"Taryn Moore is young, beautiful, and brilliant--so why would she kill herself? When Detective Frankie Loomis arrives on the scene to investigate the girl's fatal plunge from her apartment balcony, Frankie knows in her gut there's more to the story. Her instincts are confirmed when surprise information is revealed that could have been reason enough for Taryn's suicide--or a motive for murder. To English professor Jack Dorian, Taryn was the ultimate...

On a dim winter afternoon, a young Irish immigrant opens the gas taps in his Brooklyn tenement. He is determined to prove--to the subway bosses who have recently fired him, to his badgering, pregnant wife--"that the hours of his life belong to himself alone." In the aftermath of the fire that follows, Sister St. Savior, an aging nun, a Little Sister of the Sick Poor, appears, unbidden, to direct the way forward for his widow and his unborn child....