Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company. There's the sun-worshiping holy man whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain, and the fading actress with sidelines in astrology and S & M. Now, one of Sampson's friends may have arranged his kidnapping.

As private eye Lew Archer follows the clues from the canyon sanctuaries of the megarich to jazz joints where you can get beaten up between sets, The Moving Target

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Sleeping Beauty plunges detective Lew Archer into a fascinating and intricate case connected to a disastrous oil spill on the Southern California coast. Ross Macdonald's masterful tale leads his investigator into a load of trouble involving ransom, a lethal dose of Nembutal, the death of a stranger found floating off shore, and three generations of the imposing Lennox family, whose offshore oil platform caused the spill. The young Lennox heiress—glimpsed...

"Summer in the year of our Lord 1365. On the night after the Corpus Christi procession, a man is brutally murdered on the steps of York Minster. The next morning his severed hand is found in a room at the York Tavern--a room hastily vacated by a fellow guild member who had quarreled with the victim. Archbishop Thoresby calls on Owen Archer to investigate"--Back cover.

A House Divided is an exciting introduction to two of the most fascinating players in the American Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant was gruff and sloppy, the son of a hardworking but uneducated man opposed to slavery. Robert E. Lee, a slave owner himself, was a polite, aristocratic Virginia gentleman who descended from the Revolutionary War hero "Light-Horse Harry." Both men studied at West Point but developed very different tactics-Lee proved to be a...

When a millionaire matriarch is found floating face down in the family pool, the prime suspects are her good-for-nothing son and his wife, who stand to inherit, as well as a questionable chauffeur and a tycoon of a company trying to get the woman's property for the oil under it.

Private Investigator Lew Archer takes this case in the Los Angeles suburbs and encounters a moral wasteland of corporate greed and family hatred—and sufficient

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In The Barbarous Coast, Lew Archer's pursuit of a girl who jackknifed too suddenly from high diving to high living leads him to an ex-fighter with an unexplained movie contract, a big-time gambler who died by his own knife, and finally to an answer he would rather not have known.

When Lew Archer stops for a hitchhiker and finds a young man dying of a gunshot wound, he knows he has stumbled into a mess. In a matter of hours he is suspected by the law, hired by a target-shooting trucking magnate, and chasing a hijacked load of hooch and a band of sinners on the loose.

On the first day of Christmas: Lady Miranda Archer accepts a marriage proposal. On the first day of Christmas, fifteen minutes later: Miranda realizes she's made a huge mistake. For the next twelve days: Miranda must find a way out of her engagement-which is harder than it looks, especially since her fiancé is pompous, mean, and desperate for her family's jewels-and convince her true love that all she wants for Christmas is him.

It has only been a month since Gerald Wilkins be-came the richest kid on earth. One month since he found out his great-aunt Geraldine had left him all her fortune and, with it, a murder mystery, clues to a diamond heist, and a target on his back. One month since Sir Mason Green made off with the contents of the diamond casket, an object of unspeakable power. And you thought your school vacation was eventful. As book two of the Archer Legacy opens,...

The Ladakh attack! When Archer learns that Master Darque has murdered everyone at the temple in Ladakh, he vows to avenge his fallen friends and teachers. He'll have to go it alone, however, thanks to the seductive powers that Pamela has developed over Armstrong. As Darque re-animates those he has slain to fight in his defense, will Archer be able to overcome an army of the undead on his own?