Haydons lyrical sixth installment in her sweeping saga . . . While deftly managing a large cast of intriguing characters in a story thats both grand and intimate but never predictable, Haydon moves all the pieces into place for the next volume.--"Publishers Weekly."

"I don't care if you kill to get the money; you're going to pay your taxes on this land," tax agent, Paul Bradley said in 1913, only moments before his death.A hundred years later, Seth O'Malley's old friend passes him a cold case - four unrelated murders one hot summer in Minneapolis. Twenty-four hours later, Seth is hosting a house full of detectives with similar stories - four unrelated murders happened each summer in some mid-sized city in the United States. When murder-for-hire turns personal, Seth and Ava hope to find the tax assassin in Southeastern Colorado before he completes the contract to kill Ava and her entire family.Filled with memorable characters, romance, and intrigue readers have come to expect from Claudia Hall Christian, the Tax Assassin is the first in the Seth and Ava Mystery series.

Many men killed Julius Caesar. Only one man was determined to kill the killers. From the spring of 44 BC through one of the most dramatic and influential periods in history, Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, the future Emperor Augustus, exacted vengeance on the assassins of the Ides of March, not only on Brutus and Cassius, immortalized by Shakespeare, but all the others too, each with his own individual story. The last assassin left alive was one of the lesser-known: Cassius Parmensis was a poet and sailor who chose every side in the dying Republic's civil wars except the winning one, a playwright whose work was said to have been stolen and published by the man sent to kill him. Parmensis was in the back row of the plotters, many of them Caesar's friends, who killed for reasons of the highest political principles and lowest personal piques. For fourteen years he was the most successful at evading his hunters but has been barely a historical foot note--until now. The Last Assassin dazzlingly charts an epic turn of history through the eyes of an unheralded man. It is a history of a hunt that an emperor wanted to hide, of torture and terror, politics and poetry, of ideas and their consequences, a gripping story of fear, revenge, and survival.

“An enthralling conclusion to this superb trilogy, displaying an exceptional combination of originality, magic, adventure, character, and drama.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) King Shrewd is dead at the hands of his son Regal. As is Fitz—or so his enemies and friends believe. But with the help of his allies and his beast magic, he emerges from the grave, deeply scarred in body and soul. The kingdom also teeters toward ruin: Regal has plundered and abandoned the capital, while the rightful heir, Prince Verity, is lost to his mad quest—perhaps to death. Only Verity’s return—or the heir his princess carries—can save the Six Duchies. But Fitz will not wait. Driven by loss and bitter memories, he undertakes a quest: to kill Regal. The journey casts him into deep waters, as he discovers wild currents of magic within him—currents that will either drown him or make him something more than he was. Praise for Robin Hobb and Assassin’s Quest “Fantasy as it ought to be written . . . Robin Hobb’s books are diamonds in a sea of zircons.”—George R. R. Martin “Superbly written, wholly satisfying, unforgettable: better than any fantasy trilogy in print—including mine!”—Melanie Rawn

The only way to win this murderer’s deadly game... is to play along. Summer, 1380. Brutal and sudden death is not uncommon in the foul alleys and streets of London. The corpse of a clerk has been pulled from the Thames. They drowned, but not before receiving a vicious blow to the back of the head. Then Bartholomew Drayton, a usurer and money-lender, is found dead in his strongroom, a crossbow bolt firmly embedded in his chest: a real mystery because the windowless strongroom was locked and barred from the inside. So who killed him? And how? And are the deaths connected? Sir John Cranston comes to survey the scene. When other clerks are murdered, each with a riddle pinned to his corpse, Cranston enlists the help of Brother Athelstan – and together they must pit their wits against a deadly adversary bent on murder and mayhem. Another thrilling historical mystery from a true master of the genre, perfect for fans of S. G. MacLean, S. J. Parris and C. J. Sansom.

George Fisher seeks the moral roots of America's antidrug regime and challenges claims that early antidrug laws arose from racial animus. Those moral roots trace to early Christian sexual strictures, which later influenced Puritan condemnations of drunkenness, and ultimately shaped the early American drug war. Early laws against opium dens, cocaine, and cannabis rarely rose from racial strife, but sprang from the traditional moral censure of intoxication and perceived threats to respectable white women and youth. The book closes with an examination of cannabis legalization, driven in part by the movement for racial justice.