Category: Meme

Mailbox Monday is on tour with July’s host being Mrs. Q: Book Addict.

Another week gone by and another absurd amount of books came into my house. Of course I’m blaming it on the fact that my birthday was on the 5th and I was treating myself 🙂

Thumbing across the scorched west Texas desert loner Jack Reacher has nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get there. Cruising the same stretch of two-lane blacktop is pretty Carmen Greer. But for Reacher the lift comes with a hitch. Carmen’s got a story to tell and it’s a wild one. All about her husband, her family secrets, and a hometown that’s pure Gothic. She’s also got a plan. Reacher’s part of it. And before the sun sets, this ride could cost them both their lives.

 

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Somewhere off the coast of Alaska, a sunken cargo poses a threat of unthinkable proportions. Potentially, the lost shipment of chemicals could destroy all life in the ocean – and perhaps the world – unless Dirk Pitt can find it first. But time is running out for the NUMA agent and his team. Pitt’s main target is just one deadly component of a vast international conspiracy fueled by hijacking, bribery, and murder. And at the center of it all is a powerful Korean shipping empire with a chilling political agenda -to kidnap the President of the United States…

 

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The luxury yacht had disappeared long ago, on its way to a secret meeting at the White House. Now, it has been discovered – within a millions-ton mass of ice. The only clue to the ship’s demise – and its missing cargo – are the corpses of its crew, and a set of ornately carved rings. The only man who can find the answer is Dirk Pitt…

 

 

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     A former Secret Service agent turned high-tech entrepreneur, Kurt Ford couldn’t be more proud when his son Collin follows in his footsteps. But elation turns to despair when Collin is found dead in his apartment and the police rule the case a suicide. Knowing his son would never kill himself, Kurt searches for the truth – and uncovers shocking evidence that the person behind the murder is none other than the president of the United States. Now Kurt is about to attempt the impossible: to assassinate a leader who has spun out of control. But as he sets his plan in motion, he finds out how much he really has to lose – and what dark forces are lying in wait for his next move.

 

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The dead body discovered in a Seattle dumpster was shocking enough – but equally disturbing was the manner of death. The victim, a high school coach, had been lynched, leaving behind a very pregnant wife to grieve over his passing, and to wonder what dark secrets he took to his grave. A Homicide detective with twenty years on the job, J.P. Beaumont knows this case is a powder keg, and he fears where this investigation will lead him. Because the answers lie on the extreme lethal edge of passion and hate, where the wrong kind of love can breed the most terrible brand of justice.

 

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     The first evidence is found in the belly of a shark: a hand sporting a jade ring. The hand belongs to a Silicone Valley billionaire. When the rest of his bullet-ridden body washes up on shore, Dismas Hardy, assistant D.A., is suddenly plunged into San Francisco’s murder trial of the century.
A Japanese call girl with a long list of bigshot johns is the defendant. But a series of bizarre twists and turns blows the case wide open, making Hardy himself a target for everyone from the victim’s sexy daughter to the vengeful judge who wants Hardy to sizzle.

 

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Once Dismas Hardy was a cop. Now he spends his days in a lawyer’s suit, billing hours to a corporate client in a downtown San Francisco office. Hardy’s wife and kids like it that way. Then one client changes everything. Graham Russo, a former baseball star, is charged with murdering his dying father. Was it suicide, the last desperate act of a dying man? Was it murder? Or mercy?
Now, as a carnival of reporters, activists, cops, lovers, and families throng around the case, Dismas Hardy is going to trial with a client he doesn’t trust, a key witness he cannot believe, and a system that almost destroyed him once. For Dismas, this case will challenge everything he believes about the law, about his family, and about himself. Because a chilling truth is beginning to emerge about an old man’s lonely death. And what Dismas knows could put him next in line to die…

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     Matthew Mercer and Harris Sandler are playing a game almost no one knows about – not their friends, not their coworkers, and certainly not their powerful bosses, who are some of the most influential senators and congressmen on Capitol Hill. It’s a game that has everything: risk, reward, and the thrill of knowing that – just by being invited to play – you’ve become a true insider. But behind this game is a secret so explosive it will shake Washington to its core. And when one player turns up dead, a dedicated young staffer will find himself relying on a tough, idealistic seventeen-year-old Senate page to help keep him alive … as he plays the Zero Game to its heart-pounding end.

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     Amid the sparkling snow-swept mountains of Lake Tahoe, Nina Reilly has made a home, juggling the demands of her one-woman law practice and raising a teenage son alone. Now Nina has taken on a case that will threaten everything she holds dear, drawing her into a tangled web of loyalties and alliances within one of Lake Tahoe’s most prominent families. Her client: a man accused of murdering his own brother – on the ski slopes of Tahoe. The law says Nina must give Jim Strong the best possible defense. But Strong’s family has turned violently against him, and suddenly Nina is at the center of the storm. As she works a flawed and troubling case and gets swept into an unexpected love affair, the two sides of Nina’s life come crashing together … in the ultimate act of malice.

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A wealthy socialite has been murdered. Now the killer – a consummate professional – must tie up a few loose ends. One is a witness. The other is Lucas Davenport, the cop on the case. Of all the criminals Davenport has hunted, none has been as efficient or as ferociously intelligent as the woman who’s hunting him.

 

 

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     When a new Protestant extremist group shatters the Good Friday peace accords with three savage acts of terrorism, Northern Ireland is blown back into the depths of conflict. And after his father-in-law is nominated to become the new American ambassador to London, retired officer Michael Osbourne is drawn back into the CIA.
Then Osbourne uncovers a dark plan that marks his father-in-law for execution, setting into motion a deadly chain of events that will thrust him back into the sights of the most merciless assassin the world has ever known. Osbourne escaped this ruthless killing machine once – but the elusive October will never allow him to slip through his crosshairs again…

Another week – another full mailbox. I really should restrain myself. But I just keep telling myself that I’d been good January-May and with my birthday just around the corner – like in 3 DAYS! – I’m treating myself 🙂

Anyhoo – July’s host is Mrs. Q: Book Addict.

Here’s what arrived for me last week:

On an isolated Greek island, a World War I fighter plane attacks a modern U.S. Air Force base…a mysterious saboteur preys on an American scientific expedition…and Dirk Pitt plays a deadly game of hunter and hunted with the elusive head of an international smuggling ring. Dirk Pitt, intrepid hero of Clive Cussler’s smash bestsellers Dragon, Sahara, and Inca Gold, is hot on the trail of a mammoth drug conspiracy controlled by a missing Nazi War criminal. On land and in the depths of the Aegean, Pitt trouble shoots his way through one of his most daring, desperate adventures!

 

1954. Vixen 03 is down. The plane, bound for the Pacific carrying thirty-six Doomsday bombs – canisters armed with quick-death germs of unbelievable potency – vanishes. Vixen has in fact crashed into an ice-covered lake in Colorado.
1988. Dirk Pitt, who heroically raised the Titanic, discovers the wreckage of Vixen 03. But two deadly canisters are missing. They’re in the hands of a terrorist group. Their lethal mission: to sail a battleship seventy-five miles up the Potomac and blast Washington, D.C., to kingdom come. Only Dirk can stop them…

 

When Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels receives a report of an excess of body parts appearing at the Cook County Morgue, she hopes it’s only a miscount. It’s not. Even worse, these extra limbs seem to be accessorized with Jack’s handcuffs. Jack must put her train wreck of a personal life on hold to catch a terrifying and brilliant maniac – a maniac for whom getting caught is only the beginning…

 

Meeting an anonymous client late on a sizzling summer night is asking for trouble. But trouble is Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski’s specialty. Her client says he’s the prominent banker, John Thayer. Turns out he’s not. He says his son’s girlfriend, Anita Hill, is missing. Turns out that’s not her real name. V.I.’s search turns up someone soon enough – the real John Thayer’s son, and he’s dead. Who’s V.I.’s client? Why has she been set up and sent out on a wild-goose chase? By the time she’s got it figured, things are hotter – and deadlier – than Chicago in July. V.I.’s in a desperate race against time. At stake: a young woman’s life.

 

Mailbox Monday is on tour with June’s stop being at Burton Book Review.

This week I had four books come into my house. I purchased these from bookcloseouts.com. I had been extremely good all year, having not purchased a single book myself! Wow, I can’t believe I made it to June!! BUT! I couldn’t resist when I got an email from Bookcloseouts advertising Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith for $2.99! It’s only been on my wish list for ever! Plus I was able to get other books that had been on my wish list for a while as well! (This is me justifying buying more books). Anyway, on to the books:

     Hollywood, May 1962: Marilyn Monroe, the ultimate goddess of the silver screen, is at the peak of her popularity, internationally famous, universally admired by women and desired by men. But she’s also famously insecure and temperamental and is being pilloried in the press for delaying the production of Something’s Got to Give. When the head of Twentieth Century Fox threatens to cancel her contract, Marilyn hires “PI to the stars” Nathan Heller to tap her phones and record conversations that might prove to be important if there’s a lawsuit.
Less than three months later, Monroe is dead from an overdose and, officially, a suicide. But Heller isn’t buying it. He knows that in the weeks before, the star was anything but suicidal. He knows, too, about her affair with JFK, about the secret connections between the Kennedys and the Mob … and about Bobby Kennedy’s blood feud with Jimmy Hoffa. In short, Heller knows too much to accept this bum rap on a beautiful, gifted woman loved by the whole world … including Nathan Heller.
So he investigates, though his efforts might enrage some very famous, very powerful, very dangerous people. But they can’t keep Heller from finding out the astounding truth behind Marilyn Monroe’s untimely demise…

      For 140 years, Nathaniel Cade has been the President’s Vampire, sworn to protect and serve his country. Cade’s existence is the most closely guarded of White House secrets: a superhuman covert agent who is the last line of defense against nightmare scenarios that ordinary citizens can only dream of.
When a new outbreak of an ancient evil – one that Cade has seen before – comes to light, he and his human handler, Zach Barrows, must track down its source. The president suspects that the threat may have ties to a high-level defense contractor – a private, Blackwater-like security force whose hired mercenaries take a very dim view of being forced to work with the president’s men. “Protect and serve” often means settling old scores and confronting new betrayals … as only a century-old predator can.

     A Simple Act of Murder is the investigation that this case should have had from the beginning. America’s most famous detective, Mark Fuhrman – who has cracked some of the best-known and most puzzling crimes in American history – cuts through the myths and misinformation to focus on the hard evidence. He examines the ballistics and medical records, scrutinizes photographs from the crime scene and the famous Zapruder film, and weighs the testimony of hundreds of witnesses.
Filled with vivid photos, informative diagrams, and original drawings by Fuhrman himself that show the evidence in a new light and make complex forensic matters clear and easily understood, this book is the visual record of the JFK assassination.
In this gripping and highly personal account, Fuhrman unveils a major clue that had been ignored for forty years – a breakthrough that will change the debate over the assassination. Overturning accepted notions about the way the murder occurred, A Simple Act of Murder answers many questions that have plagued the American people ever since that fateful day in Dallas.

     Indiana, 1818. In a one-room cabin, nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his mother’s bedside. “My baby boy …” she whispers before dying. Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother’s fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire. Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, young Lincoln sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.
While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving the Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for almost two hundred years – until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln. Now, using the journal as a guide, Seth reconstructs the true life story of America’s greatest president. For the first time ever, he reveals the hidden history behind the Civil War – and uncovers the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of the nation.

Mailbox Monday is on tour with June’s stop being at Burton Book Review.

Wow, it’s been forever since I posted a Mailbox Monday post! Actually when I looked back I hadn’t posted one since January! Of course I haven’t received all that many books this year (not like last year, where I went absolutely book bonkers!) Anyway, I got 4 books this week:

From LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer Program:

     It’s the spring of 1939, and the prospect of war in Europe looms large. The United States has no intelligence service. In Washington, D.C., President Franklin Roosevelt may run for an unprecedented third term and needs someone he can trust to find out what the Nazis are up to. His choice: John F. Kennedy.
It’s a surprising selection. At twenty-two, Jack Kennedy is the attractive but unpromising second son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Roosevelt’s ambassador to Britain (and occasional political adversary). When Jack decides to travel through Europe to gather research for his Harvard senior thesis, Roosevelt takes the opportunity to use him as his personal spy. The president’s goal: to stop the flow of German money that has been flooding the United States to buy the 1940 election – an election that Adolf Hitler intends for Roosevelt to lose.

From a Paperbackswap Box-of-Books trade:

     Nearly five centuries ago a fleet of boats landed mysteriously on an island in an inland sea. There, an ancient Andean people hid a golden hoard greater than that of any pharaoh, then they and their treasure vanished into history – until now.
1998, the Andes Mountains of Peru. Dirk Pitt dives into an ancient sacrificial pool, saving two American archaeologists from certain drowning. But his death-defying rescue is only the beginning, as it draws the intrepid Pitt into a vortex of darkness and danger, corruption and betrayal. A sinister crime syndicate has traced the long-lost treasure – worth almost a billion dollars – from the Andes to the banks of a hidden underground river flowing beneath a Mexican desert. Driven by burning greed and a ruthless bloodlust, the syndicate is racing to seize the golden prize … and to terminate the one man who can stop them: Dirk Pitt!

     Charts of lost gold … breathtaking art and rare volumes … maps of hidden oil and mineral deposits that could change the world’s balance of power. Now Dirk Pitt has discovered the secret trail of the treasures of Alexandria – a trail that plunges him into a brutal conspiracy for total domination of the globe. Zealots threaten to unseat the governments of Egypt and Mexico, exposing America to invasion and economic collapse. Suddenly, from East to West, anarchists reach their deadly tentacles into the heart of the United States. And Dirk Pitt is up against the most feared assassin known to man. An international band of terrorists is making its play for world power on the high seas – and Pitt is the only man alive who can stop them!
      In prison, they call her the Sculptress for the strange figurines she carves – symbols of the day she hacked her mother and sister to pieces and reassembled them in a blood-drenched jigsaw. Sullen, menacing, grotesquely fat, Olive Martin is burned-out journalist Rosalind Leigh’s only hope of getting a new book published.
But as she interviews Olive, in her cell, Roz finds flaws in the Sculptress’s confession. Is she really guilty as she insists? Drawn into Olive’s world of obsessional lies and love, nothing can stop Roz’s pursuit of the chilling, convoluted truth. Not the tidy suburbanites who’d rather forget the murders, not a volatile ex-policeman and her own erotic response to him, not an attack on her life.

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with January’s location being at At Home with Books.

Only one book in my mailbox this week. From PBS:

In this gripping third novel in the acclaimed series, Myron Bolitar must confront a past that is dead and buried – and more dangerous than ever before. The home is top-notch New Jersey suburban. The living room is Martha Stewart. The basement is Legos – and blood. The signs of a violent struggle. For Myron Bolitar, the disappearance of a man he once competed against is bring back memories – of the sport he and Greg Downing had both played and the woman they both loved. Now, among the stars, the wannabes, the gamblers, and the groupies, Myron is embarking upon the strange ride of a sports hero gone wrong that just may lead to certain death. Namely, his own.

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with January’s location being at At Home with Books.

I actually hadn’t received a book in the mail at all this year until the 21st! I think that’s got to be some kind of a record for me, haha!

A Paperbackswap wishlist book:

 Dust and Shadow: An Account of the Ripper Killings by Dr. John H. Watson by Lyndsay Faye

From the gritty streets of nineteenth century London, the loyal and courageous Dr. Watson offers a tale unearthed after generations of lore: the harrowing story of Sherlock Holmes’s attempt to hunt down Jack the Ripper.
As England’s greatest specialist in criminal detection, Sherlock Holmes is unwavering in his quest to capture the killer responsible for terrifying London’s East End. He hires an “unfortunate” known as Mary Ann Monk, the friend of a fellow streetwalker who was one of the Ripper’s earliest victims; and he relies heavily on the steadfast and devoted Dr. John H. Watson. When Holmes himself is wounded in Whitechapel during an attempt to catch the savage monster, the popular press launches an investigation of its own, questioning the great detective’s role in the very crimes he is so fervently struggling to prevent. Stripped of his credibility, Holmes is left with no choice but to break every rule in the desperate race to find the madman known as “the Knife” before it is too late.

I also received 5 books from my grandmother:

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with December’s location being at Let Them Read Books.

I actually received these books last week, but I never got around to creating a post, so I’m sharing them now. The first was a book I got from Bookmooch, the second was a win from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program.

 During a crowded service at a cathedral in Germany, armed intruders in monks’ robes unleash a nightmare of blood and destruction. But the killers have not come for gold; they seek a more valuable prize: the bones of the Magi who once paid homage to a newborn savior … a treasure that could reshape the world. With the Vatican in turmoil, SIGMA Force leaps into action. An elite team of scientific and Special Forces operatives under the command of Grayson Pierce and accompanied by Lieutenant Rachel Verona of Rome’s carabinieri, they are pursuing a deadly mystery that weaves through sites of the Seven Wonders of the World and ends at the doorstep of an ancient, mystical, and terrifying secret order. For there are those with dark plans for the stolen sacred remains that will alter the future of humankind … when science and religion unite to unleash a horror not seen since the beginning of time.

Nashville private investigator Jared McKean has a son with Down’s syndrome, a best friend with AIDS, an ex-wife he can’t seem to fall out of love with, and a weakness for women in jeopardy – until one frames him for murder. His DNA and fingerprints are found at the murder scene. his voice is on the victim’s answering machine, and the victim was killed with a bullet from his gun. To make matters worse, his teenaged nephew comes out of the closet and runs away to join a dangerous fringe of the Goth subculture. Now Jared must find a way to clear his name, hold his family together, and solve a case that could cost him his life.

Mailbox Monday is on tour, with December’s location being at Let Them Read Books

The only thing that came this past week was one book from Bookmooch:

 A young woman is shot in cold blood, her lifeless body dumped outside the stadium at the height of the US Open. Once her tennis career had skyrocketed. Now the headlines are being made by another young player from the wrong side of the tracks. When Myron Bolitar investigates the killing he uncovers a connection between the two players and a six-year-old murder at an exclusive club. Suddenly Myron is in over his head. And with a dirty senator, a jealous mother, and the mob all drawn into the case, he finds himself playing the most dangerous game of all…

Well I had a good mailbox again this week. I really need to stay off of Paperbackswap!! Oh well. (I also received Assassin of Secrets from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program, but I’m not listing that book and you can read why here.)

So from Paperbackswap:

 Computers, poetry and Samurai lore were successful businessman Tadeo Kurobashi’s passions. So it stood to reason that the ancient “art” of hara-kiri would be his suicide method of choice. But Detective J.P. Beaumont wasn’t certain that the dead software magnate had any choice in the matter of his own demise – despite the bloody Samurai sword Kurobashi clutched in his lifeless hand. Especially since an error in the time-honored death ritual indicated cold-blooded homicide … of a most traditional sort.

 

 
 Her male-bashing pop-psych bestseller created a storm of controversy on the talk-show circuit. Now Professor Hope Devane is dead, brutally slashed on a quiet street in one of L.A.’s safest neighborhoods. The LAPD’s investigation has reached a dead end, and homicide detective Milo Sturgis turns to his friend Dr. Alex Delaware for a psychological profile of the victim – and a portrait of a killer. Hope Devane had very different public and private faces. The killer could be any one of the millions who read her book, or someone from the personal lives she kept so carefully separate. As Alex and Milo dig deeper into her shadowy past, they will set an elaborate trap for her killer … and reveal the unspeakable act that triggered a dark chain of violence.

 Peter Hale is a young attorney with a lot to prove. Crossing his father, one of Portland’s most powerful lawyers, was a costly mistake. Now, cut loose from his job and from his inheritance, Peter’s landed in the public defender’s office of a small Oregon town – and in the middle of a high-profile case that could make or break his career. His mentally retarded client, accused of the savage murder of a college coed, faces the death penalty. And Peter faces a choice – between the pursuit of headlines and the pursuit of truth, between the compulsion to save himself and the courage to save his client – in a devastating trial by fire.

 
 The papers call him the Ice Man. David Nash, defense attorney – cool, unruffled, practically unbeatable in the courtroom. Most of his clients are guilty. A few may be monsters. Suddenly the Ice Man is assailed by doubts and unanswerable questions. What is the cost of each victory, each rapist or murderer set free – to society and to Nash’s soul? Then comes a case that may be Nash’s redemption. A client whose innocence he can believe in, a rising lawyer and family man accused of the brutal murder of an undercover vice cop. But as the case moves toward trial, new doubts grip him: What is truth and what is carefully fabricated falsehood? Is Nash, a master at handling juries, being manipulated himself? And by whom? By the time Nash’s perfect case is finished, the questions become a matter of life and death.

 An epic story that movies with force, passion, and authority, Balance of Power begins when President Kerry Kilcannon and television journalist Lara Costello at last decide to marry. But the momentous occasion is followed by an unspeakable tragedy – a massacre of innocents by gunfire – that ignites a high-stakes game of politics and legal maneuvering in the Senate, the courtroom, and across the country, which the charismatic but untested young President is determined to win at any cost. But in the incendiary clash over gun violence and gun rights, the cost to both Kilcannons may be even higher than he imagined.

 
 Long estranged from her blue-blooded New England family, attorney Caroline Masters is summoned home to defend her niece against charges of murder. Police found twenty-two-year-old Brett Allen blood-splattered and incoherent near the scene of the crime, the weapon covered with her fingerprints. Caroline has doubts of her own about Brett’s innocence. But as the sensational trial heats up, she’ll find disturbing inconsistencies in the testimony of the toughest challenges of her life and career – from trusting her former lover, state prosecutor Jackson Watts, to risking the federal judgeship she’s worked her whole life for, to exposing a dark family secret that could save her niece or destroy them both…

 

  In the high-stakes, high-pressured world of presidential politics, where predators carry microphones and one misstep can savage a lifetime of achievement, Kerry Kilcannon is the rarest player of all. Kilcannon believes he can make the system work. And he may just die trying. Driven by the violent nightmare of his childhood, fueled by forces that few could understand, and burdened by secrets no one must know, Kilcannon is running for President – and entering the crucial battleground of California with seven days to go. But for Kilcannon, there are hurdles that his courage, charisma, and compassion may not overcome: the network correspondent he still loves; the reporter bent on the exposure; the rival who’ll do anything to win; and the fanatic who believes that he must murder Kilcannon to protect the right to life…

Here’s what came this week (now if only I could finish the book I’ve been reading for the past two weeks … and it’s not because it’s bad, it’s because I’m just not reading). The first was a wish list book from Paperbackswap, the second is a LibraryThing Early Reviewers win.

England in the 1880s was a society in transition, shedding the skin of Victorianism and moving towards a more modern age. Promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police inefficiency … all these things combined to create a feeling of uncertainty and fear. The East End of London became the focus of that fear. Here lived the uneducated, poverty-ridden and morally destitute masses. When Jack the Ripper walked onto the streets of the East End he came to represent everything that was wrong with the area and with society as a whole. He was fear in a human form, an unknown lurker in the shadows who could cross boundaries and kill. Jack the Ripper: The Definitive History is not yet another attempt to identify the culprit. Instead, this book sets the murders in their historical context, examining in depth what East London was like in 1888, how it came to be that way, and how events led to one of the most infamous and grisly episodes of the Victorian era.

 Maggie Silver is solidly middle class, with a mortgage to pay and an ill mother to support. She does her best to scramble up the ladder at an exclusive, high-powered PR firm in Southern California, whose clients are movie stars and famous athletes. Now, Maggie is being asked to take on her toughest client yet: Senator Henry Paxton, distinguished statesman from Southern California, who also happens to be the father of Anabelle, Maggie’s former high school best friend. Senator Paxton’s young, female aide has been found murdered, and it is up to Maggie to run damage control and prevent a scandal. Thrown back into the Paxton’s glamorous world, Maggie is unexpectedly flooded with memories from the stormy years in high school when her friendship with Anabelle was dramatically severed after a tragedy that neither of them has been able to forget. As Maggie gets further embroiled in the lives of the Paxtons, she realizes that the ties of her old friendship are stronger than she thinks.