In this thrilling novel set in two periods of San Francisco history, Cree Black confronts the mystery of one of the strangest victims of the Great Quake.

Bert Marchetti, a friend and homicide inspector, asks Cree to help investigate a human skeleton recently unearthed in the foundation of an old San Francisco home, supposedly the bones of a victim of the 1906 earthquake. The bones have been sent to UC Berkeley for analysis, where their peculiar characteristics and anatomical deformities have intrigued the forensic anthropology team. They call the skeleton Wolfman. So who was the Wolfman? What caused the deformities, and how did he end up in that grand hilltop home?

Cree’s historical research takes her back to the unholy glory days of the Barbary Coast, old San Francisco’s infamous red-light district.As she assists at the forensics lab, she also begins to realize that Bert Marchetti’s involvement with the case is more complex than he has let on. Her narrative is illuminated by entries from the 1889 diary of Lydia Schweitzer, a Victorian woman with her own secrets–and her own compelling interest in the person who would come to be known as the Wolfman.

A vivid and elegantly plotted thriller that reveals San Francisco’s hidden face across two centuries, Bones of the Barbary Coast tells the story of two women determined to face human nature’s darkest aspects with courage and compassion.

Introducing Cree Black, a parapsychologist with a haunted past.

When Lila Beauforte takes up residence in her ancestral home, the 150-year-old Beauforte House in the Garden District of New Orleans, she is terrified by ghostly apparitions. The family reluctantly calls Cree Black for help. Based out of Seattle, Cree, a parapsychologist with a degree from Harvard, is a “ghost buster.” But as Cree gets closer to the truth, the proverbial skeletons in the closet of the prestigious Beauforte family come crashing down on her, and she must struggle to keep her own ghosts at bay.

Daniel Hecht has created a plausible, heart-stopping ghost thriller. Relying on the science of parapsychology to spine-tingling effect, he brings to life a remarkably compelling character in Cree Black—as well as the ghosts she confronts.

Lucretia (Cree) Black is a parapsychologist whose investigative methods include in-depth historical research and psychological analysis. When she’s asked by her former mentor, renowned neuropsychiatrist Mason Ambrose, if she would examine the case of a fifteen-year-old boy suffering from bizarre and frightening symptoms, Cree refuses to get involved. Physically and emotionally exhausted, she’s planning to take some time off. But Ambrose is persistent, so Cree reluctantly finds herself heading for a private boarding school on a Native American reservation in New Mexico.

Nothing in Cree’s background as a Harvard-trained clinical psychologist or her experience as a paranormal investigator has prepared her for Tommy Keeday’s case. A talented young Navajo, Tommy has recently been enduring violent, agonizing seizures that his family believes are signs of possession by a chindi, a hostile spirit. As Cree struggles to find answers, she becomes increasingly aware that Tommy and the people who surround him have some deep and disturbing secrets.

The follow-up to City of Masks, a Booksense 76 pick, this second novel in the Cree Black series is a thrillingly plausible supernatural mystery, a passionate love story, and a thoughtful exploration of Navajo culture and identity in modern America.

In a radical departure from her urban life, Ann Turner buys a piece of remote Vermont land and sets up a tent home in deep forest. She’s trying to escape an unending string of personal disasters in Boston; more, she desperately wants to leave behind a world she sees as increasingly defined by consumerism, hypocrisy, and division.

As she writes in her journal, “There’s got to be a more honest, less divided way to live.”

She soon learns she was mistaken in thinking a kindly Mother Earth would grant her wisdom and serenity in her new home. The forest confronts her with unanticipated dangers, aching loneliness, harsh weather, instinctive fears, and unsettling encounters with wild animals. It’s beautiful, yes, but life in the woods is never easy. When necessity requires her to start work as a farmhand, she quickly realizes that she held similarly childish illusions about small farms. Under the stern tutelage of Diz Brassard, the farm’s sixty-year-old matriarch, and the gentler guidance of Earnest Kelley, an Oneida Indian friend of the Brassards, she discovers what hard work really means. Ann faces her predicament with determination, but there’s a lot to learn–about the Brassard family, about dairy farming, and about herself. If she is to succeed in her new life, she must become as tough and resilient as the rural community she lives in. She must also learn to accept love–even if it arrives in the most unexpected forms.

On Brassard’s Farm is a tale of personal struggle, sweeping transformation, and romantic love. Author Daniel Hecht tells of Ann Turner’s quest for a better life with unsparing honesty and gentle humor. Through its portrayal of the unrelenting labor and harsh pragmatism of farming, On Brassard’s Farm reveals the deep durability of rural life and offers a much-needed affirmation in a changing and uncertain world.

The New Jersey State Police started calling him Howdy Doody, after the famous television puppet of the 1950s. In a thirteen-month period he had killed seven people: three in northern New Jersey, then three in Manhattan, and another in the Bronx—all of them found hung up like puppets, strings attached to their limbs. Finally, the murderer was caught in New York City. But several months later, State Police detective Mo Ford finds another victim, killed and arranged in exactly the same way. Is it a copycat crime, or did the police catch the wrong man? Mo’s theory about what happened soon expands, implicating US intelligence agencies and a horrific experiment with human beings. But with so many forces behind the scenes, how will he find the true puppet master?

Despite his brilliance, Paul Skoglund hasn’t held a steady job for years, partly because of his Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder that forces his body into wild swings and to blurt out tragically inappropriate words. When his wealthy aunt asks him to take on the repairs of her magnificent hunting lodge, he is in no position to refuse. But inside the lodge lies a mystery involving disappearances and deaths that haunt the region.

Meanwhile, Paul’s ex-wife is using his condition to wrest away custody of their young son, but for Paul, nothing and no one is going to come between him and Mark. Then quickening events lead him deeper into his family’s past, and as Paul faces the darker aspects of his own nature, he must brave the possibility that in saving those he loves, he might well destroy himself.