When Appaloosa police chief Amos Callico begins shaking down local merchants for protection money, those who don't want to play along seek the help of Cole and Hitch.

April Kyle, the head of an upscale Boston call-girl operation, requests private investigator Spenser's help in preventing a local kingpin from seizing control of her enterprise.

Elizabeth Shaw specializes in wills and trusts at the Boston law firm of Shaw & Cartwright, and over the years she's developed a friendship with wives of very wealthy men. However, these rich wives have a mutual secret: they've all had an affair with a man named Gary Eisenhower--and now he's blackmailing them for money. Shaw hires Spenser to make Eisenhower "cease and desist, " so to speak, but when women start turning up dead, Spenser's assignment...

"All is quiet in Paradise, except for a spate of innocuous vandalism. Good thing, too, because Jesse Stone is preoccupied with the women in his life, both past and present. As his ex-wife, Jenn, is about to marry a Dallas real-estate tycoon, Jesse isn't too sure his relationship with former FBI agent Diana Evans is built to last. But those concerns get put on the back burner when a major Boston crime boss is brutally murdered. Despite all evidence...