A wounded ex-NYPD detective investigates murder and espionage on the coast of California in the early days of WWII. Autumn, 1941—Max Byrns was once a high-flying NYPD detective, but his career ended the night he took a bullet intended for another officer. The shooting left scars both physical and emotional. Now his wife Elizabeth has given up her own successful career at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art so that Max can recover in the peaceful town on the California coast where she and the rest of her wealthy Schuyler family once summered. In San Ignacio, they buy a house from a local Japanese strawberry farmer, Tadeo Suzuki. Elizabeth freelances in art restoration while Max and Tadeo become fast friends. But as the clouds of war gather, Max and Elizabeth worry about their son, Philip, serving in the Army Air Corps, and about the growing anti-Japanese sentiment in San Ignacio. When war finally comes, their simple, happy...

"What Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for Victorian London and Caleb Carr did for old New York, Sydney Jones does for historic Vienna."--Karen Harper, New York Times bestselling author of the Queen Elizabeth I mystery seriesAt first it seemed like a series of accidents plagued Vienna's Court Opera. But after a singer is killed during rehearsals of a new production, the evidence suggests something much more dangerous. Someone is trying to murder the famed conductor and composer Gustav Mahler. Worse, Mahler might not be the first musical genius to be dispatched by this unknown killer.Alma Schindler, one of Mahler's many would-be mistresses, asks the lawyer and aspiring private investigator Karl Werthen to help stop the attacks. With his new wife, Berthe, and his old friend, the criminologist Hanns Gross, Werthen delves into Vienna's rich society of musicians to discover the identity of the person who has targeted one of Austria's best-known artists.Set...

The summer of 1898 finds Austria terrorized by a killer who the press calls "Vienna's Jack the Ripper." Four bodies have already been found, but when the painter Gustav Klimt's female model becomes the fifth victim, the police finger him as the culprit. The artist has already scandalized Viennese society with his erotically charged modern paintings. Who better to take the blame for the crimes that have plagued the city?This is, however, far from an open-and-shut case. Klimt's lawyer, Karl Werthen, has an ace up his sleeve. Dr. Hans Gross, the renowned father of criminology, has agreed to assist him in investigating the murders. Together, Gross and Werthen must not only clear Klimt's name but also follow the trail of a killer that will lead them in the most surprising of directions. By uncovering the cause of the crimes that have shaken the city, the two men may risk damaging Vienna more than the murders did themselves.Written by an acclaimed expert on Vienna...

The new intriguing novel of suspense in the acclaimed Viennese Mystery seriesMarch, 1902. When Herr Karl, head waiter of the Café Burg, is found dead at the foot of the Maria Theresa monument, it is assumed he slipped on the ice and hit his head. However, a witness has come forward who says otherwise, and private enquiries agent Karl Werthen is hired to investigate.At the same time, Werthen is commissioned to locate a missing letter from the emperor to his mistress. Franz Josef is desperate for the letter not to fall into the wrong hands – but what incendiary information does it contain?As Werthen and his colleague, renowned criminologist Dr Hanns Gross, pursue their investigations, it becomes increasingly clear that there is a connection between the two cases – and that the future of the empire may be at stake.

An ex-Nazi on the run narrates this chilling novel of suspense in which he will do whatever it takes to keep his vicious past from being exposed. On the coast of Central America, an aging man sits down to pen his memoirs. He begins with his childhood in Vienna, just after World War I, when his family lived in respectable poverty and his greatest pleasure was an evening spent being rocked to sleep in the lap of his beloved babysitter. It would be a sweet tale if the author could withhold what comes later, but he intends to tell every horrifying detail of the truth. He's a war criminal—a veteran of the elite Nazi brigade known as the SS—and he'll write proudly of every atrocity he can recall. Distracting him from his work is inquisitive American journalist Kate O'Brien, who has come in search of a story. When Kate accidentally comes across his pages, the man has no choice but to act, kidnapping her and locking her in his basement. His latest...

Would you rather be the hunter or the hunted? That is the choice ex-CIA operative Jake Jacobs, now a comfortable history professor, must make after he discovers his name on an online hitlist. And his choice draws him back into the old game and to a former lover as he fights to stay alive. Jake Jacobs happily put the wasted years of his CIA service behind him two decades ago. Now a history professor in Oregon, he is at work on a book about a possible mole in the Agency who was never outed. Suddenly, he finds himself pulled back into the secret world when his name and photo, along with those of four others, appears on a revenge site, Reckoning. The site promises vengeance for an op that went sideways in Vienna during the final days of the Cold War. Ancient history to Jake, who figures someone is trolling him. Until a couple of the online photos are suddenly X-ed out, and he discovers those two, who were also involved in the disastrous op,...

A peace-seeking man must unravel the mystery that led to his former lover's death Expat American journalist Sam Kramer is burned out: too many dead bodies, too many wars covered, too little meaning in it all. He's got a dead-end job at the Daily European as the correspondent for Vienna, where nothing happens now that the Cold War is over. And that is exactly how Kramer likes it. But his private neutral zone is shattered with news of the suicide of Reni Müller, a German left-wing firebrand and Kramer's long-estranged ex-girlfriend. To his surprise, Kramer suddenly finds himself the executor of Reni's literary estate—but the damning memoir named in her will is nowhere to be found. Tracking down the manuscript will lead Kramer to the unsettling truth of Reni's death, drawing him back into the days of the Cold War and showing him the dark side of the woman he loved.

A ruthless German spy is torn between love and duty in this powerful espionage thrillerFebruary, 1917. A lone German agent is despatched to Washington to prevent the British delivering a telegram to President Woodrow Wilson – by any means possible. For this is the Zimmermann telegram: it contains a devastating piece of news which is sure to bring the USA into the war on the side of Britain and her allies.Having fought in the trenches himself, Max Volkman knows that America's involvement will only prolong the slaughter of innocents and is implacable in his determination to kill the British envoy carrying the telegram. But when his pursuit of the Englishman leads him to the home of American heiress Catherine Fitzgerald, wife to one of Washington's most powerful politicians, he is presented with a terrible choice: loyalty to his comrades in the trenches or the loss of the one woman he has ever truly loved. His decision will determine the outcome of the...