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Keeper of the Keys

For ambitious, troubled architect Ray Jackson, the nightmare begins one sultry California night when his wife disappears. No phone call, no ransom note, no body, reveals whether Leigh is dead or alive.

Then, suddenly, a woman shows up on Ray’s doorstep demanding answers: Kathleen, an old friend of Leigh’s. Ray wants answers, too, but his questions seem strange and shady to Kat. Suspected by his wife’s friend and by the police, Ray launches a desperate and alarming search of his own. Using a collection of keys he has held on to since he was a boy–keys to homes he and his mother once lived in–Ray quietly yet boldly enters each house, one by one, hoping to unlock the secrets of his own past. As past and present collide, as a chilling mystery begins to unravel, Ray is suddenly confronted with the most agonizing decision of his life–to face his own violence-laden past, acting to prevent another horrendous act of violence, or not. His choice will leave nothing and no one the same.


From the Hardcover edition.

Unlucky in Law (Nina Reilly)

Nina Reilly takes on the most dangerous and difficult case of her career in New York Times bestselling author Perri O’Shaughnessy’s latest thriller. An ingenious blend of forensic science, history, and gripping suspense, Unlucky in Law pits the tough but compassionate attorney against the most unbeatable adversary of all: the law.

Nina has just received a last-minute call from her old boss and mentor in Monterey County, California, where she is enjoying the breathtaking scenery and spending time with her boyfriend, P.I. Paul van Wagoner. Klaus Pohlmann is in desperate straits and begs Nina to take over a seemingly unwinnable case: A luckless two-time felon named Stefan Wyatt has robbed a grave and made off with the long-buried bones of a Russian émigré. When he is caught and arrested, further devastating evidence found in the grave suggests that Stefan is guilty of a far more deadly crime.

A young woman, a classmate of Stefan’s, has been killed, and he is accused of her murder. Now, as a result of California’s Third Strike law, Wyatt is looking at twenty-five years to life whether he’s convicted of grand theft or murder. Either way, he’s in big trouble.
With her client’s blood DNA found in the dead woman’s apartment, Nina faces an uphill battle. Suspecting that her hapless client has been set up, Nina brings in a brilliant forensic pathologist who comes up with a startling theory about the case that could rewrite a crucial page of European history. As the evidence mounts against Nina’s client, Paul launches his own investigation into the shadowy past of the two-decades-old skeleton. But long-held secrets nearly get him killed and reveal a more insidious evil at work—and an extraordinary story dating back to tsarist Russia and the Romanov court. As Wyatt edges closer to the unluckiest verdict of his young life, Nina makes an astounding discovery that just might save her client—or expose a killer who could bury them all.

Brilliantly imagined and compulsively readable, Unlucky in Law is a beguiling mix of wrenching drama and gripping action. And it is Perri O’Shaughnessy’s most accomplished novel to date.


From the Hardcover edition.

Perri O¿Shaughnessy is the pen name for two sisters, Pamela and Mary O¿Shaughnessy, who live in Hawaii and on Lake Tahoe, and California and on Lake Tahoe respectively. Pamela graduated from Harvard Law School and was a trial lawyer for sixteen years. Mary is a former editor and writer for multimedia projects. They are the authors of nine previous Nina Reilly novels: Presumption of Death, Unfit to Practice, Writ of Execution, Move to Strike, Acts of Malice, Breach of Promise, Obstruction of Justice, Invasion of Privacy, and Motion to Suppress.


From the Hardcover edition.

Stone Angel (Kathleen Mallory Novels)

At the end of Killing Critics, the third book in Carol O'Connell's addictive series about Mallory, a strikingly original New York City cop, Mallory is traveling south on a train. "She carried no stitch of formal identification that would tie her to a name or a place. This was the way she had come to New York as a child, with only her wits and a bit of a mother's blood on her hands ..." Stone Angel shows us both the beginning and end of that journey, solving mysteries set up in O'Connell's first two books in the series--Mallory's Oracle and The Man Who Cast Two Shadows--as well as raising the inevitable question of what she can do for an encore. Even if the Mallory books end here, O'Connell's future seems secure: these dark and powerful myths are sure to be read and reread for a long time.

NYPD Detective Kathleen Mallory is back--to face her most terrifying obsession--the murder of her own mother...

Mallory's Oracle (Kathleen Mallory Novels)

athleen Mallory, an extraordinary wild child turned New York City detective, is propelled onto the street when her adoptive father--a police inspector--is found stabbed to death next to the body of a wealthy woman. The murders are linked to two homicides her father had been investigating and now his cases become Mallory's, his death her cause. 2 cassettes.

Case of Lies (Nina Reilly)

No one writes legal suspense like Perri O’Shaughnessy. Blending powerful human drama with legal thrills, mystery, humor, and unforgettable characters, the New York Times bestselling author has created a uniquely entertaining series of novels centered around lawyer and single mother Nina Reilly. Now, in a masterful new novel, Nina’s investigation into an unsolved murder takes her on a dark journey strewn with old crimes, bitter truths, and heart-stopping danger.

For Nina Reilly, the mountain town of Lake Tahoe is home. It’s where she forged a successful career as a tough, resourceful attorney–and raised her teenage son, Bob, alone. Back from a stint in Monterey, where her love life took a tumble, Nina has returned to her Tahoe law office with her old friends Sandy Whitefeather and Sandy’s son, Wish. It isn’t long before she has a new client whose wife was shot and killed during a casino-district robbery two years before. The police have no suspects, and the robbery victims, three students, lied about their identities and are hiding outside California and the reach of the court.Two of the witnesses have fled to a village not far from the home of Bob’s father, Kurt Scott, in Germany. As Nina tries to unravel the mystery of one violent Tahoe night, a harrowing journey begins–one that takes her from the dark underworld of Tahoe’s casinos to the halls of a prestigious East Coast university to Europe and an emotional reunion with Kurt.

As old feelings are rekindled, Nina’s case turns violent. Everyone has something to hide–the brilliant but unstable mathematics student who has made an astonishing discovery, the owner of a motel where the shooting took place, and the shooter, who has turned the whole case into a gigantic lie.

Filled with all the rich drama, stunning surprises, and ingenious twists we have come to expect from this incomparable storyteller, Case of Lies will grab you from the very first page and never let you go as it speeds to its incredible conclusion.

Perri O’Shaughnessy is the pen name for two sisters, Pamela and Mary O’Shaughnessy, who live in Hawaii and California. Pamela, a Harvard Law School graduate, was a trial lawyer for sixteen years. Mary is a former editor and writer for multimedia projects. They are the authors of ten previous Nina Reilly novels: Unlucky in Law, Presumption of Death, Unfit to Practice, Writ of Execution, Move to Strike, Acts of Malice, Breach of Promise, Obstruction of Justice, Invasion of Privacy, and Motion to Suppress.


From the Hardcover edition.

Dead Famous

To summarize the plot of Dead Famous would be to spoil it, since O'Connell keeps revealing it layer by layer as you go along--a daring technique, and a rewarding one if you're a patient reader. Suffice it to say that the story involves a seemingly unstoppable serial killer; a beautiful hunchback with tragedy in her past; a radio shock-jock who helps the killer find his victims; an extremely mean house cat; a gloomy veteran cop drinking himself into oblivion; and, at the center of it all, NYPD detective Kathy Mallory, who returns here for her seventh outing. Mallory (don't call her Kathy) is one of the strangest, most intriguing series heroines in crime fiction: a former street waif who's brilliant and gorgeous, but also sociopathic, manipulative, and obsessive-compulsive.

No formulaic cop thriller, Dead Famous is instead a crime tale that focuses on its quirky, often outre characters. There isn't a lot of conventional suspense. Yet near the end, the story gathers tremendous narrative momentum and rises to a real tragic power. O'Connell's quirky writing style and approach aren't for everyone, but her fans--old and new--will find much to appreciate here. --Nicholas H. Allison

Jurors on a controversial trial are being killed off one by one, and only Detective Kathleen Mallory can figure out why. But the FBI has told her to lay off and leave it to the Feds. That's never stopped Mallory before.

Find Me

On Route 66, as word travels that children's grave sites are being discovered along the road, the parents of missing children form a silent caravan. They are being shepherded by NYPD Detective Kathleen Mallory, who seeks a killer like none she has ever known-and a child unlike the others: herself.

Move to Strike

Defense attorney Nina Reilly has bad luck with men: one marriage ended abruptly, and another ended in tragedy. Still, her misfortunes with the opposite sex are nothing compared to the trouble she has finding a decent client. In her sixth outing, Move to Strike, Nina's defending a minor who's a major pain: Nikki Zack, a mouthy, rebellious teenager who's being tried as an adult in the murder of her uncle, a wealthy plastic surgeon. Like a lot of people in Lake Tahoe, Nikki disliked Bill Sykes, who showed both greed and snobbery to Nikki and her scatterbrained mother, Daria. He discouraged their familial overtures except when he cheated them in a land deal. Nevertheless, Nikki claims she didn't kill him, even though she was spotted sneaking around his pool on the night of the murder, and the prosecution's case against her is based on a blood sample that indicates she wielded the murder weapon. Nina is particularly struck by two strange facts: Sykes's son Chris was killed in a plane crash at almost the same time Sykes died, and Sykes's widow, Beth, is almost abnormally quick to front the money for her niece's defense, no questions asked.

Nina knows Nikki saw something or someone at Sykes's house, but she's not sure whether Nikki's protecting her sleazy, housebreaking boyfriend or Daria, whose vagueness is almost too extreme to believe. Nikki is placed under house arrest, but that's not enough to keep her--or Nina and her son Bob--safe when a stranger starts calling. When the treasure trove of unimpressive-looking rocks that Nikki took from Sykes's underwater hiding place turns out to be something completely unexpected, the ring of suspects widens and danger creeps closer. Nina teams with Paul van Wagoner, the investigator (familiar from Acts of Malice and previous Nina Reilly mysteries) she can't quite seem to disentangle herself from, to help sort the loose ends from the dead ends. And there are plenty of both.

The O'Shaughnessy sisters (Perri is a pen name for Pamela and Mary) are taking new risks and increasing the stakes with every book, and Move to Strike shows they can pull it off. The characters are deftly drawn and the plotting masterfully complex. The pacing falls a bit short of heart-stopping; the courtroom scenes serve to up the stakes for Nikki, yet don't really add much tension. But this series is still young and keeps getting better and better. Grisham and Turow, check your rear-view mirrors: there's a new writer in the fast lane. --Barrie Trinkle

New York Times bestselling author Perri O'Shaughnessy takes the courtroom thriller to breathtaking new heights in Move to Strike, a page-turning masterpiece of suspense that brings back attorney Nina Reilly, hailed by critics as "one of the most interesting heroines in legal thrillers today" (San Jose Mercury News).

Nina Reilly thought she'd seen it all. An attorney and single mother, Nina isn't afraid to tackle the toughest cases and trickiest defenses. But she is wholly unprepared for her latest client—sixteen-year-old Nicole Zack, rebel, thief, and best friend of Nina's teenage son, Bob.

Did Nikki steal something from her uncle, a prominent plastic surgeon, then kill him in cold blood? To find out, Nina calls in Paul van Wagoner, a P.I. and ex-lover whose bravado conceals a troubling personal secret.

As Paul investigates the eerily coincidental death of the surgeon's son— killed in a plane crash the same night his father was murdered—Nina sorts through the twisting lies surrounding Nikki, uncovering a seething mystery, some enraged former patients, and two very old crimes.

Finally, Nina must confront the central question she must answer in order to save her client: What did Nikki really see the night of her uncle's murder?

Crime School

Mallory, the feral street urchin adopted by an understanding police detective, grew up to be a tough, formidable cop herself, and in the five earlier thrillers featuring her exploits, Carol O'Connell has dropped few clues about her early life. Crime School fills in the blanks with this complex tale about Mallory's efforts to solve the attempted murder of the knife-wielding prostitute who once sheltered and later betrayed her--a copycat crime nearly identical to another that occurred two decades ago. Fans of this series and its unique, complicated, steely protagonist will welcome O'Connell back to the bestseller lists after a protracted absence, while those who've been waiting for the emergence of a kinder, gentler Mallory, able to return the affections of those who love her--like Charles Butler, the quirky criminologist whose unrequited adoration of Mallory knows no bounds, and her partner, Riker, who's known her since his old friend Markowitz plucked her off the streets--may be disappointed. --Jane Adams

Police Detective Kathleen Mallory recognized the crime scene: victim hanging, hair in mouth, fire burning. It happened twenty-one years ago, when Mallory was a child. She also recognized the victim...

The Man Who Cast Two Shadows (Kathleen Mallory Novels)

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Read by Kate Burton

With prose that cuts like a knife, resonant suspense, and characters as inventive as they are compelling, O'Connell proves that she is a master of the art.


At the heart of The Man Who Cast Two Shadows is NYPD Sergeant Kathleen Mallory, a wild child whose intelligence is matched only by the ferocity with which she pursues her own vision of right and wrong.  She now is faced with a case that strikes close to home - a young woman is found dead only a few blocks away, her skull and hands crushed, her neck snapped, and a label in her jacket which reads "Kathleen Mallory".

Nothing can prepare Sergeant Mallory for what she finds in her investigation - a cradle in a closet; a concerto filled with silences and creams; a cat that dances without warning; and three men, each with a great deal to hide and a great deal to lose . . .