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.

Lurking in the dark corners of J. P. Beaumont's bizarre case was not just a demented mind obsessed with murder, but secrets so deadly that even a street-tough cop could die guessing.

This is the first in the popular series featuring California investigator Kinsey Millhone. She's 32, twice divorced, no kids, an ex-cop who likes her work...and who works strictly alone!

Jonas Piedmont Beaumont has had a hard life and learned at a young age how hard life can be. Two marriages, a treacherous battle with the bottle, assorted midlife and moral dilemmas, and a few decades as a homicide detective haven't convinced him otherwise. When Beau and his new partner Sue Danielson are assigned the murder of an elderly woman torched to death in her bed, Beau finds himself distracted by Sue's difficulties at home.

For Sheriff Joanna Brady and her 12-year-old daughter Jenny, an innocent Girl Scout campout turns into a lethal game when Jenny and her tentmate, Dora Matthews, discover a murdered Phoenix woman.