Mink, Manolos, and Murder

Rachel, who had the good fortune to find Richard floating facedown in the pool, is feeling as if she's woken up in an Agatha Christie novel. It doesn't help that everyone around her seems to have a motive for murder. So, while the cops detain Emma's family and friends at her isolated Adirondacks compound for the weekend, Rachel, an investment banker by trade, makes like Miss Marple (minus the gray hair and sensible shoes) and does some digging of her own. Her investigation gets especially tricky when Peter Forrest, the too-good-to-be-true best man, turns out to be the number-one love interest and her number-one suspect. And Rachel can't help remembering the solemn pact she and her friends made back in college--a promise to rescue each other from bad relationships, using any means required. Has someone taken the pact too far?

"As if a recent breakup, scrounging for rent money, and lusting after designer shoes weren't enough to make graduate student Melanie Prescott's life challenging, suddenly she's practically living The Da Vinci Code. A mysterious stranger is sending obscure codes and clues her way and she soon discovers she has to solve them in order to stay alive. With stakes like that, her dissertation on 'the derivation and primary characteristics of codes and ciphers used by prevailing nations during wartime' is looking a little less important than it was yesterday. Right now she's just worrying about living to see tomorrow.

"The only bright spot in the whole freakish nightmare is Matthew Stryker, the six-foot tall, dark, and handsome stranger who's determined to protect her. Well, that and the millions of dollars that will be her reward if she survives this deadly game. And she'd better survive. Because that's a heck of a lot of money to be able to spend on shoes and handbags and sunglasses and dresses, and, well, it's hard to be fashionable when you're dead."

Charley Van Leeuwen can tell by a man's kiss whether he's been drinking Taittinger or Veuve Clicquot. Not that she kisses many men, a fact her friends deplore. So imagine their surprise when she comes home to San Francisco with her new husband. Jack Fairfax is the definition of tall, dark, and handsome. But is he the mild-mannered meteorologist he claims to be? Sometime between finding a dead body in her bathtub, tagging along on a ransom drop, and getting rescued by her husband in a hail of bullets, Charley begins to believe there's more to Jack's past than he's willing--or able--to admit.

When a mystery writer cries bloody murder, everyone blames her overactive imagination . . .

"Thriller scribe Sophie Katz is as hard-boiled as a woman who drinks Grande Caramel Brownie Frappuccinos can be -- maybe it's from a lifetime of fielding dumb comments about her half-black, half-Jewish ethnicity. ('My sister married a Polynesian! I just love your culture!') So Sophie knows it's not paranoia, or post-divorce, living-alone-again jitters, when she becomes convinced that a crazed reader is sneaking into her apartment to reenact scenes from her books. The police, however, can't tell a good plot from an unmarked grave.

"When a filmmaker friend is brutally murdered in the manner of a death scene in one of his movies, Sophie becomes convinced that a copycat killer is on the loose -- and that she's the next target. If she doesn't solve the mystery, her own bestseller will spell out her doom. Cursing her imagination (why, oh, why did she have to pick the axe?), Sophie engages in some real-life gumshoe tactics. The man who swoops in to save her in dark alleys at night is mysterious new love interest Anatoly Darinsky. Of course, if this were fiction, Anatoly would be her prime suspect . . . "

"The 'him' in MAKE HIM LOOK GOOD is Ricky Biscayne, sexy Latin singing sensation who has taken the pop world by storm. The women who orbit him include:

• Milan, Ricky's new publicist, smart as a whip and chubby as only a girl who still lives at home with her parents can be
• Geneva, Milan's sister and as lean and chic as Milan is not; her Club G promises to be Miami's hottest opening ever
• Jasminka, Ricky's gorgeous Serbian model wife, who finally might eat a little something now that she's pregnant
• Irene, a firefighter whose high school romance with Ricky was the last love in her life, eking out an existence for herself and her daughter.
• Sophia, who is beginning to suspect that she and Ricky Biscayne look a little too much alike
• Jill Sanchez, an omniverous media-manic Latina star who has crossed over from CDs to perfume, clothes and movies

Set in and around Miami, with its vibrant music, club and modeling scenes, MAKE HIM LOOK GOOD is irresistible fiction."

Bailey Weggins, a clever writer for a leading women's magazine, Gloss, is dragged into a murder investigation by her editor-in-chief and boss from hell, Cat Jones. Cat is a woman who gets what she wants from her employees, so when she discovers that her nanny has been murdered she insists Bailey find the killer before the police do. Was the chocolate that poisoned the nanny meant for Cat, known for her love of truffles? But then, the beautiful, duplicitous nanny has an enemy list all her own. The investigation takes Bailey from the streets of New York City to the swankiest Connecticut suburbs and Bucks County retreats, and everyone is a suspect, including the catty editors at Gloss. Bailey proves that she is the original gutsy girl when she outwits the clever killer.

As Kate is drawn deeper into the murdered woman's past, she begins to uncover the secrets and lies behind Upchurch's picket-fence facade -- and considers the choices and compromises all modern women make as they navigate between marriage and independence, small towns and big cities, being a mother and having a life of one's own.