes across a new will, made just days before he died, that disinherits his two children in favor of four unknown and unconnected parties. McCone sifts through Perry Hilderly's belongings, but finds little to explain this puzzling change – until she uncovers a.357 with the serial number burned off.

As McCone tracks down the new beneficiaries she discover that the shootings aren't so random after all and that the dead man isn't the only one with a lurid past. To link the heirs to the killings, she must follow a treacherous trail of evidence that travels from the Vietnam years to the present. But along the way the elusive sniper waits in a homicidal rage and takes aim – this time at All Souls and Sharon McCone.

In the latest installment in this critically acclaimed series, McCone is hired to investigate one of San Luis Obispo County’s most puzzling cold cases. A generation ago, Laurel Greenwood, a housewife and artist, inexplicably vanished, leaving her young daughter alone. Now, new evidence suggests that the missing woman may have led a strange double life. But before McCone can penetrate the tangled mystery, she must first solve a second disappearance – that of her client, the now grown daughter of Laurel Greenwood. The case, which forces Sharon to explore the darker sides of two marriages, comes uncomfortably close on the heels of her own marriage to Hy Ripinsky, and she begins to doubt the wisdom of her impulsive trip to the Reno wedding chapel.