Showing results by author "Libby Fischer Hellmann" in All Categories

It all began with a line of Persian poetry . . . Anna and Nouri, both studying in Chicago, fall in love despite their very different backgrounds. Anna, who has never been close to her parents, is more than happy to return with Nouri to his native Iran, to be embraced by his wealthy family. Beginning their married life together in 1978, their world is abruptly turned upside down by the overthrow of the Shah, and the rise of the Islamic Republic.

When pretty, smart Sara Long is found bludgeoned to death, it's easy to blame the man with the bat. But Georgia Davis - former cop and newly-minted PI - is hired to look into the incident at the behest of the accused's sister, and what she finds hints at a much different, much darker answer. It seems the privileged, preppy schoolgirls on Chicago's North Shore have learned just how much their innocence is worth to hot-under-the-collar businessmen.

In 1968 two young Vietnamese sisters flee to Saigon after their village on the Mekong River is attacked by American forces and burned to the ground. The only survivors of the brutal massacre that killed their family, the sisters struggle to survive but become estranged, separated by sharply different choices and ideologies. Mai ekes out a living as a GI bar girl, but Tam’s anger festers, and she heads into jungle terrain to fight with the Viet Cong. For nearly 10 years, neither sister knows if the other is alive. Do they both survive the war?

August 1944. Prague is where the story begins, with a seemingly casual exchange. But in wartime, is any act, any one thing, trivial? Decades later, in contemporary Chicago, the consequences emerge through the medium of television. Documentary filmmaker Ellie Foreman gets a letter prompted by the success of her show Celebrate Chicago. One viewer was the elderly Ben Sinclair. When he suddenly dies, his landlady, Mrs. Fleischman, finds Ellie's name among his effects and writes to her.

With little work during the pandemic, Chicago PI Georgia Davis agrees to help the best friend of fellow sleuth Ellie Foreman. Susan Siler’s aunt died suddenly, following her COVID booster, and Susan’s distraught mother wants the death investigated. However, Georgia’s investigation is interrupted by a family trip to Nauvoo, Illinois, the onetime Mormon heartland. It’s there that her life unexpectedly intersects with the runaway spouse of a Mormon fundamentalist.

Barbara Adams, head of the Windbrook Library in suburban Chicago, has died, apparently from a fall down the stairs to the library's basement. But when Julia Fairbanks, her closest friend's daughter starts to poke around, she finds troubling emails that indicate Barbara was not the victim of a heart attack, but a vicious killer instead. Can Julia find the murderer? Or will she end up on The Last Page?

As World War II rages across Europe and the Pacific, its impact ripples through communities in the heartland of America. A farm girl is locked in a dangerous love triangle with two Germans soldiers held in an Illinois POW camp. Another German, a war refugee, is forced to risk her life spying on the developing Manhattan Project in Chicago. And espionage surrounds the disappearance of an actress from the thriving Jewish community of Chicago's Lawndale.

A bloodstained note left for PI Georgia Davis reveals the shocking existence of a half-sister she never knew about. Her sister, Savannah, is pregnant and begging for Georgia's help. Determined to track her down, Georgia finds herself heading deep into the secretive and dangerous underworld of Chicago's illegal sex trafficking business. She soon discovers that trafficking is just a small part of the horrifying and deadly situation in which her new sister is caught up.

How do you solve a murder when there are 42,000 suspects? That’s the task facing Chicago PI Georgia Davis, hired to hunt down those behind the assassination of resistance leader Dena Baldwin at a demonstration 14 months after the 2016 election. The gunman, on a nearby hotel rooftop, dies within minutes of the shooting. As Georgia sifts through Dena’s 42,000 Facebook followers, she discovers that unknown enemies hiding behind fake profiles have infiltrated the group. She finds others who will do whatever it takes - including murder - to shield right-wing, wealthy elites.

When three bodies turn up in rapid succession, all in landfills or waste disposal dumpsters, rookie cop Georgia Davis is drawn into the investigation. Teaming up with her detective boyfriend Matt and his friend, Detective Sergeant John Stone, Georgia must work out who's responsible for the killings, but there's little evidence to go on. The case also tests the strength of Georgia's relationship with Matt - complicating the situation is the daughter of a real estate mogul, who also happens to have her eye on Matt. Who's behind these gruesome killings?

Doubleback, the sequel to the acclaimed Easy Innocence, reunites PI Georgia Davis with video producer Ellie Foreman. The two women track leads from Northern Wisconsin to an Arizona border town, where illegal immigrants, smuggled drugs, and an independent contractor called Delton Security come into play. Georgia and Ellie go to great lengths to find the truth, and Georgia discovers that you can cross a line, but sometimes you have to double back.

Hired to produce a candy-floss profile of Chicago-based aviation giant Delcroft, Ellie is dismayed when company VP Charlotte Hollander trashes the production and cancels the project. Ellie believes Hollander was spooked by shots of a specific man in the video footage. But when Ellie arranges to meet the man to find out why, he is killed by a subway train before they can talk. In the confusion, she finds a seemingly abandoned pack of cigarettes with a flash drive inside that belonged to the now-dead man.

An Image of Death sees Ellie in the midst of producing another video documentary, financed by a successful Chicago real estate developer. But things take an unexpected turn one winter night when a mysterious package arrives anonymously on Ellie's doorstep. Inside, she finds a surveillance video apparently showing the murder of a young woman. Who was the victim, why was she murdered, and what is her connection to Ellie?

Someone is trying to kill Lila Hilliard. During the Christmas holidays she returns from running errands to find her family home in flames, her father and brother trapped inside. Later, she is attacked by a mysterious man on a motorcycle... and the threats don't end there. As Lila desperately tries to piece together who is after her and why, she uncovers information about her father's past in Chicago during the volatile days of the late 1960s... information he never shared with her, but now threatens to destroy her.

The big news story in Chicago is the murder trial of Johnny Santoro, a dock worker whose girlfriend has been killed. Most Chicagoans are betting on a quick guilty verdict, but Ellie Foreman has doubts about his complicity - Santoro is strangely familiar to her. Checking back to the outtakes of a video project in progress while the murder took place, Ellie finds evidence that could save Santoro from a lifetime behind bars.

On the eve of the Cuban Revolution, headstrong 18-year-old Francesca Pacelli flees from her ruthless Mafia-boss father in Havana to the arms of her lover, a rebel fighting with Fidel Castro. Her father, desperate to send her to safety in the US, resorts to torture and blackmail as he searches the island for her. So begins the first part of a spellbinding saga that spans three generations of the same family. Decades later, the family is lured back to Cuba by the promise of untold riches.

Trawling through the lawless corners of the dark internet is the last thing respectable bank manager, Rachel Foreman, expected to be doing. But she’s just been fired after falling for a cyber-scam, resulting in the identity-theft and online targeting of a female Fortune 500 CEO, accused, among other things, of the murder of a disgruntled former employee.

In this fourth crime thriller of the Ellie Foreman series, the Chicago documentary filmmaker finds herself in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Returning from a video shoot at the Lodge, a newly renovated, upscale resort, Ellie befriends a woman who claims her ride abandoned her at a highway rest stop. But Ellie’s kindness is brutally cut short when a pickup truck pulls up, the rear window opens, and the woman is shot dead.

As World War II rages across Europe and the Pacific, its impact ripples through communities in the heartland of America. Mary-Catherine, a farm girl, is locked in a dangerous love triangle with two Germans soldiers held in an Illinois POW camp in the Chicago suburbs. Mary-Catherine thinks she's in love, but the German POW may have other plans for their relationship.

Young Lena Bentheim is forced to flee Nazi Germany for Chicago in 1935, leaving her family and boyfriend behind. After learning English, she eventually finds a new life as a secretary in the Physics Department of the University of Chicago. She meets and marries another German refugee scientist and has a child. Then tragedy strikes, and Lena is forced to spy on the nuclear fission experiments at the University of Chicago.