Sarah Brandt is shattered when she learns that a woman has inquired at the Daughters of Hope Mission for Catherine, the abandoned child she has taken as her daughter. The woman claims she was Catherine’s nursemaid, and is now acting on behalf of the girl’s mother to reunite them. Unwilling to simply hand Catherine over to a complete stranger, Sarah asks Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy to investigate. But when he goes to interview the woman at her tenement in Chelsea, he finds she has been murdered. Though her death leaves Sarah’s claim to Catherine unchallenged, her sense of justice compels her to work with Malloy to find the killer. Their search takes them from the marble mansions of the Upper West Side to the dilapidated dwellings of lower Manhattan and into the deepest and darkest secrets of Catherine’s past. And while Malloy helps Sarah determine the fate of the child she loves, he faces a challenge of his own—and his decision could change both their lives forever…

Reporter-turned–television executive Robin Hudson is living it up at New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel—until murder gets her down in award-winning author Sparkle Hayter’s dazzling comic mystery After a neighbor’s electric wall-hanging short-circuits and sets Robin Hudson’s East Village apartment building on fire, the TV newswoman and her cat are forced to temporarily relocate. Their new digs are in the Chelsea Hotel, home to bohemian artists both famous and infamous. But people have a habit of dying on Robin—this time literally. Who shot controversial bad-boy art dealer Gerald Woznik? His wife tells the world he was a great connoisseur and a real bastard. The heiress he was living with calls him a misunderstood genius. With suspects coming out of the woodwork, Robin is drawn into a homicide investigation that forces her to brave the downtown scene: guerrilla performance artists, fiery revolutionaries, handcuffed nuns, and the ex-lover of her current beau. She must scramble to find a missing woman and track the last stops of a modern-day underground railroad before she loses her life—and her last chance for romance. The Robin Hudson Mystery series is a winner of the Sherlock Award for Best Comic Detective. The Chelsea Girl Murders is the 5th book in the Robin Hudson Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

At seventeen, Chelsea King is kidnapped while walking to a friends house in a small Wyoming town. Ransom does not seem to be the reason for her kidnapping, nor does rape. Days later, she begins to understand that the men who hold her are members of a mafia. The man who ordered her abduction wants nothing more than to see her die. It is only her kidnappers growing infatuation for her that keeps this from happening. Chelsea is locked inside a luxurious apartment, surrounded by men of the mafia, many of them vulgar and cruel. One of them belongs to a sinister cult and wishes to use her as a human sacrifice. Another runs an exclusive gambling establishment that conveniently supplies customers with young, pretty girls. Escape comes welcome but unexpected, yet Chelsea is not happy. She is torn between love for her family and love for the gangster who once stole her. When he falls into danger she is faced with a difficult decision. Is she brave enough to risk her freedom in order to save him?

At her dead uncle's mansion for the weekend, Amanda and her cousins realize that he was murdered by someone present. They must find the killer.