No Safe Place - Richard North Patterson
Kerry Kilcannon, Book 1 of 3
 
In his first book since the national best-seller Silent Witness, Richard North Patterson uses his mastery of characterization and suspense to give us a story of startling realism and originality�an extraordinary novel of presidential politics.
 
In the year 2000, Senator Kerry Kilcannon's insurgent campaign against Vice President Dick Mason has come down to the last seven days�the time remaining until the California presidential primary. Whoever wins in California is likely to win the Democratic nomination, a prize that the Vice President is determined to deny Kerry at any cost. And for all the votes and enthusiasm his passion and personal magnetism have gained him, Kerry's problems are formidable.
 
He is haunted by the tragedy of his older brother, James, a presidential candidate who was assassinated in California twelve years earlier. Kerry has stumbled in his advocacy of abortion rights, and a right-to-life fanatic has pushed this explosive issue to the forefront by murdering three people at a women's clinic. In addition, a journalist for a national newsmagazine is striving to verify the lethal story that, two years ago, while still married, Kerry had a secret love affair with Lara Costello, a reporter assigned to him on Capitol Hill. And now, even more threatening, Kerry is being stalked by the abortion-clinic murderer himself.
 
This narrative is seamlessly interwoven with scenes from Kerry's past: his youth as the son of a drunken and abusive father; his self-image as the less-gifted younger brother of a brilliant yet distant senator; his reluctant ascension to his brother's place; his poignant romance with Lara Costello. And when Lara is ordered against her will to cover Kerry in California, he is forced once more to evaluate his life, and the terrible cost of his ambition to become President of the United States.
 
With rare authenticity, Richard North Patterson depicts the world of high-stakes presidential politics on the verge of an explosion that is as dramatic as it is thought-provoking. But No Safe Place is also a story of people at their best and at their worst: their passions, their ideals, their flaws. A novel that will hold the reader enthralled from the first to the last sentence.
 
Somebody's Baby - Elaine Kagan
In 1959, a gentile boy was off-limits to a young Jewish girl living in a well-to-do Kansas neighborhood. Especially a boy with tattoos, a drifter from California who had spent time in jail, who worked in a gas station, and who would fight a man for looking at him the wrong way. Jenny Jaffe knew the rules, but when she saw Will McDonald for the first time, everything she knew about right and wrong disappeared. What was left was a passionate, once-in-a-lifetime love that no social constraints could hold. Will and Jenny became inseparable, and by the end of Jenny's senior year in high school, she was pregnant. When they made a plan to run away, Jenny waited at the spot where Will was to pick her up, but he never showed.
 
What follows is the story of true love that spans three decades -- between man and woman, parent and child. Jenny is forced to give up her baby for adoption, and when that child, Claudia, becomes a parent herself, she begins a search for her biological parents at the risk of destroying the love of the adoptive parents who have raised her. Claudia finds more than she imagined, as she uncovers years of lies and betrayal, sacrifice and silence, and the extraordinary love of Will and Jenny, whose faith and passion survive it all.
 
Riptide - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
IN 1695, a notorious English pirate buried his bounty in a maze of booby-trapped tunnels on an island off the coast of Maine. In three hundred years, no one has breached this cursed and rocky fortress. Now a treasure hunter and his high-tech, million-dollar recovery team embark on the perfect operation to unlock the labyrinth's mysteries. First the computers fail. The then crewmen begin to die. The island has guarded its secrets for centuries, and it isn't letting them go--without a fight.
 
The Coffin Dancer - Jeffery Deaver
Lincoln Rhyme, Book 2 of 16
 
Now a major television series starring Russel Hornsby, Arielle Kebbel, and Michael Imperioli, �Lincoln Rhyme is more relentless than ever� (People) and Jeffery Deaver delivers �supercharged tension� (USA TODAY) in this New York Times bestselling suspense masterwork.

NYPD criminalist Lincoln Rhyme joins his brilliant prot�g� Amelia Sachs, in the hunt for the Coffin Dancer�an ingenious killer who changes his appearance even faster than he adds to his trail of victims. They have only one clue: the madman has a tattoo of the Grim Reaper waltzing with a woman in the front of a coffin. Rhyme must rely on his wits and intuition to track the elusive murderer through New York City�knowing they have only forty-eight hours before the Coffin Dancer strikes again.

Coffin Dancer is a �heart-stopping� (Booklist) thriller from #1 international bestselling author Jeffery Deaver�s �simply outstanding� (San Jose Mercury News) Lincoln Rhyme series.
 
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