The violent and vengeful lives of three sons are exposed when their despicable father is murdered, and each man struggles to come to terms with the guilt over his involvement in the crime. Reissue.

Reissue of Paretsky's thriller featuring private eye V.I. Warshawski, 25 years after the publication of her debut.

Checking up on empty family mansions for an old client, V.I. discovers the dead body of a missing reporter who disappeared during the McCarthy era, a find that is linked to two prestigious Chicago families and leads to her involvement in the search for a missing boy with terrorist connections. Reprint.

The bestselling V.I. Warshawski novels have dazzled readers and earned the acclaim of critics everywhere. “V.I. Warshawski rules,” writes Newsweek, crowning her “the most engaging woman in detective fiction.” Of V.I.'s creator, the Chicago Tribune says “Sara Paretsky has no peer.”

Now Paretsky brings her incomparable storytelling brilliance to her most powerful Warshawski novel yet. Total Recall follows the Chicago P.I. on a road that winds back more than fifty years — and into an intricate maze of wartime lies, heartbreaking secrets, and harrowing retribution.

For V.I., the journey begins with a national conference in downtown Chicago, where angry protesters are calling for the recovery of Holocaust assets. Replayed on the evening news is the scene of a slight man who has stood up at the conference to tell an astonishing story of a childhood shattered by the Holocaust — a story that has devastating consequences for V.I.'s cherished friend and mentor, Lotty Herschel.

Lotty was a girl of nine when she emigrated from Austria to England, one of a group of children wrenched from their parents and saved from the Nazi terror just before the war broke out. Now stunningly — impossibly — it appears that someone from that long-lost past may have returned.

With the help of a recovered-memory therapist, Paul Radbuka has recently learned his true identity. But is he who he claims to be? Or is he a cunning impostor who has usurped someone else's history ... a history Lotty has tried to forget for over fifty years?

As a frightened V.I. watches her friend unravel, she sets out to help in the only way she can: by investigating Radbuka's past. Already working on a difficult case for a poor family cheated of their life insurance, she tries to balance Lotty's needs with her client's, only to find that both are spiraling into a whirlpool of international crime that stretches from Switzerland and Germany to Chicago's South Side.

As the atrocities of the past reach out to engulf the living, V.I. struggles to decide whose memories of a terrible war she can trust, and moves closer to a chilling realization of the truth — a truth that almost destroys her oldest friend.

With fierce emotional power, Sara Paretsky has woven a gripping and morally complex novel of crime and punishment, memory and illusion. Destined to become a suspense classic, Total Recall proves once again the daring and compelling genius of Sara Paretsky.


From the Hardcover edition.

Among the first, and perhaps the most compelling, female private investigators of contemporary fiction, Sara Paretsky's incomparable character V. I. Warshawski at last returns to the page in her first full-length appearance since 1994's Tunnel Vision. Hard Time is the work of a master--a riveting novel of suspense that is indisputably Paretsky's best V.I. Warshawski novel yet. Multimedia conglomerate Global Entertainment has purchased the Chicago Herald-Star, forcing the paper's staff to scramble to stay employed. Reporter Murray Ryerson, V.I.'s longtime friend and sometime rival, manages to reinvent himself as the host of a television show on Global's network.

On her way home from a party celebrating Murray's debut, V.I. almost runs over a woman lying in the street. Stopping to help, V.I. soon learns that her Good Samaritan act will drop her squarely in a boiling intrigue. In a case that forces her to go head-to-head with one of the world's largest providers of private security and prison services, a case that exposes dark hidden truths behind the razzle-dazzle of the entertainment industry, V.I. will be ahead of the game if she gets out alive.

Sara Paretsky's genius made Chicago private eye  V.I. Warshawski a household name.  Now the New York Times bestselling author explores an unseen corner of the city she loves.  In Ghost Country she has written a parable for the millennium, a powerful, haunting novel of magic and miracles, of four troubled people who meet beneath Chicago's shadowy streets--and of the woman whose mysterious appearance changes all of their lives forever.

They come from different worlds and meet at a time of crisis for all of them.  Luisa, a drunken diva fallen on hard times, discovers on Chicago's streets a drama greater than any she has experienced onstage.  Madeleine, a homeless woman, sees the Virgin Mary's blood seeping through a concrete wall beneath a luxury hotel.  Mara, a rebellious adolescent cast out by her wealthy grandfather, becomes the catalyst for a war between the haves and have-nots as she searches among society's castoffs for the mother she never knew.  

As the three women fight for their right to live and worship beneath the hotel, they find an ally in Hector Tammuz, an idealistic young psychiatrist risking his career to treat the homeless regardless of the cost.  Tensions in the city are escalating when a mysterious woman appears during a violent storm.  Erotic to some, repellent to others, she never speaks; the street people call her Starr.  And as she slowly transforms their lives, miracles begin to happen in a city completely unprepared for the outcome.  

In this extraordinary novel, Sara Paretsky gives voice to the dispossessed, to men and women struggling to bury the ghosts of the past, fighting for their lives in a world hungry for miracles, terrified of change.  A magical, unforgettable story of myth and madness, hope and revelation, Ghost Country is Sara Paretsky's most eloquent and ambitious work yet.


From the Hardcover edition.

These are stories of P.I.s who keep guns in their handbags--or their bras, of crime victims, homeless women, and housewives whose ordinary lives take a brutal, sometimes fatal twist. This collection brings several brilliant international authors to American readers for the first time, including Amel Benaboura, Irina Muravyova, and Helga Anderle. Mystery fans will also enjoy new works by familiar voices Sara Paretsky, Elizabeth George, Amanda Cross, Ruth Rendell, Antonia Fraser, Frances Fyfield, and many more contemporary masters.

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.

In 'Grace Notes,' V.I. has barely finished her morning coffee when she sees an ad in the paper asking for information about her own mother, long dead.  The paper leads V.I. to her newfound Italian cousin Vico, who's looking for music composed by their great-grandmother.  What's the score?  Clearly it's something to kill for... 'The Pietro Andromache' finds V.I.'s friend Dr. Lotty Herschel with motive and means to dispatch her professional rival and steal his priceless statue.  Lotty didn't do it--but does she know who did?  V.I. soon cuts to the art of the case--and it's not a pretty picture at all!

Summoned by an old high school friend to a race 'At the Old Swimming Hole,' V.I. ends up swimming with the sharks--the FBI and a ruthless gambling kingpin--in a pool of blood.... And it's only 'Skin Deep' when a relaxing facial transformation transforms a client into a stiff.  V.I.'s pal Sal needs help.  Her beautician sister Evangeline is prime suspect--and V.I. has only eighteen hours to crack the case before it's headline news...'  Three-Dot Po' proves there's nothing like a dog.  Especially a dog on the trail of her mistress's killer, with V.I. in tow...

In 'Strung Out,' love means nothing and V.I.'s quick to learn the score as her old friend's tennis-champion daughter is under suspicion for strangling her father with a racket string.  And there's more, nine stories in all, in this masterful collection of short fiction starring V.I. Warshawski, 'the most engaging woman in detective fiction since Dorothy Sayers's Harriet Vane' (Newsweek).

When a neighboring eighty-year-old dog owner turns up floating facedown in a canal shortly after an argument with a yuppie couple, V. I. Warshawski begins an investigation. Reprint.

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.

V.I., who had volunteered with Deirdre at a women's shelter, suspects her death is linked to a case of upper-class domestic abuse so slickly concealed that the police refuse to believe it.  Increasingly at odds with the cops, V.I. is blindly plunging ahead after the truth.  And her path may lead to corruption at the highest levels.or deep into the abandoned tunnels beneath Chicago's streets, where secrets are hiding in the dark like a child's--or V.I.'s--worst nightmare.

Crime is common ground for the twenty-one women  writers in this extraordinary collection of  contemporary mystery fiction. The voices here include  professional crime solvers who take you from the mean  streets of V.I. Warshawski's  Chicago in a case of music and murder... to the  California freeway where Kinsey Millhone's beloved VW  skids into a shooting... to the gang-held turf of  Sharon says mum's the word. And then there are  mothers, grandmothers, battered wives, and social  workers -- ordinary women in extraordinary situations  whose voices reveal contemporary life as seen  through a woman's eye. From the opening tale of a girl  down-and-out in London and what she steals from a  corpse... to the final story of a summer vacation  in the Berkshires, complete with romance and  sudden death... this unique collection brings us great  mystery writing that engages both our intellects  and our hearts.

V.I. Warshawski, a Chicago detective specializing in the field of corporate crime, is caught up in a game of lies, extortion, blackmail, sabotage, and murder in Chicago's shipping industry when she investigates the murder of her cousin, Boom Boom.

Meeting an anonymous client late on a sizzling  summer night is asking for trouble. But trouble is  Chicago private eye V.I. Warshwski's specialty.  Her client says he's the prominent banker, John  Thayer. Turns out he's not. He says his son's  girlfriend, Anita Hill, is missing. Turns out that's  not her real name. V.I.'s search turns up someone  soon enough -- the real John Thayer's son, and  he's dead. Who's V.I.'s client? Why has she been  set up and sent out on a wild-goose chase? By the  time she's got it figured, things are hotter --  and deadlier -- than Chicago in July. V.I.'s in a  desperate race against time. At stake: a young  woman's life.

Someone knocking on the door at 3 A.M. is never  good news. For V.I. Warshawski, the bad news  arrives in the form of her wacky, unwelcome aunt Elena.  The fire that has just burned down a sleazy  SRO hotel has brought Elena to  V.I.'s doorstep. Uncovering an arsonist  -- and the secrets hidden behind Elena's boozy  smile -- will send V.I. into the  seedy world of Chicago's homeless... into the Windy  City's backroom deals and bedroom politics, where  new schemers and old cronies team up to get V.I.  off the case -- by hook, by crook, or by  homocide.

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 twenty-five 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 to a snooper who knows too  much.