Chicago’s V. I. Warshawski confronts crooked politicians and buried family secrets in the gritty new novel fromNew York Times–bestselling author Sara Paretsky.

No one would accuse V. I. Warshawski of backing down from a fight, but there are a few she’d be happy to avoid. High on that list is tangling with Chicago political bosses. Yet that’s precisely what she ends up doing when she responds to Frank Guzzo’s plea for help.

For six stormy weeks back in high school, V. I. thought she was in love with Frank. He broke up with her, she went off to college, he started driving trucks for Bagby Haulage. She forgot about him until the day his mother was convicted of bludgeoning his kid sister, Annie, to death. Stella Guzzo was an angry, uncooperative prisoner and did a full twenty-five years for her daughter’s murder.

Newly released from prison, Stella is looking for exoneration, so Frank asks V. I. for help. V. I. doesn’t want to get involved. Stella hated the Warshawskis, in particular V. I.’s adored mother, Gabriella.

But life has been hard on Frank and on V. I.’s other childhood friends, still stuck on the hardscrabble streets around the dead steel mills, and V. I. agrees to ask a few questions. Those questions lead her straight into the vipers’ nest of Illinois politics she’s wanted to avoid. When V. I. takes a beating at a youth meeting in her old hood, her main question becomes whether she will live long enough to find answers.

Chicago’s V. I. Warshawski confronts crooked politicians and buried family secrets in the gritty new novel fromNew York Times–bestselling author Sara Paretsky.

No one would accuse V. I. Warshawski of backing down from a fight, but there are a few she’d be happy to avoid. High on that list is tangling with Chicago political bosses. Yet that’s precisely what she ends up doing when she responds to Frank Guzzo’s plea for help.

For six stormy weeks back in high school, V. I. thought she was in love with Frank. He broke up with her, she went off to college, he started driving trucks for Bagby Haulage. She forgot about him until the day his mother was convicted of bludgeoning his kid sister, Annie, to death. Stella Guzzo was an angry, uncooperative prisoner and did a full twenty-five years for her daughter’s murder.

Newly released from prison, Stella is looking for exoneration, so Frank asks V. I. for help. V. I. doesn’t want to get involved. Stella hated the Warshawskis, in particular V. I.’s adored mother, Gabriella.

But life has been hard on Frank and on V. I.’s other childhood friends, still stuck on the hardscrabble streets around the dead steel mills, and V. I. agrees to ask a few questions. Those questions lead her straight into the vipers’ nest of Illinois politics she’s wanted to avoid. When V. I. takes a beating at a youth meeting in her old hood, her main question becomes whether she will live long enough to find answers.

The New York Times bestseller from the author of Fire Sale

In Kansas, three families have coexisted not-so-peacefully for more than one hundred and fifty years: the Grelliers, the Fremantles, and the Schapens. Into their lives comes Gina Haring, a relative of the Fremantles who is house-sitting the derelict family mansion while she puts her own life in order. Her lifestyle and beliefs will put her at odds with her neighbors—and test the mettle of a community being swept up in events beyond its control.

Bleeding Kansas

Two farm families, the Grelliers and Schapens, can trace their Kansas roots back to the 1850s, a time of violent clashes between antislavery and proslavery forces. Their shared history and family rivalry is tested with the arrival of Gina Haring, a lesbian Wiccan, who moves into a nearby farmhouse and starts practicing pagan rites.

The Grellier’s and Schapens’ have always wondered who stands better with the Lord. Then the Griellier’s suffer a family tragedy and the Schapens’ are convinced that God favors them when one of their cows gives birth to a “Perfect Red Heifer”—a sign of the second coming. Passion, prejudice, and religious fervor rise to a fever pitch and then erupt at a pagan festival in celebration of summer’s end.

Hardbal

V. I. Warshawski is asked to find Lamont Gadsden, a man who’s been missing for four decades. The search turns up old skeletons from the Chicago’s racially charged history, as well as haunting family secrets—her own and those of the elderly sisters who hired her.

New information emerges about V.I.’s father’s role in a politically and racially charged trial almost forty years ago. Afraid to discover that her adored father might have been a bent cop, V.I. takes the investigation all the way to its frightening end.

“Victoria, sweetie, you look terrific!”

With those words—and the sour yeasty smell of stale beer—Elena, V.I. Warshawski’s derelict aunt, re-enters 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. After three terrifying attempts on her life, V.I. doesn’t know whether it’s the politicians, the police, or the developers who are after her.

As this, her sixth investigation, takes her deep into the workings of both the construction business and Cook County politics, V.I. discovers a connection between the two that brings her to a confrontation where the line between friend and enemy is redrawn to frightening effect.