Bent Northrop Memorial Library

Finding wealthy Elaine Boldt seems like a quickie case to Kinsey Millhone. But Kinsey's case goes from puzzling to sinister, after her bridge partner is found dead.

Wendell Jaffe has been dead these past five years--or so it seemed, until his former insurance agent spotted him in the bar of a dusty little resort halfway between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz. When the insurance company that paid up on Jaffe's life insurance policy hires Kinsey Millhone to sort things out, Kinsey's investigation of the con man's past triggers a surprising inquiry into her own family history.

Sleuth Kinsey Millhone is pulled into the detritus of a dead man's life, a man who was wanted dead by everyone he knew. He called himself Alvin Limardo, and the job he had for Kinsey was cut-and-dried: locate a kid who'd done him a favor and pass on a check for $25,000. It was only later, after he'd stiffed her for her retainer, that Kinsey found out his name was Daggett. John Daggett. Ex-con. Inveterate liar. Chronic drunk. And dead. The cops called...

First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human...

"From the New York times bestselling author of 'The Paris Wife' comes an atmospheric novel of intertwined fate and heart-wrenching suspense: A detective hiding away from the world. A series of disappearances that reach into her past. Can solving them help her heal? Anna Hart is a seasoned missing persons detective in San Francisco with far too much knowledge of the darkest side of human nature. When unspeakable tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna,...

"It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance--and the subsequent cover-up--will have an impact...

Private investigator Kinsey Millhone embarks upon a dangerous and revealing excursion into her past when she is contacted by a storage unit scavenger who has found a box of her personal effects, including a letter that forces her to reexamine the breakup of her first marriage.

"When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy,...

"t's been a year since Billie Flanagan--a Berkeley mom with an enviable life--went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found, just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie's death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the...

Detective Alex Cross hunts down a serial killer who targets entire families--and who will next be coming for the Crosses. A precise killer, he always moves under the cover of darkness, flawlessly triggering no alarms, leaving no physical evidence. Cross and Sampson aren't the only ones investigating. Also in on this most intriguing case is the world's bestselling true-crime author, who sees patterns everyone else misses. The writer, Thomas Tull, calls...