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Nevada Barr |
| Sierra Lavotini Mysteries |
Maggie Reid Mysteries |
Maggie Reid Mysteries
| 1. "Your Cheatin' Heart"
| 2. "Stand By Your Man"
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"Your Cheatin' Heart"
St. Martin's Paperbacks, February 2000 Reviewed on 5/29/01 | |||||
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Once upon a time Maggie Reid had a nice home, a rich husband, and an adoring daughter. But that fairy-tale life hit the
skids when her no-good man left her for a busty bottle blonde, and her rebellious teenage daughter went with him. Maggie's
mama didn't raise no fool, though. Wide-awake and smelling the Starbucks, Maggie decided to follow her heart and becomes
a country-western singer at the Golden Stallion Club. There, she glimpses her destiny - a lanky cowboy in steel-tipped
boots and tight jeans. Though she'd determined to meet Marshall Weathers, she sure isn't desperate enough to kill
her pesky ex-brother-in-law, Jimmy, to do it. As fate would have it, Weathers is the detective investigating Jimmy's murder,
and Maggie is his leading suspect. Unless she wants to sing the prison blues, Maggie's got to do some fancy two-stepping
to expose Jimmy's true killer - and find her true love.
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Sierra Lavotini Mysteries
| 1. "The Miracle Strip"
| 2. "Drag Strip"
| 3. "Film Strip"
| 4. "Strip Poker"
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"The Miracle Strip"
St. Martin's Paperbacks, October 1999 Reviewed on 5/2/01 | |||||
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The whip-smart Sierra Lavotini is the hottest act on Panama City's strip scene. She's the headliner at the bare-all bar,
the Tiffany Club. Other than this exotic evening activity, Sierra's life is fairly simple. And that's the way she likes it. But
when a good firend, Denise, seeks her help, Sierra's life takes a murderous turn. Seems Denise's furry friend Arlo has just
been "dognapped." From the pricey ransom note, Sierra figures there's much more to this case than meets the eye. And
her hunch proves correct when a quick trip to Denise's apartment reveals a fresh corpse. Sierra can't shake the feeling
that her friend isn't telling her the whole story - especially after Denise goes missing and the body count continues to
rise. Determined to uncover the naked truth, Sierra vows to unmask the killer, digging in her stilettos until the dangerous
job is done.
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"Drag Strip"
St. Martin's Minotaur, October 1999, HC Reviewed on 5/17/01 | |||||
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Exotic dancer, Sierra Lavotini and her protegé, Ruby Lee Diamond, are on a break from an appearance at the Dead
Lakes Motor Speedway when Ruby disappears. Sierra discovers Ruby dead, sees Panama City Homicide Detective John
Nailor standing over the body, then watches helplessly while he disappears when Sierra begins to scream for help. Then,
worse, Nailor denies being there at all, creating more trouble for her with the cops. Sierra is hopping mad and more than
confused, but she can't let a typical male get in the way of duty. Someone killed a member of her "family," and she's determined
to find out what happened to the young, innocent Ruby. Dodginf suspicious cops, jealous wives, dangerous men, and her
loony neighbor Raydean, not to mention that cad Nailor, Sierra teases the truth out of this complicated case.
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"Film Strip"
St. Martin's Minotaur, October 2000, HC Reviewed on 5/17/01 | |||||
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Exotic dancer Sierra lavotini's latest brainstorm to help the Tiffany Gentleman's Club turn a profit is a disaster. Sierrs,
headliner for the classiest strip joint in Panama City, Florida, and the club's owner Vincent Gambuzzo, have invited a gallery
of porn actresses to guest-star on the Tiffany stage. It's a gutsy plan, considering that most of these silicone-enhanced
creatures don't have much in the way of true talent. As Sierra likes to say, at the Tiffany, dancing consists of more than
T & A working a pole. Still, under Sierra's firm guidance, the venture seems to be raking in the cash. At least until a sniper
begiins taking exception - starting with Venus Lovemotion, who is shot and killed. Sierra takes a bullet in the, ahem, posterior
region during the attack, and would like nothing more than to forget about the whole thing and convalesce with the help
of her on-again boyfriend, Homicide Detective John Nailor. But when the investigation hones in on Marla, another Tiffany
girl, Sierra is forced to focu her energy on finding the real killer. No small task, considering the interest of the local "organization"
in the situation, even once Sierra enlist the help of her landlady, Pat; Raydead, her psychotic neighbor; and her oldest
brother, Francis.
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"Strip Poker"
St. Martin's Minotaur, November 2001, HC Reviewed on 1/14/03 | |||||
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When Vincent Gambuzzo, the not-so-bright proprietor of the Tiffany Gentleman's Club in Panama City, Florida, loses his
business playing poker, his headliner, exotic dancer Sierra Lavotini, faces a crisis. The new sign out front reads BIG MIKE'S
HOUSE OF BOOTY, and Big Mike's new business strategy leaves a little to be desired in the class department and even
less to the imagination of the increasingly rambunctious clientele. As the dancers' unofficial leader and mother hen, Sierra
leads most of her coworkers in a walkout and schemes to restore Vincent to power. But he's in jail, charged with murdering
a man in a shootout at the end of that same disastous poker game. Can Sierra prove Vincent innocent, help her fellow
out-of-work dancers, and manage to make next month's trailer payment without a job? With the help of her neighbor Raydean,
her on-again boyfriend, Panama City Homicide Detective John Nailor, and her "uncle," "Big Moose" Lavatini of the New Jersey
syndicate, of course she can.
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Anna Pigeon Mysteries
| 1. "Track of the Cat"
| 2. "A Superior Death"
| 3. "Ill Wind"
| 4. "Firestorm"
| 5. "Endagered Species"
| 6. "Blind Descent"
| 7. "Liberty Falling"
| 8. "Deep South"
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"Track of the Cat"
Avon Books, May 1994 Reviewed on 10/16/00 | |||||
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The memory of violence and loss drove Anna Pigeon from the city to seek peace in the Southwestern
wilderness. Now a ranger in America's national parks, Anna is one with nature and its serene, unspoiled majesty. But
the brutal death of a fellow ranger in the remote West Texas backcountry - presumably by mountain lion attack - looks
suspiciously like murder to Anna. And her unathorized investigation into the tragedy is placing her squarly in harm's
way. For a trail with few leads winds through dangerous territory - where Anna must confront the dark side of the desert...
and the human heart.
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| Desiree Shapiro Mysteries | ||||||
| 1. "Murder Can Kill Your Social Life" | 2. "Murder Can Ruin Your Looks"
| 3. "Murder Can Stunt Your Growth"
| 4. "Murder Can Spoil Your Reunion"
| 5. "Murder Can Spook Your Cat"
| 6. "Murder Can Singe Your Old Flame"
| 7. "Murder Can Spoil Your Appetite"
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"Murder Can Kill Your Social Life"
Signet, November 1994 Reviewed on 5/3/00 | |||||
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Desiree Shapiro, New York P.I., is no hard-boiled shamus. She has dimples in her knees, elbows,
and some unmentionable places. Desiree is a chubby gumshoe who has a mind as sharp as a Cuisinart and a queen-
size talent for sleuthing. Her heart is pretty big, too, which is why she agrees to take the case of the poor grocery
kid accused of killing the old lady in apartment 15D for the money stashed in her freezer. Sure, the boy's fingerprints
on the refrigerator make the problem sticky... but only until there's yet another murder in the same building. Before
anyone can say Haagen-Dazs, Desiree bets she will be able to fingure the real killer. She's detoured by dinner with
a bachelor, but he, unfortunately, turns into a suscpect. So while her love life is chilling out, Desiree cooks up a
scheme to trap a lean, mena, decidedly unsavory killer.
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| 1. "Burning Time" | 2. "Hanging Time" | 3. "Loving Time"
| 4. "Judging Time"
| 5. "Stealing Time"
| 6. "Tracking Time"
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"Burning Time"
Doubleday, October 1993, HC Reviewed on 10/16/00 | ||
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| back to book list || back to the top | ||
| The Home Repair is Homicide Mysteries | ||||
| 1. "Dead Cat Bounce" | 2. "Triple Witch" | 3. "Wicked Fix"
| 4. "Repair to Her Grave"
| 5. "Wreck the Halls"
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"Dead Cat Bounce"
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"Triple Witch"
Reviewed on | ||
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"Wicked Fix"
Reviewed on | ||
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"Repair to Her Grave"
Bantam Books, August 2001 Reviewed on 10/31/02 | |||||
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Jacobia Tiptree and her teenage son are used to their Eastport, Maine, home attracting more than its fair share of housguests.
This year Jake is hoping the plaster dust will keep them away while she finally gets her gem of a fixer0upper into shape -
from doorknobs and chandeliers to leaky pipes to ghostly phenomena. But when the charming and mysterious Janathan
Raines appears on her doorstep - and then just as suddenly dissapears - remodeling the house becomes the least of
Jake's problems. Could Jonathan's disappearence have anything to do with his quest for a cursed violen - the one that
local legend says was hidden by a long-ago owner of Jake's house before he too vanished without a trace? Soon Jonathan's
grief-stricken girlfriend arrives downeast, and Jake needs to strip Eatport's past of its idyllic veneer - before a killer paints
her very dead indeed!
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"Wreck the Halls"
Bantam Books, December 2001, HC Reviewed on 10/31/02 | |||||
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People hardly ever lock their doors in Eastport. So when Jake and her best pal, Ellie, arrive at Faye Anne Carmody's kitchen
door, they knock and walk right in. But though Christmas is just two weeks away, what they find as far from festive: a
dazed Faye Anne covered in blood, and her no-good husband - the town butcher, Merle - no where in sight. Nowhere, that
is, until Jake discovers the body - tidily wrapped in his own butcher paper. It doesn't long for news of the murder to race
through the small town, and just about everyone has a theory about the grisly crime that has robbed Eastport of its
least-liked citizen. But while police chief Bob Arnold considers it an open-and-shut case, Jake and Ellie aren't convinced
of Faye Anne's guilt. Jake has enough going on in her life without trying to investigate a murder. After all, she's just
married her longtime love, Wade, and the pair plan to spend the winter rehabilitating the paint-encrusted windows in Jake's
old home. But Jake has to admit that there are a lot of details that don't add up. When yet another Eastport citizen
turns up dead, Jake realizes the murder's trial began long before the night Merle Carmody died. But what keeps eluding
her and Ellie is the motive behind the mystery. The truth is so close, they can almost taste it - but can they stop the
shrewd killer before he chisels another victim's name onto a tombstone?
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A serial killer leaves a New York college girl
to die in the California desert, his burning brand seared in her flesh...
