June 7th, 2026
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Love, Danger, Homecomings & Heart β€” Your June Reading Escape Starts Here

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One disastrous night. One devastating man. One diabolical proposition.


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He’s stubborn. She’s tougher. His kid? Already picked the bride.


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A small-town second chance wrapped in danger, desire, and Sharon Sala heart.


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She came home to save the ranch… and found the cowboy she never forgot.


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From reality TV heartbreak to real-life reinvention.


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A missing twin. A deadly cartel. One K-9 team caught in the crossfire.


Merciless by Richard Montanari

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Also by Richard Montanari:

The Buried Girl, March 2019
e-Book
The Killing Room: A Balzano & Byrne Novel, May 2017
Paperback / e-Book
Shutter Man, February 2016
Hardcover / e-Book
Merciless, August 2007
Hardcover
The Skin Gods, August 2007
Mass Market Paperback (reprint)

MERCILESS
By: Richard Montanari

Ballantine
August 2007
On Sale: July 31, 2007
Featuring: Jessica Balzano; Kevin Byrne
416 pages
ISBN: 0345492404
EAN: 9780345492401
Hardcover
Add to Wish List

Thriller Police Procedural | Suspense

On a frigid December night, Karen sits at the edge of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, dressed in a flowing gown, like a visitor from the distant past. A beautiful and shining young woman, she gazes up at a bone-white winter moon like a fairy-tale princess frozen in time. At first glance, one might not even notice that she is dead, coated in a glistening patina of ice.

Homicide cops Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano take the lead on the case, uncovering a plethora of eerie clues – each more warped and spine-chilling than the last. Yet the identity of Karen’s pitiless killer remains a mystery. Then the next victim is found upriver at an abandoned waterworks, posed with an unlikely object in her clasped hands. Struggling to link the victims and make sense of the madman’s agenda, Byrne and Balzano follow his twisted trail, which stretches into a past of dark crimes forgotten by all but a few.

Now the past roars back into the present with a vengeance as the ingenious killer unleashes a torrent of rage upon the streets of Philadelphia. As Byrne and Balzano sift through suspects and clues, they unearth a shocking secret history: a legacy of malevolence and cold-blooded retribution dating back twenty years. And the farther they make their way up the body-strewn banks of the Schuylkill River, the closer they get to a villain from their worst nightmare, an evil as patient as it is merciless.

This jolting thriller coils back in time to deliver a fiendish mystery, a shattering revelation, and one hell of a wild ride. Lock your doors and turn up the lights. This terrifying bedtime story will keep you up all night.

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