If you are upset that you couldn't get tickets for the world championship boxing bout, ask a friend to invite you to her next co-op apartment board meeting. The language may be more controlled than a left to the chin, but the passion behind it is sometimes no less fierce. Returning from a visit to her son's family in California, retired attorney Martha Patterson steps out of the plane at LaGuardia into a New York City heat wave. OK. She'll get home to her air-cooled apartment, have a leisurely bath, rest up from two weeks with wonderful but energy-demanding grandchildren, and get back to gentle retirement, punctuated by the occasional commission to prepare a brief or other legal document for friends in the law. The first sign of trouble is Boris, the doorman at her apartment house. Boris has shed the uniform coat that seemed almost a part of him and is in his shirtsleeves. The entrance door has been propped open, to very little avail. Boris makes it official. He is sorry to say it, but the air conditioning is out of order. Tired, hot, anxious for respite, why does Martha agree to take a place on the board? There are only two ways she can only explain it to herself. Either she feels it's her duty as a long-time tenant--or she's a damn fool. The board meeting the next day seems to confirm the latter; she finds herself in the midst of turmoil, and tempers rise with the temperature. But could a fight over putting in a new kitchen or selling an apartment really lead to murder? The tenants' concerns seem unconnected to the death of a former archaeologist. The dangerous task of finding the killer and fending off another murder falls on seventy year old Martha, who combines exceeding common sense with sharp intellect. Sprague makes her characters live for us, taking us into the world of middle-class midtown Manhattan professionals, showing them as the sometimes flawed, mostly decent humans they are, and giving them one of the city's crimes to roil their lives and engage ours. Whether her readers live in the City or in an Iowa village, there is no mystery writer who shares her crimes and their solutions more effectively. Turn on your air conditioning and enjoy Gretchen Sprague's Murder in a Heat Wave!

Not everything that goes bump in the night brings gifts ... As the nights draw in, the veil between worlds thins, and all sorts of ghosts and ghouls come tumbling in. In the shadows, under the bed, in wind-whipped snowy landscapes and in rooms lit by guttering candles, the dead of winter are waiting for us ... and their hearts are cold as ice. From the mysterious occupant of an ancient tomb to the Christmas visitor who is troubled by violent dreams, these are ten ghost stories from the masters of the genre that will chill your blood and haunt your dreams through the darkest months of the year. With stories from Lennox Robinson, M. Burrage, Ruth Rendell, E.F. Benson, Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Russell Wakefield, M.R. James, Margaret Irwin, Algernon Blackwood and W.W. Jacobs

A terrible heat wave has fallen over Firefly Junction and tempers are flaring. With triple digit temperatures and humidity thick enough you can cut it with a knife, a chili cook-off is the last place journalist Sunni Taylor wants to be but Prudence Mortimer, the owner of the Junction Times wants her to cover the event. When one of the competitors is stabbed to death in the parking lot the cook-off really heats up. Sunni is no longer covering recipes and pepper eating contests. She has a murder to solve, and the triple digit temperatures aren’t going to stop her. Book 14 of the Firefly Junction Cozy Mystery series More in the series: 1. Death in the Park 2. Killer Bridal Party 3. Murder at the Inn 4. A Humbug Holiday 5. Calamity at the Carnival 6. Double Trouble 7. Havoc at Wildwood Manor 8. Fatal Feud 9. Trick or Trouble 10. A Crafty Killing 11. Death at the Museum 12. Murder at the Pumpkin Patch 13. Founders' Day Fiasco 14. Heat Wave Homicide 15. Terror at Thornbridge Hotel

This first in a series of novels based on the hit TV show CSI: Miami, details all-new cases that the popular forensic investigators must solve. Lieutenant Horatio Caine leads a crack team of forensic scientists who investigate crimes amid the tropical surroundings and cultural crossroads of Miami. Together, they collect and analyze the evidence to expose the truth and to bring justice to those who often cannot speak for themselves: the victims. Crime boss Kurt Wallace was fighting to hold his vast crime empire together—until a few well-placed bullets ended the struggle. As a host of dangerous "business interests" move in to seize control of Wallace's piece of the Miami underworld, Caine's CSIs must piece together the evidence to discover who was responsible for the crime that all of Miami had a motive to commit.

The “compelling” story behind the 1995 Chicago weather disaster that killed hundreds—and what it revealed about our broken society (Boston Globe). On July 13, 1995, Chicagoans awoke to a blistering day in which the temperature would reach 106 degrees. The heat index—how the temperature actually feels on the body—would hit 126. When the heat wave broke a week later, city streets had buckled; records for electrical use were shattered; and power grids had failed, leaving residents without electricity for up to two days. By July 20, over seven hundred people had perished—twenty times the number of those struck down by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Heat waves kill more Americans than all other natural disasters combined. Until now, no one could explain either the overwhelming number or the heartbreaking manner of the deaths resulting from the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Meteorologists and medical scientists have been unable to account for the scale of the trauma, and political officials have puzzled over the sources of the city’s vulnerability. In Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg takes us inside the anatomy of the metropolis to conduct what he calls a “social autopsy,” examining the social, political, and institutional organs of the city that made this urban disaster so much worse than it ought to have been. He investigates why some neighborhoods experienced greater mortality than others, how city government responded, and how journalists, scientists, and public officials reported and explained these events. Through years of fieldwork, interviews, and research, he uncovers the surprising and unsettling forms of social breakdown that contributed to this human catastrophe as hundreds died alone behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of contact with friends, family, community groups, and public agencies. As this incisive and gripping account demonstrates, the widening cracks in the social foundations of American cities made visible by the 1995 heat wave remain in play in America’s cities today—and we ignore them at our peril. Includes photos and a new preface on meeting the challenges of climate change in urban centers “Heat Wave is not so much a book about weather, as it is about the calamitous consequences of forgetting our fellow citizens. . . . A provocative, fascinating book, one that applies to much more than weather disasters.” —Chicago Sun-Times “It’s hard to put down Heat Wave without believing you’ve just read a tale of slow murder by public policy.” —Salon “A classic. I can’t recommend it enough.” —Chris Hayes

Christian Heurich (1842-1945) was not only Washington D.C.'s most successful brewer, he was the world's oldest, with 90 years' experience. He walked across central Europe learning his craft, survived a shipboard cholera epidemic, recovered from malaria and worked as a roustabout on a Caribbean banana boat--all by age 30. Heurich lived most of his life in Washington, becoming its largest private landowner and opening the city's largest brewery. He won a "beer war" against his rivals and his beers won medals at World's Fairs. He was trapped in Europe while on vacation at the start of both World Wars, once sleeping through an air raid, and was accused of being a German spy plotting to assassinate Woodrow Wilson. A notably odd episode: when they began to tear down his old brewery to build the Kennedy Center, the wrecking ball bounced off the walls. Drawing on family papers and photos, the author chronicles Heurich's life and the evolving beer industry before and after Prohibition.

Unsolved Murders of the UK: Cold cases from 1951 to Present Day delves into the mysterious and haunting cases of individuals who were brutally taken from this world, yet their killers were never brought to justice. From mysterious disappearances to seemingly motiveless killings, as well as other cases that continue to perplex law enforcement, this book takes a closer look at the victims, the crimes and the police investigations, as well as the theories surrounding each case. With a focus on the cold cases that have remained unsolved for decades, this book offers a comprehensive examination of the most intriguing and disturbing murders in the UK’s recent history. Join us as we explore the twisted minds of the killers and the relentless pursuit of justice for the victims and their families. This book will captivate true crime enthusiasts and armchair detectives alike.

A New York real estate tycoon plunges to his death on a Manhattan sidewalk. A trophy wife with a past survives a narrow escape from a brazen attack. Mobsters and moguls with no shortage of reasons to kill trot out their alibis. And then, in the suffocating grip of a record heat wave, comes another shocking murder and a sharp turn in a tense journey into the dirty little secrets of the wealthy. Secrets that prove to be fatal. Secrets that lay hidden in the dark until one NYPD detective shines a light. Mystery sensation Richard Castle, blockbuster author of the wildly best-selling Derrick Storm novels, introduces his newest character, NYPD Homicide Detective Nikki Heat. Tough, sexy, professional, Nikki Heat carries a passion for justice as she leads one of New York City's top homicide squads. She's hit with an unexpected challenge when the commissioner assigns superstar magazine journalist Jameson Rook to ride along with her to research an article on New York's Finest. Pulitzer Prize-winning Rook is as much a handful as he is handsome. His wise-cracking and meddling aren't her only problems. As she works to unravel the secrets of the murdered real estate tycoon, she must also confront the spark between them. The one called heat.

Young Jake Swift is afraid he is a suspect when his friend is found murdered. A Tom Jackson Story

It's July 1936 and Toronto is under a record-breaking heat wave. Charlotte Frayne is the junior associate in a two-person private investigation firm, owned by T. Gilmore. Two events set the book’s plot in motion: an anti-Semitic hate letter is delivered to Gilmore, who up to now has not acknowledged his religion, and Hilliard Taylor, a veteran of the First World War requests the firm’s assistance in uncovering what he believes is systematic embezzlement of the Paradise Café, which he owns and operates with three other men, all of whom were prisoners of war. The two events, although seemingly completely unrelated, come together in this wonderful novel that brings to life characters who are as real to the reader as those of the Murdoch series.