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By Kathleen Y\’Barbo (Barbour Books)

Two Series of Murders Seem Mysteriously ConnectedStep into True Colors — a series of Historical Stories of Romance and American Crime Three years before Jack the Ripper began his murderous spree on the streets of London, women were dying in their beds as The Midnight Assassin terrorized the citizens of Austin, Texas. Now, with suspicion falling on Her Majesty’s family and Scotland Yard at a loss as to who the Ripper might be, Queen Victoria summons her great-granddaughter, Alice Anne von Wettin, a former Pinkerton agent who worked the unsolved Austin case, and orders her to discreetly form a team to look into the London matter. The prospect of a second chance to work with Annie just might entice Isaiah Joplin out of his comfortable life as an Austin lawyer. If his theories are right, they’ll find the The Midnight Assassin and, by default, the Ripper. If they’re wrong, he and Annie are in a bigger mess than the one the feisty female left behind when she departed Austin under cover of darkness three years ago.

By Karen Young (Howard Books)

This successful author of romance novels (more than 10 million units sold from 1992 to 2008 in mass-market romance editions) continues her move into romantic suspense with a thriller about a woman faced with the decision to clear her ex-fiance’s name in a murder case when he asks her to lie for him. Lauren Holloway’s ex-fiance, Tucker Kane, is without an alibi when his ex-wife is murdered. Tucker claims to have been alone at a job site at the time, but he needs Lauren to lie for him so that he won’t become a suspect in the murder. She refuses; now as a prime suspect, Tucker disappears without a trace. Years later, she sees him at an antique fair, and worried that Lauren will reveal his carefully constructed life, he forces his way into her hotel room and tells her that he’s trying to find evidence to clear his name.