Akron Public Library

"Class reunions: a time for memories--good, bad, and, as Virgil Flowers is about to find out, deadly--in the thrilling new novel in the #1 New York Times-bestselling series Virgil knows the town of Trippton, Minnesota, a little too well. A few years back, he investigated the corrupt - and as it turned out, homicidal - local school board, and now the town's back in view with more alarming news: A woman's been found dead, frozen in a block of ice. There's...

In Israel, a man clutching a backpack searches desperately for a boat. In Minnesota, Virgil Flowers gets a visitor: an Israeli investigator. She is chasing a man who has smuggled out an extraordinary relic-- an ancient inscribed stone with startling details about King Solomon. Despite Virgil's first reaction-- that this is a joke, or a movie plot-- it turns out that many people around the world are also pursuing the smuggler, some of them likely to...

Virgil Flowers will have to watch his back--and his mouth--as he investigates a college culture war turned deadly in another one of Sandford's "madly entertaining Virgil Flowers mysteries" (New York Times Book Review). At the local state university, two feuding departments have faced off on the battleground of science and medicine. Each carries their views to extremes that may seem absurd, but highly educated people of sound mind and good intentions...

The superstore chain PyeMart has its sights set on a Minnesota river town, but two very angry groups want to stop it - local merchants fearing for their businesses and the environmentalists predicting ecological disaster. The protests don't seem to be slowing the project down, though, until someone decides to take matters into his own hands. The first bomb goes off on the top floor of PyeMart's headquarters. The second one explodes at the construction...

Virgil Flowers is only in his late 30s, but he's been around the block a few times, and he doesn't think much can surprise him. He's about to be proved wrong. On a hot, humid summer night in Minnesota, Flowers is in bed with one of his ex-wives when the phone rings. It's Lucas Davenport. There's a body near a veteran's memorial in Stillwater with two shots to the head. The victim has a lemon in his mouth, exactly like the body they found a week ago....

When protests about a superstore chain's plans to build a location in a Minnesota river town escalate into bombing attacks at the construction site and the company's headquarters, Virgil Flowers races against time to find and stop the bomber.

"In southeast Minnesota, down on the Mississippi, a school board meeting is coming to a close. The board chairman announces that the rest of the meeting will be closed, due to personnel issues. "Issues" is correct. The proposal up for a vote before them is whether a local reporter should die. And the vote is four to one in favor. Meanwhile, not far away, Virgil Flowers is doing a favor for a friend by looking into a dognapping, which seems to be turning...