Showing results by author "Sara Paretsky" in All Categories

Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller and MWA Grandmaster Sara Paretsky has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

Chicago may be the city of broad shoulders, but its political law is "Pay to Play." Money changes hands in the middle of the night, and by morning, buildings and parks are replaced by billion-dollar projects. Chicago PI V. I. Warshawski gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals through her impetuous goddaughter, Bernie Fouchard. Bernie tries to rescue Lydia Zamir, a famed singer-songwriter now living on the streets; Zamir’s life fell apart when her lover was murdered next to her in a mass shooting at an outdoor concert.

In this gripping adventure - the first V.I. Warshawski mystery - America’s top private eye is tossed into a dangerous adventure when a seemingly straightforward assignment becomes complicated and deadly. Hired by a man who calls himself John Thayer, V.I.’s assignment is to find Thayer’s son Peter’s missing girlfriend. But when V.I. finds young Peter’s dead body instead, her client disappears.

V .I. Warshawski is famous for her cool under fire, her intelligence, her humor, her unflinching courage, and her love of good coffee. But even the strongest people sometimes need a break to recharge, so her friends send her to Kansas for a weekend of college basketball where Angela, one of her protégées, is playing. And that’s where trouble finds V.I.

Stubbornness has landed private eye V.I. Warshawski in big trouble at her Chicago office. With her grand old Loop building set to be razed, she's become a hold-out tenant amid frayed wiring and scary, empty corridors. Then she finds a homeless woman with three kids in the basement, and before she can rescue them, they disappear. Worst of all, she's been implicated in a murder - after the body of Deirdre Messenger, a prominent lawyer's wife, turns up sprawled across her desk.

An exciting mystery anthology of short stories by assorted writers including Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton.

On her way home from an all-night surveillance job, V.I. Warshawski’s dogs lead her on a mad chase that ends when they discover a badly injured teen hiding in the rocks along Lake Michigan. The girl only regains consciousness long enough to utter one enigmatic word. V.I. helps bring her to a hospital, but not long after, she vanishes before anyone can discover her identity. As V.I. attempts to find her, the detective uncovers an ugly consortium of Chicago powerbrokers and mobsters who are prepared to kill the girl. And now V.I.’s own life is in jeopardy as well.

Deadlock, V. I. Warshawski’s second case, involves the huge Great Lakes shipping industry. Once again the subject is murder - this time the “accidental death” of Boom-Boom Warshawski, an ex-hockey star and V. I.’s beloved cousin, who fell - or was pushed - off a rain-slicked pier on Chicago’s busy waterfront. Convinced that Boom-Boom was in fact killed because of information he had uncovered about criminal doings on the shipping lines, V. I. begins a long and frustrating search for her cousin’s murderer.

Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski knows from the start that Consuelo Alvarado's baby is trouble. Consuelo is 16. Diabetic. And the daughter of a friend. When she goes into labor too early, even V. I.'s wild drive to get her to the hospital can't save either Consuelo or her child.

It's strictly Friends & Family as V.I. Warshawski, "the detective mystery fans have been waiting for" ( Time), makes return appearances in a collection of stories that bring new meaning to "ties that bind." Decked out in her silk shirts and no-nonsense Attitude, V.I. is out to make a living - by the skin of her teeth.

Killing Orders, V.I. Warshawski’s third adventure, starts when her great-aunt Rosa summons the detective to her cold suburban home. Rosa made V.I.’s childhood miserable and the detective resents the command to help her aunt prove she didn't embezzle five million dollars from a local Dominican priory.

Legendary sleuth V.I. Warshawski returns to the Windy City to save an old friend’s nephew from a murder arrest. The case involves a stolen artifact that could implicate a shadowy network of international criminals. As V.I. investigates, the detective soon finds herself tangling with the Russian mob, ISIS backers, and a shady network of stock scams and stolen art. In Shell Game, nothing and no one are what they seem, except for the detective herself, who loses sleep, money, and blood, but remains indomitable in her quest for justice.

Accompanied by her dog, V. I. tracks her quarry through a university town, across fields where missile silos once flourished - and into a past riven by long-simmering racial tensions, a past that holds the key to the crimes of the present. But as the mysteries stack up, so does the body count. And in this, her toughest case, not even V. I. is safe.

Racine Avenue is going upscale — bad news for hand-to-mouth residents like V. I. Warshawski. As tax bills skyrocket, newcomers pressure old inhabitants into fixing up their homes or moving out. To the yuppies on the block the worst eyesore belongs to old Hattie Frizell, whose yard is “returning to native prairie, complete with hubcaps.” Their block club wants her and her five dogs gone.V. I. and Hattie have a relationship of sorts: one of those five dogs gave V. I.’s dog Peppy an unwelcome litter.

V.I. Warshawski isn't crazy about going back to her old south Chicago neighborhood, but a promise is something she always keeps. Caroline, a childhood friend, has a dying mother and a problem - after 25 years she wants V.I. to find the father she never knew. But when V.I. starts probing into the past, she not only finds out where all the bodies are buried - she stumbles onto a very new corpse. Now she's stirring up a deadly mix of big business and chemical corruption that may become a toxic shock....

Elena, V.I. Warshawski’s derelict aunt, reenters her niece’s life at three in the morning. Burned out of her SRO hotel, Elena has turned to V.I. for a place to stay. V.I. vows that it will be a short visit and uses some old political contacts to find Elena a room. When V.I. is hired to investigate the fire at the hotel, her aunt disappears, and her aunt’s young friend is found dead at a construction site. V.I. is warned off the case by both a high-ranking police officer and a major Chicago developer - who also happens to be a close friend of the chairman of the Cook County Board.

In Total Recall, Sara Paretsky brings together several disparate plots in one gripping story. This powerfully suspenseful novel confronts the machinations of a vast and corrupt industry that trades on the victims of Nazi terrorism; the strange and dubious phenomenon of "recovered memory;" and a personal story that brings V. I. Warshawski into the long-buried past of her dearest friend and mentor, Dr. Lotty Herschel.

New York Times best-selling author Sara Paretsky is the master of twisting suspense and propulsive plot. She has been hailed by the crime community as "a legend" (Harlan Coben) and "one of the all-time greats" (Karin Slaughter). Her acclaimed novels featuring detective V.I. Warshawski rank among the most celebrated crime series in modern fiction. Now in this spellbinding collection, Paretsky showcases her extraordinary talents with 14 short stories, eight of which feature the indomitable detective - and a new V.I. story.

Don't toss out the cake and candles just yet. Philip Roth, who, among other notable achievements, changed the way Americans laugh about masturbation, celebrates his birthday on March 19th. Check out: I Married a Communist and Operation Shylock.

In an instant, the lives of two women collide. One was behind the wheels of a Trans Am she liked to drive too fast. The other was lying in the road, dying an agonizing death. When Chicago private eye V.I. Warshawski gets out of her car to look at the woman she almost hit, she begins a long, harrowing descent into a world of shadowy secrets and tangled lives—and into the grimmest heart of her city.