Do or Die

Format: Hardcover, 272pp.
ISBN: 0385492480
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Pub. Date: August  2000

Harlem's supersleuth Mali Anderson is back on the case in the fourth installment of Grace Edwards's beautifully rendered and critically acclaimed Mali Anderson mystery series.

All of the characters Edwards's fans love are back. This time Mali and company take to the high seas for a brief trip aboard the QE2. When they return to Harlem, they discover that the singer in Dad's jazz band has been murdered--her throat slit from ear to ear, and her shirtsleeve ripped to expose faded track marks. The girl's father, also a member of Dad's band, is devastated. Out of a sense of duty, responsibility, and loyalty to her father and his grieving friend, Mali sets out to find the murderer and slips in and out of the "three B's" of Harlem--the beauty shops, barbershops, and bars--with her signature grace and grit.

A spectacularly drawn Harlem--the good, the bad, and the ugly--comes vividly to life in Do or Die, which has all the charm and chutzpah Edwards's fans have grown to expect. Readers will take delicious pleasure not only in Mali's struggle to find the culprit before he strikes again; they will cheer her on as she fights for her jaw-droppingly gorgeous (and sensitive) man, Tad Honeywell, when he becomes the target of a sexpot's advances.

If I Should Die

Author:  Grace F. Edwards
Publisher:  Bantam Books, Incorporated
Date Published:  March 1998
Format:  Mass Market Paperbound

Read an Excerpt

On the way to pick up her orphaned nephew Alvin at the world-renowned Uptown Children's Chorus, Mali hears the screams of a terrified child. As she and her Great Dane, Ruffin, race to the rescue, a car speeds away, leaving a young boy dazed on the sidewalk and a man lying in the street with a bullet hole in his forehead. The victim is her friend, Erskin Harding, tour director of the Chorus and a man without an enemy in the world. Could he have been the target, or was he an innocent bystander gunned down as he tried to prevent the kidnapping of young Morris Johnson? Though Mali has good reason to be suspicious of the police, there's one cop she's ready to trust: Tad Honeywell, smart, suave, and handsome. But as she follows her leads, each seems to lead only to more mayhem.

A Toast before Dying

Author:  Grace F. Edwards
Publisher:  Random House, Incorporated
Date Published:  March 1999
Format:  Trade Paper

On a busy Saturday night at a Harlem hot spot called the Half-Moon Bar, a shot rings out. Fatally wounded is a popular barmaid and sometime actress named Thea. The main suspect is the young, suave Kendrick, Thea's boyfriend and the brother of sleuth Mali Anderson's good friend Bert. Miss Bert, the straight-talking owner of Bertha's Beauty Shop, appeals to Mali to get her brother off the hook. As the story unwinds against the lushly painted backdrop of contemporary Harlem, old characters return (Mali's handsome boyfriend Tad, her jazz musician father, and her preteen nephew Alvin), new characters pop up (the colorful Too Hot, the elegant Gladys Winston), and Mali wends her way through one of the most fascinating neighborhoods on the globe to finally nail the murderer.

No Time to Die

Author:  Grace F. Edwards
Publisher:  Bantam Books, Incorporated
Date Published:  February 2000
Format:  Mass Market Paperbound