A different kind of serial killer is terrorizing the city of Santa Fe. All of the victims have one thing in common: they were violent sex offenders who slipped through the cracks in the justice system, and walked on legal technicalities. Someone has decided to make them pay.

Forensic psychologist Dr. Sylvia Strange is called upon to help catch the killer, even if she has mixed feelings about the victims. She must uncover the pain of a madman -- pain that has driven him over the edge and into the depths of sadistic retribution.

But Sylvia soon draws the attentions of the vigilante, who decides that anyone who tries to stop justice must be dealt with as any other criminal -- with a sentence of death.

Includes exciting excerpts from Sarah Lovett's thrillers featuring Dr. Sylvia Strange: Dangerous Attachments, A Desperate Silence, Dantes' Inferno and her lastest hardcover, Dark Alchemy, coming soon from Simon and Schuster...

    I hope Patricia Cornwell's legion of fans will forgive me for saying so, but Dr. Sylvia Strange is a much more complicated and likeable character than Kay Scarpetta. Sarah Lovett's books about Santa Fe-based forensic psychologist Strange (Dangerous Attachments is also out in paperback) are full of the details of her crime work, but they're also firmly rooted in the basic humanity of her everyday life. And Lovett's plots have lots of compensating social impact to go with the murder, rape, and pillage: this time she raises the serious question of what to do when authentic sexual villains slip off the legal hook....

Sylvia Strange is back in a hair-raising chiller from the acclaimed author of Dantes' Inferno and Acquired Motives.

A string of deaths in laboratories around the world has the scientific community on edge -- and the FBI on high alert. To the FBI, the circumstances surrounding the scientists' deaths spell the work of an unusually skilled serial poisoner, and they have zeroed in on a single suspect: the brilliant, beautiful Dr. Christine Palmer. A world-renowned toxicologist and leader of numerous international research teams, Palmer is one of only a handful of scientists with highly classified knowledge of the deadliest experimental neurotoxins and their antidotes.

When a molecular toxicologist is poisoned while working at a top-secret research facility outside Santa Fe, Dr. Sylvia Strange and counterterrorism expert Edmond Sweetheart are recruited to assemble a psychological profile of Palmer in an effort to link her to the crimes. But as Sylvia's investigation of Palmer's charismatic persona draws her ever more strongly into the scientist's orbit, hunter and hunted become perilously intertwined. And when Sylvia discovers that her partner may be withholding crucial information, she no longer knows who can be trusted: is the killer friend or foe?

Sylvia will risk everything she holds dear, only to learn that there is no safe haven from a voyeuristic killer whose weapon of choice may go undetected in the food you eat, the clothes you wear, or the air you breathe....

The author of the critically acclaimed novels Dangerous Attachments and Acquired Motives is back with another spellbindingly original thriller featuring forensic psychiatrist Sylvia Strange. Now, in Dantes' Inferno, Sylvia is called to Los Angeles from her New Mexico home when a massive explosion blasts through the J. Paul Getty Museum, endangering children on a field trip and claiming two lives. The police peg notorious bomber John Dantes as the mastermind, even though he's in a maximum-security prison, serving a life sentence for another bombing he claims he didn't commit.

Dr. Strange, a genius at accessing the most tortured psychiatric cases, is called in to evaluate Dantes. The prisoner is said to be unreachable -- and renowned for psychologically terrorizing his every visitor. But Dr. Strange forms a sudden, and unsettling, connection with Dantes. There's something about the enigmatic loner and his obsession with Los Angeles that both confounds and unnerves her. She's not at all convinced he's the man behind the bombs now ripping through the city -- but she is convinced he holds the key to finding the real bomber. The problem remains: how to get at Dantes? The police department's drug-and-interrogation campaign effectively stupefies the patient, and Dr. Strange's inability to "get results" troubles her deeply pragmatic supervisor, who in turn challenges her approach, her ability, and her intuition. As the death toll rises, so does public outcry, and sanctions against the fully demonized prisoner are further tightened. With the clock ticking on a bomb promised to be of epic proportions, Dr. Strange's sovereignty over her patient is slipping away -- along with, seemingly, her sanity.

Dantes' Inferno is a hypnotic, heart-pounding journey to the soul of madness that reveals disturbing and darkly universal truths about human nature. It is Sarah Lovett's best thriller yet....

In her work within the justice system, forensic psychologist Dr. Sylvia Strange has dealt with some of the most twisted and depraved minds ever documented. Now, one of those minds wants to deal with her.

Lucas Watson has escaped from prison. A grotesque embodiment of homicidal dementia, Watson is not trying to get away. He's got something far more sinister in mind -- playing a deadly game of wits and wills with the beautiful doctor.

Now, Sylvia must employ all of her courage and knowledge of the criminal mind to survive the attentions of one of the most violent killers ever known.......

Forensic psychologist Dr. Sylvia Strange has matched wits with some of the most twisted minds in the American criminal system, and survived. Now, she finds herself struggling to reach a ten-year-old girl found by police who has been terrified into utter silence. As Sylvia slowly works her way into the girl's scarred psyche and gains her trust, she realizes that what her patient witnessed may still pose a threat to someone very powerful. Someone who may want the child dead.

Her suspicions are confirmed when an attempt is made on the girl's life by a hired assassin, and Sylvia discovers a conspiracy that reaches from a death row inmate to the drug lords of Mexico. Now, Sylvia must protect her helpless ward, and unravel the mystery of the young girl's life -- before a ruthless killer ends it.......

Editor Lia Matera has compiled an irresistible concoction of mystery and suspense filled with the clever twists and chilling turns of breakups, family feuds, broken partnerships, and lovers' quarrels. As this acclaimed cast of authors probes the minefield of intimace, devotion, and trust upon which human lives are built, Irreconcilable Differences explodes with heart-stopping mayhem.Joyce Carol Oates, Amanda Cross, Jeffery Deaver, John Lutz, Edna Buchanan, Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller, Laurie R. King, Sarah Lovett, Jan Burke, Jeremiah Healy, Julie Smith, Judith Kelman, Margaret Maron, Gillian Roberts, Joan Hess, Sarah Shankman, Pete Hautman, Eileen Dreyer, Lia Matera ...