Kirjahaku

President Tim Connors is slipping badly in the polls and doesn't stand a chance of being re-elected. Chief of Staff Arthur Locke blames the First Lady, abrasive feminist Congresswoman Rachel Connors.Locke thinks he has the solution. Wouldn't it be easier to re-elect a handsome, grieving widower?When his plan to assassinate the President's wife goes terribly wrong, Locke sets in motion a chain of events that could allow him eventually to place himself in the presidency.Hired assassin Vincent Chambers tells Locke, "Killing a president is easy. Getting away with it is the hard part."Locke's wife, Elaine, discovers his plan to kill Rachel and vows to stop him, even if she has to kill the man she once loved with all her heart.Washington D.C. is crawling with ambitious characters. There's the randy Vice-President Dennis Quinn, whose trysts with underage girls make plenty of copy for the tabloids, the slovenly head of the DNC, Arnold Combs, who doesn't really care who wins, as long as it's a Democrat, the Assistant Chief of Staff, Ralph Mason, who's so head over heels in debt that murder for money seems a logical way out.Secret Service Special Agent Jason Hall, along with the FBI, the CIA, and Arlington Chief of Police Tom Reilly, all sort through the scarce clues, but will any of them find the solution in time to prevent another murder?

In the second of The Manhattan Stories, Emma is nine on the day they meet, hot-headed and wild-haired. Akecheta is twelve, already the man of his house. He saves her life and tells her she belongs to him.As they grow together up on the frontier surrounding Manhattan, Kansas, he teaches her how to fish at Pillsbury Crossing, how to hunt deer in the woods at Deep Creek, and how to survive in a land where bears, snakes, accidents, and even nature itself can steal away your life in an instant. She slowly teaches him how to trust and how to share the burdens of his shameful past.When he graduates from high school an aunt sends him to a university in the other Manhattan, in New York. Emma continues her education at home, graduating from high school and then becoming one of the first women to study animal husbandry at Kansas State University.While she waits for Akecheta in Kansas, he delights in Manhattan, New York. He is dazzled by the theatres, the museums, and the grand library.He explores low places like the Bowery, where a winning hand at poker can mean losing your life, and ventures into high society in the elegant drawing rooms of the powerful and wealthy, where he discovers that the most dangerous thing of all may be a beautiful, well-born blonde.

In the first of The Manhattan Stories, wealthy heiress Jessica McCarthy desperately wants to be married and have a family. A rogue and a scoundrel, Zachary Belk, the handsomest man in Manhattan, is the only one who has proposed. Even though her father warns her that Zachary won't make a good husband, she marries him. She soon discovers that her father was right. When the stock market crashes, and both families are left penniless, Zachary seeks a new fortune on a property he owns in another Manhattan, in Kansas. They are only there a short time before he deserts her. With a new baby, Jessica must learn to survive and support her family in an unfamiliar frontier land with only her faith and determination to guide her. Can she make her own way in the world and find the love she was meant to have in a place so different from the home she left? Just as she believes she has a happy future with a true love, an unexpected development threatens it all.

Devout Christians, Mary and David Gentry, fall victim to a series of crimes and mishaps in their comfortable, upper middle class Michigan suburb. David convinces a doubtful Mary to move to New Jordan, a walled, secluded, community being built in Georgia and designed for Christians only. There is literally no crime, and the houses don't even need locks on the doors. David and Mary are thoroughly investigated and approved but, as part of the requirements to move in, they must surrender all their considerable assets with the understanding that if they decide to leave, everything will be returned to them. Architect David is ecstatic when given the assignment of designing the new city. The children love their new school and quickly make friends. Only Mary is unhappy. She soon rebels against the strict rules for women; no makeup, no hair color or haircuts, and worst of all, no birth control. When she begins trying to persuade David to leave, she falls victim to a series of accidents and starts to wonder if her husband is in on a plot to kill her. His new assistant is a beautiful young widow, and he seems overly fond of her. With only one friend in New Jordan, Mary wonders who she can really trust. Convinced that someone is coming into her home when she is away, she begins to investigate and discovers bugs planted in the house, including the bathrooms and bedrooms. Her probing discovers that no one has ever left New Jordan alive. Living with the knowledge that every day could be her last, Mary realizes it was much easier to get into New Jordan than it will be to get out.

In the third of The Manhattan Stories, it's 1930, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains are home to a town of renegade Mormons. On Nancy's 18th birthday, her father tells her she must marry her cousin Abner, the town's blacksmith. He's already married to three other women, one of them her younger sister.Terrified of what being married to Abner would mean, Nancy runs away and gets lost in the woods. Hungry and cold, she finds a seemingly deserted cabin and takes shelter. When she meets Jake, the man who owns it, she must decide if he is a man she can trust. She has nowhere else to go except home to marry Abner. At first reluctant to let her stay, Jake finally agrees.Tired of living alone in the wilderness, he is willing to wait for Nancy to learn to care for him. As they slowly get to know one another, she learns to love him. She expects to spend her life there, but Abner has other ideas. His rage drives him to murder, and he sets out to kill not only Nancy, but Jake as well, and almost succeeds. Thinking they will only be safe in one place, Jake takes Nancy to his childhood home, Manhattan, Kansas. They aren't there very long before Nancy discovers their stalker has followed them across the country. She knows that sooner or later, someone is going to die. The only question is, which one of them is it going to be?

In the twilight of his career, basketball superstar Andre Jeffers meets very young and very beautiful Sierra Wentworth. For the first time in his life, he is not the one in control. She and her greedy mother maneuver him into leaving his family and marrying her. Once Sierra has what she wants, his fame, his money, and his son, she divorces him, but Andre is not going to be disposed of so easily. Sierra is found slaughtered in the boutique Andre bought her. The ex-husband is the prime suspect, but not the only one. Under the guidance of his experienced partner, newly promoted Las Vegas Detective Sam Howard begins his very first homicide investigation and discovers there were several people who had a reason to want her dead, including her own mother.

From their childhood home in a small Tennessee town to the stages of Las Vegas, ambitious Earleen Jameson guides the career of her talented and beautiful granddaughter, Special. Earleen will do anything to make Special a star, including murder.Unknowingly helping Earleen is Alexandra Merritt, owner of the Las Vegas Desert Flower Hotel and Casino. She has a lifetime habit of taking in strays, both animal and human. This time, she befriends the Jameson women and soon begins to suspect she might be sheltering a killer. Can she and her lover, Las Vegas homicide cop, Sam Howard, find the truth before another man finds Special fatally attractive?

It's National Finals Rodeo week in Las Vegas, and even more people than usual are traveling to Sin City in hopes of fulfilling their dreams. There's Sonny Monroe, a country music superstar clinging to the edge of disaster. Ferlin and Patsy want to be married by an Elvis impersonator. Lil'bit Meade wants to win the barrel racing title. Charles Driscoll is starting a new job and wants to prove he has what it takes. Sandy Novarro plans on winning the Megabucks jackpot. Inquizitor, the meanest bull in rodeo, wants the chance to kill another human being.When one of the new arrivals winds up dead, casino owner Alexandra Merritt and homicide detective Mike Simmons have a case to solve, and must do it before the suspects all leave town. There's only one murderer, but everyone involved will find that it's a Rough Ride in Vegas.

Kansas 1852Half-breed Everett Snipes discovers a newborn baby crying by the body of her mother. He recognizes the mother as the second wife of his cousin Wakiza, chief of the Village of Scouts located a few miles from the Army base. Everett rescues the infant and takes her to her family. The child's people are being pushed out of their ancestral lands. In the East, rumblings of the coming war over slavery are already spreading across the nation, and Kansas, Bloody Kansas, will not escape the carnage.The Kansa Indians once controlled the entire territory. Now, white settlers are flooding in and, in spite of treaties, stealing reservation lands while the white government takes no action against the invasion. As she grows, Kimimela and her family fight marauding Pawnees, the white man's diseases, and changing times. Under the protection of her cousin Everett, a man who belongs nowhere, yet manages to fit in everywhere, she survives. Kimimela must adapt and make her way in life by learning to blend in with the very people who have stolen everything rightfully hers.Throughout her struggle, Kimimela, the daughter and granddaughter of chiefs, clings to the traditions of her people. She is Kansa ... and will never forget it.