It is 1988. On a dead-end street in a run-down suburb there is a music shop that stands small and brightly lit, jam-packed with records of every kind. Like a beacon, the shop attracts the lonely, the sleepless, and the adrift; Frank, the shop’s owner, has a way of connecting his customers with just the piece of music they need. Then, one day, into his shop comes a beautiful young woman, Ilse Brauchmann, who asks Frank to teach her about music. Terrified of real closeness, Frank feels compelled to turn and run, yet he is drawn to this strangely still, mysterious woman with eyes as black as vinyl. But Ilse is not what she seems, and Frank has old wounds that threaten to reopen, as well as a past it seems he will never leave behind. Can a man who is so in tune with other people’s needs be so incapable of connecting with the one person who might save him?

In the summer of 1969, fourteen-year-old Lucas Painter carries a huge weight on his shoulders. His brother is fighting in Vietnam. His embattled parents are locked in a never-ending war. And his best friend, Connor, is struggling with his own family issues. To find relief from the chaos, Lucas takes long, meandering walks, and one day he veers into the woods.

There he discovers an isolated cabin and two huge dogs. Frightened, he runs. And the dogs run with him. Lucas finds unusual peace in running with the dogs, and eventually he meets their owner, Zoe Dinsmore. Closed off and haunted by a tragic past, Zoe has given up. She doesn’t want to be saved. She wants out. But Lucas doesn’t want her to go, and he sees an opportunity to bring more than one friend back into the light.

In the winter of 1917, nineteen-year-old Martha Lessen saddles her horses and heads for a remote county in eastern Oregon, looking for work “gentling” wild horses. She finds employment with the rancher George Bliss, whose regular ranch hands are overseas fighting World War I. George glimpses, beneath Martha’s showy rodeo garb, a shy but strong-willed girl with a serious knowledge of horses.

So begins the irresistible tale of a young woman determined to claim her place in a man’s world. Over the course of several long, hard winter months, many of the townsfolk witness Martha talking in low, sweet tones to horses believed beyond repair—and getting miraculous, almost immediate results. It’s with this gift that she earns their respect, and a chance to make herself a home.

Meet Elvis Cole, L.A. Private Eye. . . . He quotes Jiminy Cricket and carries a .38. He’s a literate, wisecracking Vietnam vet who is determined to never grow up.

When quiet Ellen Lang enters Elvis Cole’s Disney-Deco office, she’s lost something very valuable—her husband and her young son. The case seems simple enough, but Elvis isn’t thrilled. Neither is his enigmatic partner and firepower, Joe Pike. Their search down the seamy side of Hollywood’s studio lots and sculptured lawns soon leads them deep into a nasty netherworld of drugs, sex—and murder. Now the case is getting interesting, but it’s also turned ugly. Because everybody, from cops to starlets to crooks, has declared war on Ellen and Elvis. For Ellen, it isn’t Funtown anymore. For Elvis, it’s just a living . . . He hopes.

Stopping was never part of the plan…

She was a successful ad sales rep in Manhattan. He was a homeless, eleven-year-old panhandler on the street. He asked for spare change; she kept walking. But then something stopped her in her tracks, and she went back. And she continued to go back, again and again. They met up nearly every week for years and built an unexpected, life-changing friendship that has today spanned almost three decades.

Whatever made me notice him on that street corner so many years ago is clearly something that cannot be extinguished, no matter how relentless the forces aligned against it. Some may call it spirit. Some may call it heart. It drew me to him, as if we were bound by some invisible, unbreakable thread. And whatever it is, it binds us still.​

In June 2014, 19-year-old Erin Corwin was living a quiet life in Twentynine Palms, California, expecting her first child with her husband, U.S. Marine Corporal Jon Corwin—until the day she drove off into the desert and never returned. As temperatures climbed into the hundreds, friends and family teamed up with local law enforcement in a grueling search of Joshua Tree National Park. Nearly two months after her disappearance, Corwin’s body was found at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft, a homemade garrote wrapped around her throat.

Suspicions mounted within the tight-knit Marine community as residents questioned if the killer was one of their own. Fellow Marine Christopher Lee and his wife lived next door to the Corwins, and the two young couples had leaned on each other for support.

A killer is playing deadly games with local students… and the only prize is murder.
Detective Chief Inspector Whitney Walker has worked hard to get where she is. A single mother, she joined the police force when she was eighteen and never looked back… until one wrong move put her in jeopardy of losing her job. So when a serial killer starts murdering female students at a nearby university, she knows this is it: her chance to stop a killer and redeem her career… or blow it and say goodbye to the job she loves.

Aided (and sometimes impeded) by Dr Georgina Cavendish, a lecturer who steps out of the isolated world of academia when one of her students is murdered, Walker soon arrests the obvious culprit. Everything seems to have worked out…