Late in the Cold War, a young woman escapes from Communist Hungary, vanishing into the night with a priceless painting and a baby girl --- setting events in motion from a decades-old secret that will change lives for generations to come. Many years later, classical pianist Maggie O’Shea is drawn to Cornwall in search of a long-lost Van Gogh and the truth behind her husband’s death. A journal from World War II Paris holds many of the answers, but only two people know where the Van Gogh is hidden now --- a courageous nun and a man presumed dead. Maggie finds herself on a collision course with three dangerous Russians who threaten all she holds dear --- including her life and the life of the man she has come to love.

Kidnapped by a gorgeous girl in a casino bar in Reno, Mortimer Angel disappears for several days. When he finally makes contact with his friends and family, he's on a new case, one that takes him on more than one unexpected journey, then becomes a new case with more unexpected journeys. This time, Mort travels more roads than he has ever traveled before, and ends up in a place he never could have predicted.

When PI and ex-con Colleen Hayes learns that a local neo-Nazi group is talking about shooting the mayor, she thinks it’s just another rumor --- until her source, a humble street newspaper vendor, winds up in SF General, beaten to a pulp. To add to her grief, she discovers that her runaway daughter, Pamela, might have joined a shadowy religious group, building a church in South America near a volcano that is about to erupt. Death is the path to perfection according to the charismatic young preacher --- and the date is fast approaching. Colleen is desperate to find a way to stop her daughter from making the ultimate mistake before she --- along with hundreds of others --- lose their lives.

Nevada’s attorney general is missing. At dusk on a deserted Nevada highway in a thunderstorm, ex-IRS agent and PI-in-training Mortimer Angel comes across a pretty, scantily clad girl --- Harper Leeman. When Mort offers her a ride, she orders him out of his truck at gunpoint. She tries to take off, but he cuts the valve stem on the rear tire. Realizing she’s in trouble, he wants to help --- but with no spare tire, he devises a creative way to get them out of the hills. On their way down, a rough-looking man stops and asks Mort if he has “seen anyone up in the hills.” Mort realizes the guy is after Harper, who is hiding in the truck. Thus begins a cat-and-mouse chase in northeast Nevada that continues even after Mort finds the attorney general --- Harper’s mother --- dead in the trunk of a car.

Blinded by a gunshot wound to the face while working as a private investigator nine months ago, Rick Cahill is now sure of only one thing: he has to start a new life and leave his old one behind. He’s still trying to figure out what that life is when his onetime partner, Moira MacFarlane, asks for his help on a case she’s taken for his former best friend. The case is simple and Moira only needs him for one interview, but Rick is wary of waking sleeping demons. Ultimately, he goes against his gut and takes the case, which quickly turns deadly. Rick’s old compulsion of finding the truth no matter the cost --- the same compulsion that cost him his eyesight and almost his life --- battles against his desire to escape his past. The stakes are raised when his friend is implicated in murder and needs his help.

While on a trip to Dublin to visit her parents, solicitor Benedicta “Ben” O'Keeffe runs into Luke Kirby --- the man who killed her sister --- freshly released from jail. On the surface he appears remorseful, conciliatory even, but his comment as she walks away makes her realize he is as evil as ever. Back in Glendara, she finds chaos. The Oak pub has burned down, and Carole Kearney, the Oak's barmaid, has gone missing. And then, while walking the dog up Sliabh Sneacht, Ben and her partner, Sergeant Tom Molloy, make a gruesome discovery: a body lying face down in the snow. Who could be behind this vicious attack on Glendara and its residents? And why disturb such a charming town at Christmas?

PEOPLE DIE IN SUNSHINE is a carnival ride through the externally glamorous but internally twisted lives of two people, Frederick and Coco Rothenstein, and their world --- one most of us only know about from reading true-crime stories and news accounts of the lives of the super-rich and entitled dwellers in the bastions of wealth and privilege where families such as the Rothensteins reign. The first four words of Gloria Nagy's scorching, ironic tale of greed, glamour, envy, avarice and the Janus-headed coin of love and hate are: "Money. Money. Money. Money." What Nagy accomplishes in a work of humor, heartbreak, murder and redemption reinforces those four words.

Back in London’s swinging '60s, Steve Cook was teen idol number one. But that changed when a 16-year-old fan was found dead in his hotel room bed. Steve’s career came to a crashing halt after he was dumped by his record company and arrested. Now, in 1978 San Francisco, Steve works construction, still dreaming of a comeback. Until his 11-year-old daughter is kidnapped. He turns to one person for help: Colleen Hayes, who knows what it’s like to be on the wrong side of the law and live in judgment for the rest of your life. It doesn’t take Colleen long to realize that something fishy is going on with the kidnapping of Melanie Cook. What transpires is a harrowing journey through a music industry rife with corruption and crime.

In 2011, Will Parker, the young prodigy CEO of a big tech company, makes a coding mistake that costs a college student her life. To assuage his guilt, he pursues a career in the FBI Cyber Division. Now, Special Agent Will Parker is called to investigate a murder scene at a Comic Con event, where the victim has ties to a radioactive quantum computer that Will was working on before he left his gig as CEO. He discovers the victim was holding an auction for the computer on the Dark Web --- and the bidding is still live. With bidders including a legendary Chinese hacker, Russian criminals sent by the Kremlin, and a corporate executive desperate to escape a scandal, Will once again finds a life in his hands when the victim’s daughter is taken hostage.

First loves are never forgotten. Ever. Certainly not for Tommy "Pancake" Jeffers. His first-kiss, sixth-grade love, Emily, who he has not seen since grammar school, is sliding toward divorce in the artsy Gulf Coast town of Fairhope, Alabama. Longly Investigations has been charged with looking into the finances involved. When Emily doesn't appear for their nervously anticipated meeting, Pancake's radar goes on high alert. Her body, along with that of Jason --- one of two guys she has been dating --- is found murdered, execution-style, and Pancake calls in Jake, Nicole and Ray. Who would have done this? Could it be the soon-to-be ex, who has an ironclad alibi; the other guy Emily was seeing --- jealousy being a motive for harm; or do the drugs found in Jason's pocket indicate a drug-related hit?