Adult

Genevieve has finally escaped the stressful demands of her sales job and begun a new life aboard a houseboat in Kent. Not many people know that she financed her fresh start by working weekends as a dancer at a less-than-reputable gentlemen's club, and she's determined to keep it that way. But on the night of her housewarming party, the past intrudes when a body washes up beside the boat, and Genevieve recognizes the victim as a fellow dancer.

DAMAGE CONTROL displays Amber Dermont's remarkable gift for portraying characters at crossroads. In “Damage Control,” a young man works at an etiquette school while his girlfriend is indicted for embezzlement. A widow rents herself to elderly women and vacations with them as a “professional grandchild” in “Stella at the Winter Palace.” And in “The Language of Martyrs,” a couple houses a mail-order bride on behalf of the husband’s Russian mother.

When Indian tycoon Frank D’Cruz hires Charles Boxer to find his daughter who has been abducted, Boxer knows Frank’s crooked business empire has made him plenty of enemies. Despite the vast D’Cruz fortune, the kidnappers don’t want cash, instead favoring a cruel and lethal game. To save Alyshia, Boxer must dodge religious fanatics, Indian mobsters, and London’s homegrown crime lords.

After Laure and Marie learn of their parents’ plan to sell the family’s summer retreat, L’Agapanthe, they devise a scheme for attracting a wealthy suitor who can afford to purchase the estate. This place of charm and nostalgia is the perfect venue to exercise proper etiquette and intellect, though not all its visitors are socially savvy, especially when it’s a matter of understanding the relationships between old money and the nouveau riche.

Investigator Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist --- and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police. A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown insurgents with an iron fist. Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head.

Jim Praley is home from college, ready to unlock Tulsa's secrets. He drives the highways. He forces himself to get out of his car and walk into a bar. He's invited to a party. And there he meets Adrienne Booker; Adrienne rules Tulsa, in her way. A high-school dropout with a penthouse apartment, she takes a curious interest in Jim. Through her eyes, he will rediscover his hometown.

The offer of $30,000 for one day's work in London, followed by a family vacation in an exotic locale, seems too good to be true for Brooklyn private investigators Karin Schaeffer and her husband, Mac. Putting Mac’s investigations into the alleged marital infidelities of billionaire Godfrey Millerhausen on hold, the family finds paradise in the sun-drenched Mediterranean island of Sardinia. But the holiday turns dark and terrible when the children vanish.

A former Shin-Bet agent now in exile in the U.S. and under the protection of the FBI, Daria Gibron works primarily as an interpreter but still can't resist the occasional freelance job as an operative. En route to an impromptu meeting with an old contact from her days in the Israeli Secret Service, Daria learns that she's about to walk into an ambush. Someone has linked her to a much sought-after terrorist, and now all the resources of the U.S. intelligence community are being marshaled against her.

Doctor Bev is trying to stir things up with her old flame Norman, who has reunited with Hannah Swensen. Just as Hannah's patience with Bev runs thin, her rival is found dead at the bottom of Miller's Pond. To everyone's shock, Hannah is now the target of a murder investigation --- and she's feeling the heat in a way she never has before.

SON OF A GAMBLING MAN is a memoir of growing up in mob-run Sin City from a casino heir-turned-governor who’s seen two sides of every coin. When Bob Miller arrived in Las Vegas as a boy, it was a small, dusty city. His father was a tough guy --- though a good family man --- who had operated on both sides of the law on some of the meaner streets of industrial Chicago. As Bob grew up, so did Vegas, now a “town” of some two million.