Knit 1, Read Too!

Derek Strange is a rookie cop, the job he's dreamed of since he was a boy. His brother, Dennis, has not been as fortunate; home from the service with a disability pension and zero prospects, he is a man with good intentions but bad habits. Derek has always looked out for Dennis, but no amount of brotherly love can save him from the dangerous world of Alvin Jones, a local bottom-feeder, hustler, and stone killer who draws him into his web of violence. 

Sibyl Danforth has been a dedicated midwife in the rural community of Reddington, Vermont, for 15 years. But one treacherous winter night, in a house isolated by icy roads and failed telephone lines, Sibyl takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency Caesarean on its mother, who appears to have died in labor. But what if--as Sibyl's assistant later charges--the patient wasn't already dead, and it was Sibyl who inadvertently killed her? 

Sam Spade is a partner in a private-eye firm who finds himself hounded by police when his partner is killed while tailing a man. The woman who asked his partner to follow the man turns out to be someone who is not what she says she is, and is really involved in something to do with the 'Maltese Falcon', a gold-encrusted life-sized statue of a falcon, the only one of its kind.