Red Herring is a story about courage triumphant over fear. It's a mystery set in the Pacific Northwest-in Bellingham, Washington and the San Juan Islands. When radar spots a vessel heading toward an oil refinery, a Coast Guard patrol is dispatched, and an unmanned boat operating under autopilot is intercepted. Then the Coast Guard discovers explosives aboard, along with a note threatening the construction of a pipeline beneath an environmentally sensitive body of water. Fear of terrorism erupts. Ex-coast guard commander Charlie Noble, now a marine private investigator, agrees to search for the man most believe is behind the bomb plot. But Noble steps into a dangerous, puzzling web of intrigue involving corporate greed, Homeland Security, and murder. Through personal courage, gritty determination and uncompromising honor, he unravels the truth.

As an artist, my eyes are trained to observe the minutest detail, enabling me to spot the most obscure clues. Can you do the same? By looking carefully at the notes and pictures in my casebook, can you find all the clues and deduce how the crime has been committed? The reader, as assistant detective, must gather clues from the text and illustrations to help solve a mystery involving a stately home full of possible suspects and a disappearing fish-shaped ruby.

Originally published: New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

A 2022 MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD Nominee In this Avery Ayers Antique Mystery series debut, perfect for fans of Ellery Adams and Jane K. Cleland, an antiques appraiser hunts a missing gem while probing her parents' deaths. After her parents' deaths, Avery Ayers takes over the family business, Antiquities & Artifacts Appraised, from the home office in Lilac Grove and a branch in Manhattan. Now living back at home with her younger sister Tilly and their newly moved-in, eccentric Aunt Midge and her Afghan hound, Avery's life is filled with jewels, tapestries, paintings, and rare finds. But their world is rocked when Avery learns that the theft of a priceless ruby may be connected to her parents' demise. The trouble starts when the Museum of Antiquities hires Avery to appraise a rare, resplendent ruby. It bears a striking similarity to a solitary stone in the museum's prized Xiang Dynasty bejeweled dragon medallion exhibit, which has long been missing one of its ruby eyes. Now, Avery and her colleagues--ostentatious Sir Robert Lane and fatherly Micah Abbott--suspect they may have the missing gem. But facets of the case remain cloudy. Security guard Art Smith is always underfoot but is not what he appears. Another body turns up connected to the appraisal. And Avery receives mysterious notes that begin to put her life in danger. Avery enlists possible ally Art's help in cutting the list of suspects who might have polished off her parents and swiped the jewel. Was it art collector Oliver Renell? Curator Nate Brennan? Acquisitions Liaison Francesca Giolitti? Actor Tyler Chadwick? Was the crime impersonal or perpetrated by someone all too close to Avery? If she can't find the culprit, lovely Lilac Grove may be the setting for Avery's own death.

VBI (Vermont Bureau of Investigation) head Joe Gunther and his team are called in to investigate a series of violent deaths that appear unrelated until telltale clues reveal a linkage between them and that all of the deaths are, in fact, murders. However, apart from a single drop of unexplained blood left at each crime scene, there are no obvious connections between the victims or the cases. The police are faced with more questions than answers including what do the mysterious deposits of blood mean, coming as they do from three additional unknown people. In their search for the elusive truth, the VBI must plumb the depths of every suspect's past, every victim's most intimate details, and examine each piece of evidence down to the smallest detail—an examination which includes a trip to the Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island and an exploration of cutting edge forensic technology.

THE STORY: Three love stories, a murder mystery, and a nuclear espionage plot converge in this noir comedy about marriage and other explosive devices. It's 1952: America's on the verge of the H-bomb, Dwight Eisenhower's on the campaign trail

Fiction. The Crying of Lot 49, but funny. A Confederacy of Dunces, but sharp. The Big Sleep, but on acid. In this latest work by Andrew Farkas, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, not enemies. The moon landing was a hoax filmed by Stanley Kubrick. The Space Race and the Cold War were diversions enacted to cover up the biggest secret ever kept. But Wallace Heath Orcuson (Wall to his friends) has more immediate problems to deal with. He's just woken up in an apartment he's never seen before. There's a dead body under his couch. It's his girlfriend's husband, a man named "Senator" Kipper Maris. Meanwhile, at a donut shop, a radio narrator, who's been forced to adopt the name Edward R. Murrow, reads Wall's story. He hates it. He wants to change it. The problem: Murrow is a narrator, not a writer, and the penalty for altering a manuscript is death. Luckily for Murrow, his boss, "Senator" Kipper Maris, was recently murdered. So maybe no one will notice. Or maybe there's a reason for the rule. But you can't find out what's in Pandora's box until it's opened, right? Who wants to see what's inside?