"Of #1 New York Times-bestselling author Sue Grafton, NPR's Maureen Corrigan said, "Makes me wish there were more than 26 letters." With only two letters left, Grafton's many devoted readers will share that sentiment. X: The number ten. An unknown quantity. A mistake. A cross. A kiss. X: The shortest entry in Webster's Unabridged. Derived from Greek and Latin and commonly found in science, medicine, and religion. The most graphically dramatic letter....

Fearing that the assailant who had once tried to kill him--and had left him badly scarred and partially amnesiac--would again try to murder him, Bobby Callahan turns to Kinsey Millhone for help.

Floral Beach wasn't much of a town: six streets long and three deep, its only notable feature a strip of sand fronting the Pacific. It was on that sandy beach seventeen years ago that the strangled body of Jean Timberlake had been found. The people of Gloral Beach didn't pay a whole lot of mind to past history, especially when Bailey Fowler, the self-confessed killer, had been properly processed and convicted. They weren't even unduly concerned when,...

Kinsey Millhone's grit is tested as she unearths the gruesome truth about a long-buried betrayal and, in the process, comes face-to-face with the grisly fact of her own mortality.

"Beginning slowly with the day-to-day life of private eye Kinsey Milhone, the story suddenly shifts to Solana Rojas, introducing readers to a chilling sociopath. Rojas is not her birth name. It is an identity she cunningly stole, an identity that gives her access to private caregiving jobs."--Back cover

When Kinsey Millhone tracks an insurance scam to Bibianna Diaz, she finds herself entangled in the murderous path of Bibianna's spurned suitor--gangster Raymond Maldonado.

A collection of stories that reveal Kinsey's origins-- and Grafton's past. The nine stories that open the book show how fully formed Kinsey was from the beginning. The thirteen stories in the second part, written in the decade following her mother's death, feature Kit Blue, a younger version of Grafton herself, and reflect her troubled family life and the author's journey from anger to understanding and forgiveness.