Everyone deserves a well-earned vacation, don't they? Guess again Plans have been made and the bags are packed but Detective Stephanie Chalice is having about as much fun as Michael Vick at an ASPCA fundraiser. The new story finds Chalice and Lido on the East End of Long Island, vacationing with Max, their new arrival. Things go wrong from the very start. Their vacation rental burns to the ground, bodies pile up, and just to make things interesting, Lido . . . All I'll say is that you'll never believe it. Chalice may be out of her jurisdiction but she's never out of questions or determination and soon connects two unsolved homicides. As always, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and her initial findings plunge her deeper and deeper into the most extraordinary investigation of her career.

Here's the scoop. Once there was Marlow, now there's Mango, Frank Mango, a new detective doing his job in a very old fashioned way, an unlikely hero in an age of computers, gadgets, and gizmos. Two dead bodies have been discarded along the Sunset Strip, both aspiring actors, women of talent and ambition in a town renown for eating you up and spitting you out. Who really cares about these nobodies? Mums the word-with the Academy Awards just days off, the powers that be are determined to sweep the dead under the red carpet at least until Oscar can take his gratuitous bow. There are, however, wrinkles in this finely crafted plan of deception, most notably the disappearance of yet another woman, a killer whose sniper rifle is trained on the fabled red carpet, and a throwback detective who doesn't like to get pushed around. "Lawrence Kelter is an exciting new novelist, who reminds me of an early Robert Ludlum," -Nelson DeMille

This is the story of Josh and Rocky, two young teens from entirely different worlds, who collide in the heat of a New York summer. A naive boy from California, Josh comes to New York to visit his Uncle Jake, a sentimental elder whose eccentricities are only exceeded by his warmth and passion for life. Rocky is the beautiful daughter of a rabbi from Brooklyn, whose one dying wish is to understand what it means to be a complete woman before she runs out of time. With seemingly little in common, the two young friends quickly find that they are incomplete without each other and that the span of a brief summer is all the time they may ever have. It is with this realization in mind that they are able to embrace hope in the face of a tragedy few relationships could endure.

A sterilized skull, a deranged forensics expert, a plunge into the deepest recesses of the criminal mind. In her most challenging case yet, Chalice must turn to a madman to deliver a killer. Detective Chalice is called into action when a unconscious man is found in Central Park. Barely alive, John Doe is clad only in a torn bed sheet and has sustained a life threatening wound. His body is covered in scars, essentially a tapestry chronicling his history as a torture victim. Stranger still, a human skull lies just inches away. Chalice has just two leads in this case, a skull that has been sterilized and found to be evidence free, and an comatose witness to a murder-tough odds, even for NYPD's best and brightest.

It's a hot summer night on Long Island. The Suds Shack is packed-lots of kids partying at a bar. In the crowd is a girl who is different from anyone else. A guy on the prowl-plop goes a pill into her drink. Her world spins out of control. He thought he had her; now he's dead, and she's coming for his accomplice. They picked the wrong girl to mess with. She can look like you or me, or anyone else she may choose to become. Lexa and her brother Ax have a special talent, a unique gift. In Book One, Lexa and Ax find themselves entangled in a web of murder, drugs, and manipulation.