Walker Family (Jance)

The hunter is free to kill again -- and hour by hour, he draws closer . . . The brilliant psychopath Andrew Carlisle spent only six years in prison for the brutal torture–murder of a young girl of the Tohono O'otham tribe. The testimony of Diana Ladd -- a teacher on the reservation -- put Carlisle behind bars, and now she can't ignore the dark, mystical signs that say a predator has returned to prowl the Arizona desert. Because no matter where Diana and her young son hide . . . he will find them.

Twenty years ago, a darkness rose up out of the blistering heat of the Arizona desert and descended upon the Walker family of Tucson. A personified evil, a serial killer named Andrew Carlisle, brought blood and terror into their world, nearly murdering Diana Ladd Walker and her young son, Davy. Now much has changed. The family has grown larger. There's Lani, the beloved adopted daughter-a beautiful Native American teenager "kissed by the bees" and destined, according to Tohono 0'othham lore, to become a woman of great spiritual power. And now that the psychopath Carlisle has died in prison, Brandon and Diana Walker believe that their long nightmare is finally over. They are wrong. The monster is dead, but his malevolence lives on . . . in another.

The Walker family survived the atrocities perpetrated by a serial killer and his crazed acolyte in both Hour of the Hunter and Kiss of the Bees. But can they escape the vengeance of a new killer or killers whose sights have been set on their precious daughter, Lani? Young girls are being spirited away from an orphanage deep in Colonial Mexico -- told they're traveling to a loving adoptive family in southern Arizona, their hopes are high. But the fate that waits for them is truly horrifying: when death comes, it will be a blessing....Former Sheriff Brandon Walker is living the life of a reluctant retiree. Playing golf while his wife, Diana Ladd, continues to write her bestselling tales of true crime, he desperately misses the action and sense of usefulness from days gone by. When he's invited to join the Last Chance Club to review and attempt to solve long-cold cases, he little imagines the first case to cross his path will be one he may have botched back when he was sheriff. And when the case from all those decades past becomes entangled with a current murder, it seems a serial killer with a very long and shocking track record may be back in business....

Queen of the Night, New York Times bestselling author J.A. Jance brings back the Walker family-introduced in Hour of the Hunter, terrorized in Kiss of the Bees, and last seen in Day of the Dead. A multilayered thriller, gripping and unforgettable-evocatively set in the breathtaking Arizona desert-Queen of the Night is a chilling tale of murder past and present that connects and devastates three separate families.