Jack Drake shares a Malibu beach mansion with a gorgeous movie star but hates his life. The depressed private eye can't shake the death of his wife and can't end his toxic relationship with Hollywood heartthrob Amanda Bigelow. But an at-risk sixteen-year-old who is injured in an inner-city shooting gets Jack unstuck. As a favor to a friend, Jack sequesters Game in the mansion, keeping him safe. Their worldviews differ, but they draw from their histories of loss and grief while investigating the shooting and three seemingly unrelated murders, tying Game's world in downtrodden Oakville to Jack's in idyllic Malibu. Fans of wisecracking investigators such as Spenser, Kinsey Milhone, and Stephanie Plum will cheer for Jack Drake, a man in love with two women—one of them dead. "This is a smart, edgy, state-of-the-art L.A. noir with heart. Jack Drake is a private eye with grit, a few demons and a semi-glamorous life on...

After performing a daring rescue of a fellow quilter during a robbery at a Walmart in Paducah, Kentucky, also known as Quilt City, journalist and mayoral candidate Hadley Carroll vows to bring the perpetrators to justice after the heist turns tragic.Then, a seemingly unrelated murder and two ominous messages cause Hadley to ask the staff at Paducah Pulse, her weekly newspaper, to find answers. Amid the turmoil, Hadley and Detective Brandon Green finally enjoy their first date at Barbecue on the River, the city's largest annual event, only for mayhem to disrupt the festivities.Now, employing the diligence and perceptiveness that helped her solve the Quilt City Murders, Hadley investigates the killings that follow, connecting the invisible dots. As Paducah panics, the Pulse staff sheds light on a wide-ranging conspiracy. Hadley tangles with her nemesis and mayoral opponent, Nick Stoddard, and endures various threats. But she's determined to...

Quilter Hadley Carroll thinks her life can't get any worse after being demoted from reporter to newspaper courier and having her fiancé, Matt Ackerman, dump her without explanation. But then, while chucking a sack of newspapers into the Ohio River in Paducah, Kentucky—known as Quilt City—she finds Matt's body snagged under the transient dock. She knows she'll never find peace if she doesn't figure out why he left her and who killed him, so she gets to work.But the mystery deepens when fellow quilters succumb to foul play, so Hadley must use her investigative skills and impressive intellect to connect a series of seemingly unrelated crimes.As QuiltWeek Paducah, the largest quilting event in the world, approaches, then fills the small town with 30,000 textile connoisseurs, Paducah's mayor tries to instill calm as citizens panic, protests flair up, and visiting quilters flee by the thousands.Despite grieving the loss of Matt, Hadley perseveres, strengthened...

During a weekly Paducah Quilters Quorum session, Hadley worries about her looming deadline for the cookbook she's writing, the pain her best friend is in, her depressed young housemate, and the Paducah mayoral race she's favored to win against her nemesis—corrupt businessman Nick Stoddard. Then she learns that fellow quilter Donna considers the death of a coworker to be suspicious. Adding to her concerns, Hadley will meet the family of her beau, Detective Brandon Green, that night, and her younger sister, Jenny, will arrive for a visit, bringing three kinds of trouble with her. But then bricks shatter Hadley's windows, transforming worry into danger. Just when Hadley fears her burdens will cause her to crack up, people in and around Paducah die in what could become a major public health crisis. She steels herself and enlists the services of private eye Garrett Hunt. They investigate the murders, but when her family's secrets emerge...

Hadley Carroll's big weekend plans include visiting the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, with her friends and newfound family, watching an action scene being shot downtown for a Hollywood adventure film, celebrating a birthday, and quilting in Paducah Quilters Quorum.But Hadley, a journalist and the mayor of Paducah, receives bad news from Ashley, the eighteen-year-old who lives with her, and from Dakota, Hadley's best friend.Then, when the movie stunt goes terribly wrong and the crimes that follow threaten to tear the city apart, Hadley and her usual entourage set out to catch the criminals.But the stakes grow higher and the stresses become personal when someone close to her goes missing, and Hadley finds herself in unfamiliar terrain when the system breaks down.She solicits assistance from private-eye Garrett Hunt and from her boyfriend, Detective Brandon Green, but this time justice may elude them all.