San Antonio College Library

When an actor's wife is abducted in Hollywood, the husband turns for help to lawyer Stone Barrington, the wife's ex-boyfriend. For Barrington, it is a dangerous assignment as the Mafia is involved, but he knows danger, having been a New York policeman.

Kinsey Millhone is working on a case involving the death of a claims adjuster for a California insurance company. The story takes her into the Los Angeles barrio in pursuit of a violent criminal, into jails and hospitals, and into a grungy bar named the Meat Locker.

Three early mystery novels--The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The High Window--introduce the world of hardboiled 1930s private detective Philip Marlow.

Lew Archer investigates the death of a wealthy matriarch found floating in her pool.

Reba Lafferty was a daughter of privilege, the only child of an adoring father. Nord Lafferty was already in his fifties when Reba was born, and he could deny her nothing. Over the years, he quietly settled her many scrapes with the law, but he wasn't there for her when she was convicted of embezzlement and sent to the California Institute for Women. Now, at thirty-two, she is about to be paroled, having served twenty-two months of a four-year sentence....

In 1970 in East Los Angeles, Gloria Damasco, a feminist political activist from Oakland, and her best friend Luisa are attending a march in support of the Chicano Moratorium. After the protest turns into a riot, Gloria and Luisa discover the dead body of a 4-year old boy named Michael David Cisneros; he has been strangled and his body defiled. Working unofficially with the lead LAPD homicide investigator, Gloria and Luisa become acquainted with the...