New Releases by Sara Paretsky

Legendary detective V.I. Warshawski uncovers a nefarious conspiracy preying on Chicago''s weak and vulnerable, in this thrilling novel from New York Times bestseller Sara Paretsky. On her way home from an all-night surveillance job, V.I. Warshawski is led by her dogs on a mad chase that ends when they discover a badly injured teen hiding in the rocks along Lake Michigan. The girl only regains consciousness long enough to utter one enigmatic word. V.I. helps bring her to a hospital, but not long after, she vanishes before anyone can discover her identity. As V.I. attempts to find her, the detective uncovers an ugly consortium of Chicago powerbrokers and mobsters who are prepared to kill the girl. And now V.I.’s own life is in jeopardy as well. Told against the backdrop of a city emerging from its pandemic lockdown, Overboard lays bare the dark secrets and corruption buried in Chicago’s neighborhoods in masterly fashion.

Love & Other Crimes has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

Chicago is the city of broad shoulders, but V.I. Warshawski knows its politics: "Pay to Play". Money changes hands in the middle of the night; by morning, buildings and parks have been replaced by billion-dollar projects.Private investigator V.I. gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals when her impetuous goddaughter Bernie tries to rescue a famed singer-songwriter, now living on the streets. Thanks to Bernie, V.I. finds herself in the path of some developers whose negotiating strategy is simple: they bulldoze - or kill - any obstacle in their way.Questions pile up almost as fast as the dead bodies. When she tries to answer them, the detective finds a terrifying conspiracy stretching from Chicago''s parks to a cover-up of the dark chapters in the American government''s interference in South American politics. Before finds answer, V.I. will be pushed closed to breaking point. People who pay to play take no prisoners.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST “A proper hero for these times . . . To us, V.I. is perfect.” — THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "Sara Paretsky’s gloriously kick-ass private eye, V.I. “Vic” Warshawski, is back . . . in a political-rot thriller that’s the definition of perfection in the genre." — THE WASHINGTON POST Chicago’s legendary detective, V.I. Warshawski, knows her city’s rotten underbelly better than most, but she’s unable to avoid it when her goddaughter drags her into a fight over lakefront land use, in this propulsive novel from New York Times bestseller Sara Paretsky. Chicago may be the city of broad shoulders, but its political law is “Pay to Play.” Money changes hands in the middle of the night, and by morning, buildings and parks are replaced by billion-dollar projects. Chicago PI V.I. Warshawski gets pulled into one of these clandestine deals through her impetuous goddaughter, Bernie Fouchard. Bernie tries to rescue Lydia Zamir, a famed singer-songwriter now living on the streets; Zamir’s life fell apart when her lover was murdered next to her in a mass shooting at an outdoor concert. Not only does Bernie plunge her and V.I. headlong into the path of some ruthless developers, they lead to the murder of the young man Bernie is dating. He’s a computer geek working for a community group called SLICK. V.I. is desperate to find a mysterious man named Coop, who roams the lakefront in the middle of the night with his dog. She’s sure he holds the key to the mounting body count within SLICK. Coop may even know why an international law firm is representing the mass murderer responsible for Lydia’s lover’s death. Instead, the detective finds a terrifying conspiracy stretching from Chicago’s parks to a cover-up of the dark chapters in America’s meddling in South American politics. Before she finds answers, this electrifying novel pushes V.I. close to the breaking point: People who pay to play take no prisoners.

Sara Paretsky follows her instant New York Times bestseller Fallout—her most widely read novel in years—with an extraordinary adventure that pits her acclaimed detective, V.I. Warshawski, against some of today’s most powerful figures. Legendary sleuth V.I. Warshawski returns to the Windy City to save an old friend’s nephew from a murder arrest. The case involves a stolen artifact that could implicate a shadowy network of international criminals. As V.I. investigates, the detective soon finds herself tangling with the Russian mob, ISIS backers, and a shady network of stock scams and stolen art that stretches from Chicago to the East Indies and the Middle East. In Shell Game, nothing and no one are what they seem, except for the detective herself, who loses sleep, money, and blood, but remains indomitable in her quest for justice.

LEE CHILD says she''s "a genius." P.D. JAMES called her "the most remarkable" of today''s suspense writers. STIEG LARSSON loved her work so much, he named her in his novels. And now SARA PARETSKY returns with the most extraordinary novel of her legendary career: FALLOUT. Before there was Lisbeth Salander, before there was Stephanie Plum, there was V.I. WARSHAWSKI. To her parents, she''s Victoria Iphigenia. To her friends, she''s Vic. But to clients seeking her talents as a detective, she''s V.I. And her new case will lead her from her native Chicago... and into Kansas, on the trail of a vanished film student and a faded Hollywood star. Accompanied by her dog, V.I. tracks her quarry through a university town, across fields where missile silos once flourished — and into a past riven by long-simmering racial tensions, a past that holds the key to the crimes of the present. But as the mysteries stack up, so does the body count. And in this, her toughest case, not even V.I. is safe. Exciting and provocative, fiercely intelligent and witty, FALLOUT is reading at its most enjoyable and powerful.

Sara Paretsky, one of the most legendary crime writers of all time, presents an exclusive and thrilling short story featuring beloved investigator V.I. Warshawski as a ten-year-old girl on her first investigation. V.I. Warshawski developed her strength and sense of justice at a very early age. It’s 1966 and on the south side of Chicago racial tensions are at an all-time high. Dr. Martin Luther King is leading marches at Marquette Park and many in the neighborhood are very angry. With nothing but a bicycle, eighty-two cents in her pocket, and her Brownie camera hanging from her wrist, Victoria sneaks off to Marquette Park alone to protect her father Tony, a police officer who is patrolling the crowds. What begins as a small adventure and a quest to find her father and make sure he is safe turns into something far more dangerous. As the day goes on and the conflict at the park reaches a fever pitch Victoria realizes she must use her courage and ingenuity if she wants to keep herself and her family members out of harm’s way.

A classic short story of love, revenge, and appetite from New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky. Daphne Raydor has an insatiable appetite. Overweight as she is, she always assumed she would never know love. But meeting Jerry changes everything. Her appetite decreases. Her self-worth skyrockets. Then her mother comes to visit. And everything changes again. But Daphne refuses to go back to her old life, and now her appetite is for revenge... Taste of Life was previously included with the novel Brush Back. Get a taste of Brush Back with an excerpt included here.

Crime writer Sara Paretsky is known the world over for her acclaimed series of mysteries starring Chicago private investigator V. I. Warshawski, now in its seventeenth installment. Paretsky’s work has long been inflected with history—for her characters the past looms large in the present—and in her decades-long career, she has been recognized for transforming the role of women in contemporary crime fiction. What’s less well-known is that before Paretsky began her writing career, she earned a PhD in history from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on moral philosophy and religion in New England in the early and mid-nineteenth century. Now, for the first time, fans of Paretsky can read that earliest work, Words, Works, and Ways of Knowing. Paretsky here analyzes attempts by theologians at Andover Seminary, near Boston, to square and secure Calvinist religious beliefs with emerging knowledge from history and the sciences. She carefully shows how the open-minded scholasticism of these theologians paradoxically led to the weakening of their intellectual credibility as conventional religious belief structures became discredited, and how this failure then incited reactionary forces within Calvinism. That conflict between science and religion in the American past is of interest on its face, but it also sheds light on contemporary intellectual battles. Rounding out the book, leading religious scholar Amanda Porterfield provides an afterword discussing where Paretsky’s work fits into the contemporary study of religion. And in a sobering—sometimes shocking—preface, Paretsky paints a picture of what it was like to be a female graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. A treat for Paretsky’s many fans, this book offers a glimpse of the development of the mind behind the mysteries.

Chicago’s V. I. Warshawski confronts crooked politicians and buried family secrets in the gritty new novel from New York Times–bestselling author Sara Paretsky. No one would accuse V. I. Warshawski of backing down from a fight, but there are a few she’d be happy to avoid. High on that list is tangling with Chicago political bosses. Yet that’s precisely what she ends up doing when she responds to Frank Guzzo’s plea for help. For six stormy weeks back in high school, V.I. thought she was in love with Frank. He broke up with her, she went off to college, he started driving trucks for Bagby Haulage. She forgot about him until the day his mother was convicted of bludgeoning his kid sister, Annie, to death. Stella Guzzo was an angry, uncooperative prisoner and did a full twenty-five years for her daughter’s murder. Newly released from prison, Stella is looking for exoneration, so Frank asks V.I. for help. V.I. doesn’t want to get involved. Stella hated the Warshawskis, in particular V.I.’s adored mother, Gabriella. But life has been hard on Frank and on V.I.’s other childhood friends, still stuck on the hardscrabble streets around the dead steel mills, and V.I. agrees to ask a few questions. Those questions lead her straight into the vipers’ nest of Illinois politics she’s wanted to avoid. When V.I. takes a beating at a youth meeting in her old hood, her main question becomes whether she will live long enough to find answers.

Chicago’s V. I. Warshawski “is at her stubborn, reckless, compassionate best in this complicated page-turner about selfish secrets passed down through generations” (Booklist). In 1939, Dr. Lotty Herschel, V. I. Warshawki’s closest friend in Chicago, escaped the Holocaust in Vienna with her childhood playmate, Kitty Saginor Binder. Though the two drifted and animosities grew between them over the years, when Kitty’s daughter finds her life in danger, she turns to Lotty for help. In turn, Lotty summons V. I. to take the case. The threats on the daughter’s life at first seem a simple case of bad drug dealings, but V. I. soon discovers that they are just the tip of an iceberg of lies secrets and silence whose origins trace back to the deadly race among America, Germany, Japan, and England to develop the atomic bomb. And while the secrets may be old, the people who continue to guard them will do anything to make sure they stay buried...

Vic Warshawski is a private investigator and martial arts expert. She tackles the problem of a missing student in Indemnity only, a death which was far from accidental in Deadlock and a forgery in Killing orders. Private eye novel.

A strange crime gets V.I. Warshawski involved with some of Chicago’s most rich and powerful players in this thriller from New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky. When a group of Chicago tweens holds a ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse—stabbed through the heart in a vampire-style slaying. V.I. Warshawski arrives on the scene to escort the girls home–but protecting them places her at the tangled center of the investigation. And the girls include daughters of some of Chicago’s most powerful families: the grandfather of one, Chaim Salanter, is among the world’s wealthiest men; the mother of another, Sophy Durango, is running for the United States Senate. For V.I., the questions multiply faster than the answers. Is the killing linked to a hostile media campaign against Durango—or to Salanter’s childhood in Nazi-occupied Lithuania? As V.I. struggles to find an answer, she finds herself fighting enemies who are no less terrifying for being all too human.

V.I.''s battleaxe Aunt Rosa is under investigation by the FBI and SEC after counterfeit stock certificates were found at St. Albert''s Priory, where she serves as treasurer. As malicious as her aunt is, V.I. knows she''s not dishonest, so V.I. vows to protect her from taking the fall. But V.I. starts questioning the strength of her family ties when a menacing voice on the phone threatens to throw acid into her eyes if she doesn''t butt out. The stakes are high as she begins to sniff out a connection between Chicago''s most powerful institutions: the Church and the Mob.

A classic V.I. Warshawski short story from New York Times bestselling author Sara Paretsky. When a beautiful young man hires Chicago detective V.I. Warshawski to find his long-lost father, his story has so many holes that V.I. knows she’s on thin ice. Some illusive resemblance to a face she can’t quite remember keeps the PI on the case, even though when she finds the old man, he claims he never had a child. Uncovering the real identities of both father and son leads V.I. on a chase from Chicago’s seedy bars to its Gold Coast hotels and leave her shaken to the core. Don’t miss this rare story about the detective who is a “powerful magnet for trouble” (People) by the international bestselling and award winning Sara Paretsky. Originally published in Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine and reprinted in Body Work

“V.I. Warshawski is back—intelligent, tough, sarcastic and trouble-prone as ever....Body Work isn’t just a satisfying whodunnit; it’s a rich, well-written why-dunnit, striking some surprising chords that will resonate long after you finish the final page.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch Chicago’s Club Gouge attracts an eclectic audience, from bohemian types to Ukranian mobsters to young men just back from the war. And tonight, V.I. Warshawski is in the crowd too. The edgy stage show stars The Body Artist, who invites audience members to draw on her naked flesh. But things get a lot edgier when a woman sketches a picture on the Body Artist—and one of the veterans flies into a drunken rage. Next thing V.I. knows, she’s cradling the woman’s dying body in an alley, and a PTSD-stricken soldier is presumed guilty. But he’s also comatose after a drug overdose, and the mystery of what exactly set him off—and what kinds of shady activities are really happening at Club Gouge—will lead V.I. to a truth as explosive as the IEDs that lurk on the roadsides of Iraq. Bonus in this Edition: A Short Story Featuring V.I. Warshawski

The 30th anniversary edition of the first V. I. Warshawski novel, Indemnity Only, featuring a new afterword from Sara Paretsky Meeting an anonymous client late on a sizzling summer night is asking for trouble. But trouble is Chicago private eye V. I. Warshawski’s specialty. Her client says he’s the prominent banker John Thayer. Turns out he’s not. He says his son’s girlfriend, Anita Hill, is missing. Turns out that’s not her real name. V. I.’s search turns up someone soon enough—the real John Thayer’s son, and he’s dead. Who’s V. I.’s client? Why has she been set up and sent out on a wild-goose chase? By the time she’s got it figured, things are hotter—and deadlier—than Chicago in July. V. I.’s in a desperate race against time. At stake: a young woman’s life.

When V.I. Warshawski is asked to find a man who''s been missing for four decades, a search that she thought would be futile turns lethal. Old skeletons from the city''s racially charged history rise up to force her back with a vengeance - a nun who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. dies without revealing crucial evidence, and on the city''s South Side, people spit when she shows up. The elderly sisters who hired her are also keeping important information to themselves. Then V.I. finds that her family is keeping secrets of their own. A young cousin whom she''s never met arrives from Kansas City to work on a political campaign, but disappears under mysterious circumstances. Afraid to learn that her adored father might have been a bent cop, deception and corruption following her at every step, V.I. finds all her certainties under threat, but takes the investigation all the way to its frightening end.

A brilliant collection of 26 original stories from the best women crime writers of our times, introduced and edited by Sara Paretsky From wicked irony and white-collar crime in Amanda Cross’s “The Baroness,” to the chilling “Only A woman,” Algerian writer Amel Benaboura’s English-language debut, here are voices known and unknown at home and abroad, as familiar crime turf in America and England is expanded to Russia, Algeria, Austria, Germany, and South America. From Ruth Rendell’s lovelorn secretary to Eleanor Taylor Bland’s Asian-African college professor, the women characters in these tales are girlfriends who collaborate to catch a thief . . . or get away with murder; P.I.s who keep guns in their handbags . . . or their bras; crime victims, homeless, women, or housewives whose ordinary lives take a brutal, sometimes fatal twist. But in each case, a master storyteller has created new, powerful fiction that plumbs the depth and breadth of a woman’s art.

When a neighboring eighty-year-old dog owner turns up floating facedown in a canal shortly after an argument with a yuppie couple, V. I. Warshawski begins an investigation.

“No one, male or female, writes better P.I. books than Paretsky.”—The Denver Post V. I. Warshawski isn’t crazy about going back to her old south Chicago neighborhood, but a promise is something she always keeps. Caroline, a childhood friend, has a dying mother and a problem—after twenty-five years she wants V.I. to find the father she never knew. But when V.I. starts probing into the past, she stumbles onto some long-buried secrets—and a very new corpse. Now she’s stirring up a deadly mix of big business and chemical corruption that may become a toxic shock to a snooper who knows too much. “[Paretsky’s] work does more than turn the genre upside down: her books are beautifully paced and plotted, and the dialogue is fresh and smart.”—Newsweek “Her best and boldest work to date . . . a criminal investigation that is a genuine heroic quest.”—The New York Times Book Review

A revealing look at the power of speaking out, Writing in an Age of Silence describes Paretski’s coming of age in a time of great possibility, during the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and the women’s movement. Bestselling crime-writer Sarah Paretsky has won critical acclaim for her V.I. Warshawski novels, centered around one of the first and most popular female investigators in contemporary fiction. In this fascinating and personal account, Paretsky describes a life shaped by the desire to act. From the feminist movement—which triggered her aspirations to write and shaped the character of her female detective—to the Patriot Act and the liberties we have lost, Paretsky describes the struggle of one individual to find a voice. A moving call to action, Writing in an Age of Silence chronicles the social changes that have shaped contemporary America, and mirrors a desire for freedom, both personal and political, that many Americans will relate to today.

A witty, wild anthology “filled with excellently plotted stories” of cooking, cleaning, and crime by some household names in mystery fiction (South Florida Sun Sentinel). Join Nevada Barr, Barbara Collins, Carole Nelson Douglas, Eileen Dreyer, Vicki Hendricks, Suzann Ledbetter, Elisabeth Massie, Christine Matthews, Denise Mina, Marcia Muller, Sara Paretsky, Nancy Pickard, S.J. Rozan, and Julie Smith on a riotous ride through the dark but often hilarious corners of the housewife psyche . . . In the expert hands of fourteen unsurpassed storytellers—including New York Times bestsellers and Agatha, Anthony, Dagger, Macavity, Shamus, and Edgar Award winners—being a housewife takes on a whole new meaning. Get ready for a lethal mix of meddling mothers-in-law, creepy neighbors, cheating husbands, fickle female friends, careers left behind, out-of-control kids, steamy sex, and much, much more in this thrilling collection of stories. Go behind the lace curtains and PTA smiles to explore the often mind-numbing reality of being a housewife. You’ll laugh, you’ll gasp, you’ll nod in recognition as victims bite the dust—and domestic divas get their hands dirty. “Excellent.” —Library Journal “Delightful.” —Booklist “[A] stellar list of contributors.” —Publishers Weekly

“The best of the Warshawski novels!”—Los Angeles Times Book Review Underneath V. I. Warshawski’s wisecracking P.I. exterior lies a real pushover. When elderly neighbor Mr. Contreras asks her to look into a fellow union retiree’s sudden disappearance, she says “yes” from her heart, not her head. And when a crotchety eighty-year-old dog owner starts wrangling with a Yuppie-Come-Lately couple on their blue-collar street, again, it’s V.I. to the rescue. Only it all goes to hell in a handbasket when Mr. Yuppie turns out to be a lawyer in V.I.’s ex-husband’s law firm, and the missing retiree turns up floating facedown in a canal. And now V.I.’s strapping on her shoulder holster to snoop into Chicago’s labor unions and politicos, because being on the side of the angels won’t win her any halos… but it’s the perfect place for an encounter with violent death. Praise for Guardian Angel “A fast-paced, complicated mystery… the real joy of Guardian Angel is Paretsky’s smooth pen and continuing cast of characters.”—New York Daily News “No one, male or female, writes better P.I. books than Paretsky, and Guardian Angel is the best to date!”—The Denver Post “One monster of a plot.”—Booklist “Some crime series grow stale over time, but there''s no sign of fatigue here. This is partly because the recurring characters continue to develop and engage the reader, and partly because of the moral intelligence that informs the writing.”—Spectator

The pious late-twentieth-century descendants of anti-slavery emigrants worry about maintaining religious superiority over a rival family while launching an active harassment campaign against a Wiccan newcomer, an effort that is challenged by a young man''s military service and the birth of a promising cow. 150,000 first printing.

''Who''re you working for then, Warshawski?'' ''My cousin.'' ''Boom Boom? He''s dead.'' ''I know. That''s why I''m working for him.'' Boom Boom''s body was found floating near the docks, chewed up and spat out by a ship''s propeller. More like brother and sister than cousins, Vic and Boom Boom looked out for each other. Boom Boom grew up to be an ice hockey hero, and Vic a private eye. And now V I Warshawski would like to know how, exactly, her cousin died...

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Takes off with a bang—literally...V. I. remains a paragon among PIs, and Fire Sale is one of Paretsky’s best books yet.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch A conscience can weigh a PI down more than the heaviest firearm—and get her into more trouble too. It’s that nagging conscience that makes V. I. Warshawski agree to fill in as coach for the girls’ basketball team at her South Chicago alma mater—which in turn leads her to the headquarters of By-Smart, the global retail empire where V. I. hopes to get some desperately needed funds for the struggling squad. But conscience seems to be in short supply at By-Smart...with the exception of Billy Bysen, the earnest teenage grandson of the chain’s gruff, tightfisted founder. And when Billy disappears—along with a mysterious document much desired by By-Smart’s management team—V. I. is hurled onto a twisted, body-strewn path that runs through Chicago’s dirtiest places and reveals some of its dirtiest secrets...

Vic Warshawski a quarante ans, une licence de détective privée et des bureaux plutôt miteux au cœur de Chicago. Un soir, au sous-sol, elle découvre une mère et ses trois enfants qui se sont réfugiés près de la chaudière. N''écoutant que son bon cœur Vic veut les aider. Elle a, parmi ses clientes et amies, quelques " bienfaitrices " qui devraient pouvoir soutenir ces malheureux en perdition. Mais, soudain, les ennuis s''amoncellent. Les propriétaires sont prêts à tout pour la faire partir, la famille disparaît et ses fameuses clientes n''ont guère envie de mettre leur nez dans son histoire. Pire encore, Vic découvre un cadavre dans son bureau. Derrière toutes ces aventures, se cachent des requins de la finance et du bâtiment et Vic a intérêt à trouver la solution sous peine de finir elle aussi en cadavre. Et cela juste avant de partir en vacances. Un comble...