Born with a physical disability, no magical talent and a precocious intellect, Princess Isabelle des Zephyrs has lived her life being underestimated by her family and her kingdom. The only person who appreciates her true self is Jean-Claude, the fatherly musketeer who had guarded her since birth. All shall change, however, when an unlikely marriage proposal is offered, to the second son of a dying king in an empire collapsing into civil war. But the last two women betrothed to this prince were murdered, and a sorcerer-assassin is bent on making Isabelle the third. Step by dangerous step, Isabelle must unravel the lies of her enemies and discovers a truth more perilous than any deception.

The Danes are a washed-up band, eager to once again have a number one hit. That is, until an agent from the US Army approaches them. Will they travel to an African desert and track down the source of a mysterious and malevolent sound? So they embark on a harrowing journey through the scorching desert --- a trip that takes their front man, Philip Tonka, into the heart of an ominous and twisted conspiracy. Meanwhile, a nurse named Ellen tends to a patient recovering from a near-fatal accident. The circumstances that led to his injuries are mysterious --- and his body heals at a remarkable rate. Ellen will do the impossible for this enigmatic patient, who reveals more about his accident with each passing day.

Usually clear-headed editor Samantha Clair stumbles through her post-book-party morning with the hangover to end all hangovers. But before the ibuprofen has even kicked in, she finds herself entangled in an elaborate saga of missing neighbors, suspected arson and strange men offering free tattoos. By the time the grisly news breaks that the fire has claimed a victim, Sam is already in pursuit. Never has comedy been so deadly as she faces down a pair from Thugs ’R’ Us, aided by nothing more than a Scotland Yard boyfriend, a stalwart Goth assistant, and an unnerving knowledge of London’s best farmer’s markets.

Megan Hamilton never really liked Elliot Bailey. He turned his back on her family when they needed him the most, and it almost tore them all apart. So she’s shocked when Elliot arrives at her family’s inn, needing a place to stay and asking questions that dredge up the past. Megan will rent him a cottage, but that’s where it ends. Coming back home to Haven Point was the last thing bestselling writer Elliot Bailey thought he’d ever do. But the book he’s writing now is his most personal one yet, and it’s drawn him back to the woman he can’t get out of his mind. Seeing Megan again is harder than he expected, and it brings up feelings he’d thought were long buried. Could this be his chance to win over his first love?

At the heart of this collection are girls and women confronting the danger around them, and the danger hidden inside their turbulent selves. In the title story, a precocious 11-year-old named Jill is in thrall to an older male relative, the mysterious, attractive black sheep of the family. Without telling her parents, Jill climbs into his sky-blue Chevy to be driven to an uncertain, and unforgettable, fate. In “The Drowned Girl,” a university transfer student becomes increasingly obsessed with the drowning/murder of another female student, as her own sense of self begins to deteriorate. And in the final story, “Welcome to Friendly Skies,” a trusting group of bird-watchers is borne to a remote part of the globe, to a harrowing fate.

Off the coast of Brazil, a team of scientists discovers a horror like no other, an island where all life has been eradicated, consumed and possessed by a species beyond imagination. Before they can report their discovery, a mysterious agency attacks the group, killing all but one --- Professor Ken Matsui, an expert on venomous creatures. Strangest of all, this inexplicable threat traces back to a terrifying secret buried a century ago beneath the National Mall: a cache of bones preserved in amber. The artifact was hidden away by a cabal of scientists --- led by Alexander Graham Bell --- to protect humankind. But they dared not destroy it, for the object also holds an astonishing promise for the future: the very secret of life after death.

Margaret Maguire --- a widow and grandmother, home from the hospital in time for Christmas --- is no longer able to ignore the consequences of having married an imperious and arrogant man. Despite her efforts to be a good wife and mother in small-town Iowa, her adult children are now strangers to one another, past hope of reconciliation. Margaret’s granddaughter could be the one to break the cycle, but she can’t do it without Margaret’s help. It’s time to take stock, to examine the past --- even time for Margaret to call herself to account.

Two decades ago, the producers of the James Bond movies hired legendary crime novelist Donald E. Westlake to come up with a story for the next Bond film. The plot Westlake dreamed up --- about a Western businessman seeking revenge after being kicked out of Hong Kong when the island was returned to Chinese rule --- had all the elements of a classic Bond adventure, but political concerns kept it from being made. Never one to let a good story go to waste, Westlake instead wrote an original novel based on the premise --- a novel he never published while he was alive. Now, nearly a decade after Westlake’s death, Hard Case Crime is proud to give that novel its first publication ever.

It started as a dream vacation in Spain, with Fay and Paul Agarra enjoying all the delights of a European holiday. But when Paul inexplicably disappears from a Barcelona street corner, Fay knows something is terribly wrong. Once reunited, Paul shrugs off the episode as a simple misunderstanding --- but Fay suspects her almost perfect life has taken a dark and sudden turn. Soon there are more signs that Paul is beginning to change. Fay’s worst suspicions are realized when she learns that he is succumbing to the ravages of dementia. As her husband transforms before her very eyes, Fay copes with her fears by retreating into a fantasy life filled with promise instead of pain.

Twelve-year-old Ernest Young, a half-Chinese orphan, is raffled off at the 1909 World’s Fair. The winning ticket belongs to the flamboyant madam of a high-class brothel, famous for educating her girls. There, Ernest becomes the new houseboy and befriends Maisie, the madam’s precocious daughter, and a bold scullery maid named Fahn. But as the grande dame succumbs to an occupational hazard and their world of finery begins to crumble, all three must grapple with hope, ambition and first love. Fifty years later, in the shadow of Seattle’s second World’s Fair, Ernest struggles to help his ailing wife reconcile who she once was with who she wanted to be, while trying to keep family secrets hidden from their grown-up daughters.

DI Nicola Tanner needs Tom Thorne’s help. Her partner, Susan, has been brutally murdered, and Tanner is convinced that it was a case of mistaken identity --- that she was the real target. The murderer’s motive might have something to do with Tanner’s recent work on a string of cold-case honor killings she believes to be related. Tanner is now on compassionate leave but insists on pursuing the case off the books and knows Thorne is just the man to jump into the fire with her. He agrees but quickly finds that working in such controversial territory is dangerous in more ways than one. And when a young couple goes missing, they have a chance to investigate a case that is anything but cold.

Long before Padma Lakshmi ever stepped onto a television set, she learned that how we eat is an extension of how we love, how we comfort, how we forge a sense of home --- and how we taste the world as we navigate our way through it. Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother’s kitchen in South India. LOVE, LOSS, AND WHAT WE ATE is Lakshmi’s extraordinary account of her journey from that humble kitchen, ruled by ferocious and unforgettable women, to the judges’ table of “Top Chef” and beyond.

Tallulah James’ parents’ volatile relationship, erratic behavior and hands-off approach to child rearing set tongues to wagging in their staid Mississippi town, complicating her already uncertain life. She takes the responsibility of shielding her family’s reputation and raising her younger twin siblings onto her youthful shoulders. When betrayal and death arrive hand in hand, she takes to the road, headed to what turns out to be the not-so-promised land of Southern California. The dysfunction of her childhood still echoes throughout her scattered family, sending her brother on a disastrous path and drawing her home again. There she uncovers the secrets and lies that set her family on the road to destruction.

Six months after Lanie Jacobs’ husband’s death, it’s hard to imagine anything could deepen her sense of pain and loss. But then Lanie discovers that he left behind several other women who, like Lanie, each believe she was his legally wedded wife. Desperate to make a fresh start, Lanie impulsively takes a job at the family-run Capriotti Winery. With no real family of her own, she’s bewildered by how quickly they all take her under their wing and make her feel like she belongs. Everything is finally going well for her, but the arrival of River Green changes all that. The fresh-faced 21-year-old seems as sweet as they come...until her dark secrets come to light --- secrets that could destroy the new life Lanie has only just begun to build.

In January 2015, Ford unveiled a new car at the Detroit auto show and the automotive world lost its collective mind. This wasn’t some new Explorer or Focus. Onto the stage rolled a supercar, a carbon-fiber GT powered by a mid-mounted six-cylinder Ecoboost engine that churned out over 600 horsepower. It was sexy and jaw-dropping, but more than that, it was historic, a callback to the legendary Ford GT40 Mark IIs that stuck it to Ferrari and finished 1-2-3 at Le Mans in 1966. Detroit was back, and Ford was going back to Le Mans. Journalist Matthew DeBord has been covering the auto industry for years, and in RETURN TO GLORY he tells the story of Ford’s revival as a company as exemplified by the new GT.

Mark, Todd and Zola came to law school to change the world, to make it a better place. But now, as third-year students, these close friends realize they have been duped. They all borrowed heavily to attend a third-tier, for-profit law school so mediocre that its graduates rarely pass the bar exam, let alone get good jobs. And when they learn that their school is one of a chain owned by a shady New York hedge-fund operator who also happens to own a bank specializing in student loans, the three know they have been caught up in The Great Law School Scam. But maybe there's a way out. Maybe there’s a way to escape their crushing debt, expose the bank and the scam, and make a few bucks in the process.

A tragic incident on the operating table leaves a patient damaged for life and leads a young surgeon to abandon his profession as a physician. Now, years later, a series of senseless, gruesome murders are rocking the same medical community. The weapon? A surgical scalpel. But who exactly is preying on these victims? And why? What does this grisly pattern reveal? And who will be the one to stop it? Special prosecutor Jana Berzelius, who has her own dark secrets to hide, is in charge of the investigation. What she can’t know, until she is finally closing in on the murderer, is just how her own mother’s recent death is intimately connected.

For generations they've shared the small Maine island of Seven, but the Hillsingers and the Quicks have always kept apart, even since before Jim Hillsinger and Billy Quick married sisters. When Jim is ousted from the CIA under suspicion of treason, he begins to suspect that he has been betrayed --- by his brother-in-law, Billy, and also by his own wife, Lila. In retaliation, he decides to carry out an old threat: to send their 12-year-old son, Catta, to a neighboring island to test his survival skills. Set over three summer days in 1964, Estep Nagy's debut novel moves among the communities of Seven --- the families, the servants and the children --- as longstanding tensions become tactical face-offs in which love, loss and long-held secrets become brutal ammunition.

June 1939. Francis Dempsey and his shell-shocked brother Michael are on an ocean liner from Ireland bound for their brother Martin's home in New York City, having stolen a small fortune from the IRA. During the week that follows, the lives of these three brothers collide spectacularly with big-band jazz musicians, a talented but fragile heiress, a Jewish street photographer facing a return to Nazi-occupied Prague, a vengeful mob boss, and the ghosts of their own family's revolutionary past. When Tom Cronin, an erstwhile assassin forced into one last job, tracks the brothers down, their lives begin to fracture.