Dick Saperstein had the best trees for sale, and the worst attitude to go with it. When he gets hung for the holidays, it's up to sassy Ethel Cunningham to put down her spiked eggnog, and find out who sleighed him before Christmas in her beloved Clover Court is ruined. It was to be the snowiest Christmas on record for the East Coast, and one the Coffee Sleuth would never forget as she Jingled-all-the-way to solving her trickiest, and merriest mystery yet.
In her lumpiest adventure yet, Ethel must race to find a killer before she gets diced herself. Sal Bunion's attitude was as spicy as his famous salsa. When he turns up dead it's up to sassy Ethel Cunningham to put down the tortilla chips and catch a sick and saucy killer. Who killed Sal and stole his famous recipe? Maybe his gold obsessed wife Toni, or bitter waitress and girlfriend, Roberta? How about muscular and brooding Pablo? And then there's the mysterious new business partner, Mr. Fox. Did he kill him? Many would think it's one of his estranged children, Sal Jr, Al or Rose.In a battle of wills, salt and spice, Ethel even has the Clover Court gang of misfit neighbors helping her out in one of her most tricky and tasty mysteries yet.
"Of what use is one ugly little tree?" Atop a windswept hill, a crooked little tree stands alone . . . until one Christmas Eve, when an old woman labors up the hill with a box of ornaments, and tells the tree that he is special. He is to be the official Christmas tree for all of the homeless people in the city below! Year after year, colored balls and garland adorn the tree at Christmastime, but one year, the woman does not come. Will there be a Christmas for homeless? This story is based on actual events about a funny-looking mimosa tree that sits above a busy freeway in Fort Worth, Texas. A formerly homeless woman decorated the tree, year after year, so that the homeless would have a Christmas tree. When she died, neighbors took over the custom and now decorate it for Easter, Halloween, and other holidays as well. It can be seen on the north side of Interstate 30 near the Oakland exit.
Lieutenant Eve Dallas tails a serial killer who has a passion for the "Twelve Days of Christmas" in this novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling In Death series. No one likes to be alone during the holidays. For New York's most posh dating service, Personally Yours, it is the season to bring lonely hearts together. But Lieutenant Eve Dallas, on the trail of a ritualistic serial killer who likes to dress up as Santa Claus, has made a disturbing discovery: all of the victims have been traced to Personally Yours. As the murders continue, Eve enters into an elite world of people searching for their one true love. A world where the power of love leads men and women into the ultimate act of betrayal...
Tortured and brilliant private detective Charlie Parker stars in this thriller by New York Times bestselling author John Connolly. Former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker is on the verge of madness. Tortured by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, he is a man consumed by guilt, regret, and the desire for revenge. When his former partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker finds himself drawn into a world beyond his imagining: a world where thirty-year-old killings remain shrouded in fear and lies, a world where the ghosts of the dead torment the living, a world haunted by the murderer responsible for the deaths in his family—a serial killer who uses the human body to create works of art and takes faces as his prize. But the search awakens buried instincts in Parker: instincts for survival, for compassion, for love, and, ultimately, for killing. Aided by a beautiful young psychologist and a pair of bickering career criminals, Parker becomes the bait in a trap set in the humid bayous of Louisiana, a trap that threatens the lives of everyone in its reach. Driven by visions of the dead and the voice of an old black psychic who met a terrible end, Parker must seek a final, brutal confrontation with a murderer who has moved beyond all notions of humanity, who has set out to create a hell on earth: the serial killer known only as the Traveling Man. In the tradition of classic American detective fiction, Every Dead Thing is a tense, richly plotted thriller, filled with memorable characters and gripping action. It is also a profoundly moving novel, concerned with the nature of loyalty, love, and forgiveness. Lyrical and terrifying, it is an ambitious debut, triumphantly realized.
Perhaps best described as Dickens's ``other'' Christmas story, this is an elderly narrator's reminiscence of holidays past, each incident inspired by the gifts and toys that decorate the traditional tree. There is a range of appeal in the story itself, from snug memories of beloved toys to the passing along of eerie stories surrounding various childhood haunts. Ingpen renders the story quite accessible by focusing on objects of the period mentioned in the text, and by filtering the memory aspects of the telling through soft sweeps of paint. All ages.
