Judith A. Jance

With a divorce from her cheating husband of ten years pending and her high-profile broadcasting career abruptly ended by TV executives who wanted a "younger face," Alison Reynolds feels there's nothing keeping her in L.A. any longer. Summoned back home to Sedona, Arizona, by the death of a childhood friend, she seeks solace in the comforting rhythms of her parents' diner, the Sugarloaf Café, and launches an on-line blog as therapy for others who...

A prisoner languishes in a Phoenix jail cell, accused of brutally slaying his estranged wife. No one believes the man is innocent, except the new female sheriff of Cochise County, in town for a crash course in police training. Joanna Brady is out of her jurisdiction--and possibly in over her head. For a human monster is on the prowl, hiding the grisly evidence of his horrific crimes in the vast emptiness of the Arizona desert. And an impromptu investigation,...

After spending twenty years behind bars, Frank Muñoz, a disgraced former cop, is out on parole and focused on just one thing: revenge. The wife who abandoned him after his arrest, the mistress who ratted him out for abetting a money-laundering scheme, the detectives who presided over his case all those years ago--they all have targets on their backs. For Ali Reynolds, the first Christmas without her father is riddled with grief and uncertainty. And...

Sheriff Joanna Brady investigates a series of deaths in Cochise County, Arizona, where the victims were shot and scalped. Suspicion centers on a nearby ranch where European tourists come to play at Indians.

"Years ago, when he was a homicide detective with the Seattle PD, J. P. Beaumont's partner, Sue Danielson, was murdered. Volatile and angry, Danielson's ex-husband came after her in her home and, with nowhere else to turn, Jared, Sue's teenage son, frantically called Beau for help. As Beau rushed to the scene, he urged Jared to grab his younger brother and flee the house. In the end, Beaumont's plea and Jared's quick action saved the two boys from...

In the desert, a Native American woman is dead--an ex-con once jailed for the murder of her husband--and her teenage daughter has vanished into the long shadows of the night-still canyons. A dedicated law officer, Sheriff Joanna Brady of Cochise County has suffered stoically through loss and pain--yet she has never wavered in her commitment to duty and the pursuit of justice. Now, as she stands on the brink of a new life and new happiness, death is...

In Tucson, twenty years ago, a psychopath named Andrew Carlisle brought blood and terror into the home of Diana Ladd Walker and her family. When Carlisle died in prison, Diana and her husband, ex-county sheriff Brandon Walker, believed their long nightmare was finally over. They were wrong. Their beloved adopted daughter Lani has vanished -- a beautiful Native American teenager destined, according to Tohono O'othham legend, to become a woman of great...

Beaumont is taking some time off to get knee replacement surgery, but instead of taking his mind off work the operation plunges him into one of the most perplexing mysteries he's ever faced. His past collides with his present, explore the staggering cost of war and the debts we owe those who served in the Vietnam War, and those in uniform today.

A Seattle fisherman has died badly bound, tortured and set ablaze aboard his boat on the Puget Sound. And with his death comes disturbing questions and the key to a Pandora's Box of evil that has remained tightly closed for over half a century. Else Didriksen is no longer the beautiful, troubled teenager who disappeared from detective J.P. Beaumont's life thirty years earlier. Now she is a homicide victim's widow-frightened, desperate and trapped...