New Releases by Gail Bowen

Award-winning mystery writer Gail Bowen’s first three masterful mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Joanne Kilbourn are now collected in a single volume. In Deadly Appearances, a successful politician sips his water before a speech at a picnic on a sweltering August afternoon and, within seconds, he is dead; in Murder at the Mendel, Joanne’s childhood friend may have a far more complicated, far more sordid, and far more deadly past than Joanne knows about; and in The Wandering Soul Murders, a centre for street kids holds a dark and disturbing secret, forcing Joanne to act when her own children are drawn into a web of intrigue that will leave you breathless.

While Andy recuperates, Kate has more than a cranky patient to deal with: Maggie, the homeless woman who has been living in the laneway behind Kate''s house, suddenly vanishes. The police are indifferent, and Kate, prodded by the concern of her tenant''s son, T.C., begins a hunt on her own. Her search takes her to corners of her neighbourhood she''s never had reason to explore, from a women''s drop-in centre to a seedy adult-video shop, and she gradually learns about Maggie''s unlikely and disturbing past. A brutal murder links that past to the present and ultimately engages Kate in a daring, potentially dangerous, investigation.