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.

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?

Mark Hodder's second Burton & Swinburne steampunk adventure, following the acclaimed The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, is filled with eccentric steam-driven technology, grotesque characters, and a deepening mystery. When a clockwork-powered man of brass is found abandoned in Trafalgar Square, Burton and his assistant, the wayward poet Algernon Swinburne, find themselves on the trail of the stolen Garnier Collection--black diamonds rumored to be fragments of the Lemurian Eye of Naga, a meteorite that fell to Earth in prehistoric times. From a haunted mansion to the Bedlam madhouse, from South America to Australia, from séances to a secret labyrinth, Burton struggles with shadowy opponents and his own inner demons. Can the king's agent expose a plot that threatens to rip the British Empire apart, leading to an international conflict the like of which the world has never seen? And what part does the clockwork man have to play? From the Trade Paperback edition.