For more than twenty years William F. Buckley Jr.'s Blackford Oakes novels have entertained readers and satisfied those who love adventure, wit, and intrigue. With the publication of A Very Private Plot, Buckley has brought the series, which began when at the age of twenty-four Blackford Oakes was seduced by the Queen of England, to its satisfying conclusion. The year is 1995. An ambitious U.S. senator wants to weaken the power of the CIA, perhaps to the point of its elimination. To accomplish his goal, he tries to enlist Blackford Oakes - now retired - into his cause by forcing him to testify before a senate committee about CIA covert activities in 1985. The senator wants to know what President Reagan did at that time when informed of a plot by Soviet veterans of the war against Afghanistan to assassinate Mikhail Gorbachev, who had just risen to power. What will Oakes do? Will the senator be able to force him to testify? Or will Oakes be able to draw upon the wit and savoir-faire that have saved the day on so many occasions? .

When a nation's attention turns toward war, many opportunities for other crimes arise. Against the backdrop of brothers fighting brothers and cities under siege, civilians and soldiers alike conspire to use the cover of conflict to steal, cheat, spy and even murder for whatever reason - the honour of their cause or personal gain. Sometimes the crimes committed because of war can be the most terrible of all. The stories in Murder Most Confederate, the majority written specifically for this book, are all set within the Confederacy. They range from the war-torn city of Richmond, Virginia, where a husband and wife run an unusual boarding house, to two brothers fighting on opposite sides of the war and the terrible price one of them pays for happiness. From men and women doing their patriotic duty to rogues and criminals committing crimes under the cover of combat, the savage side of war is revealed in these stories of Murder Most Confederate. The rebellious line-up includes:
"The Hessian" by Doug Allyn * "The Price of Coal" by Edward D. Hoch * "Last Hours in Richmond" by Brendan DuBois * "Veterans" by John Lutz * "The Cobblestones of Saratoga Street" by Avram Davidson * "A House Divided" by Marc Bilgrey * "Blossoms and Blood" by Janet Berliner * "Whistling Dixie" by Billie Sue Mosiman * "Behind Enemy Lines" by John Helfers and Carol Rondou * "The Unknown Soldier" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch * "A Woman's Touch" by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens * "Ghost" by Bradley H. Sinor * "The Last Day of the War" by James Reasoner * "Valuables" by Kristine Scheid * "The Face" by Ed Gorman * "Matthew in the Morning" by Gary A. Braunbeck

Among the Ten Commandments, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is self-evidently one of the most basic and fundamental of them all. Even so, there are those who would break that commandment with impunity, as there also are those who enthusiastically break them all. Sometimes those who seek out and bring these transgressors to justice are men and women of the cloth, whose exploration of the mysteries of the divine uniquely qualify them to uncover the frailties of their fellow man. From G. K. Chesterton's classic priest-turned-detective Father Brown to Peter Tremayne's historical Celtic nun and lawyer, Sister Fidelma, religious men and women put aside their professional duties for a moment and take up an altogether different vocation for a short time - that of detective. Stories in this collection of ecclesiastical sleuthing are: "The Stripper" by Anthony Boucher; "The Wrong Shape" by G. K. Chesterton; "Jemima Shore's First Case" by Antonia Fraser; "The Sweating Statue" by Edward D. Hoch; "Bingo Next Time" by Ralph McInerny; "Miss Butterfingers" by Monica Quill; "In the Confessional" by Alice Scanlon Reach; "Hemlock at Vespers" by Peter Tremayne; "Conventional Spirit" by Sharan Newman; "Mea Culpa" by Jan Burke; "When Your Breath Freezes" by Kathleen Dougherty