Showing results by author "Marcia Muller" in All Categories

It's Sharon McCone's first case as staff investigator for All Souls Legal Cooperative. She knows nothing about antiques, yet she has an affection for Salem Street with its charming mix of antique and curio shops. Now elderly dealer Joan Albritton has been found dead, stabbed with an antique dagger. Her neighbors are shocked. Recurring vandalism has them frightened. Ferreting out the facts will take Sharon from the chaotic jumble of the junk dealer's establishment to a museum where San Francisco's most elegant socialites gather.

In this twisting mystery in a New York Times bestselling series, pranks escalate into a deadly scheme that Private Investigator Sharon McCone must unravel—​before they claim her life. San Francisco is home to more than 200 privately owned streets. Most are alleyways, but a select few are...

Deadly Anniversaries celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Mystery Writers of America with a collection of stories from some of the top names in crime fiction. An anniversary can honor many things: a birth, a wedding and sometimes even a death. In Deadly Anniversaries, editors Marcia Muller and...

The most renowned American authors in Western fiction are brought together in one bang 'em-up, shoot-it-out collection! Including titles by Louis L'Amour, Brian Garfield, Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini, Thomas Thompson, John M. Cunningham, Chad Oliver, Donald Hamilton, Loren D. Estleman and Owen Wister.

The Globe Apartments, six stories of decaying brick and concrete, rises above San Francisco's volatile Tenderloin district. The seedy former hotel, once a haven for the city's down and out, now houses Vietnamese families striving to improve their lives. But private eye Sharon McCone believes that someone from the Tenderloin's shadowy underworld is determined to drive the newcomers out.

It's a cold Sunday in San Francisco. Sharon McCone's alone on a routine surveillance job, following a man named Frank Wilkonson through the city's lush horticultural hot spots to the sere foothills of the Diablos. But when she returns to find her kindly old client in a pool of blood, nothing she's learned explains it. The search for answers takes her from Wilkonson's sullen brood on Burning Oak Ranch, to the eccentric havoc of a household in the Haight, to Golden Gate Park and the desperate digs of the homeless.

Amid the shifting world of San Francisco flea markets, shady vendors sell junk, precious antiques, and stolen goods side by side. Somewhere in the mix, a priceless collection of sacred Torah scrolls is gathering dust - and attracting a group of fanatical killers. When private investigator Sharon McCone helps one flea market kingpin fend off a stalker, she's drawn into the netherworld of deal-making and thievery, a dangerous milieu seldom seen by outsiders.

Appleby Island, once the magnificent home of a tycoon and planter, is a place of history and mystery in the Sacramento delta. Its story includes hints of tragedy, fueling rumors that ghosts still walk its derelict orchards. Now Patsy McCone, her new lover, and a group of invetors are turning the old mansion into an elegant bed and breakfast.

To tourists, bay-windowed Victorian mansions are quaint, peaceful symbols of old San Francisco, but on the secluded hill above Steiner Street, the gingerbread has sparked a bitter battle. Ambitious developers are pushing for restoration and residents are fighting for their homes… until a controversial restorationist is found dead on the job, awash in garish housepaint. Private investigator Sharon McCone is called in only to discover a second bitter feud, this time between the developers and members of the city's powerful architectural community.

Sharon McCone has chosen a guy who respects her as a professional and shares her passions. But living together in her beloved little house on Church Street may be another matter entirely. The looming crisis of who will compromise first is delayed when Hy heads out of town on business and McCone dives into one of her most baffling cases yet - the disappearance of Laurel Greenwood, who vanished twenty-two years before without a trace.

Feast on this delectable collection of "whodunits" from some of the mystery world's most diabolical chefs. Whet your appetite with Sara Paretsky's "Skin Deep," in which fan-favorite Chicago private investigator, V.I. "Vic" Warshawski, takes on a chi-chi salon after one of its clients turns up dead.

In New York Times bestselling author Marcia Muller's captivating mystery, private detective Sharon McCone's investigation hits closer to home than ever before?Ķ The Color of Fear When a knock on the door in the middle of the night wakes Sharon, she's wholly unprepared for the horrifying news...

Private eye Sharon McCone receives an email asking for help from her emotionally disturbed half-brother, Darcy Blackhawk, but he fails to reply to her response. As Sharon digs deeper, she discovers that Darcy sent his message from an Internet café in San Francisco, a city he's never been to before. Sensing that Darcy is in terrible danger, McCone begins a search for him throughout the city. The investigation leads her to the body of a woman at the Palace of Fine Arts, where a witness told her Darcy was headed. As her search widens, Sharon uncovers a connection to an unsolved murder....

Picture Salmon Bay: an isolated, run-down northern California village, home to an idle fleet of fishing boats, a deserted amusement park, and a handful of secretive, even hostile residents. When private investigator Sharon McCone arrives in search of one of the town's wayward daughters, the trail leads to the thriving resort of Port San Marco. McCone believes that the missing woman, a former social worker named Jane Anthony, was involved in the suspicious deaths of three terminally ill patients at an exclusive hospice.

Sharon McCone is excited - and relieved - to move her detective agency into the perfect new office space. Unfortunately, real estate woes aren't the only headache that the new building brings into Sharon's life. Possible 19th-century ghosts and a shady "intra-reality organization" ensure that Sharon's new office will bring as much excitement as any of her clients.

In the expert hands of two of the mystery world's top storytellers, being a housewife takes on a whole new meaning. These original stories explore the dark side of the housewife psyche and are guaranteed to delight. But be cautioned: These stories—"GDMFSOB" by Nevada Barr (author of the Anna Pigeon series) and "Acid Test" by Sara Paretsky (author of the V.I. Warshawski novels)—are meant to be listened to alone while sipping a glass of wine.

Settled in to their new home after they lost their house in a fire, and fully established in their new shared offices, private investigator Sharon McCone and her business partner husband, Hy, are finally starting to feel comfortable. That calm is shattered when Hy's former colleague, Gage Renshaw - a shady troublemaker whom they presumed dead - reappears, and it's unclear what he wants from his prosperous former associate.

The McCone Files gathers all of Sharon's short cases into a single volume covering her entire career as staff investigator at All Souls Legal Cooperative in San Francisco. From the death of a clown in Diablo Valley to the disappearance of a young socialite on the Golden Gate Bridge, from the murder of a teenage gang leader in San Francisco to the drowning of an aged Japanese herb-gatherer, and from streets filled with juvenile runaways to the quietness of a mausoleum, Sharon investigates.

Bobby Foster, car-hop at the chic Cafe Comedie, is going to the gas chamber. He's already confessed to the murder of Tracy Kostakos, the club's rising star. But two years after the crime, Tracy's body is still missing and Bobby's confession is full of holes. All Souls Legal Cooperative's final appeal sends San Francisco's number-one P.I., Sharon McCone, behind the footlights into the super-charged arena of anxious club owners and aspiring young hopefuls...into the fractured world of Tracy's priviledged family and the mind of a young comedienne who was not the good little girl they thought they knew....

Drug lords, missing millionaires, corrupt cops… just another day for Carpenter and Quincannon Detective Services. Two missing bodies and two separate investigations take Carpenter and Quincannon from the heights above San Francisco Bay to the depths of Chinatown's opium dens. For John Quincannon, this is a first: searching a Chinatown opium den for his client's husband, missing in the middle of a brewing tong war set to ignite over the stolen corpse of Bing Ah Kee.