Showing results by author "Katia Lief" in All Categories

Joni Ackerman’s decision to raise children, 25 years ago, came with a steep cost. She was then a pioneering filmmaker, one of the few women to break into the all-male Hollywood club of feature film directors. But she and her husband Paul had always wanted a family, and his ascending career at a premier television network provided a safety net. Now they’ve recently transplanted to Brooklyn so that Paul can launch a major East Coast production studio, when a scandal rocks the film industry and forces Joni to revisit a secret from long ago involving her friend Val.

New York Police detective Dave Strauss is haunted by the one case he couldn't solve: A schoolgirl vanished off the streets of Brooklyn, with only a trail of blood and a series of untraceable phone calls from "the Groom" hinting at her fate. Now the cold dark night has engulfed another young girl - but this time she is part of Dave's family. He and his wife, Susan, know 14-year-old Lisa has not run away, and they know her disappearance is not just a tragic coincidence. And once the first phone call comes, they know she's not alone....

When violence descends on Karin Schaeffer and Mac MacLeary's comfortable Brooklyn neighborhood, and their best friend becomes the lead investigator, they are drawn into the bewildering series of crimes. As the mystery deepens, what looks like the work of a garden-variety serial killer turns out to be an evil darker than anyone imagined, with roots shockingly close to home.

Just when their new life together has settled in, Mac vanishes, unearthing secrets and dangers that force Karin into a face-off with a deadly Mexican queenpin whose son has an agenda of his own. Along the way, nothing is quite as it has seemed. Her husband has a dark past she had never imagined, including a revelation that shocks everyone who thought they knew him.

Fifteen-year-old Kate Steiner is not sure why she is suddenly boarding at an East Coast school for troubled kids, though there is evidence that her lawyer parents are having marital problems. It is the mid-1970s, and at the progressive school where she has landed, Kate is initiated into a stratified society inhabited by kids who fell through the cracks. Kate must grapple with moral ambiguities when she discovers that Patrick, her first boyfriend, is also a slip-sliding drug addict.

Dawn is still in love with Hank, who dumped her for Christine - and they're living together now. Then Mike Blitsky - proprietor of a transvestite escort service - bursts into Dawn's life when she becomes the editor of a tell-all memoir he's writing to pay for his legal defense. Unbeknownst to Dawn, Hank is Mike's lawyer, defending him against charges of running a male prostitution ring. With everyone working at cross purposes, the result is a modern day comedy of errors that doesn't wind up until the wedding bouquet goes flying in the final scene.

Aspiring cartoonist Catherine "Cat" Gold earns her living as a celebrity assistant in uptown Manhattan, while navigating the cramped downtown spaces of life, love, and alternative art. Her boss is Rochelle "Rocky" Love, a celebrated 1970s feminist and has-been '80s radio and television star who is convinced she can forge a '90s comeback with an autobiography. But the ghostwriter hired to glorify her life instead reveals a battleground of treachery and hypocrisy, littered with lies and sex that cross all the boundaries. When Cat herself experiences Rocky's duplicity and learns that the icon is a fraud, she is fueled by a sense of disappointment and conspires with the ghostwriter....

When she discovers evidence of her husband's infidelity, Annie Goodman's life is thrown asunder and she flees with her young daughter to the one person she has always trusted: her twin sister, Julie. In this safe harbor, the sisters quickly become as close as they were as children. But when Annie tries to get a job, her safe harbor turns rocky - she's arrested, her credit cards are stolen, and her very identity is in question. Seeking solace with Julie, she finds her twin sister gone, along with her daughter. It soon becomes clear that nothing Annie previously believed is certain....

When Lauren fails to pick her son up from school, a normal day turns into a nightmare - and Alice begins to realize that nothing will ever be ordinary again. The police desperately search for Lauren, who is nearly nine months pregnant. Alice, herself pregnant, realizes she's being followed and has the creeping fear that she and her unborn twins are in danger. As new life grows within her, she must fight to save her family - and herself.

A team of burglars plans to rob a secluded country house in Waterbury, Connecticut while the famous owner is away visiting relatives for the holidays. But volatile relationships within this family lead to a last minute change in plans, and three generations convene in Waterbury instead. When the burglars arrive to find the house occupied instead of empty, a simple crime quickly becomes complicated in this gripping psychological thriller.

Former New York City police detectives turned Brooklyn private investigators Karin Schaeffer and her husband Mac survived when brutal terror invaded their lives more than once. Now the offer of $30,000 for one day's work in London, followed by a family vacation in an exotic locale, seems too good to be true. And then they discover that it is.

Former Detective Karin Schaeffer has nothing left to live for after serial killer Martin Price destroys all she holds dear. Known as "The Domino Killer," Price doesn't stop until an entire family is destroyed. When he leaves a message, scrawled in blood, on her bathroom mirror, she knows what's coming - You are next. But Karin Schaeffer refuses to run and hide.

It’s been five years since Joni Ackerman tipped the antifreeze into her husband’s cocktail. Five years since he was found dead on the stairs. Five years since she got away with murder. At first, Joni feared the consequences of her transgression, but she’s learned to embrace the power of recklessness in a way she would have hated to see in anyone else. It was that recklessness, after all, that took her to this rewarding new life.