Best-selling author Linda Barnes’ witty private eye, Carlotta Carlyle, approaches challenging assignments in proper Boston with savvy and compassion. In Cold Case, a decades-old missing person case turns red-hot, threatening Carlotta’s composure and a Massachusetts political race. A mysterious client comes to Carlotta secretly with a wild tale: he has obtained parts of a recently written novel by Thea Janis, the literary sensation who disappeared 24 years ago. As soon as Carlotta begins to hunt for the author, her client calls off the search. But she accidentally discovers Thea’s grave in a nearby cemetery-unearthing a tangle of lies and scandal that Boston’s most prominent citizens will do anything to suppress. With her Edgar Award-winning talents, Linda Barnes creates suspenseful mysteries packed with well-crafted plot twists and stunning surprise endings. Narrator C.J. Critt perfectly voices blue-blooded socialites as well as quirky folk from the seamier side of town.

There’s a mysterious woman who speaks broken English sitting in Carlotta’s office with a newspaper clipping about a mutilated corpse. Suddenly Carlotta is plunged into the desperate world of illegal aliens, the cold-hearted immigration agents who hunt them down, and the deadly “coyotes” who bring the innocents across the border.

The brash Boston P.I. Carlotta Carlyle takes on a case for the Green and White Cab Company. The investigation will lead her into the mysterious shadowlands of computer technology, where she finds that information is cheap and privacy is a thing of the past.

Edgar Award finalist Linda Barnes has been justifiably heralded for her scintillating mysteries. In Heart of the World, private investigator Carlotta Carlyle begins a frantic search when a young girl she’s been mentoring goes missing. Clues seem to indicate that the disappearance has something to do with the girl’s Colombian drug lord father-a man believed dead but who Carlotta now suspects is very much alive.

Best-selling author Linda Barnes sets her gripping P.I. Carlotta Carlyle mysteries-including Cold Case-on the mean streets of Boston, where blackmail, cover-ups, and murder abound. In this “utterly compelling” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) entry, Carlotta’s allegedly unfaithful fiancE disappears right after his supposed mistress turns up dead.

The photograph-of a raisin-faced baby wearing something pastel-arrives in a blue envelope. There’s no identification or return address, just an unfamiliar postmark. But something in the baby’s face makes Carlotta keep the snapshot. Three weeks later, she finds out why.