title: The Jasmine Trade: A Novel of Suspense Introducing Eve Diamond
author:  Denise Hamilton 
description: When a young Chinese bride-to-be is found dead at the wheel of her Lexus at the start of this solid debut thriller, plucky Los Angeles Times reporter Eve Diamond's compulsive curiosity and professional instinct for good copy lead her into the unfamiliar and intersecting worlds of Asian gangs and Southern California's "parachute kids," wealthy Asian teens living unsupervised in San Marino mansions while their parents manage businesses on the other side of the Pacific. By quickly befriending a parachute kid "dancing with the dragon" of gang membership and just as swiftly falling in love with Mark Furukawa, a counselor for troubled teens, Eve ensures herself a role in the investigation that is both complicated and personal. Add in the murdered girl's secret diary, her shady fianc, a corrupt bank, a racist cop and the "jasmine trade" (smuggling girls out of Chinese provinces and forcing them into prostitution), and it's not surprising that Eve's entanglement in the case becomes life threatening. First-time novelist Hamilton, herself a former L.A. Times scribe, might be accused of "dancing with the dragon" of common mystery novel tropes, but she, unlike many of her characters, escapes essentially unscathed. In addition to a gripping story and keen observations about contemporary Los Angeles, she also offers an undeniably winning narrator: intelligent, impulsive Eve is sharp on the outside and vulnerable on the inside, willing to cogitate with equal intensity on issues private (a lost love, a dead brother) and public (racial and socioeconomic politics, "the media's scorching glare"). And Hamilton hints, ever so gently, that her heroine might return.
zlib_text: This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, events, and incidents are products of the
  author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance
  to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
   
  Snake Charmer copyright @ 2015 by Evelyn Glass. All rights reserved. No part of this book may
  be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case
  of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
   
  Book 2 of the Diamondbacks Motorcycle Club trilogy
  
  CHAPTER ONE
   
  There was a pile of paperwork waiting on her desk, but Eve just couldn’t bring herself to care.
  Contracts, tenants’ applications, contractors’ bills, clients’ demands…she could not care less
  about any of it. It wasn’t that she wasn’t trying. She tried very hard to reconcile her old lifestyle
  with who she had become after her brief but eventful encounter with the Diamondbacks.
   
  Her exp