Dinah Pelerin Mystery

With her passion for mythology, Dinah tries to sort out the complicated song lines of her own ancestors while struggling to understand the Aboriginal dreamtime and solve not one but two bizarre murders. Dinah Pelerin's wealthy American uncle, dying of cancer, has summoned his entire family to a remote lodge in upper Australia, where he intends to end his life. Dinah hopes to at last learn the truth about her father, who died while committing a felony when she was a child. But the truth, she discovers, has darker ramifications than she'd bargained on. Meanwhile, her artist brother thinks he's possessed by the snake god; her family is seething with resentments; her uncle, who isn't really her uncle, is obsessed by a woman he married but could never possess; and a man none of them claims to know is murdered on a nearby island. A Poisoned Pen Press Mystery

Bet your bones, but never bet your heart. A wedding on the edge of a Hawaiian volcano sounds risky to Dinah Pelerin, the bride's best friend and maid of honor. The bride, Claude Ann Kemper, has bet her heart that she's found the right man at last. The groom has gone all in on a real estate deal that he believes will set him and his new wife up for life. But Hawaii is a tinderbox of ancient myths and modern conflicts over who should control the land so cherished by its native people. A group of native Hawaiians claims that the sacred bones of an ancestral king are buried on the land that the groom plans to sell, and one of them has vowed do whatever it takes to stop him. On top of this, a blackmailer is conspiring to cash in on the groom's suspicious past, Claude Ann's ex-husband is stalking her and rigging booby traps, and Pele, the local fire goddess, is rocking the island with a series of earthquakes. It seems as if the stakes can't get any higher. Then, when somebody shoves a member of the wedding party into a flow of molten lava, all bets are off. True friendship is never easy, and Dinah and Claude Ann have had their misunderstandings. But when danger threatens, Dinah is determined to protect her friend and repay the loyalty Claude Ann has shown to her, even if she has to walk through fire to do it. If Dinah and Claude Ann are to get out alive, they'll have to face down an angry goddess and a ruthless killer. A Poisoned Pen Press Mystery

No fortress can protect against human corruption, not even the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Hewn out of a frozen mountain six hundred miles from the North Pole, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was designed to safeguard the earth's precious collection of diverse plant seeds from rising sea levels, hurtling asteroids, nuclear holocaust, and every other conceivable disaster. But no fortress, however remote or carefully constructed, can protect against human corruption and those who have made it their business to gain control of the world's food supply. When Dinah Pelerin left sunny Hawaii on an undercover fact-finding mission to the seed vault in Longyearbyen, Norway, she had no idea that she would get a crash course in the politics of genetic engineering, that she would become embroiled in the marital troubles of an American presidential candidate and his enigmatic, Norwegian-born wife, or that a dead body would tumble out of the hotel sauna into her arms. In late December, the polar night wraps around the little town of Longyearbyen like a lead blanket, impenetrable and endless. The temperature rarely climbs above zero, and bodies don't decompose in the permafrost. The dead have to be shipped south for burial, and soon there are two murder victims headed there. Who has killed them, and why? With three US senators, a powerful corporate CEO, and a Norwegian government minister as her fellow suspects, Dinah is under no illusions about her role. She had better untangle the knot of motives and pretenses fast or suspicion will come crashing down like an avalanche and bury her so deep that she'll never see daylight again.

In 1973, on a remote beach on the Greek island of Samos, a movie star named Marilita Stephan murdered her boyfriend, his mother, and a powerful colonel in the military junta, a crime for which she was executed. Forty years later, Dinah Pelerin arrives on Samos to spend the summer with her Norwegian boyfriend Thor before she joins an archaeological dig nearby. Thor, a policeman on sabbatical, seems unduly fascinated by the 1973 murders, and Dinah soon discovers that he had more in mind than romance when he chose the island of Samos as their holiday destination. Guns supplied to Greece's former junta by the CIA have turned up in Norway in the hands of terrorists, and Norwegian intelligence has traced the source of the weapons to Samos. The island has also become a transit point for refugees fleeing the Middle East. When an Iraqi immigrant with a fake ID is killed, Thor suspects a link to the arms traffickers. But before he can investigate, his car plunges off a cliff and he disappears. Because Greece's economic woes have bred corruption, Dinah fears that he was betrayed by local police and was either kidnapped or murdered. Unable to trust anyone, she sets out alone to find him. The deeper she digs, the more connections she sees between the present crime wave and what happened in 1973. It's possible that Marilita may have been innocent, and the fate of her boyfriend holds eerie parallels to Thor's disappearance. Dinah must be smarter and braver than she has ever been if she is to prevent another Greek tragedy.