Books four through six in the award-winning Amanda Pepper mystery series are now available in one volume! This collection includes:WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESEWell-known Broadway playwright and TV producer Lyle Zacharias is throwing himself a lavish birthday party in his hometown of Philadelphia. Guests include his current wife, ex-wives, friends, former partners—not to mention Amanda Pepper and her own irrepressible mother, Bea. Yet when Lyle drops dead in the middle of a speech, it appears the likely perpetrator is none other than Bea, whose gift was fifty delicious, but apparently poisoned, tarts!It''s up to Amanda to clear her mother''s name and find the real murderer…before he or she strikes again! But Amanda herself may be the next target! Who says teaching isn''t exciting? With any more excitement, Amanda will have to retire before she hits thirty-one…if she lives that long!HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATIONAmanda Pepper''s friend Sasha has a photography assignment in Atlantic City, and she invites her broke schoolteacher friend to come along for a free mini-vacation. But the two quickly discover there''s more to lose than money at the shore when Sasha finds a stranger bludgeoned to death in her bed. When a witness identifies Sasha as having been at the scene, she Goes Directly To Jail and does not pass "Go." Under the boardwalk and between the slot machines, and sometimes with the help of a motley crew of gamblers, Amanda works to unearth the truth and free her friend.IN THE DEAD OF SUMMERMellow old Philadelphia, where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have flourished for centuries, now has a new claim to fame. The City of Brotherly Love has been proclaimed number one in the nation...for hostility. English teacher Amanda Pepper, crabbily gearing up for summer school at exclusive Philly Prep, feels she fits right in with the hostility mode.And it''s going to get worse. Amanda gets her first prickling of unease in her own classroom, where a reading of Romeo and Juliet activates some very strange chemistry. Then the computer science teacher begins receiving anonymous "go-back-to-Africa" phone calls. A young Vietnamese boy dies in a drive-by shooting. And late one night, outside a Chinatown massage parlor, student April Tuong is kidnapped.Random violence? Perhaps. But Amanda refuses to let gentle April vanish without at least asking a few questions, starting in her own classroom.Gillian Roberts''s Philadelphia is the real thing. So, too, are her wit and humor, and her gripping story of Amanda''s tenacious search for the missing girl--along the brick streets of historic Philadelphia, in exotic Chinatown, and through the shady, sinister back alleys of the impoverished. The truth, when she finds it, is appalling, deadly, and much too close to home.
