The peaceful life of John and Merle Wright is shattered when they return home to find their daughter has been kidnapped and the babysitter murdered.

When Paul Jenkins, the police chief of Boar's Bluff, New Hampshire, investigates the murders of three men, "he risks even more in a dangerous game of seduction as the killer tries to find out how much he really knows."--Cover.

The first murder seemed senseless. The second death a tragic accident. And the killer...a total mystery to Chief of Police James Morgan. Chief Morgan’s job had been, up to now, a cinch—his principal occupation being to sexually service the dissatisfied wives of the town’s wealthiest citizens. The troubled town is Bensington, a bedroom suburb of Boston, where respectable natives live in old Victorians, rich newcomers in mock mansions, and the poor in wood-heaped frame houses. Just beneath Bensington’s sedate surface are some very off-centered residents whose quirky cravings and guilts tend to be overlooked, or neatly concealed. Then a brutal double murder blows everyone’s deep, dark secrets into the open air, and for once rich and poor alike are caught up in the same net of passion and violence. James Morgan, Bensington born and bred, is a lean and handsome widower whose love for his dead wife spurs an unending series of sexual conquests, and whose warm compassion wars with the icy imperatives of his profession. Although he is expected to solve the mysterious murders and put the town back together, local coffee-shop critics question his competence, even as they relish the rumors of his trysts. The women who sleep with Morgan—for reasons ranging from boredom to desperate loneliness—are included in his investigation, as is a rich man on the brink of ruin, and a policeman nursing a hidden hate, and a degenerate family consisting of a brutal father and two very different sons—one retarded, the other frighteningly gifted. And complicating it all is Morgan’s newest conquest, the daughter of the victims, who herself may be a target. Filled with insight and irony, this electrifying thriller blends roller-coaster action with the sensitive probing of men and women driven by private demons of love and hate, need and desire. Edgar nominee Andrew Coburn masterfully splices psychological suspense with police procedure as he turns his keen eye on small-town America and the secrets it keeps.

Company Secrets is a novel of intrigue in high places, a gripping word picture of cold violence and unemotional murder. In reviewing it for the Sunday Times of London, John Coleman writes: “Coburn is as good on sad women as on bad men, his prose so flexed and edged as to make paranoia fashionable.”

Goldilocks is vintage Coburn, the Coburn of Sweetheart, The Babysitter, and Love Nest. This is a story of a New England town where all the deals have been quietly cut, the cops have traded their souls to crime bosses, and the crime boss of crime bosses—a beautiful woman from the wrong side of the tracks—has married up, into the WASPs, and her name decorates ever corner and library in town. And into this quiet swamp with its smooth surface drops Goldilocks—tall and blond, with exquisite blue eyes, the new boy in town, and so vicious he makes the rest of them know that life before Goldilocks was like a fairy tale. Small wonder The New York Times crime book critic Newgate Callendar writes, “Natural storytellers are not too common but Mr. Coburn is one.” An angry yet still sexy widow becomes the prey of Vietnam vet Goldilocks, but he, too, gets caught in the web of evildoing and gets his just deserts, though not till the town is turned end to end. No question—Coburn can write up a storm.

Since the publication of the successful first edition of Earthquake Protection there have been 110 lethal earthquakes, killing 130 000 people; there have also been significant developments in the field of earthquake risk management, particularly in the modelling and analysis of risk for insurance and financial services. Furthermore, major earthquake disasters, such as the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan and the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake in Turkey have occurred. The experience and knowledge gained through these events have improved our understanding of how to manage, mitigate and work towards the prevention of similar catastrophes. The 1990s were in fact the costliest decade on record in terms of disaster management due to such seismic events, placing unprecedented pressure on the insurance industry in particular, and changing its view of earthquake protection. Significantly revised and updated, this second edition continues to provide a comprehensive overview of how to reduce the impact of earthquakes on people and property, and implement best practice in managing the consequences of such disasters. It also includes significant coverage of the techniques of modelling earthquake catastrophe. Each chapter deals with a separate aspect of protection, and covers a wide range of economic and social conditions, drawing on the authors' considerable personal experience and with reference to real life examples. Key features include: Recent event coverage Modern developments in the theory and practice of planning and engineering loss estimation techniques, along with new engineering techniques such as microzonation and hazard-mapping Historic buildings experience An entirely new chapter on 'Earthquakes and Finance' This valuable book provides essential reading for earthquake and structural engineers and geoscientists, as well as insurers and loss prevention specialists, risk managers and assessors involved in managing earthquake risk, urban and regional planners, and emergency management agencies.

Andrew Coburn’s The Babysitter was a bestseller; his previous book, Off Duty, was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “a flawlessly plotted, stylishly written account The rewards are many and exceptional.” Now, in Sweetheart, a novel about the Boston Mafia, Andrew Coburn has surpassed himself. Revenge, the defining motif of this suspenseful tale of crime, is a joyous emotion in the Mafia. It figures in their use of tire irons to dismember the killers of the innocent, honored parents of Anthony Gardella, the local capo. And, over cocktails, a more sophisticated vengeance can be sought—by using a Beretta semi-automatic with silencer fired at point blank range. Police Lieutenant Wade, code name “Sweetheart”, has troubles of his own. Wade is recruited by Russell Thurston, and FBI agent of immaculate grooming and soaring ambition, to infiltrate the Gardella family. As shock follows surprise, Wade finds himself caught in a dilemma: The police lieutenant’s sympathies are subtly drawn toward the all-too-fascinating charm of the mobster chief, until Wade, the honest cop, must make an agonizing choice. The man who always did what was right has to decide whether to cross the slim line between justice and corruption. Andrew Coburn’s ear for dialogue and his eye for vivid characterization make Sweetheart superior and original entertainment as well as a grippingly authentic Mafia story.

Love Nest, Andrew Coburn’s gripping new thriller, is certain to gain the same critical acclaim. The murder of a young and alluring prostitute is at the core of this compelling story of small-town crime, corruption, and desire. In her brief stay in Andover, Massachusetts, her charm and beauty had touched the lives of many of the town’s leading citizens, not the least of whom is the investigator of her murder, Sergeant Sonny Dawson. His tenacious search for the killer uncovers a netherworld of characters that shocks his sensibilities but does not dampen his thirst to solve the case. The taut psychological drama, the agonizingly suspenseful plot, and the deft prose that mark Andrew Coburn’s writing of Love Nest consolidate his stature and his fictional territory—the authentic New England world he has staked out for himself. And in his portrait of a small New England town, Coburn reveals the sophistication and breadth of a most gifted novelist.

Bensington, Mass., the Boston bedroom suburb that was the scene of Andrew Coburn’s acclaimed thriller No Way Home, is the setting of this new novel of thumbscrew suspense, explosive sex, and shattering revelation. Once again police chief James Morgan takes center stage—this time to delve into the deaths of two young people that rip the surface of the artificially idyllic community where people play by their own desperately driven and dangerous rules. When the corpse of sixteen-year-old Glen Bodine is found, the death seems a tragic accident—or else an all-too-possible suicide. Murder is out of the question, for this is a town of nice people, pretty manners, and piles of money. But when an eccentric grafter declares himself a child killer, not only Glen’s death but another, even more mysterious one buried in the past must be put under searching scrutiny. The results expose a viper’s nest of twisted hungers and terrifying secrets. As James Morgan follows a twisting trail to the unexpected truth that bares the underside of relationships and marriages, and reveals treacheries within families, he himself is torn between cool professionalism and hot carnal passion to possess a beautiful married woman he knows he should not touch. But he is not the only one impaled on horns of desire. A woman painter finds herself going to bed with a man she fruitlessly tries to despise. A wife in a “perfect marriage” finds she has been “sleeping with the devil.” Another chooses a sexual route to wreak revenge on her staid husband and devastatingly seductive stepson, while the most loving wife in the group is targeted by a brilliant, rich, and ruthless tycoon who, as always, gets what he wants—whether in the boardroom or the bedroom. Andrew Coburn reaffirms his position as a novelist who has taken the crime thriller to new heights of storytelling suspense and new depths of insight and compassion as he weaves a spellbinding tale out of the sins men and women commit and the veil they do to each other and themselves. Unfolding with nerve-crackling tension, Voices in the Dark will have you reading far into the night to unravel a tangle of intertwined lives, lusts, and lies and to discover how fragile is the seam that separates guilt from innocence, how deadly the line that separates love from hate.