One rain-lashing night, Melanie Truslow's father--a former French officer in Vietnam--fell off the McClenny Pier near his North Florida home and was drowned. Now his large house, and its ghosts, are hers. As she begins to settle into her new surroundings, she tries to understand the accident of his death and to reconstruct the life of the man who had left her mother before Melanie was born. Her only clues lie within the house's filthy basement--a room with blacked-out windows, chicken bones and cigarette butts strewn on the floor, and stacks of homemade pornographic videos narrated by a scarred and cynical French journalist.

Leaving Miami for the sunny shores of Panama City was supposed to be a good thing for the Rankin family. Vicky has just earned her private detective license. Her husband Rick has landed a job as manager of a motel, where he can write his westerns in peace. And maybe now their teen-age son Rusty will outgrow the rebellious phase he's going through. But things aren't going to be that simple. Instead, they are drawn into the nefarious doings of Snag, proprietor of a mysterious museum on the edge of town where boards creak, cadavers reek, and laughter echoes down from the rafters.

Literary suspense from Anne Petty and P. V. LeForge. Shrimpboat captain Carla Conway thought her life was enough of a mess before she found the body of her old nanny tossed like a rag doll into the belfry of a long-abandoned church. With the help of her crusty first mate Comer-and little from the sheriff-she investigates the old woman's death. What she finds takes her deep into the myths and legends of the Florida swamps-and into the mystery of her own origin.