Is she missing, or was she ever there? As a newspaper reporter, Lexie Lincoln knows a good story when she sees one, and when a source doesn’t show up for an interview and doesn’t answer her phone, Lexie feels certain there’s something wrong. This woman is a visitor to town, on her own and vulnerable, and Lexie may be the only person to realize she’s gone missing. The weird thing is that nobody else remembers seeing this woman, even though Lexie met her during a busy night in her friend Margarita’s restaurant. That makes it hard for her to convince anyone that there’s a problem. After all, Lexie can see ghosts most other people don’t. The woman Lexie talked to might not even have been alive. Sure of her instincts, Lexie sets out to learn more about the woman and what might have happened to her. The plot thickens when the woman’s car is found abandoned. Now Lexie knows she didn’t imagine the visitor, but where is she, and what happened to her? As the clues line up, Lexie starts to worry that they’re just a bit too neat, too much like a good story. Now that the police are seriously investigating the woman’s disappearance, Lexie’s credibility may be in danger if she got the story all wrong in the first place. She has to find the truth before the police do—and before her next issue goes to press—if she doesn’t want to be the editor who cried wolf.

Was It an Accident—or Vengeance? When a fisherman spots a car in the river, it’s the most exciting news during a slow week in Stirling Mills, and newspaper editor Lexie Lincoln is there to cover it. The cops think it was an accident, but a ghost on the scene tells Lexie the drowned driver got what he deserved for cheating her out of her land. Lexie figures the ghost got vengeance. There are just two problems: A ghost can’t be prosecuted for murder, and the person the ghost named isn’t one of the people found in the car. Still, Lexie thinks it’s worth digging into, and she discovers that someone has been taking advantage of elderly landowners. She’d have thought the town would rally behind her investigation of a real estate scam, but she finds herself standing alone. Her suspect has an eerie hold over everyone he encounters. If she doesn’t find concrete proof that he committed a crime, she may get run out of town. That’s a real challenge when no one still alive will talk to her. And then there’s still the case of the drowned driver and his passenger—was it an accident, or did the scheme lead to murder?

Locking the doors may not keep a killer out Lexie Lincoln hoped the Saturday outing Wes Mosby planned would be a date, a step toward defining their ambiguous relationship, but it turns out to be something better: a story. Wes fears there was something shady about the construction of a bridge that collapsed in a recent storm. It’s out of his jurisdiction, but he thinks Lexie’s just the person to dig into it. She suspects Wes might be right when the county engineer she calls about the bridge invites her to his house for a cookout instead of arranging an interview. There must be something he doesn’t want to discuss at the office. But when she arrives, he’s nowhere to be found. His family can’t get into the house because it’s locked from the inside. After the police resort to kicking in a door, they find him dead from an apparent suicide. Or is it? It doesn’t make sense for him to invite Lexie over, then kill himself before talking. On the other hand, there are those locked doors. How could the killer have left? Then again, this is Stirling Mills, where half the population can do seemingly impossible things. Getting in and out in spite of locked doors isn’t out of the question. If it was murder, was he killed because of the bridge, or was it something else? Either way, Lexie’s investigation into the bridge has made her a target of threats. If she’s dealing with someone willing to kill to keep her from finding and publishing the truth, and if that person can lock or unlock any door, she won’t be safe until she brings the killer to justice.

A Boston Wedding... A Veiled Threat... A Dangerous Environment... When Nancy attends a wedding in Boston, she encounters a marriage marred by mischief. The groom may have stolen the bride's heart, but a thief has made off with her antique lace veil! From a mansion in Cape Cod to a museum of witchcraft in Salem, Nancy, Bess, and George follow a trail of intrigue and deceit across the New England countryside. They uncover the shocking story behind the wedding-day prank -- and a $60 million mystery behind the vanishing veil!

Small-time Crime, Big-time Danger Of all the crimes to plague the idyllic small town of Stirling Mills, Texas, Lexie Lincoln never expected jewelry theft. But thieves are breaking into local homes, stealing cheap costume jewelry and stirring up paranoia. When a ghost suggests that the jewelry may be more valuable than anyone realizes, Lexie finds herself delving into forgotten chapters of the town’s strange history. It seems the jewelry might actually be valuable to those with the ability to use its power, and that poses a real danger as the crimes escalate. Lexie needs to track down the thieves before they can use the gems for nefarious purposes—and before the town tears itself apart with fear and suspicion. She can’t exactly tell local cop Wes Mosby that she’s getting hot tips from ghosts, so it’s up to her to crack the case, stop the thieves, and foil their sinister agenda in time to save the town’s spring festival. Another Lucky Lexie mystery by the author of the Enchanted, Inc. series.

It’s the event someone’s dying to attend . . . The grand-opening party at a new bed-and-breakfast in a vintage farmhouse that’s supposedly haunted poses quite the dilemma for Lexie Lincoln. Most of the other guests are noted ghost hunters, and since Lexie actually can see ghosts, she’ll know whether they’re frauds and whether the inn really is haunted. But showing what she knows or honestly reporting on what she sees and hears would make her sound like a tabloid reporter rather than a serious journalist. Ghosts become the least of Lexie’s concerns when a flash flood blocks the road out and then one of the guests is found dead. Someone in the inn has to be a killer. If they don’t figure out who, there could be more victims. It’s up to Lexie to enlist the aid of the resident ghosts to break the case and save them all, but that may mean revealing her secret talent to the rest of the world. Or is an angry ghost the real threat?

Someone knows who’s been naughty, and they’re not being nice about it Lexie Lincoln is excited about the holiday season. Stirling Mills puts on a big celebration, with elaborate light displays and numerous events. It’ll be like living in one of those TV Christmas movies she binges every December. There’s just one damper on her holiday spirit: the Secret Santa, an information vigilante who seems to have access to the Naughty list and who is sharing that information through anonymous notes sometimes slipped into pockets and sometimes left in people’s homes during the night. Since nothing is damaged or taken and there’s no sign of a break-in, no one has reported these incidents to the police, so they aren’t involved, but that doesn’t stop Lexie from investigating. Informing people about affairs, backstabbing, and workplace politics stirs up strife, and the fact that the Santa sometimes also leaves gifts that fulfill unspoken needs doesn’t help. Lexie’s not sure she believes in Santa, but someone who knows secrets, good and bad, and who can slip into homes during the night sounds a lot like St. Nick. Busting Santa might put Lexie on the Naughty list, but she feels she has to save the holiday celebration before the bad vibe drives the tourists away – and before her own secrets are revealed.

As a young reporter in Uzbekistan, Bagila Bukharbayeva was a witness to her countrys search for an identity after the collapse of the Soviet Union. While self-proclaimed religious leaders argued about what was the true Islam, Bukharbayeva shows how some of the neighborhood boys became religious, then devout, and then a threat to the country's authoritarian government. The Vanishing Generation provides an unparalleled look into what life is like in a religious sect, the experience of people who live for months and even years in hiding, and the fabricated evidence, torture, and kidnappings that characterize an authoritarian government. In doing so, she provides a rare and unforgettable story of what life is like today inside the secretive and tightly controlled country of Uzbekistan. Balancing intimate memories of playmates and neighborhood crushes with harrowing stories of extremism and authoritarianism, Bukharbayeva gives a voice to victims whose stories would never otherwise be heard.

Between 1887 and 1927, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote sixty Sherlock Holmes stories, and his great Canon has become the most praised, most studied, and best-known chapter in the history of detective fiction. Over twenty thousand publications pertaining to the Sherlock Holmes phenomenon are known to have been published, most of them historical and critical studies. In addition, however, almost since the first stories appeared, such was their uniqueness and extraordinary attraction that other authors began writing stories based on or derived from them. A new genre had appeared: pastiches; parodies; burlesques; and stories that attempted to copy or rival the great detective himself. As the field widened, there was hardly a year in the twentieth century in which new short stories or novels did not appear. Many hundreds are now known to have been published, some of them written by authors well-known for their work in other literary fields. The non-canonical Sherlock Holmes literature not only constitutes a literary field of considerable historical interest, but includes many stories that are both enjoyable and fascinating in their own right. Although a large bibliography on these stories exists, and a few limited anthologies have been published, no attempt has previously been made to collect them all and discuss them comprehensively. The Alternative Sherlock Holmes does so: it provides a new and valuable approach to the Sherlock Holmes literature, as well as making available many works that have for years remained forgotten. Presented as an entertaining narrative, of interest to both the aficionado and the scholar, it provides full bibliographic data on virtually all the known stories in the field.