Sara Paretsky CD Collection 2: Bleeding Kansas, Hardball

Bleeding Kansas: Two farm families, the Grelliers and Schapens, can trace their Kansas roots back to the 1850s, a time of violent clashes between antislavery and proslavery forces. Their shared history and family rivalry is tested with the arrival of Gina Haring, a lesbian Wiccan, who moves into a nearby farmhouse and starts practicing pagan rites. The Grellier’s and Schapens’ have always wondered who stands better with the Lord. Then the Griellier’s suffer a family tragedy and the Schapens’ are convinced that God favors them when one of their cows gives birth to a “Perfect Red Heifer” — a sign of the second coming. Passion, prejudice and religious fervor rise to a fever pitch and then erupt at a pagan festival in celebration of summer’s end. Hardball: V. I. Warshawski is asked to find Lamont Gadsden, a man who’s been missing for four decades. The search turns up old skeletons from the Chicago’s racially charged history, as well as haunting family secrets — her own and those of the elderly sisters who hired her. New information emerges about V.I.’s father’s role in a politically and racially charged trial almost forty years ago. Afraid to discover that her adored father might have been a bent cop, V.I. takes the investigation all the way to its frightening end.