Rachel Gold Mysteries

Best of the West 2019 – 2nd Place in 20th- to 21st-Century Western Mystery Fiction by TrueWest Magazine "Wortham's writing style is easygoing, relying on natural-sounding dialogue and vivid descriptions to give us the feeling that this story could well have taken place." -Booklist As the 1960s draw to a close, the rural northeast Texas community of Center Springs is visited by two nondescript government men in dark suits and shades. They say their assignment is to test weather currents and patterns, but that's a lie. Their delivery of a mysterious microscopic payload called Gold Dust from a hired crop duster coincides with fourteen-year-old Pepper Parker's discovery of an ancient gold coin in her dad's possession. Her adolescent trick played on a greedy adult results in the only gold rush in north Texas history. Add in modern-day cattle-rustlers and murderers, and Center Springs is once again the bull's-eye in a deadly target. The biological agent deemed benign by the CIA has unexpected repercussions, putting Pepper's near-twin cousin, Top, at death's door. The boy's crisis sends their grandfather, Constable Ned Parker, to Washington D.C. to exact personal justice, joined by a man Ned left behind in Mexico and had presumed dead. The CIA agents who operate on the dark side of the U.S. government find they're no match for men who know they're right and won't stop. Especially two old country boys raised on shotguns. But there's more. Lots more. Top Parker thought only he had what had become known as a Poisoned Gift, but Ned suffers his own form of a family curse he must deploy. Plus, there are many trails to follow as the lawmen desperately work to put an end to murder and government experimentation that extends from their tiny Texas town to Austin and, ultimately, to Washington, D.C. Traitors, cattle-rustlers, murderers, rural crime families, grave robbers, CIA turncoats, and gold-hungry prospectors pursue agendas that all, in a sense, revolve around the center of this small vortex called Center Springs. Gold Dust seems to be fiction, but the truth is, it has already happened.

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, now streaming on Netflix, starring Essie Davis as the honourable Phryne Fisher "Phryne's fans get everything they could possibly want from this installment in the long-running and ever more popular series: a fast-talking, tough heroine; an engaging cast of supporting players; a couple of really nifty mysteries; and plenty of fun." -Booklist Phryne Fisher is on holiday. She means to take the train to Sydney (where the harbour bridge is being built), go to a few cricket matches, dine with the Chancellor of the university, and perhaps go to the Arts Ball with that young modernist, Chas Nutall. She has the costume of a lifetime, and she's not afraid to use it. When she arrives there, however, her maid Dot finds that her extremely respectable married sister Joan has vanished, leaving her small children to the neglectful care of a resentful husband. What has become of Joan, who would never leave her babies? Surely, she hasn't run away with a lover, as gossip suggests? Then while Phryne is visiting the university, the very pretty Joss and Clarence ask her to find out who has broken into the Dean's safe and stolen a number of things, including the Dean's wife's garnets and an irreplaceable illuminated book called the Hours of Juana the Mad. An innocent student has been blamed. So Phryne girds up her loins, loads her pearl-handled .32 Beretta, and sallies forth to find mayhem, murder, black magic, and perhaps a really good cocktail before more crime erupts in Sydney.

Storm Kayama and her partner Ian Hamlin are excited to get away from Honolulu for the weekend. While they will both be doing work on this trip, it is a much needed break from the routine. Storm is supposed to check on an old friendas diabetic son. This should be easy, but when the boyas mother, Jenny Williams, turns up dead, Storm must find the boy before the murderers do. In the meantime, Ian is investigating the disappearance of Brock Liu, the son of an Oaahu shipping magnate. Are Jenny Williamsa death and Brock Liuas disappearance related? Or are they both linked to an older unsolved crime?

The past is never past on the mean streets of Phoenix, especially when the mercury hits a hundred and it's only April. Half a century after the unsolved murder of an FBI agent, the missing badge is found on the body of a dead transient. The case seems a perfect fit for David Mapstone, history professor turned Maricopa County deputy sheriff. That is, if he can get past a forced partnership with rival cold-case expert Sgt. Kate Vare and the FBI's strange stonewalling about the details of the agent's killing. To complicate matters, there are the crimes making history today, like the arrest of Russian mafia members in a multimillion-dollar fraud case. David's wife, Lindsey, star of the sheriff's Cybercrimes Bureau, was on the task force that busted the case wide open. But her triumph is short-lived when a hit in Scottsdale leaves three task-force members dead. Lindsey's life in danger, Sheriff Peralta stashes Lindsey and David in a safe house. That doesn't get the good "History Shamus" off the hook, though, as Sheriff Peralta inexplicably demands that David solve the cold case The trail will take Mapstone to the most forlorn parts of Phoenix, as well as to San Francisco and picturesque southern Arizona, as he slowly uncovers the bloody secrets surrounding the mysterious FBI badge. He's got the brains and the leads. Now all he and Lindsey have to do is live long enough to bring justice to a fifty-year-old crime.

A fascinating historical mystery by Sulari Gentill, author of #1 LibraryReads pick The Woman in the Library In a city full of strangers, be careful whom you trust… Shanghai, 1935. Black sheep gentleman sleuth Rowland Sinclair arrives with his bohemian housemates from Sydney, Australia to explore a new city and take the name Sinclair international with a new class of negotiations. A novice to global commerce, Rowland is under strict instructions from his brother to keep a low profile…but that soon becomes next to impossible. A beautiful Russian taxi girl-who once claimed to be the Princess Anastasia and who danced in Rowly's arms the night before-is found slain in his suite. Out of sympathy for the murdered girl and to clear his name, Rowly and his companions embark upon their own investigation into the murder mystery. They soon discover there are many people who may have wanted Alexandra Romanovna dead. As they are drawn deeper into Shanghai society and its underworld, Rowly searches for answers in a strange city determined to ruin him. Perfect for fans of Rhys Bowen, Kerry Greenwood, and Jacqueline Winspear and exploring the simmering underbelly of Shanghai just years before WWII, Shanghai Secrets is a historical mystery that brings alive an expatriate playground where East and West collide, the stakes are high, and fortunes-and lives-are easily lost.

"Bearing Witness grips you from the start. If you have not read Michael Kahn's terrific legal thrillers before, you are in for a treat." -Philip Margolin, New York Times bestselling author Rachel Gold blames it on her mother, Sarah, who convinced her to file what seemed like a simple age-discrimination case on behalf of Ruth Alpert, her mother's best friend. Ruth had been fired just shy of her sixty-third birthday by Beckmann Engineering, a corporate powerhouse known in St. Louis, both for its charitable contributions and vicious lawyers. The first hint that the case might not be so simple comes when a key witness is gunned down in a parking lot before Rachel's eyes. The second comes when Rachel learns that Ruth has knowledge of confidential information that could transform her simple age claim into a massive, multi-million-dollar conspiracy case spanning decades. With the help of her best friend, Benny Goldberg-the grossest (and funniest) law professor in America-the savvy and beautiful Rachel Gold struggles to make sense of a dark scheme hatched more than a fifty years ago, a conspiracy with a bloody trail of murder, mayhem, and treachery that implicates some of the wealthiest and most respected elder citizens in the country. These men have guarded their vile secret for half a century and will take whatever steps are necessary to protect it from disclosure.

Budapest, 1956. In this darkest year in the modern history of Hungary, a national uprising against Soviet occupiers and their reign of terror is underway. Eleven-year-old Evike and her firebrand mother steal deep into battle zones in support of civilian freedom fighters armed only with primitive weapons and desperate courage against the heavy artillery of trained Russian troops. Taken in for interrogation by the secret police, little Evike spins a story to deflect attention from her mother's revolutionary activities. A story that will irrevocably alter a number of lives and reach its tentacles, thirty years later, into the life of Ildiko Palmay. Chicago, 1986. Ildiko, 37, a librarian and ESL teacher, the American-born daughter of Hungarian refugees, is caught in a web of guilt and regret over her mother's mystifying death. Unsettled by her life and her romantic failures, she finds herself suddenly and unexpectedly drawn back to her roots, first to the Hungarian neighborhood of her youth in Chicago-and eventually to the Russian-occupied city of Budapest. Along the way, she meets a magnetic man who may not be what he seems, uncovers a trail of secrets and betrayals that eventually intersect with the tangled knot of the mother-daughter participants in the Revolution-and she discovers the shocking truth about her mother's death. Triptych is the suspenseful unfolding of two parallel stories of mother and daughter relationships forged in the brutalities of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Triptych is about survival, displacement, the corrosive power of secrets, and, ultimately, the healing power of forgiveness.

A funeral in the family forces Alan Saxon to go home and confront the father he hates. Old wounds are reopened and he beats a hasty retreat. Though he flies off to the Far East, he cannot outrun his problems. His first port of call is Bangkok where he plays a round of golf with an old friend, Sam Limsong. Pleasure is soon overshadowed by some alarming developments, and he flies on to Tokyo with deep misgivings. Contracted to make an instructional video, Saxon falls foul of his host, the tyrannical Shoei Ogino, head of a giant corporation who is obsessed with the game of golf. In Ogino's relationship with his sons, Saxon sees parallels with his own father's attitudes. Those parallels are thrown into sharper relief when Ogino is murdered. Saxon is caught up in the family chaos and drawn into a relationship with the delectable Mitsu, bereaved daughter of Ogino. Problems multiply for the British golfer, but he continues to fly the flag bravely....

"A deft historical novel...and window into a too-often ignored chapter in recent american history."-S. J. Rozan, Edgar award-winning author of Ghost Hero In December 1941, America reels from the attack on Pearl Harbor. Patriotism and paranoia grip New York as the city frantically mobilizes for war. Nurse Louise Hunter is outraged when the FBI, in a midnight sweep of prominent Japanese residents, arrests her patient's wife. Masako Fumi is an avant-garde artist, a newcomer to the bustling city. The nurse vows to help free Masako. When the body of Masako's art dealer is discovered in the gallery where he'd been closing down her controversial show, Masako's troubles multiply. Homicide detective Michael McKenna doubts her guilt, but an ambitious G-man schemes to turn the murder and ensuing espionage accusations into a political cause célèbre. Louise hires a radical lawyer and enlists the help of her journalist roommate. But sensing a career-making story, Cabby Ward sets out to exploit Masako's dilemma for her own gain. Louise and McKenna must defy both racism and ham-fisted government agents to expose the real killer.

St Louis lawyer Rachel Gold deals with many a family drama, mostly of the dysfunctional variety. Divorce. Paternity. And death. Occasionally, all three combine into a "dead hand" trifecta, where the deceased seeks to control the living-and especially his descendants-from beyond the grave. Rachel calls them "zombies." The legal term for such inheritance plans is "the dead hand," the English translation of the Old French term "mortmain." The term refers to the attempt by wealthy individuals to exert perpetual ownership over property (and future generations) through legal documents prepared before they die. But not even the most obsessed tycoon or his skilled attorneys can foresee every future contingency. To quote the old Yiddish maxim, "Man plans, and God laughs." And angry descendants sue. It's so true. Rachel suddenly finds herself representing two women-one a young widow, one an older divorcee-in a pair of nasty zombie cases where the outcome of each hinges upon a clause in a contested estate plan. Client Cyndi Mulligan is the trophy widow of the late Bert Mulligan, a billionaire entrepreneur whose last will and testament left his estate to Cyndi's unborn daughter. The challenge comes from Bert's angry first wife and her angrier only son. Their claim: Cyndi's daughter-born eleven months after Bert's death-cannot possibly be Bert's child. In the other case, Rachel represents Marsha Knight, the first wife of the wealthy founder of a women's lingerie manufacturer. Marsha has been sued by his young widow, who seeks to invalidate Marsha's divorce settlement and, in the process, impoverish her through invocation of the ancient and nearly inscrutable Rule Against Perpetuities. As the trial date approaches in each lawsuit, the threats to Rachel and her two clients begin to escalate. Zombies, as Rachel discovers, are hard to kill. And even worse, they can still kill-and where least expected. The Dead Hand is written with the verve, humor, and legal smarts that are trademark Michael Kahn.

Next book in the Attorney Rachel Gold Mystery Series In this fascinating and fast-paced legal thriller, attorney Rachel Gold learns that family doesn't always come first… An emotionally propulsive legal thriller, Bad Trust is: • Perfect for fans of Sue Grafton and Linda Fairstein • For readers who enjoy courtroom dramas and St. Louis based mysteries An ugly trust fund dispute among siblings turns deadly when Isaiah, CEO of the family firm he stole from their father, is murdered in his office. Jewish lawyer Rachel Gold, hired to bring suit against Isaiah on behalf of his sisters, must now defend one against the charge of fratricide. But playing at detective for her legal case means getting entrenched in the complex dynamics of the Jewish family. As Rachel and her team seek essential evidence, the widowed Rachel struggles with family issues of her own, including relationships with her young son Sam and her boyfriend Abe. The jury is still out on whether or not Rachel can create the work-life balance she is seeking. Bad Trust, the newest addition to these riveting lawyer mysteries, is the perfect pick for fans of Lisa Scottoline and Sara Paretsky.