Mystery China

A vehicle crammed with dozens of dead Chinese immigrants is found in Southern Texas. Pathologist Margaret Campbell must put aside her horror and find out why. Detective Li Yan - an even more unwelcome memory for Campbell - has arrived stateside to investigate a link in the case to a lucrative trade in illegal labourers.

Is the third world war really winding down? With the recent change in political tide for Russia, the threat of nuclear weapons coming from the Kremlin seems to have dwindled. However, more than one leader in Asia still holds nukes in their possession, and the communist leader of China seems more determined than ever to save face. Is there any way to end this conflict without a full-blown nuclear war? Despite enormous military losses in Europe and the Russian Far East, the Indian government is determined to stand by the Chinese.

While living in America, a brilliant Chinese scientist is chosen to work on the US military’s most classified technologies for over a decade. Suddenly, he is outlandishly targeted by the FBI, traded in a prisoner exchange by President Eisenhower and must return to China. This episode ultimately led to China’s development of a military-run secret space program (SSP) using exotic electromagnetic propulsion systems now challenging US military dominance on Earth and in outer space.

A prodigious Chinese swimmer kills himself on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. Days later, a champion weightlifter suffers a fatal heart attack prior to competition. Detective Li Yan senses a conspiracy surrounding the fatalities and finds a female athlete willing to talk. But she will trust only one person: Li's fiancée, Margaret Campbell. When Campbell's contact herself vanishes, the gun is fired on a race against time. And Li must now outrun, and outwit, an enemy bent on pushing him beyond endurance.

Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: happy parents and a twin sister that meant the world to him. But Alyssa went missing a year ago, stolen off the side of a lonely street with only one witness to the crime. His family shattered, his sister presumed dead, Johnny risks everything to explore the dark side of his hometown in a last, desperate search.

When local real estate shark Edgar Coleman is murdered and "good riddance" is the response from every Pecan Spring resident, China Bayles quickly learns that Coleman was no stranger to adultery and blackmail. China's fiancé, the interim police chief, is immersed in the investigation, and the suspect list grows steadily longer. China puts her honeymoon plans aside and starts hunting for the killer. As her investigation gets underway, she digs up dirt and secrets on people she knows.

When CIA officer Craig Norton glimpses an unexplainable object in the sky over Mongolia, he can’t quite believe it. Frankly, he isn’t sure Langley will either. Despite his misgivings, Craig reports the sighting in a cable to headquarters detailing the incident. Fast-forward fifteen years. Craig is still reeling from the report that tanked his career and his personal life. That fleeting moment on the Mongolian steppe made him a pariah at the Agency, and he still hasn’t recovered. At this point, he doubts he ever will.

A vehicle crammed with dozens of dead Chinese immigrants is found in Southern Texas. Forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell must put aside her horror and find out why. Detective Li Yan - an even more unwelcome memory for Campbell - has arrived stateside to investigate a link in the case to a lucrative trade in illegal laborers. Li and Campbell will soon find that the crime scene hides another secret: a biological time bomb linking traffickers, politicians, and migrants in Beijing, Washington, and Texas - posing multiple countries one very singular threat.

This 19th mystery in the China Bales series is a cozy herbal treat from national best-selling author Susan Wittig Albert. While Pecan Springs bustles back to life in the warmth of spring, one woman’s life is tragically brought to an end. Assigned to cover the story, an intern from the local paper gets too deeply involved. When she disappears, China is determined to find her—before the young journalist becomes headlines herself.

Ordered to relieve an alcoholic skipper, Dan finds he has inherited a damaged ship, an untrustworthy crew, and an ambiguous mission. He is to take the USS Oliver C. Gaddis, soon to become the PNS Tughril, on her final voyage to be donated to Pakistan. But in Kirachi, Dan gets new orders: take Gaddis still further east, and operate against modern pirates preying on commercial shipping in the remote, dangerous South China Sea.

On the dark waterside docks of Shanghai, a photographer is recording cargo being secretly loaded when he's brutally killed and his camera destroyed. Shortly thereafter Covert-One director Fred Klein brings the word to the President that there's a Chinese cargo ship rumored to be carrying tons of chemicals to be used by a rogue nation to create new biological weapons. Klein is ordered to get the President solid proof of what the Chinese ship is ferrying.

Admiral Lenson leads Operation Rupture, the invasion of South China, in a bid to finally end the war and restore peace. Meanwhile, Captain Cheryl Staurulakis fights to take a radical new “super ship” to sea, even though its power and capability may introduce more risk than reward.

It is Sunday afternoon, and Theodosia and Drayton are catering a formal tea at a hot-air-balloon rally. But as the sky turns gray and the clouds start to boil up, a strange object zooms out of nowhere. It is a drone, and it appears to be buzzing around the balloons, checking them out. As Theodosia and Drayton watch, the drone, hovering like some angry, mechanized insect, deliberately crashes into the balloon next to them. An enormous, fiery explosion erupts, and everyone watches in horror as the balloon plummets to the earth, killing all three of its passengers.

Herbalist China Bayles' latest adventure takes her to the mountains of North Carolina, where her friend Dorothea Harper serves as the director and curator of the Hemlock House Library, a priceless collection of rare gardening books housed in a haunted mountainside mansion that once belonged to Sunny Carswell, a reclusive heiress. But the most valuable book - A Curious Herbal, created by Elizabeth Blackwell in the 1730s - is missing, and Dorothea is under suspicion.

A prodigious Chinese swimmer kills himself on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. Days later, a champion weightlifter suffers a fatal heart attack prior to competition. Detective Li Yan senses a conspiracy surrounding the fatalities and finds a female athlete willing to talk. But she will trust only one person: Li's fiancée, Margaret Campbell. When Campbell's contact herself vanishes, the gun is fired on a race against time. And Li must now outrun - and outwit - an enemy bent on pushing him beyond endurance.

While Admiral Dan Lenson motorcycles across a post-Armageddon US in search of his missing daughter, his wife, Blair Titus, lands in a spookily deserted, riot-torn Beijing to negotiate the reunification of Taiwan with the rest of China and try to create a democratic government. But a CIA-sponsored Islamic insurgency in Xianjiang province is hurtling out of control. Andres Korzenowski, a young case officer, must decide whether ex-SEAL Master Chief Teddy Oberg - now the leader of a ruthless jihad - should be extracted, left in place, or terminated.

New York Times best-selling author Susan Wittig Albert is widely acclaimed for her cozy China Bayles mystery series. In Cat’s Claw, China’s friend Police Chief Sheila Dawson takes center stage. When local computer guru Larry Kirk is found dead, many are convinced it was suicide over his recent divorce. But Sheila has a hunch there’s more to this case than meets the eye - especially when evidence surfaces that Larry was being stalked.

Commanding a combined US-South Korea force, the newly promoted US Navy hero Dan Lenson wonders if his embattled group can possibly keep sea lanes open in the Central Pacific as he tries to turn the tide and buy time for the Allies to regroup. But when his own flagship comes under ferocious attack, he must leave it to assume command elsewhere - without knowing when he'll be able to return. In the meantime, SEAL operator Teddy Oberg, escaping from a hellish POW camp, heads west through desolate mountains toward what he hopes will be freedom.

When a prominent animal researcher is found hanged in the midst of angry protests against his experiments, suspicion falls on biology professor Dottie Riddle. Known as the Cat Lady of Pecan Springs, Dottie's sympathy for strays—and the victim's distaste for them—gives the police reason to think she may be capable of murder. But China Bayles doesn't think so. She hires a lawyer for Dottie and starts looking around for clues. But she soon discovers that digging up old evil is a dirty and dangerous business...

Olivia Andrews is locally famous for her blog and podcast, Forget Me Not: A Crime Victim’s Storyboard, which is dedicated to telling the stories of victims of crime. Now she has a stunning story to tell about a decades-old murder mystery involving a prominent citizen of Pecan Springs—someone who isn’t the man everybody thinks he is. But she is killed by a hit-and-run driver while she’s out jogging early one morning. Was it an accident—or something else? Her sister wants to know.