Lydia Quixano Perez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the drug cartels, her life is, by and large, reasonably comfortable. Even though she knows they'll never sell, Lydia stocks some of her all-time favorite books in her store. And then one day a man enters the shop to browse...

"Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarette when a chance encounter with a suicidal lawyer left Mark knowing a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most-sought-after dead body in America ... Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. And [his lawyer] will do anything to protect her client--even take a last, desperate gamble...

Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder following a shootout that kills his best friend, Miles Kendrick, an ex-mob spy turned federal witness, runs for his life, with assassin and former FBI agent Dennis Groote in pursuit.

For most of the last hundred years, Biloxi was known for its beaches, resorts, and seafood industry. But it had a darker side. It was also notorious for corruption and vice, everything from gambling, prostitution, bootleg liquor, and drugs to contract killings. The vice was controlled by small cabal of mobsters, many of them rumored to be members of the Dixie Mafia. Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up in Biloxi in the sixties and were childhood friends,...