Denise Hamilton is no stranger to adventure! With only $200 in her back pack, the Los Angeles native hitchhiked into Albania, relying on the hospitality of strangers. Along with her Balkan adventure, Hamilton, a Fulbright Scholar, also lived and taught in former Yugoslavia during the Bosnian War. As a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, Hamilton covered events ranging from the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe to the fall of the Soviet Union. Her award winning work has also appeared in Wired, Cosmopolitan, Der Spiegel and New Times. While Hamilton is mainly focused on her fiction career these days, readers can still get a whiff of her journalistic style. Hamilton writes Uncommon Scents, a monthly perfume column for the Los Angeles Times. Damage Control, her latest, is a stand-alone thriller with themes of politics and celebrity, as well as passion and murder.
Brand-new stories by: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Hector Tobar, Patt Morrison, Robert Ferrigno, Gary Phillips, Christopher Rice, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, Scott Phillips, Diana Wagman, Lienna Silver, Brian Ascalon Roley, and Denise Hamilton.
Los Angeles 1949. A city of big dreams and dark shadows...
Lily Kessler, a former stenographer and spy for the OSS, comes to Los Angeles to find her late fiancé's sister Kitty, an actress who is missing from her Hollywood boardinghouse. The next day, Kitty's body is found in a ravine below the Hollywood sign. Unimpressed by the local police, Lily investigates on her own. As she delves into Kitty's life, she encounters fiercely competitive starlets, gangsters, an eccentric special-effects genius, exotic denizens of Hollywood's nightclubs, and a homicide detective who might distract her from her quest for justice. But the landscape in L.A. can shift kaleidoscopically, and Lily begins to see how easily a young woman can lose her balance and fall prey to the alluring city's dangers....
With vibrant characters and unerring insight into the desires and dark impulses that can flare between men and women, The Last Embrace showcases Denise Hamilton at the height of her storytelling powers as she transports readers to a fascinating, transitional time in one of America's most beguiling cities.
"Nobody can do multicultural Los Angeles better than Denise Hamilton" "(The Denver Post" ); now, the Edgar Award-nominated author sends reporter Eve Diamond on a suspense-charged investigation of the deadly criminal element in the city as colorful and unpredictable as Eve herself.
Shadowing a customs official for a story, Eve is a witness when gunfire erupts at LAX. A beautiful Asian woman is killed, and her little girl is swept away by the INS. Eve suspects the toddler is being used by smugglers who trade in human lives. With the return of her ex-lover, Eve has everything to lose as she races to protect the child from ruthless armed men -- and may find herself caught in their sights.
