Mercy

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Heartbreaker comes a thrilling novel of passion and obsession featuring attorney Theo Buchanan.

Like his FBI agent brother Nick, Theo Buchanan is devoted to his crime-fighting career. Unlike his brother, he works the other side of the desk as an esteemed Justice Department attorney and rarely sees on-the-field action—until he comes to the aid of Dr. Michelle Renard, a beautiful and brilliant surgeon in Bowen, Louisiana, who recently saved his own life. Michelle’s medical clinic has been vandalized, and the investigation uncovers a deadly ring of criminals bent on preserving their secrecy at any cost.

They call themselves the Sowing Club: four white-collar professionals whose sophisticated crimes have amassed millions of dollars in a Cayman Islands bank account. The group is bound by a pact to leave the cash untouched until they accumulate a certain amount, but their leader, John, is distracted by and nearly bankrupt from his wife's grave illness. Knowing what must be done, John turns to his three friends to mercy-kill his wife, but the line between mercy and murder quickly vanishes....

As the relentless and cold-blooded Sowing Club sets out to silence Michelle, the one person who has information that could destroy them, Theo confronts the lies, greed, and evil that bind the lethal foursome—and risks more than he ever has before. Michelle saved his life...now can he save hers?

Bestselling author Julie Garwood has a new calling--contemporary romantic suspense fiction. While longtime fans of Garwood hope she won't forsake the historical romance genre that has been so successful for her, this versatile author is coming into her own as a creator of amazingly complex and detailed suspense novels. In Mercy, Theo Buchanan, the brother of FBI agent Nick Buchanan from Heartbreaker, Garwood's first foray into suspense fiction, meets surgeon Dr. Michelle "Mike" Renard when he throws up on her designer dress at a New Orleans gala. Dr. Mike saves Theo's life with an emergency appendectomy, enabling him to return to Boston and his job as a federal prosecutor.

But Theo can't stop thinking about Mike and her little hometown on the bayou. After concluding an investigation and trial that brings down a powerful organized crime syndicate, Theo receives several death threats and his boss recommends he keep a low profile. What better place to go incognito than Bowen, Louisiana, where the catfish practically throw themselves at your fishing pole and where a certain pretty young doctor is opening her new practice? But when Theo arrives, he finds life in Bowen isn't quite as idyllic as he thought. Someone has ransacked Mike's new office and seems dead set on harming her. As Theo struggles to protect Mike, he uncovers a ring of upper-crust criminals willing to do anything, even murder, to keep their dirty little secret--all $40 million of it--from being discovered. What connection could they possibly have to Mike? And why does everyone under the age of 18 keep calling Theo "Coach"? Join perennial favorite Garwood on a journey into the quirky, close-knit communities of the Louisiana bayou and the journey a man and woman devoted to their careers undertake as they fall passionately in love. --Alison Trinkle