Cold Fury

Having just turned sixteen, Sara Jane Rispoli’s birthday is anything but sweet.

Returning from her first high school dance, Sara Jane walks into a ransacked home and finds her family missing, the dog maimed and a psychopath in a ski mask who won’t rest until she’s dead. With nothing to go on but a clue hidden in a bust of Frank Sinatra, Sara Jane jumps into her dad’s 1965 Lincoln Continental and drives into the night.

The clues lead her to an ancient, worn notebook that contains a guide to a Chicago hiding in plain sight — safe houses, secret doors, mysterious phone numbers are all suddenly at Sara Jane’s disposal. But it also contains darker, more troubling secrets concerning the Rispoli family, including the revelation that a rare and powerful hereditary trait passed down from the time of Alexander the Great enabled certain male members of the Rispoli clan to become major figures in the Outfit, Chicago’s storied crime syndicate.

Sara Jane realizes the secret-filled notebook is the reason why her family was taken, and why she’s being pursued by three different factions: her turncoat uncle, Police Detective Dotty Smelt, and the huge, shambling freak in the ski mask. Learning of the gift awakens a realization in Sara Jane that she, too, possesses the powerful phenomenon.

With the help of a weight-challenged sidekick, an angry Italian greyhound, and a legion of guardian angel sewer rats, Sara Jane is chased, attacked, and fights back with cold fury, staying one step ahead of her pursuers and circumnavigating the male-centric Outfit while also keeping a growing romance alive.