The Undertaker's Widow

They were young, popular, the perfect couple -- an all-American boy and a beautiful cheerleader. But the youthful passion that led them to Lookout Point that terrible evening would prove fatal. For Richie Walters the end came swiftly, as death descended upon him in a savage orgy of horrific violence. Elaine Murray would live long enough to learn just how lucky her boyfriend had been ...

Two brutal slayings have rocked a stunned city. But the murders are merely the nightmare's beginning, flinging open a terrifying Pandora's box of sordid secrets and dark revelations more deadly than the bloodlust that lives in the rock-hard heart of a killer.

Seven years ago, Phillip Margolin seized the imagination of thriller readers everywhere with his chilling breakout bestseller, Gone, but Not Forgotten. After five subsequent New York Times bestsellers, Margolin now returns to the haunting terrain of Gone, but Not Forgotten with a mesmerizing tour de force of psychological suspense, an electrifying tale of revenge and retribution that shows a master storyteller at the very peak of his craft.

Thursday: Subject is still combative after four days of applied pain, sleep deprivation and minimal food.

Vice squad detective Bobby Vasquez, for months on the trail of a slippery underworld figure, receives an anonymous tip that directs him to a mountain cabin. He races through the idyllic Oregon woods, expecting to close the book on a long-standing vendetta. What he finds instead opens a Pandora's box of horror that will haunt him to his dying day.

8:10: Subject bound and gaffed and placed in upstairs closet at end of hall. Turned out lights in house, drove off, then parked and doubled back. Watched from woods.

Within hours, Vincent Cordoni -- a brilliant surgeon with a history of violence and drug abuse -- is arrested for a heinous crime. Facing a seemingly insurmountable wall of evidence, he turns to Portland's top criminal defense attorney, Frank Jaffe-who, along with his ambitious daughter, Amanda, must put on an inspired defense. Amanda's first taste of criminal defense work is as intoxicating as it is chilling, but it raises moral questions she's loath to address. Is she defending an innocent man? Or is she using her considerable skills to set a monster free? Then Cardoni disappears under bizarre circumstances. Four years later, a second set of murders has begun ....

8:55: Subject exits house, naked and barefoot, armed with kitchen knife. Remarkable strength of character. Breaking her will be a challenge.

Has Cardoni resurfaced to ply his deadly trade anew? Is there a copycat killer? Or has the real killer been someone else all along? The police will do everything they can to stop Cardoni -- but they have to find him first.

Following a twisting trail of clues, including a harrowing diary that clinically records the killer's horrible deeds, Amanda Jaffe and Bobby Vasquez join the hunt-and themselves become targets of the twenty-first century's first genuinely monstrous psychopath.

Private investigator Dana Cutler and attorney Brad Miller have overcome more than a few daunting challenges and powerful enemies to see justice done. Against tremendous odds, they successfully unmasked an American president's involvement in a chain of murders. They also saved the life of a Supreme Court justice while foiling a conspiracy by rogue members of the CIA to fix a case headed for the court.

Now wicked threats old and new are about to bring them together once again. Convicted serial killer Clarence Little has escaped from death row in Oregon, and Brad receives threatening messages in D.C., where he is working for Senator Jack Carson, a high-ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. A dead body, murdered according to Little's M.O., is found in the senator's Georgetown home, and Carson has disappeared. While Dana is in Oregon digging into Carson's shady background, a terrorist cell is poised to destroy a packed professional football stadium in one of the biggest attacks on American soil. As the senator's personal life begins to dovetail with the cell's evil plan, Brad and Dana will risk it all again to uncover the truth and save their country.

Phillip Margolin proves once more that he is a true master of suspense, delivering another high-octane thriller set in Washington's legendary corridors of power. Capitol Murder's breathtaking pace and electrifying twists will have old fans and newcomers racing to the final, stunning page.

A mesmerizing tale of deceit and criminal stealth in the high-stakes world of pharmaceutical research from Phillip Margolin, the New York Times bestselling master of the courtroom thriller.

Daniel Ames is living the American dream. Though born into poverty and living on the streets by the age of fifteen, Daniel has overcome every obstacle -- and now is an associate at Reed, Briggs, Portland's most prestigious law firm, earning more money than he ever imagined possible.

But when Aaron Flynn enters his life, Daniel finds himself caught between his towering ambition and his bedrock idealism. Flynn, a charismatic civil litigator, sues Geller Pharmaceuticals -- Reed, Briggs's biggest client -- for manufacturing a drug that he claims causes unspeakable birth defects. Daniel is certain the claim has no merit -- until a memo written by a Geller scientist is found, detailing the shocking results of a study that implicates the company in a horrific lie.

Could Daniel unwittingly be helping Geller cover up a dark secret? As he begins to investigate, his world comes tumbling down around him. His work is sabotaged, he's accused of professional incompetence, and he's fired. Twelve hours later the man who fired him is murdered. Daniel is arrested.

With help from two women, including lawyer Amanda Jaffe (whom we met in Wild Justice), Daniel scrambles to clear his name and save his reputation -- and in the process unearths a trail of deceit that leads back to a series of unsolved kidnappings seven years earlier. But someone doesn't want this trail explored, and Daniel becomes the target of a vicious killer who will stop at nothing to prevent the truth from being revealed.

On a summer night in Portland, Oregon, violence erupts at a Little League game -- and attorney Ami Vergano watches in horror as the quiet, gentle artist she recently befriended does the unexpected and unthinkable . . .

In a cheap motel room in Washington, D.C., Vanessa Kohler -- ex-mental patient, supermarket tabloid reporter, and estranged daughter of a powerful general running for president -- views a news broadcast of the bizarre incident and believes she's found the only witness to a deadly conspiracy.

Caught between a possible madwoman and a confessed mass murderer, between reality and delusion, Ami races to unearth the terrible truth about dark events that may or may never have happened twenty years earlier in a secluded cabin on Lost Lake.

Phillip Margolin -- author of the smash New York Times bestsellers Wild Justice and Gone, But Not Forgotten -- returns with a thrilling tale of politics, secrets, and murder . . .

Amanda Jaffe was a rising star of Portland's legal community, until a run-in with a psychopath left her scared and craving anonymity. But her new case promises to keep her in the spotlight -- and in danger. Defending the accused murderer of a U.S. senator will place her and those she loves directly in the path of a deadly cabal with ambitions that extend all the way to the presidency of the United States . . .

Author Miles Van Meter is on a book tour to promote his sensational bestseller Sleeping Beauty, a true-crime account of a deeply personal subject: the attack by a serial killer that left his twin sister, Casey, in a coma. Tonight the audience waits to hear Miles discuss recent developments in his sister's case -- unaware that pieces of this complex puzzle of violence, unknown even to the author, are about to be revealed.

Six years earlier, life was much simpler for everyone involved, especially seventeen-year-old Ashley Spencer, a popular high school soccer star. Then one night an intruder entered Ashley's home and murdered her father and her best friend. Traumatized and suffering from a crippling sense of survivor guilt, Ashley is ready to give up on both soccer and life until help comes from an unexpected source -- a scholarship to the Oregon Academy, an elite private school, is extended to her by school dean Casey Van Meter. The school quickly becomes a haven for both Ashley and her mother, Terri. As Ashley regains her sense of self through the school's soccer program, Terri joins a writing group for adults led by Joshua Maxfield, a former literary wunderkind who has disappeared from the bestseller lists since his second book was panned by both critics and fans.

Then tragedy strikes again and Ashley has to run for her life, unaware that the key to her survival is in the one book she's afraid to read -- Sleeping Beauty.

With its blend of dizzying plot twists and thrilling suspense, Sleeping Beauty shows Phillip Margolin at the very top of his form.