Tim Hess is a semiretired veteran cop staring at a death sentence - his own. Detective Merci Rayborn, young enough to be his daughter, is brash, impatient, and not someone from whom Hess wants to be taking orders. He certainly isn't planning on falling in love with her. Together, they must track down a psychopathic killer who's been abducting beautiful young women from the malls of Orange County.

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.

Terry Naughton, head of Orange County's Crimes Against Youth unit, is the champion of children. Someone calling themselves the Horridus has been abducting children from their beds, dressing them like little angels, and releasing them the next day, the only clue he leaves is a piece of snakeskin tucked into the folds of their gowns. So far he hasn't physically harmed any of them, but as Naughton well knows, it's only a matter of time.

In a pictures southern California beach community, a brutal serial killer is on the loose. His only victims are beautiful young women. His only adversaries are two cops haunted by problems of their own: the tough Tim Hess who is batting a life threatening illness, and the brash Merci Rayborn who has a rep for causing trouble. Now this unlikely team must put aside their personal issues to stop a ruthless madman before he strikes again.

There were two men in Rebecca Harris's life: Joshua Weinstein - the tough, dark, passionate, Jewish FBI agent she was engaged to; and John Menden - the blond, WASP, slick newsman who was her lover. Both men silently knew of the other's existence in Rebecca's life - and each hoped that when she made her ultimate decision between them, he would be the chosen one. Now they must become allies to solve her murder.

Some say that outlaws no longer exist, that the true spirit of the American West died with the legendary bandits of pulp novels and bedtime stories. Charlie Hood knows that nothing could be further from the truth. These days he patrols vast stretches of the new American West, not on horseback but in his cruiser. The outlaws may not carry six-shooters, but they're strapped all the same.

Ex-cop Jim Weir thought he'd seen it all during his years on the force. That is until he saw the body of his sister Annie, brutally used by a monster in human form, then carelessly discarded. He'd never seen such grief ravage the face of his friend and brother-in-law Ray Cruz, a good cop on the Newport Beach Police Department. When Weir learns that the only witness swore the killer made his escape in a Newport Beach squad car, his disbelief turns to confusion and outrage.

In the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, thousands of desperate refugees fled the killing fields for new lives in Southern California. But for those who settled in "Little Saigon," the war never really ended. The latest victim of the continuing struggle is Li Frye, a popular singer whose songs of hope and home have made her a heroine to her people. Ripped from the stage by masked gunmen, she has vanished into the dark alleys of Little Saigon.

Los Angeles is gripped by the exploding celebrity of Allison Murietta, her real identity unknown, a modern-day Jesse James with the compulsion to steal beautiful things, the vanity to invite the media along, and the conscience to donate much of her bounty to charity. Nobody ever gets hurt - until a job ends with ten gangsters lying dead and a half-million dollars worth of glittering diamonds missing.

Laguna: a place where a crazed killer has turned paradise into a Disneyland of depraved violence - with a fiery vengeance - and where homicide cop Tom Shephard unravels a grisly mystery. It reaches back across 40 years of sordid sex, blackmail, and suicide into the dark corners of his own past.