Two murder mysteries--one in an intensive care unit and another on the streets of the Los Angeles Marathon--with the addition of a brief essay on killer minds and a bonus excerpt from a Western historical romantic suspense set in 1834 in Mexico's California.

Jenny Dalton rescues Rafael, her employer, during a torrential thunderstorm, finding shelter in a small casa used by ranch hands. He's a popular and powerful ranchero, destined, she believes, to marry a woman of Californian or Mexican nobility. She's just a foreigner he hired to care for a frail aunt, and now her reputation is tarnished because they spent a night unchaperoned in the shelter. Shamed by taunts she is a loose woman, she quietly leaves the ranch one night — and experiences the...

Jilted by love, in 1834 Cara Lindsay flees Boston to begin a new life with an aunt in Mexico's rugged California. Heartbroken to learn her aunt is died, she becomes companion to Desira, wife of Don Miguel Navarro, the tough and irresistible owner of a major inland rancho.Prior to her arrival, Desira suffered a permanent brain injury in a mysterious fall and will never be more than a child. The lonely ranchero's heart opens to Cara's kindness and beauty like parched earth to rain. C...

Christiana, only child and heir of the earl of Gladsbury, binds her breasts and dresses as a boy in denial of her womanhood. She longs to be a knight, yet should the earl die in battle while Christiana is unwed, she and Gladsbury would be at the mercy of the king. Knowing it's not only time that she marry, but that she learn a noblewoman's tasks of managing as well as defending a castle, the earl assigns her for defense lessons to his most eligible knights—Guy de Bere and the mysterious ne...