From Arthur Ellis Award–winning, Grand Master of Crime Writers, and “the queen of Canadian crime fiction” (Winnipeg Free Press) comes the newest installment in the Joanne Kilbourn series A dark secret threatens the future of the Shreve family It’s August 24 and Joanne Shreve and her husband, Zack, are savoring the last lazy days of summer and looking forward to the birth of a new grandchild; involvement in the campaign of Ali Janvier, a gifted politician with a solid chance of becoming the province’s next premier; and the debut of Sisters and Strangers, the six-part series Joanne co-wrote that focuses on her early life. The series is the flagship of a new slate of programming, and MediaNation is counting on a big return. Joanne and Zack’s stake in the series’s success is personal. Their daughter, Taylor, is in a relationship with one of the show’s stars, and Vale Frazier is already like family to them. It seems...

For his Valentine's night call-in show, host Charlie D plans to offer his listeners two hours on the topic of "satisfaction." His in-studio guest is twenty-five-year-old Misty de Vol Burgh, formerly the highest-paid escort in the city but now happily married to eighty-three-year-old billionaire Henry Burgh. It's all good fun until Charlie receives a chilling message: "It's take-out-the-garbage night. Time to kill all the hookers and wash the streets with blood." When Charlie is directed to a website that allows viewers to watch the murder of a prostitute in real time and promises that another killing will be broadcast live within the hour, the hunt is on. But The World According to Charlie D. has an audience of over a million listeners. The murderer could be anyone, anywhere. Charlie and his team have less than two hours to find and stop the killer.

From the Arthur Ellis Award–winning Grand Master of Crime Writers comes the next installment in the Joanne Kilbourn series When Joanne Shreve's former student, Val Masluk, writes the biography of acclaimed novelist Steven Brooks, Val once again becomes part of Joanne's life. The biography is already raising troubling questions about Brooks's past, and the wedding of Brooks's daughter and Joanne's son is scheduled for the day before the biography is published. Both Joanne and her former student are haunted by memories of the seminar that led to the deaths of two people and the murder conviction of a third. The publication of the Brooks biography poses a threat not only to the future of the man and woman about to be married but also to the futures of those who love them. Joanne is certain that the threat is rooted in either her past or in that of Steven Brooks. The collateral damage caused by exposing that link will bring pain to both families, but life...

"Masterful." Barbara Fradkin, two-time winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel "Gail Bowen's Sleuth is a marvelous guide to the art of writing mysteries, told with verve, humour and elegance, and with a rare insight into the value of creating stories that explore the darkest parts of human nature." Ausma Zehanat Khan, author of The Unquiet Dead "This is one of the best 'how-to' books I've read. Utterly entertaining and personable, Gail Bowen also has some very solid tips for writers. I got re-inspired. New writers have a wonderful guide." Maureen Jennings, author of the Murdoch Mystery series "In her primer Sleuth, Gail Bowen has taken the mystery out of writing mysteries, and in her insightful and humorous and compendious way (she cleverly cites Elmore Leonard, Richard Price and others) Gail actually describes the building blocks that form the basis of any novel, mystery or not." Ian Hamilton, author of the Ava Lee novels "Intimate and informative, Bowen's Sleuth is...

From Arthur Ellis Award–winning, Grand Master of Crime Writers, and “the queen of Canadian crime fiction” (Winnipeg Free Press) comes the newest installment in the Joanne Kilbourn series. A dark secret threatens the future of the Shreve family. It’s August 24 and Joanne Shreve and her husband, Zack, are savoring the last lazy days of summer and looking forward to the birth of a new grandchild; involvement in the campaign of Ali Janvier, a gifted politician with a solid chance of becoming the province’s next premier; and the debut of Sisters and Strangers, the six-part series Joanne co-wrote that focuses on her early life. The series is the flagship of a new slate of programming, and MediaNation is counting on a big return. Joanne and Zack’s stake in the series’s success is personal. Their daughter, Taylor, is in a relationship with one of the show’s stars, and Vale Frazier is already like family to them. It seems the “season of mist and mellow fruitfulness” will be a bountiful one for the Shreves. But when a charismatic young woman wearing a grief amulet that contains a lock of her dead brother’s hair and a dark secret becomes part of their lives, the success of Sisters and Strangers and the future of Taylor and Vale’s relationship are jeopardized, and only Joanne and Zack can put an end to the threat.

From Arthur Ellis Award–winning Grand Master of Crime Writers comes the newest installment in the Joanne Kilbourn series When Libby Hogarth, the go-to lawyer for the rich or famous who have committed heinous crimes, comes to Regina to deliver the prestigious Mellohawk Lecture, she is met with a torrent of hostility and misinformation. Libby Hogarth had successfully defended Jared Delio, a wildly popular national radio host, against charges of sexual abuse brought against him by three Regina women. Her no-holds-barred cross-examination of the women stirred up a rage that still smolders. Zack and Joanne Shreve's commitment to protect Libby goes beyond the fact that in defending Delio, Libby had simply applied the principles at the root of the justice system. Zack and Libby share a history. They were the last two students to article with Fred C. Harney, a brilliant alcoholic lawyer who changed both their lives. Sawyer MacLeish, Libby's associate, was...

Arthur Ellis Award-winning authorGrand Master Award of Crime Writers of Canada (2018)The "queen of Canadian crime fiction" (Winnipeg Free Press) returns with a new installment in the Joanne Kilbourn series that is perfect for readers of Louise Penny, Ruth Rendell, and Peter Robinson. On a Saturday bright with harbingers of spring, Joanne Kilbourn-Shreve, her husband, Zack, and their family prepare to celebrate the season. Joanne's life is full, and at 60, she has been given the chance to understand a part of her history that for years was shrouded in secrecy.Living Skies is producing Sisters and Strangers, a six-part TV series about the tangled relationships between the families of Douglas Ellard, the father who raised Joanne, and Desmond Love, her biological father. Joanne is working on the script with Roy Brodnitz, a brilliant writer and friend. The project's future seems assured, but before the script is completed, Brodnitz...

Review“Bowen is a national treasure.” — Ottawa Citizen“Joanne Kilbourn mysteries are small works of elegance that assume the reader of suspense is after more than blood and guts, that she is looking for the meaning behind a life lived and a life taken.” — Calgary Herald“Bowen has a hard eye for the way human ambition can take advantage of human gullibility.” — Publishers WeeklyFrom the Trade Paperback edition.Product DescriptionThis second Gail Bowen omnibus contains her next three masterful mysteries featuring Canada’s favourite amateur sleuth, Joanne Kilbourn. In A Colder Kind of Death, a prisoner is shot to death in the exercise yard of a Saskatchewan penitentiary, and Joanne becomes a suspect when his wife is found strangled; in A Killing Spring, the School of Journalism where Joanne teaches becomes a world of deceit and fear when one of its teachers is found dead in a seedy rooming house; and in Verdict in Blood, Joanne is asked to help solve the case of a tough judge who is found battered to death in a park.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product DescriptionAward-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.From the Trade Paperback edition.From the Inside FlapAward-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.

When a prisoner is shot to death in the exercise yard of a Saskatchewan penitentiary, Joanne Kilbourn finds herself haunted by a part of her past she wished had never happened. The dead prisoner is Kevin Tarpley, the man who six years earlier had brutally killed her politician husband, Ian, in a seemingly senseless act alongside the TransCanada Highway. The haunting takes on a more menacing cast several days later when Tarpley's sinister wife, Maureen, is discovered dead in a snow-swept Regina parking lot. A brightly coloured scarf is found wound tightly around her neck, a scarf that belongs to none other than Joanne Kilbourn. Soon this single mother, author, university professor, and TV-show panelist is deemed the "number one" suspect in Maureen Tarpley's demise.Joanne knows there has to be a connection between these two murders. But what is it? A cryptic letter sent to Joanne by Kevin Tarpley just days before his death intimates that Ian Kilbourn's killing may...

Murder is the last thing on Joanne Kilbourn's mind on a perfect morning in May. Then the phone rings, and she learns that her daughter Mieka has found the corpse of a young woman in an alley near her store. So begins Joanne's chilling collision with evil in Gail Bowen's riveting third mystery, The Wandering Soul Murders.Joanne is stunned and saddened by the news that the dead woman, at seventeen, was already a veteran of the streets. When, just twenty-four hours later, her son's girlfriend is found dead, drowned in a lake in Saskatchewan's Qu'Appelle Valley, Joanne's sunny world is shattered. Her excitement about Mieka's upcoming marriage, her involvement in the biography she is writing, even her pleasure at her return to Regina all fade as she finds herself drawn into a twilight world where money can buy anything and there are always people willing to pay.From the Paperback edition.

In this chilling tale of the terrible power of the ties that both bind us and blind us, Gail Bowen has given us her best novel yet. Brimming with the author's characteristic empathy for the troubled, The Glass Coffin explores the depth of tragedy that a camera's neutral eye can capture -- and cause.Canada's favourite sleuth, Joanne Kilbourn, is dismayed to learn who it is that her best friend, Jill Osiowy, is about to marry. Evan MacLeish may be a celebrated documentary filmmaker, but he's a cold fish who not only has already lost two wives to suicide, but has exploited their lives -- and deaths -- by making acclaimed films about them. Not even Jill appears to be particularly fond of him, and Jo is appalled to learn that her friend is marrying Evan primarily to become stepmother to his teenaged daughter, Bryn. Even Bryn hates her father for having filmed her all of her short life. It's obvious to Joanne that this is stony ground on which to found a marriage. What...