A canny young woman is struggling to survive by perpetrating various levels of mostly harmless fraud. On a rainy April morning, she is reading auras at Spiritual Palms when Susan Burke walks in. A keen observer of human behavior, our unnamed narrator immediately diagnoses beautiful, rich Susan as an unhappy woman eager to give her lovely life a drama injection. However, when the "psychic" visits the eerie Victorian home that has been the source of...

"Daniel Pitt prosecutes a beloved philanthropist whose good deeds may hide dark-and dangerous-secrets in this gripping mystery from New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry. Working his way up at London law firm fford Croft and Gibson, Daniel Pitt is named second prosecutor on a fraud case with the potential to make or break his-and the firm's-reputation. The trouble is, Malcolm Vayne, the man on trial, has deep pockets, and even deeper connections....

Elenora Lodge is in quite a fix. Her stepfather lost her farm and all of her possessions in a mining venture, and her fiance dumps her faster than the proverbial hot potato. But Elenora is practical and pragmatic. So when Arthur Lancaster, earl of St. Merryn, offers her a position as a paid companion, she accepts. St. Merryn is in a bit of a fix himself. His favorite uncle has been murdered, and he's sworn vengeance on the killer, a mad alchemist...

At the height of the pandemic, TV star Ben McKenzie was the perfect mark for cryptocurrency: a dad stuck at home with some cash in his pocket, worried about his family, armed with only the vague notion that people were making heaps of money on something he—despite a degree in economics—didn’t entirely understand. Lured in by grandiose, utopian promises, and sure, a little bit of FOMO, McKenzie dove deep into blockchain, Bitcoin, and the various...

"It's summer in the Dordogne. The heirs of a Périgordian sheep farmer learn that they have been disinherited, and their father's estate sold to an insurance company in return for a policy that will place him in a five-star retirement home for the rest of his life. But the farmer never gets his life of luxury--he dies before moving in. Was it a natural death? Was there foul play? Bruno begins the investigation that leads him to several shadowy insurance...

"After a bad fall, Tom, in constant pain and addicted to painkillers at the cost of his relationships with his wife and son, realizes he can never work again and ends up in subsidized housing, where he hatches a scheme to commit convenience-check fraud with neighbors he considers lowlifes"--

When Riley Cowan finds her estranged husband Jeff dead in his palatial home, she's sure it's no coincidence. The police rule it a suicide, but Riley thinks someone's out for blood -- specifically someone Jeff's father ripped off in one of the biggest financial fraud cases of all time. She suspects that someone is trying to send a message to Jeff's father: tell me where the money is, or everyone you care about will die. Riley's in-laws might be billionaires,...

Poet and critic Kevin Young tours us through a rogue’s gallery of hoaxers, plagiarists, forgers, and fakers — from the humbug of P. T. Barnum and Edgar Allan Poe to the unrepentant bunk of JT LeRoy and Donald J. Trump. Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race...

"If you value the integrity of our elections-or want a behind-the-scenes look at an attempt at overturning one-Disproven by Ken Block takes you out of the voting booth and into the chaos that was the attempt to challenge the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In November 2020, data specialist Ken Block received a phone call from the Trump Campaign. They wanted to hire him to find evidence of election fraud. What followed were late night...

"When her dreams of rising through the police ranks like her late father crash around her, 26-year-old Emma Djan is unsure what will become of her life in Accra. Through a sympathetic former colleague, Emma gets an interview with a private detective agency tracking down missing persons, thefts, and marital infidelities. It's not the future she imagined, but it's her best option. Meanwhile, Gordon Tilson, a middle-aged widower in Washington, DC, has...