Little Veronica likes hanging out at Mrs. Life’s porch. She can see the whole town from the steps, and Mrs. Life is fascinating in the way that she keeps track of all sorts of numbers and information in her little spiral-bound notebooks. So it’s surprising to Veronica when the always-nice Mrs. Life has an argument with Mr. Quickel, the school health teacher and wrestling coach, about the cost of mowing her lawn. Soon, Mrs. Life has started to insinuate things about Mr. Quickel, his marriage and what he might or might not have done with a boy who ran off from the town to live life as an openly gay man. Soon, the entire town is turning on Mr. Quickel with rumors and threats and destroying his sanity. Before too long, Veronica starts to see what Mrs. Life’s real motivation is, and what dark secrets she keeps in one of her spiral-bound notebooks. A short story.

English writer Paul D Brazill’s 13 Shots Of Noir is a collection of short stories in the vein of Roald Dahl, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The first story, “The Tut”, was nominated for a 2010 Spinetingler Award, while the story “Anger Management” was chosen as one of the Predators and Editors top twenty crime stories.

Crime, horror and dark fiction are contained within the pages of 13 Shots Of Noir.

When Denver lawyer Adam Larsen agrees to observe a trial at the request of a young–and very attractive–female lawyer whose case is going badly, he has no idea he embarking upon another one of “those” cases, as his paralegal, former Bronco Maurice White, refers to them. Cases that involve murder.

Chief Judge Milton Gumauer refuses to admit key evidence presented by the young lawyer, despite her having laid a proper foundation for admission of the materials. And the judge is inexplicably irked by Larsen’s presence in the courtroom. After a verbal confrontation, His Honor orders Larsen to leave the courthouse. As Larsen reaches the exit, a gunshot rings out. Judge Gumauer, alone in his chambers, has been killed—but not before leaving a cryptic message, imploring Larsen to solve a murder.

With no information about the victim, the cause of death or even the time or place of the crime, Larsen has no clue where he would even start–and no particular desire to try. But when the judge’s clerk is murdered in her home, Larsen’s curiosity begins to simmer. And when he learns that the battered briefcase he noticed in the judge’s chambers has vanished, Larsen’s interest begins to boil.

He quickly finds himself drawn into a dangerous world of bribery and corruption, where there is no one he dares to trust. Even his old nemesis, Sergeant Joe Stone, has suddenly been placed on administrative leave. Undaunted, Larsen turns to his trusted staff–and, of course, his favorite private investigator, Jana Deacon–to search for the answers. But even when he thinks he has figured it all out, there are still surprises lurking in the shadows.

When does the price of gratitude become too big of a bill to pay?

Blake Casson is used to being hired for assassination work, but when he’s asked to do a recovery job of a kidnap victim he doesn’t want any part of it. The problem is, the man who saved Casson’s life previously is the kidnap victim’s father, and he’s determined to bring Casson in on the job.

Soon, Casson finds himself caught up in a game of cat-and-mouse throughout New York City in an effort to recover the abducted woman. When the investigation leads to a dramatic showdown, Casson discovers he may not live to see his end of the favor upheld.

A work of crime from our Fingerprints line.

As the unplanned finale of the Denver Opera Company’s production of Carmen. A member of the audience plunges to his death from the top balcony, nearly landing on Denver lawyer Adam Larsen and his paralegal, former Denver Bronco Maurice White. What appears to be a mere accident becomes far more complicated when the mystery woman who had accompanied the deceased can’t be found. Much to the displeasure of Larsen’s nemesis, Sergeant Joe Stone, the dead man’s wife Larsen him represent her in dealing with her husband’s ex-wife and his accounting partners. But questions begin to arise. Why was this happily married man soliciting the services of a so-called escort service? And what is so important about his secret post office box that someone assaults Larsen’s significant-whatever-she-is, private investigator Jana Duncan, outside the Cherry Creek Mall? Only Adam Larsen’s nimble brain and quick sense of humor can sort it all out—but can he do it in time to save Jana’s life?

As Denver lawyer Adam Larsen and his legal assistant enter a wealthy client’s mansion for an evening appointment, they are literally blown off their feet. The bomb in her private bathroom killed her instantly–and leaves Adam wondering why she wanted so urgently to meet with him.

Known to her many enemies as The Empress, mining magnate Helen Emerson had been in the midst of a bitter dispute with a coal miners union, and now her children persuade Adam to fight their battle for them. He soon finds himself embroiled in hostile negotiations, receiving death threats, and dealing with a gun-toting femme fatale. And then matters get complicated…

Sammy Itzkowitz was born on Christmas in a hole in the ground, under the home of a brave Polish family who hid his Jewish family from the Nazis.

After coming to Brooklyn at war’s end, Sammy awaits with eager anticipation the arrival of the holidays: his birthday, Hanukkah and Christmas. He is dismayed to discover what he sees as indifference to the true meaning of Christmas, and ignorance of Hanukkah in America.

After a frustrating incident at school, he stages a shocking protest to make people focus on his favorite time of the year for the real reasons the holidays exist. He becomes a little boy on a moral crusade.

Only an intervention by his favorite Brooklyn Dodger hero can possibly save the day.

The Denver Opera Company’s production of Carmen has an unplanned finale when a member of the audience plunges to his death from the top balcony–nearly landing on Denver lawyer Adam Larsen and his paralegal, former Denver Bronco Maurice White. What appears to be a mere accident quickly becomes far more complicated. What was this happily married man doing at the opera with another woman? And why has she disappeared? Much to the irritation of Larsen’s nemesis, Sergeant Joe Stone, the victim’s wife hires Larsen to represent her in a dispute with her husband’s ex-wife and his business partners. But questions continue to arise. Why was the deceased maintaining a secret post office box–and what is so important about it that someone would assault Larsen’s significant-whatever-she-is, private investigator Jana Duncan, outside the Cherry Creek Mall? The matter grows more confusing when an ex-cop who had been trailing Larsen is found bludgeoned to death. Larsen’s nimble brain and quick sense of humor will sort it all out. If only he can do it in time to save Jana’s life…

It’s not often one has the chance to become 20 again…

A World Ago chronicles, through one young man’s journal and vivid letters to his parents, his life, adventures, and experiences at a magical time. It follows him from being a Naval Aviation Cadet to becoming a “regular” sailor aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga on an eight-month tour of duty in the politically tense Mediterranean Sea.

Learn to fly a plane, to soar, alone, through a valley of clouds, experience a narrow escape from death on a night training flight, and receive the continent of Europe as a 21st birthday gift. Climb down into the crater of Mt. Vesuvius, visit Paris, Cannes, Athens, Beirut, Valencia, Istanbul and places in-between; wander the streets of Pompeii, have your picture taken on a fallen column on the Acropolis, ride bicycles on the Island of Rhodes, experience daily life aboard an aircraft carrier during the height of the cold war—all in the company and through the eyes of a young will-be-writer coming of age with the help of the United States Navy.

A World Ago is a rare glimpse into the personal and private world of a young man on the verge of experiencing everything the world has to offer—and discovering a lot about himself in the process.

Aaron Stiles is dead. He’s been dead for four years but doesn’t seem to know it. He’s waiting for his partner Bill to come home, and until that happens, he’s not going anywhere. The trouble is, Bill Somers won’t be coming home—ever—because he’s dead, too. The official verdict was suicide, but…

The last thing Elliott Smith needs in his latest renovation project is a ghost, especially one who won’t let him sell the place until he solves the mystery of who killed Bill. Elliott has John to help with the spectral side of things, but that leaves Elliott with the quandary of how to get information on the case. After all, he can hardly explain he’s investigating on behalf of one dead man with the assistance of another.

Available for the first time in ebook format, this special edition includes a new introduction from author Gillian Roberts and an exclusive interview with Amanda Pepper herself!

When a high school senior shows signs of mental illness, Amanda attempts to get him help, but she’s rebuffed by his parents. When the same boy then becomes the prime suspect in a murder at the Philadelphia Main Library, and runs away, Amanda, who knows he’s confused and in need of help—whether or not he committed the crime—has no choice but to run after him. And to run into the possibility of becoming the next victim herself.

In the Nahella Valley of Appalachia, a rumor is whispered about a man named Eli Pettit and the small fortune in stolen money he supposedly hid on his farm before disappearing, leaving a wife, daughter and sister-in-law to tend the land and guard the money – if the money even exists.

It is a rumor Michael O’Rear cannot resist. A wandering actor from the remnants of the Chautauqua circuit, gifted with Irish gab and charm, he arrives ready to perform his last and most horrific role – that of a murderer.

Yet, it is not simple theater for Michael. In the Appalachia of 1939, he is a stranger in a region that does not easily accept strangers. He first must ingratiate himself to the three women of the Pettit home – Eli’s wife, Rachel; his daughter, Sarah; and Rachel’s sister, Dora, and then he must curry favor with the townspeople of Yale.

For Michael, it becomes an exhilarating performance, acted with patience and with the cunning persuasion of dreamy – often outlandish – tales. One by one, he entices the cast of his drama to embrace him and to do his bidding, but in the wake of his presence, he leaves an imprint of physical and emotional terror that scars everyone who becomes mesmerized by him.

Still, in this tantalizing story of deception and senseless slaughter, of threat and fear, it is the powerful instinct for survival that eventually drops the curtain on Michael O’Rear and restores the quiet secrets of the Nahella Valley to those who know them.

Lily Kovner could not have dreamed that research for a magazine assignment would resurrect a searing memory from her childhood. A fleeting glimpse of a family treasure looted by the Nazis launches “Afikomen” – her quest for justice and restitution spanning three continents. Along the way threats, murder and the revelation of a diabolical secret deal thrust Lily onto an emotional rollercoaster further complicated by the thrill of new romance.

Amanda’s friend Sasha’s stepmother has just committed suicide—although, according to Sasha, Phoebe Ennis would never have killed herself, especially not while having a drink and wearing a red silk blouse and red sandals with four-inch heels. Amanda isn’t persuaded, but reluctantly agrees to help investigate the woman’s demise, though the evidence for foul play is slim. True, the middle-aged compulsive collector of knickknacks wasn’t universally loved. Phoebe’s own son hated her, and she bored her friends to death with hints of her “royal” lineage. And with four marriages behind her, she was already preparing to announce her renewed availability on the Net. But when another woman is found dead in Phoebe’s house, it becomes clear that something is indeed murderously amiss, and much closer to home than Amanda or anyone else could have imagined.

When Cindy stops by the local cat shelter where she volunteers, she discovers her coworker Samantha unconscious on the floor. Even more horrifying, to Cindy, is that a mother cat and her kittens have mysteriously disappeared out into the snow. While Cindy leaves the attack to the police to investigate while she seeks out the missing cats, a second assault finishes Samantha off. Soon, Cindy’s mixed up in a litter of death, missing cats and the police casting an eye in her direction as a possible suspect. Can Cindy find the missing cats and help pinpoint the murderer, or is she going to end up a victim of her own cat-astrophe? A short story.

When the decapitated body of a young computer engineer is found on the train tracks in Monterrey, Mexico, Captain Guillermo Lombardo finds his investigation taking him into the world of the Mexican drug cartels. As everyone from the university Dean to the Governor himself fails to cooperate with the investigation, Lombardo soon discovers that the body is just the tip of the iceberg of a much larger situation.

The high point of the Colorado Fiction Writers Association convention is the body discovered in the auditorium, dressed in clothing belonging to members of the executive board…until the corpse turns out to be real. To complicate matters, the collection of Weapons of Destruction that Lakewood PD Mitch Cameron brought for show-and-tell comes up short a stiletto and a garrote—which he soon discovers wrapped around the corpse’s neck.

Arthur Upton, association president and a former cop, works with Cameron to identify the dead man and to find his killer, assisted and hampered by the rest of the executive board. Stranded by a record-setting blizzard, they know that the murderer and the missing stiletto are still in the hotel. As night closes in and another body is found, they must find a way to stop a cold-blooded killer.

Big Bull Benson, the hotel and bar owner who first appeared in Spurlark’s novel GOOD GIRLS DON’T GET MURDERED, returns in a brand-new novella.

Mob boss Troy Calini doesn’t exactly have the best reputation in Chicago, but when his own daughter suspects him of killing her boyfriend Calini is determined to prove to her that his hands are clean.

Enter Big Bull Benson. Although Bull and Calini haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, Calini is convinced that Benson can use his skills and connections to find out who really committed the crime.

Benson isn’t too thrilled at the prospect of investigating the case. He’d much rather be back at the hotel he won in a poker game. Still, it’s not a smart idea to say no to a crime boss. Before you can say “whacked,” Benson finds himself on the streets and following clues.

It isn’t long before Benson realizes that this isn’t just a typical carjacking (as the police suspect) or even a mob hit. Instead, the case will take him to suburbia where he soon discovers that every family hides a dark secret. And, sometimes, those secrets can be deadly.

Anabel Martin’s world was destroyed the day her father was murdered. After spending seventeen years of her life trapped on a Top Secret island in the South Pacific, she now finds herself in Washington, DC in the care of her former politician brother and his unwelcoming wife. While she wants nothing more than to be left alone, instead she is thrust into the limelight as a key witness in the Congressional hearings investigating the murder of her father and the very existence of her former home. For Anabel, it’s hard to concentrate on these proceedings when the thing she wants most in the world is for Jared Sorensen to die.

What’s even worse is that Jared is the only reason she’s still alive.

Door to door census taking has it’s ups and downs on any day. There’s no way to know what lies behind each front door. On one afternoon, things take a particularly strange and hazardous turn for one census worker. One of the houses on the route holds dark secrets and triggers events that will never be forgotten. A short story from our Fingerprints line.

Kaitlin Singer needs time off—from a philandering husband, from a writing career stalled on a buzzard as a main character, and from the stash of chocolate in her lingerie drawer. Her decision to return to her childhood home might seem like the perfect way to get her life back together were it not for her mother foisting two visitors on her, guests who claim to be guardian angels. Perhaps not all is lost, for the angels might just be the companions she needs to help her solve the murder of a local newspaper columnist. To uncover clues to the crime, Kaitlin takes over the dead woman’s work, writing the column as well as volunteering in the senior center, moves that put her in the path of the killer. She and her guests will need assistance from a pot-bellied pig and some pool skills to bring the murderer down.

Clark is an aspiring writer that is constantly in search of a great story. But when his seemingly oppressive relationship with his girlfriend, Lex, prompts him to take drastic action, Clark realizes that he has the opportunity to make a great story.

Miles away from civilization, under the cover of a stormy night, he sets out to right the wrongs in his life with a shovel, a tarp and gritty determination.

What could possibly go wrong?

This title is published by eLectio Publishing and is distributed worldwide by Untreed Reads.

Danny has a simple job: he makes people pay for their mistakes. Unfortunately, even hitmen screw up too. When an exhausted Danny escorts an unreliable accountant to his final audit in a run-down hotel, he realizes the moneyman isn’t the only one scheduled for termination. And when you need a professional, lightning-quick gunman dead, they don’t just send one man—they send all of them.

Alone, facing multiple killers, he has to move fast and shoot faster. Worse, Danny knows the leader of the team—the legend who trained him—lies somewhere in the depths of the hotel…waiting. A short work of crime fiction from our Fingerprints line.

Emaline’s job has changed from perfect to the pits. Her best friend might have killed her husband. The man she was falling in love with has disappeared and may be dead. Not being one to sit around and wait for things to change, Emaline deals with each issue in her characteristic straightforward manner. But when she decides to look for Harry she may have bitten off more than she can manage.

Blackmailed into spying for Lysander, head of the hated Secret Police, High Priestess Iliona discovers that the threat to her country doesn’t come from their archenemy, Athens. It comes from deep within Sparta itself.

But as she investigates, the same thread keeps turning up. Of a one-eyed giant who lives in the hills. The legendary Cyclops. So who is this man who inspires such fear? A freak? A fraud? A felon? And what does his arrival have to do with the disappearance of several young women?

A new enemy arises to challenge Mrillis and Ceera as they battle plagues, an unknown enemy and treachery within the Noveni and Rey’kil alliance. Has the Nameless One survived, or has someone else taken his power? Endor’s sister, Triska, is Ceera’s heir as Queen of Snows, but arrogant and temperamental. Are they what they seem, or something else, something dangerous?

During a star-shower, Ceera has a vision of the star-metal sword. She brings together the surviving makers of the Zygradon to forge the sword, Braenlicach. The children of the makers of Zygradon and Braenlicach inherit their parents’ links with the magical objects.

Uneasy years of peace pass, as they mature. Plagues return, and the young guardians take Zygradon out to heal their land, but they are betrayed from within. Traitors within the Stronghold attack, wantonly killing those linked to bowl and sword. Mrillis is left to save his world, but in doing so, may lose all that he loves.

The rich man had to have Her at all costs. His daughters hated Her because he loved Her more. From the time they were children the Burma Girl came between them and their cruel father. Capable of creating hatred, jealousy and resentment there was only one question left to ask. Would the Burma Girl destroy them all in the end?

Passions run high in this sparkling collection from what Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine describes as “one of the best mystery short story writers of her generation.”

From shy insurance clerks obsessed with a stripper (Pirate of Penance) to wives plotting murder (Killing Kevin), there’s always a twist in the tail. Like harmless old beachcombers (The Old Man and the Seashore) and good-time girls finding that respectability isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (Long Slow Dance Through the Passage of Time), even magicians’ assistants (Saw Point), they’re all driven by a burning desire.

And be it for justice or greed, retribution or love, the flames burn hotter than hell.

GOOD LUCK CAN BE DANGEROUS

With a new building to restore and his relationship with Steve growing more serious, the last thing Elliott wants are someone else’s problems. Still, when lottery millionaire Bruno Caesar moves into his building, Elliott can’t just ignore the man’s need for help.

Bruno’s life comes to an abrupt end when he falls from his balcony. It might be nothing more than a tragic accident, except for one thing—Bruno was terrified of heights, and never went onto his balcony.

Bruno can’t rest until the puzzle of his sudden death is solved, and Elliott, Steve, and John are once again searching for answers to a puzzle. Did Bruno fall, or did he have help?

Can’t a working girl make a few dollars on Thanksgiving without tripping over a murder victim and taking heat from the cops? Prostitute Diana Andrews should know by now–the answer is always no!

A holiday short story from the author of The Retro Look and Value for the Money.

Emaline has been taking care of her elderly, cranky grandfather for so long, she wonders if she’ll ever have a life again. When he demands a sumptuous meal, she obliges, even baking him his favorite pie. It’s Johnny Banister’s last meal, but the medical examiner finds nothing suspicious. So why does Emaline seek a way to dispose of the flavoring bottle? And why does she worry that Detective Harry Jordan wants more than the pleasure of her company when he asks her to dinner?

The debut of Philly Prep English teacher and accidental sleuth, Amanda Pepper, (and of C.K. Mackenzie, homicide detective) won the World Mystery Convention’s “Anthony” for best first mystery.

When the body of a colleague is found dead in Amanda’s living room, she has to clear herself of suspicion — and make sure she isn’t the next victim as well. And all she’s got as a clue to the real killer’s identity is a locket shaped like Winnie-the-Pooh.

Elizabeth Hart enjoys her high-powered job and her lakeside home but is tired of Officer Andrew Baird’s hands-off policy. A mere ten year age gap is no reason for refusing romance, is it?

As Andrew searches for the motive behind a young woman’s death, Elizabeth carefully plots her revenge against the handsome man who treats her as a younger sister. By using Andrew’s penchant for practical jokes against him, she learns how to pursue truth, justice, and the handsome cop next door.

A romantic mystery short from our Fingerprints line.

Professional greyhound trainer Kat McKinley is a soft touch. When she’s talked into having sex with a guy who’s just not her type, a romp so pathetic it registers minus ten on a sex-to-die-for scale, she decides to end the relationship. When Kat wakes the next morning to find Mr Wham-Bam sprawled beside her, a knife embedded in his left nipple, she wishes she’d ended the relationship sooner.After that wake-up call, Kat figures life can’t nose-dive any lower. But with a killer out to get her, the police suspecting her of murder, a misbehaving greyhound, a complicated love triangle and a vicious kidnapper who threatens to cut out a child’s tongue if her dog, Big Mistake wins his next race, maybe it can…

When foot reflexologist Keely Moreno and her boyfriend, P.I. Punt Ashford, help Maxine Jackson and her son Randy search for the long-ago killer of Randy’s deceased girlfriend, they endanger their lives.

Randy, who has been unlawfully imprisoned for 20 years, has now been released and has returned to his home in Key West. DNA evidence proved that he did not murder Dyanne Darby. Randy’s bitter, because the true murderer still walks free, while Randy went to jail. He has received no money from the courts to compensate him for his years behind bars. Only his mother offers him a home, and nobody will offer him a job.

A popular girl, Dyanne dated Randy and other divers who helped Mel Fisher search for the Atocha, an ancient Spanish galleon that sank near the Florida Keys. Randy suspects that one of the other divers killed Dyanne out of jealously—and he’s determined to find the culprit. Soon, Keely and Punt find themselves involved in the investigation and facing down the real killer.

When a college student is accused of killing his girlfriend, his distraught parents ask private detective Nathaniel Singer to look for evidence that might have been overlooked by the police. Unraveling the story of the girl’s last days, Singer discovers that her tranquil-looking little college is a nest of rivalries and intrigues, and that the girl who seemed to be admired by all had many enemies. Fast, violent, and funny, Cold Trail Blues is Raymond Miller’s second Nathaniel Singer novel—the return of a writer Lee Child calls a “great new talent,” and of a character Kirkus Reviews calls “a welcome addition to the ranks of hard-boiled private eyes with a softer side.”

Newly licensed private detective Katie Hasworth faces her first murder case with more than a little anxiety—not only is she a newcomer, but the Chitting family would give Sherlock Holmes a migraine. Who murdered Alexa Chitting before she had time to change her will, leaving her fortune to the Key West Preservation Society rather than to friends and family? Her husband? Lover? Daughter? Katie faces more questions than answers as she faces the dangers awaiting her as she solves his murder.

After Ardin Wesley’s cousin Suziette is murdered, her widower, Brett, asks Ardin to help him adopt Suziette’s little girl, whom he’s grown to love. Trouble is, no one knows the identity of the child’s natural father. Ardin decides she wants to adopt Leonie, and take her to home to Manhattan.

Although she is drawn to Brett, an abusive husband turned Ardin against love and marriage. Brett feels betrayed when he learns of her plans to adopt the child. When someone sets fire to Ardin’s aunt’s house, she barely escapes with her life. Despite their differences, Brett offers her shelter and together they work to create a secure home for the bereft little girl and to discover the identity of her father before someone else dies to protect his terrible secret.

Dante Benevetti is the darling of the music world…and why not? He’s handsome, talented—and arrogant as only a man convinced of his own brilliance can be. As far as he’s concerned, the rest of the world exists for his benefit.

So, when he hears Dante is dead, a victim of murder, Elliott isn’t really surprised. Nor is he surprised when Dante comes for a post-mortem visit, demanding Elliott find out who killed him. Was it the well-known lyricist who was the only one in the house at the time? The talented young musician whose work Dante plagiarized? Or some unknown the great pianist had mortally offended?

In the sleepy town of Tickenaley, Georgia, they call the thirty minutes between day and night Dark Thirty. The memory of daylight lingers, but falling darkness brings with it haze, change and uncertainty. One day at Dark Thirty, Jesse Wade, in high spirits, carrying a birthday gift for his beloved grandson, returns home to a scene of unspeakable horror. His entire family—wife, children, grandchild—have been savagely slain. In one slashing moment, the life of this decent, loving, home-rooted man is torn apart forever.

Not since In Cold Blood has a book probed so deeply and so powerfully into the human drama that a senseless act of savagery leaves in its wake—the agony of Jesse Wade, the panic of the townspeople, the burden of the lawyers who must defend the killers, and the encroachment of the news media, exploiting it all. As the story unfolds, Terry Kay also dramatically brings to light the complex social issues we all face in a violent time: justice vs. vengeance, the failings of our legal system, capital punishment. In this beautifully written, deeply felt novel, Terry Kay chillingly juxtaposes the pastoral beauty of Appalachia and the traditional values of small-town America with the spreading stain of evil that threatens us all.

Not all detectives are heroes.

And when the dead can’t defend themselves, help comes from the most unlikely sources.

It might be from P.I.s with offices in unusually high places (“Heaven Knows”). It might come from shapeshifters in love (“Stakes & Adders”). Hell, it could even come from…you’ve guessed it, Hell. (“667, Evil and Then Some”). But whether you’re cruising a narrow boat down an English canal (“The Way It Is”) or taking a break on an idyllic French lakeside (“Dead & Breakfast”), justice is like the endings in these stories. You never see it coming.

Portland, Oregon, is about as far from his home turf as New York PI Lenny Schneider can get. Talk about culture shock: the air is fresh and clean, the rain unending, the drivers are (mostly) polite and slow, bagels are fat and fluffy, and everybody’s friendly (sort of).

Lenny came to town in search of a baseball hero’s missing daughter, and mooched a bed at an old buddy’s place. Next thing he knows, he’s involved in controversy, intrigue, and murder. Walter, a radio show host with a talent for getting under people’s skins, needs Lenny’s help in discovering who’s trying to frame him.

Trouble is, Lenny starts wondering who’s really his friend, who’s really telling him the truth, and who’s really out to get him, too.

The celebrated author Ravin Gould, his equally celebrated actress wife, the media, the locals, and as many tourists as can cram themselves into Conan Flagg’s bookstore are all on hand for that electric moment when Cady MacGill, the sheriff’s son-in-law, threatens to cut off a vital portion of Gould’s anatomy with a chain saw.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Ravin Gould is dead, and Cady MacGill has been charged with his murder.

But bookstore owner and private investigator Conan Flagg doesn’t read the situation that way. Not with an election for sheriff coming up. Not when a covey of hotshot New York publishing executives wings into town, lured to the quiet Oregon beach resort by word of the tell-all autobiographical novel that Gould had just finished writing. A novel worth millions, which has vanished without a trace.

One foggy November morning on Chicago’s West Side, paramedic trainee Beth Reilly faces a life or death choice that will put her own future in jeopardy. High on cocaine, her veteran paramedic officer slams their ambulance into a homeless, pregnant woman, forcing the woman into labor. Beth alone must decide who will live—the fetus fighting for life or the mother who is hemorrhaging to death. She can’t save them both.

Beth’s decision tests old friendships and creates new enemies. Her woman-hating boss tries to destroy her career. An ambitious prosecutor decides her trial is his ticket to a judgeship. A religious zealot treats her as a sacrificial lamb, diverting suspicion from the woman he loves. A handsome professor enters her life, but is the timing coincidental?

When one of her tormentors dies suspiciously, Beth realized her choices have turned deadly.

In the heart of the Ten Thousand Islands/Everglades National Park region lies the small town of Mangrove Bayou.

Troy Adam, mixed-race, ex-Army, and northern-born, was fired from his job as a Tampa cop, but has been reluctantly hired by the town council, on probation, as Mangrove Bayou’s new police chief.

After surviving a hurricane and solving a crime involving the death of a local citizen, Adam had hoped his employers would view him differently. Unfortunately, they still view him as “soft and squishy on the inside.”

This all changes when a college student on vacation goes missing. Adam has to deal with overwhelming press attention, a town council doubtful that he can solve the crime, and a powerful judge. Can Adam solve the case on his own terms and finally prove his merit without giving in to his ruthless side?

Teresa Macklin, who accepted Mack as a nickname to fit in as part of the mostly male police department, stifles an overpowering smell of death each time she visits a murder scene. Her latest case becomes a serial killing with the murderer leaving calling cards with every victim.

When the killer sends a taunting email she wonders if even she is one of his targets.

A young boy loses his belief in Santa and turns to petty shoplifting with the belief that it no longer matters if he’s naughty or nice. The lesson he learns as a result is more valuable than anything he could steal. A short holiday story from our Nibs literary line.

The letter that arrived from Sam’s mother was postmarked Santa Fe, penned in her mother’s handwriting, and disclosed details only Johanna Adams could know. There was just one catch: Johanna Adams had been dead for thirty-four years. The mind-blowing missive could have been an entry from Sam’s latest book of bizarre anecdotes, American Weird—or an elaborate hoax. Either way, it instantly rekindled Sam’s impossible wish that her mother hadn’t really died in a plane crash when Sam was a child. Fueled by her journalistic instincts—and a daughter’s need for closure—Sam touches down among Santa Fe’s tourists and crystal gazers, jewelry shops and fast-food stands. But only when she summons the courage to knock on the door of Room 409 at the La Fonda Hotel does her surreal, mother-seeking adventure take off with no turning back.

If you thought standing in line at your local warehouse store was murder, then you haven’t been to Megamart. These flash fiction tales of superstore madness and mayhem will make you think twice the next time you hear “clean up on aisle 13.”

This anthology contains works by: Patricia Abbott, Sophie Littlefield, Kieran Shea, Chad Eagleton, Ed Gorman, Cormac Brown, Fleur Bradley, Alan Griffiths, Laura Benedict, Garnett Elliot, Eric Beetner, Jack Bates, Bill Crider, Loren Eaton, John DuMond, John McFetridge, Toni McGee Causey, Jeff Vande Zande, James Reasoner, Kyle Minor, Randy Rohn, Todd Mason, Byron Quertermous, Sandra Scoppettone, Stephen D. Rogers, Steve Weddle, Evan Lewis, Daniel B. O’Shea, Sandra Seamans, Albert Tucher, Donna Moore, John Weagly, Keith Rawson, Gerald So, Dave Zeltserman, Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen, Jay Stringer, Anne Frasier, Kathleen A. Ryan, Eric Peterson, Chris Grabenstein and J.T. Ellison.

Bailey Green arrives in Key West just in time to discover that her old family friend Francine Shipton has been found murdered. Francine was planning on turning her home into a refuge for the homeless, and as a result, was far from popular with her neighbors.Once Francine’s son Zack installs Bailey in residence in the guest cottage as his mother had planned, he presses Bailey to help him find her killer.

Zack is loathe to suspect his neighbors: realtor Courtney Lusk, who’d like to become Mrs. Zack Shipton; Dr. Gravely, who operates a private clinic in his home; and funeral director Tucker Tisdale. Zack’s more inclined to suspect the new yardman, Mitch Mitchell who appears to be hiding a secret past. Bailey herself is falling for Zack, but as they cruise the Keys looking for clues, their relationship is threatened by their mutual suspicions of the possible suspects…and each other.

Children, it is said, are a joy forever. However, that’s not necessarily true if one you’ve never known shows up on your doorstep mentally unhinged and bent upon revenge.

District Attorney Preston Ives, fresh from convicting a serial killer, is shocked to discover a long-forgotten decision now threatens both his present and his future.

A short crime story from our Fingerprints line.

When Denver lawyer Adam Larsen agrees to defend a malpractice lawsuit against Josie Ballantine, a high-powered real estate broker who also happens to be his girlfriend, he has no idea he is plunging headlong into murder. The plaintiff’s counsel, Daniel T. Scadman, is the meanest, most aggressive lawyer in Colorado. Tempers flare during Josie’s deposition and Larsen intervenes. During the break that follows, Scadman is found, bludgeoned to death, on the floor of Larsen’s conference room. Jack Quinlan, the local furniture mogul who is suing Josie, is outraged by the murder of his lawyer. He hires Scadman’s law partner to sue Larsen and the other attorneys who were present when Scadman was killed. As Quinlan’s lawsuit against Josie moves close to trial she abruptly fires Larsen, placing her faith — and apparently much more — into the eager hands of her young insurance lawyer. Larsen turns his attention to defending himself against Quinlan’s second lawsuit, and quickly finds all of the other lawyers in the case aligned against him. Within hours after Larsen’s suspicions lead him to confront a corrupt court reporter, she is found dead — and Larsen must react quickly to keep from being framed for her murder. A vanished malingerer and an old newspaper article begin to cast light on Scadman’s death; but before the fog fully clears Larsen receives a desperate plea from Josie. A secret from her past has suddenly emerged, turning the Quinlan real estate trial into a disaster. Having a few secrets of his own, Larsen rushes into the hostile courtroom. Ready or not, he must act.

Ulat, the best hunter in the village, is dead. Ledeth, the aging shaman, must prepare the body so the victim’s spirit may rest. Many of the Clan are lost to the innumerable hazards of their world, but when Ledeth realizes Ulat’s death was the deliberate act of another human, he must find the killer – for the good of the Clan.

Five thousand years before Sherlock Holmes or “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” there was crime. And where there is crime, there are those committed to justice.

For, without justice, we are nothing more than clever apes.

A novelette.

For picture framer Veronica Phillips, the most dangerous thing that happens to her on a typical day is a sheet of glass breaking or getting cut by an errant wire. When a key comes out of the back of a picture she’s redoing, Ronnie soon finds herself mixed up in dark warehouses, dead bodies and harsh scrutiny by the local police for getting mixed up in the crime. Can Ronnie prove her innocence in the murder case, or will she end up being framed? A short story.

After her divorce, Gabbie Meyerson moves to the sleepy town of Chrissom Harbor, Long Island, to teach English at the local high school. She settles into her rental cottage above the Long Island Sound and discovers she has a housemate–the ghost of Cameron Leeds, who used to live in the cottage. Cam insists his death was no accident, and implores Gabbie to find out who murdered him eight months ago. After she recovers from her initial shock, Gabbie agrees to investigate.

She learns from CH residents that Cam was the town daredevil, romeo, and wheeler dealer. His four friends Reese, Jack, Terry, and Don are angry because Cam deceived them in a land deal. They each have a personal reason to hate him, as well. And his lover’s husband is a possible suspect. Despite what she hears, Gabbie finds herself growing fond of Cam and continues to search for his killer.

At school, Gabbie has to contend with two bullies who pick on one of her students, but receives no support from the ineffectual principal. She becomes friendly with Cam’s married lover, Jill Leverette, whose strange neighbor, Sonia Russell, has turned hostile, though Jill doesn’t know why.

A mutual attraction springs up between Gabbie and Cam’s best friend, Police Chief Darren Rollins, which she tries to ignore. After their first date, she decides it’s time Darren reopened the investigation into the circumstances of Cam’s death. She has Darren talk to Cam in his present form.

The investigation is opened, and someone attacks Gabbie inside the cottage. One of the bullies is murdered and the other goes missing. Nerves are on edge as town residents search for the boy. And suddenly the murderer’s inside Gabbie’s cottage, putting her life and the boy’s in danger.

Emaline Banister couldn’t hear who was blackmailing whom in the women’s room at work. The holidays were approaching and she was distracted by the need to make a dish that everyone could eat, including the people with odd dietary restrictions. Besides, Detective Harry Jordan was still hanging around, and she wasn’t sure if he was attracted to her or still wondering if she was a murderer. When Mary O’Neill died at the party, after eating Emaline’s salad, she was once again under suspicion. But this time she knew she hadn’t done it.

Someone killed Bill, and whoever it was stole all the money.

Rita Mae came to San Francisco in the late 1800s with her man to find a better life, never mind the fact that said new life involved plans to rob a few banks. When Bill is murdered, Rita Mae starts turning tricks while she tries to find the killer and, even more importantly, the bankroll. When her new job results in her involvement in yet another murder, Rita Mae discovers her problems are only just beginning.

Sometimes a gal just can’t win.

A short story.

Grimm Tales is a collection of stories by some of the top names in online crime fiction, all based on classic fairy tales. As novelist Ken Bruen writes in his introduction, “Ever imagined what would have come down the dark pike if The Brothers Grimm were more Brothers Coen and wrote mystery?” The collection is edited by John Kenyon, editor of Grift magazine, and contains 17 stories by Patricia Abbott, Absolutely*Kate, Jack Bates, Eric Beetner, Nigel Bird, Loren Eaton, Kaye George, Blu Gilliand, Seana Graham, Eirik Gumeny, R.L. Kelstrom, John Kenyon, BV Lawson, Evan Lewis, B. Nagel, Sean Patrick Reardon and Sandra Seamans.

All antiquities photographer Josh Katzen wants to do is enjoy his Hanukkah reunion with Roz Eliahu. When the couple becomes involved with a murdered security guard and a stolen amulet, it becomes readily apparent that the Festival of Lights is about to become the most dangerous holiday he’s ever had. A holiday short story from our Fingerprints line.

Amateur sleuth Samantha Adams journeys to the unlikely place of Hot Springs, Arkansas, partly to celebrate with an old friend who just won the lottery, and partly to recover from being jilted by her boyfriend. But a kidnapping with a million-dollar ransom demand diverts Sam’s attentions straight into the arms of a killer.

In the stately nineteenth-century homes on Philadelphia’s Delancey Street, the wilder passions scarcely ruffle the peace. Murder is unthinkable, particularly a murder involving an upscale book discussion group, of which schoolteacher Amanda Pepper is a devoted member. Nevertheless, on the day after a heated discussion of a fictional heroine’s suicide, book group member Helen Coulter falls to her death from her roof garden. Helen’s death is declared a suicide but Amanda is convinced otherwise. Why is this admirable woman dead? And if she was killed, who performed the heinous act? Amanda’s investigations will draw her into a zone of great danger, where Helen Coulter’s ice-hearted killer is once more ready to strike. . . .

Elliott Smith wakes up in the hospital with a head injury…and an invisible companion. At first, he’s convinced “John” is just a figment of a damaged brain, but when Elliott is fully recovered John is still around—and desperate to find out who he is. Reluctantly, Elliott agrees to help, and discovers Chicago PD has a John Doe on their hands with six bullets in him—who died in the ER at the same time Elliott was there.

As Elliott digs deeper into the mystery of John, he stumbles on a body hidden behind a wall for 80 years, meets a sexy artist who could become more than just a one-night stand, and uncovers a deadly secret that has haunted a nun for two decades.

Kyle and Austin’s vacation plans go horribly wrong when they become the victims of a home invasion by a group of bank robbers. Rather than simply steal their belongings and run, the criminals choose to hold the couple hostage in their apartment until they can come up with a getaway plan. As the police begin to close in, both the crooks’ desperation levels and their tempers begin to rise. Can Kyle and Austin make it out of the situation alive, or will they meet a violent end at the hands of their captors?

Amanda 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.

Mellow 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.

On the surface, Evan Dyer’s life in Otter Lake seems picture perfect: he’s a fairly successful entrepreneur and co-operator of a boarding house for young people with disabilities alongside his longtime girlfriend Rachel. The three young men currently living with them are a joy, despite their issues, and things couldn’t be better.

But Evan is a man with a past, and that past is quickly closing in on him. When Evan’s secrets collide with those of one of his tenants, the end results threaten to destroy not only the idyllic life Evan’s managed to build for himself, but the lives of those dearest to him. The only way out is to come clean and unravel a few long-buried mysteries before it’s too late.

When a psychic in a shopping mall tells Rita Del Vecchio that she is “destined for greatness,” and she will “marry a man in uniform,” the restless, wet-behind-the-ears, 22 year-old decides to finally take control of her life. Rita sets out on a quest to become a New York City Police Officer. But can a spry, feisty, single woman thrive in the gritty world of New York’s Finest?

Leaving behind the suburbs of New Jersey and a job as an under-tipped waitress, Rita Del Vecchio hangs up her apron and ballet slippers for a bullet-proof vest. But will she wear it? And if she does, will it protect her on the mean streets of Manhattan? Can it also protect her from Cupid’s arrows if they should land amiss?

Rita is assigned to the New York City Transit Police Squad and gets more than she bargained for. Riding the Lexington Avenue Subway Line, Rita winds up meeting not one man in uniform, but many. Whom will she love?

In Transit combines romance and suspense. This woman-in-jeopardy story delves into the ordinary lives of NYPD career cops and how their fates are determined by people who hold secrets as dark and as labyrinth-like as the New York City Subway System.

Book three in the Anthony Award-winning mystery series featuring Amanda Pepper, the resourceful English teacher at Philly Prep. Available for the first time in ebook format!

Amanda is sorting books for a school fundraiser, when she comes across a book for battered women that contains a special and frightening message from its original, anonymous owner. Desperate to learn who donated the books, Amanda’s search leads her to deliberate brutality and its cold-blooded consequences.

Gillian Roberts is “the Dorothy Parker of mystery writers, laughing when–especially when–it hurts, and giving more wit per page than most writers give per book.” – Nancy Pickard

When Marietta Becker goes undercover at a singles dance to investigate the homicide of five men, she thinks she’s discovered one of the saddest places she’s ever encountered. When her husband suddenly appears and is immediately recognized by the dance regulars, Marietta realizes there are a lot of reasons to want to kill someone. A short story.

Mark Tanner, a wise-cracking, disillusioned U.S. veteran and casualty of the War on Terror in Afghanistan, whiles his time away in a sleazy trailer park surrounded by eccentric misfits. After losing a bet with his long time Army buddy, Bear, Mark begrudgingly agrees to be the personal trainer of the young tennis prodigy, Brooke Wentworth.

When Brooke mysteriously disappears, apparently because of something in her past, Mark spares no effort and no person in his endeavors to find her. Mark must try to put aside his own demons while he tries to navigate his way through the lies and deceit to the awful and tragic truth behind her kidnapping.

Ably assisted by Bear, he cuts a swathe through both the criminal and tennis worlds. Mark, with acerbic wit and devil-may-care attitude, treats tennis players, white-supremacists, cops and crime bosses with equal amounts of disdain and disregard. And then his tortured past catches up with him.

When conservative millionaire A. C. King hosts his annual house party at his spacious mountain lodge, he has no idea it will be the last family reunion.

Yet the mellow autumn air is tension-filled with the presence of A. C.’s beautiful second wife, the constrained animosities of his two older sons, and the tippling of his flower-child daughter-in-law. But it is the unwelcome arrival of youngest son Lucas, with a ravishing black fiancée in tow, that is the true kiss of death.

Even Conan Flagg, an old family friend and private investigator, doesn’t foresee the sudden tragedy that leaves the party diminished and vulnerable to a cunning killer. As a blizzard seals their isolation, Conan attempts to identify the murderer among them before he or she strikes again….

Will’s aunt wants him to spend some time with his estranged son at Christmas. All Will wants is to knock off his girlfriend’s husband and collect a share of the life insurance policy. Unfortunately, when you fail to take into account all the angles, the perfect crime can really ruin your holiday. A short story from our Fingerprints line.

Troy Adam, mixed-race, ex-Army, and northern-born, is fired from his job as a Tampa cop. Looking for work, Adam finds himself in Mangrove Bayou, a small gulf coast Florida town located south of Naples and in the midst of the Ten Thousand Islands/Everglades National Park region. In short order he’s hired, on probation, as Mangrove Bayou’s new police chief. Not much of an accomplishment, as there weren’t any other serious candidates, but Adam intends to show his worth.

No sooner does he arrive than a prominent citizen is found dead. Although the medical examiner rules the case an accident, Troy believes all signs point to murder. The town council doubts that Adam or his small department can handle the case, but Adam is determined to prove them wrong. As a hurricane arrives, Adam and his team are up to their elbows in storms and suspects, assisted (or hindered) by a collection of residents who redefine the term eclectic.

When Lark agreed to run a writers’ workshop, she didn’t bargain for murder.

Lark Dodge has been dragooned into helping Bianca Fiedler, heir of Hollywood stars turned organic farmer, run a workshop for science writers, a.k.a. journalists. When one of the farm managers is found dead and covered with ice cubes in a bin used to store broccoli, it would be prudent to cancel the workshop, but Bianca insists it’s too late, and Bianca tends to get her way. While it seems likely that one of the farm’s quirky inhabitants must be guilty, Lark and her husband Jay find themselves trapped in a hunt for the killer.

Angela Baker should be thrilled at having given birth to her third baby, but her mother always finds a way of spoiling the moment. This time Mom takes a cruise specializing in plastic surgery and ends up overboard, murdered and leaving Angela to identify the body. But is it Mom? Angela isn’t certain but, then again…who would be? The woman has become unrecognizable as a result of too many little “procedures.”

Pushed by a detective determined to close the book on the murder, Angela does her own investigating and turns up more than one mother as well as the knife-wielding doctor from hell.

A new short story from our Fingerprints line and the author of Murder with All the Trimmings.

Tormented as a young boy, a man decides to settle the score and devises an intricate plan to get back at the one person who truly wronged him.

When Lark and Jay Dodge move to Washington State’s Shoalwater Peninsula, life falls into a rhythm of house renovation and baby-making until Lark’s new neighbor, Bonnie, finds a corpse on the beach. The victim, an outspoken advocate of development, is the ex-wife of another neighbor, a novelist whose house burns in a mysterious fire when he refuses to sell. Circumstantial evidence makes him the prime suspect, but Lark isn’t convinced and neither is Bonnie. What they discover puts their lives in jeopardy.

Shortly after the remains of a teenaged boy are unearthed on newly acquired Twin Lakes property, Lydia Krause has a worrisome conversation with her elderly neighbor. Daniel Korman hints at having known the dead boy and wonders if, after all this time, he should let sleeping dogs lie. Then Daniel dies under suspicious circumstances, and Lydia suspects that his two surviving childhood friends are responsible for both deaths. Or did one of Daniel’s money-hungry relatives decide to end his life? As the murders and assaults mount, Lydia is drawn further and further into Daniel Korman’s world. And, as if things weren’t bad enough, her budding relationship with Detective Sol Molina is seriously compromised as she seeks answers in what Sol considers his professional arena. Can Lydia keep her relationship intact while uncovering the true killer?

Laura Murphy, psychology professor, thinks there’s nothing she likes better than coffee and donuts on a summer morning until she says yes to dinner with a Canadian biker and finds herself and her date suspects in the murder of her college’s president. Laura’s friend, the detective assigned the case, asks her to help him find out who on the small upstate New York college campus may be a killer.  The murder appears to be wrapped up in some unsavory happenings on the lake where Laura lives.  A fish kill and raw sewage seeping into the water along with the apparent drowning suicide of a faculty member complicate the hunt for the killer.  And then things become personal.  The killer makes a threatening phone call to Laura. With a tornado bearing down on the area and the killer intent upon silencing her, Laura’s sleuthing work may come too late to save her and her biker from a watery grave.

In this short story collection, Warren Bull takes his readers across the American landscape with stories of justice and injustice, truth and speculation, and humor and noir.

The Manhattan in the title sometimes refers to the suave part of New York and sometimes to its prairie twin in Kansas.

The stories are equally diverse. Bull writes tales of children outwitting their elders in the name of what’s right in turbulent Bleeding Kansas; of card sharks, clever dames and tough guys out on the town in the flush days of post-World War II; of an anguished husband and another furious father thwarted while seeking revenge; and a crime writer who really can’t handle rejection.

A blend of history, language, pathos and fine wit.

In the coastal town of Rocky Cove, nothing interesting ever happens. And, if you’re part of a group of kids at school that aren’t exactly among the most popular, life can move at an even slower pace.

So, when a group of friends discover the body of one of their friends washed up on the rocks, the chance to solve a murder and find a little excitement in the process is too good to pass up. What they’re not prepared for is the town turning on them and an attempt on one of the group member’s lives.

Can these friends find a killer and save what’s left of their reputation at the same time?

The Rock Cove Mysteries is a new novella series geared towards ages 13 and up.

Kat McKinley, professional greyhound trainer and sometimes sleuth, is determined to find out who’s behind the slow dog scam plaguing country tracks. But with a missing sister to find, races to win, a dead guy in the fridge, a night spent in the slammer, a suspicious police inspector, and a killer on the loose, will she survive to enjoy her new romance with Ben? Of course, Ben, ‘the guy she’d want to be lip-locked with if ever the world came to an end’, would rather spend time perusing the Karma Sutra with her—not chasing a killer. But if Kat doesn’t find out who killed the guy in the fridge, she might end up dead herself.

And with all those positions to try—that would never do. A new romantic mystery from the author of the first Kat McKinley caper Chasing Can Be Murder.

One of the “folk wisdoms” that circulates among crime/mystery writers is this: While one may slaughter as many humans in pretty much any gory fashion one wishes, a writer will earn his/her readers’ undying enmity should they presume to fictionally destroy a feline. (Dogs are only slightly less verboten…perhaps dog lovers are more sanguine?)

In the title story we have an old woman, alone in the world but for her beloved felines…and she’s a serial killer in the making. They say revenge is a dish best served cold—cold as death.

This collection includes nine more tales—all of them Archer’s seventies-era “hippy” P.I. Doug McCool short stories, collected together for the first time.

Ethan was a fastidious planner; no detail escaped his keen eye. Constantly juggling his wife’s schedule with his job and clandestine meetings with a “special friend” from the office, he was finally hitting his stride. His routine life was finally becoming exciting until an afternoon tryst went terribly wrong.

Why did his wife change her plans? What would he do with the body in his SUV?

He had to formulate a new plan…

…and fast.

They say crime doesn’t pay…but it can sure be funny!

Join Jim Newell as he takes you through an anthology of criminal caper short stories where the perfect crime goes horribly awry. In this book you’ll find everything from pampered cats to fat ladies singing, a woman on the run by way of bus to a woman fleeing it all by plane and go from cigar shoppers to bed hoppers.

Just remember to leave your chicken outside (rest assured, the reason why is explained in this book), and you’ll be sure to enjoy these hilarious entries.

Jennifer Menlo loves her 911 dispatcher job, and especially loves helping people. But one desperate call from a brave seven-year-old leaves her with a yearning to do more, even though that’s strictly prohibited by the police department. The boy discovers his mother’s body and when he calls 911 for help Jen discovers the boy’s home is not far from where she lives. She doesn’t hesitate to offer more than a helping hand.

Little does she know that a murderer who has killed once will readily chose a second victim if that person threatens to reveal the killer’s identity.

It’s Mardi Gras, and ace crime reporter Sam Adams has flown to New Orleans to visit her old college roomie Kitty whose debutante niece is about to be crowned queen of Comus. At the airport Sam first glimpses Harry Zack, a songwriter turned insurance investigator, who’s way too cute. When death stalks St. Charles Avenue in the wake of Comus’s ball, Sam and Harry’s paths collide—and sparks fly in more ways than one.

Fighter pilot. Thief. Forger. Spy.

Once upon a time, the man known as Joshua Katzen was all of these things. Now retired from his military intelligence career, Katzen lives a peaceful, mundane life as an archaeological photographer and illustrator—that was the plan anyway. In reality, Josh’s past keeps interfering with his attempted retirement.

The stories in this collection are about a few of those times.

This short story collection also includes an excerpt from the novel The Case of the Moche Rolex by T. Lee Harris.

Oso Boyer might be considered a poster boy for good cops, but every man has his breaking point. For him, it’s the point where his family is put in danger. What starts out as an arson and murder investigation turns into something much more, and while Boyer is trying to piece together all the various clues, someone is stalking his sister and nephew. It’s a journey into a world Boyer never knew existed, and he just might not make it out alive.

When rising politician Karen Dodd pushes through the toughest gun-control bill in Ohio’s history, she thinks it’s her ticket to the governor’s office. But soon after she announces her candidacy, on the day she’s slated to receive an award from a gun-control organization, Karen Dodd is found dead in her comfortable suburban home, one bullet through her heart.

Suspects abound-her philandering husband, a hard-drinking former beauty queen, a smooth-talking gun lobbyist and his deceptively meek assistant, an ambitious television reporter who sees the murder as the story that could transform her career. Police lieutenant Dan Ledger puts his own life in danger as he struggles to uncover the secrets of suspects who at first seem harmlessly eccentric-but who can quickly turn deadly serious. Ledger’s used to piecing together meager bits of evidence, and he’s usually adept at analyzing the fears and desires that drive people to kill. This time, though, the motive takes him by surprise.

One Shot is a traditional whodunit with a contemporary twist. Packed with suspense and humor, it raises questions about issues ranging from gun control to reality television.

A novel of suspense, first published in hardback by Five Star Cengage/Gale.

Life can change in just an instant. That’s the harsh reality that Jenny Jasik faces when her son is killed in an automobile accident, but never in her wildest dreams did she ever expect to be working undercover as a member of a drug task force. She is, after all, just a mom. But don’t discount what a mom can do when the safety of her children is at stake.

This book was inspired by a true story of a woman who did this in a small rural town, and while that may appear unbelievable, the basic facts of how she worked undercover as an informant are true. The rest is fiction.

Domestic disturbance calls to the residence of Booth and Stacey Keiser aren’t uncommon. Keiser, a State Police trooper, is known for his volatile temper, and his wife has often been the target for his rage. So officers of the Swatara Creek Police Department aren’t surprised when the couple are found dead on the lawn of their home.

Officer Fred Drumheiser is ready to write it off as a tragic murder-suicide. But Corporal Harry Minnich isn’t prone to snap judgments. Something about the situation rubs Harry wrong, and his suspicions lead to a forensics test with a surprising conclusion.

One place. One family. One mystery. Orlin Wood.

In 1788, Zechariah Orlin stumbled out of the forest and collapsed in front of a hunting party. That moment marked the beginning of a cursed family, and the legend of Orlin Wood. From phantom voices and mysterious apparitions, to unexplained disappearances and unearthly scenes that cause the bravest of men to question their courage, Orlin Wood is a place that will haunt you.

That is, should you dare to enter.

A new collection of short horror from the author of The Rivers Webb.

Take everything you’ve ever known about mysteries, and get ready to toss it out the window. Preferably at the neighbor who stole your newspaper this morning. Go on. We’ll wait here.

This story is a spoof of murder mysteries and courtroom dramas, with a bit of science fiction thrown in. It is told, well, out of order. Hence the title. Because of that, the victim finds out ahead of time that he may be murdered and has a chance to take evasive action. Naturally, things don’t go well.

Many of the characters come to realize they are not in real life, but have been caught up in “a stupid Uncle Bert story.” Yet, they know the only way out is to proceed through the story to the end. Action alternates back and forth between courtroom drama and events happening outside the courtroom. And some actions even happen before other actions start. Or end. Or, in the middle of other actions.

Who will live, who will die and who will escape having to end up in another one of Bert’s stories? Will anyone actually get to go on vacation? Whodunit?

A laugh-out-loud, madcap short story.

Book two in the Amanda Pepper mystery series. Available for the first time in ebook format!

Amanda attempts to instill the spirit of Christmas by having her students prepare and serve a meal for the homeless, but her plan backfires. A wealthy and politically ambitious parent, Alexander “Sandy” Clausen, turns the event into a lavish, catered publicity and personal photo-op. Worse, his party ends in fire and death with his daughter, Amanda’s student, one of three people who insist they alone started the fire. Amanda wants to solve the crime with her sometime boyfriend and cop C.K. Mackenzie, and is equally determined to teach the the elusive killer a lesson or two as well.

From Gillian Roberts, the Anthony Award- winning author of Caught Dead in Philadelphia.

Keely Moreno’s foot reflexology courses never taught her how to deal with a corpse. After finally breaking free from her abusive ex-husband, Keely is pursuing a new career in Key West. All goes well until she reports to the home of her wealthy patient, Margaux Ashford, and finds her dead—killed by a bullet later found to have been fired from Keely’s own gun.

Hardworking Sylvia Saltwater managed her husband Max’s successful catering company Presentation Is Everything for 35 years. Now it’s her turn to pursue a dream of painting watercolors and living in a community. Sylvia convinces reluctant Max to hang up his carrot curler and retire on Martini Cove Island, a premier homeowner’s community.

After buying and settling into their remodeled cottage, the couple discovers Martini Cove Island isn’t the idyllic place it appears to be. With housing renovated from an old mental rest home, the island is full of secrets and a collection of unscrupulous and unsavory neighbors who’ve created their own set of rules. The president of the homeowner’s association, Colonel Frigh bullies others to do his bidding, while his frumpy wife, Erhleen, runs the Committee for Good Taste.

An eternal optimist, Sylvia throws herself into community activities undeterred by Max’s growing skepticism and his devastation at the community’s fondness for food without decorative garnishes. Sylvia, who has psychic abilities, has recurring dreams about a troubled ghostly couple asking for her help. She also meets her neighbor the elderly and child-like Fern, a former rest home resident who lives in fear because of what she knows.

A light shines into the gloom when Max and Sylvia finally meet like-minded neighbors, Butterfly and Haywood, and sophisticated, wealthy Sky and Lucia. The friends band together, hoping to oust the Colonel and to reclaim the community. They nickname the island “Pinocchio Island” because of the lies the Colonel’s gang tells.

Acting on her visions and with the help of her new friends, Sylvia follows clues, learning that the original Martini Cove developers, accused of stealing association funds, disappeared suddenly. Are they guilty and where are they now? Are Sylvia’s psychic abilities enough to give answers?

Out of print for over a decade, this terrific mystery from the son of acclaimed actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall returns in ebook format for a new generation of readers.

R.J. Brooks left Tinseltown behind long ago to become a “matrimonial detective” in New York City. Before long, he finds himself facing ghosts from his past when his celebrated mother is murdered in Manhattan. To solve this case he’s going to need both his street smarts and his Hollywood connections.

Place a young man and a young woman together in a cramped apartment. Stir in a pinch of jealousy, a dash of spite, a hint of infidelity. Steep in a broth of alcohol and let simmer before bringing to a slow boil. It’s a fast, easy recipe for murder…

A short work of crime from our Fingerprints line.

Housepainter Toby Rew has few ambitions. He’s marking time, giving a facelift to a house in a low-rent district of Syracuse, New York, to earn his next meal, next six-pack, and next month’s rent.

One sweltering day, Toby is slaving away on his ladder when he witnesses a fight in a house across the street. Curious, he investigates and discovers a dead man in a ransacked room. Like a good citizen, Toby goes off to call the cops. But when he returns to the scene of the crime with police detectives, the homeowners are present, there’s no body, and everything looks normal.

When the police leave in disgust, Toby finds himself embarking on a mission that gives his dull life new purpose. Playing amateur sleuth to find out who the dead man was, why he was killed, and what happened to the body, Toby soon finds himself entangled in a mystery involving mobsters and a rare manuscript.

When the situation turns to threats on himself, Toby’s got to avoid painting himself into a corner with his investigation, or risk becoming the next victim.

Special Forces veteran Mark Tanner’s latest job is protecting New York Turbos quarterback, Troy Decker. When Tanner begins to delve into Decker’s past he finds no record of Decker’s high school football career. Is Decker lying about where he came from?

Tanner follows a tantalizing trail across time and distance, to a small cabin nestled deep in the Rockies. Every Thanksgiving, five carefree, teenage friends made a pilgrimage to the cabin. Until nine years ago, when something dark and evil occurred that forever changed their lives. Since then, bad luck and death has followed them. But what does that weekend] have to do with the recent attacks on a famous quarterback?

Fourteen years ago Tanner’s parents were viciously murdered and his younger sister left with a traumatic brain injury. The killer was dubbed “Cupid” by the police. Tanner’s current assignment is complicated when Cupid strikes again. His investigation takes him through Cupid’s dark, twisted past to reveal an unspeakable horror.

Tanner must learn the truth. The truth about his parents’ deaths, the truth about what happened in the mountain cabin so long ago. But what is the truth? Why did a young girl leave her friends and walk into a blizzard to her death? Why did Cupid’s victims invite him into their homes? And who is behind the attempts on Tanner’s life?

The truth can set you free. But Tanner discovers it can also kill. In an explosive finale, the truth reaches out from beyond the grave and Tanner must use every survival instinct he has to fight the deadly embrace of a truth that reaches out beyond the grave.

Lenny Schneider is hired to protect a client from vague threats delivered with cut-and-paste notes. In the process, he discovers a plot to kill seemingly-random victims connected only by old age. Schneider finds a possible motive in the contents of a long-dead writer’s journal, and gets caught in the web of a fifty-year old political vendetta having its roots in the anti-communist hysteria of the 1940s and 1950s. Then he realizes that all the deaths involve the color red.

As he closes in on the truth, his whole life is threatened with extinction, and the Red Scare ceases to be only a term in the history books.

George had the ideal job for a man of his talents. Who would suspect St. Nick of being a shoplifter? Now, with his Christmas “shopping” completed, George is a happy man.

That happiness is soon to be short-lived. An unwelcome visitor is about to convince him that it is better to give than to receive and may leave him holding an empty bag. Who is REALLY naughty or nice?

A humorous crime short from our Fingerprints line.

Eleven-year-old Travis has learned to be glib in the process of selling his mother’s handmade products door-to-door to help contribute to his poverty-stricken family’s finances. Usually, the seventh-grader only works the immediate twenty-square-block low-rent neighborhood, where he has become a familiar and unwelcome figure hawking items of dubious quality to customers with little money to spare and less inclination to buy.

One evening, Travis and his mom decide to try new territory. They drive across town to an upscale subdivision in an attempt to sell batches of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies. In the course of the night, young salesman Travis discovers that rich folks have just as many sins to hide as poor people and, better still, that the wealthy are willing to pay to protect their secrets…

A short story.

Blackmailed into investigating the murder of a child, Claudia is plunged into a bizarre world of nature priestesses, who have no use for men other than as slaves. But there is discord within this secret society and, as the conflict spreads, she cannot accept that an outsider was responsible for the little girl’s death.

But while Claudia works to uncover the truth, a sinister force moves in the background. A master of disguise, the Scorpion is the spearhead of an uprising designed to unite the tribes against Rome. No one crosses this man and lives. Especially fiery young Roman women…

New York PI Lenny Schneider agrees to protect a revenge-thirsty Holocaust survivor from killing the concentration-camp guard he seeks. Lenny is caught-up in a web of lies and violence mixed with baseball, great food and music. His story is told in a hip, sometimes bawdy voice, filled with puns, quips and hilarious one-liners. Before he’s done, he finds more than just a murderer hiding in New York’s Jewish community.

When the Tribute‘s sex-therapist chokes to death at her desk, Danielle Summers takes over the woman’s daily Sex On… column. Dani, unlike her predecessor, Daisy Mae, has no qualifications or background knowledge for the job. Instead she procures her answers from the Internet, self-help books and Megan, a retired prostitute who’s had sex with thousands of guys.

About to turn 50, Dani yearns for more than one toothbrush in the bathroom, more than one car in the garage and definitely more than a greyhound with flatulence sharing her bed at night. The solution, she decides, is to start dating.

Meanwhile, one of Dani’s readers (known only as Distinctly Frustrated) has written in asking her for advice. He complains his wife is not concentrating during sex, so Dani suggests foreplay using chocolate sauce and dress-ups. However, much to Dani’s horror, a saboteur changes her reply to ‘Shove something hot down the bitch’s throat.’

The following morning, Distinctly Frustrated discovers his wife dead. Someone has indeed followed Dani’s advice and ‘shoved something hot’ down the wife’s throat. A red hot poker.

After first suspecting Dani due to evidence in her handbag and her sabotaged column suggestion, the police take the husband in for questioning.

Could the killer actually be Jack Rivers, sleazy bad boy from Gape, a rival newspaper? Did he really pretend to be Dani’s blind date just to get her in an uncompromising position so he could publish photos of her rolls of fat and cellulite in his trashy magazine – or was it all to do with slipping incriminating evidence into her handbag while she was otherwise engaged?

Or what about Alice? The Tribute‘s spaced-out receptionist-cum-tea-lady, who was Daisy Mae’s stepsister. When Daisy Mae died, Alice thought she’d get the job of writing the Sex On… column. Jealous of Dani’s success, she adds salt to her tea, spills hot coffee on her lap and sticks pins in a Dani Summers lookalike voodoo doll. But would Alice take such a giant step forward and kill DF’s wife to frame Dani for murder?

While chasing a killer, Dani discovers Mr. Right is slap bang under her nose. He’s the guy who’s been looking out for her all along. The guy who’s there for her when her blind dates turn dangerous. The guy who shoves her out from under a lethal four-wheel drive intent on leaving its tire prints straight down the middle of her body.

Can Dani survive investigating the murder long enough to find true love?

A new romantic mystery from the acclaimed author of CHASING CAN BE MURDER.

(Some scenes in this novel are inappropriate for readers under age 18.)

Agatha Christie, pawn or puppet-master?

For eleven days in December 1926, that was the question all of England was asking. Was she kidnapped, or possibly a pawn trapped in an international mystery? Or could she actually be the puppet-master, secretly manipulating an entire nation from behind her typewriter?

Did one of the most disciplined writing minds the world has ever known really just “black out,” only to somehow reappear eleven days later, feeble and disorientated at a spa hotel? And what really was written in her missing diary regarding those eleven mysterious days?

Through a weaving of facts and fiction, the adventure unfolds through the perspective of her governess, Charlotte “Carlo” Fisher. Having accepted the role of confidante to the great writer, and ignited by the receipt of a mysterious letter, Charlotte embarks on a sinister and harrowing quest.

In her exploits, Charlotte is aided by many of the famous and elite of the twentieth century. While Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his protégé, Ian Fleming, speed towards Istanbul on the Orient Express in search of Agatha’s diary, Charlotte discovers clues that dispatch her to Berlin where she stumbles into a world gone mad.

Mysterious societies emerge from the shadows, and it appears something dark is rising…

When Judith discovers a dead body in the kiln of her pottery store, she’s convinced it’s the work of her ex-husband in an attempt to cause her trouble. After discussing the incident with members of her Scrabble Club, Judith soon learns that her ex may be off the hook, and that sticks and stones may break bones, but words can definitely get you killed. A short story.

In London for a booksellers’ conference, Lark shares a small flat with Ann Veryan, an English teacher from Georgia. While Lark pursues collectible books, Ann explores London for the first time. They’ve struck up a friendship with Milos Vlacek, a Czech refugee waiter from the conference hotel. On their way home from a matinee of Macbeth at the Barbicon, Milos is stabbed on the Underground. Minutes earlier he had given Ann a manuscript to carry for him in her huge needlepoint purse.

What do you do if you’re a foreigner trapped in a British police investigation? Lark sends for husband Jay, who was coming over for a police conference. She also mails a copy of the Czech-language manuscript to her father, who has a colleague capable of translating it. Milos is not dead, but his injuries are grave. When Lark’s landlady is murdered, police suspicion of Lark and Ann intensifies. Jay may arrive to find his wife in the Old Bailey. Clearly Lark has to Do Something.

Questions abound. Who is Milos? Why was he stabbed? What’s in the manuscript? Who would kill an inoffensive elderly Englishwoman in her own hallway? When Milos, still very ill, goes missing, Lark and Ann venture out into the English countryside to find him–with explosive consequences.

Lester Calvin isn’t your typical detective. He knows cigars, he knows Tampa, but mostly, he knows people who can help solve problems. As he likes to put it, he’s “a guy, who knows a guy.” But when a beautiful woman walks in and drops a load of cash into his lap for doing absolutely nothing, he lands into a world of trouble, that even his connections might not be able to get him out of. The stakes have never been higher, as Lester must discover who this woman is, and why so many people want to find her. And he needs to act fast, because he just became a target.

Deep in the reed beds, the water shimmered and rippled. After three days’ submersion, the gases inside gently raised the body to the surface. Setting a seventeen-year-old youth on his final journey downstream.

When a wealthy horse trainer starts courting her mother-in-law, Claudia knows love has bugger-all to do with it. Especially with the number of hangers-on who’ve moved in. But exactly what is his game? Can it be connected to a string of local misfortunes?

At first, Claudia is simply curious.

Then a young man is found dead…

One minute Nobilor was leaning into the bend. The next the chariot was flying through space. Down. And down. And down… 

When a consignment of gold goes missing near the Federation’s flagship posting station, Lysander can think of no better person to investigate than Iliona. The High Priestess of a river god paying homage at the Lake of Light is the perfect cover.

But when an Olympic wrestler’s chariot careens over a cliff, Iliona doesn’t believe it was the accident it appeared. The only question is, which of the three women in his life staged the murder?

The Watcher waited until she bent down to gather a handful of bilberries. The woodland floor was soft and springy. The Watcher’s feet made no sound. 

Claudia was just ten when her father marched off to war and never came home. Now it’s time to uncover the truth about his disappearance.

Her search takes her to the dark forests of Gaul, where Druid Law rules and human sacrifice is still practiced in secret. Staying at the villa of the cold, commanding Marcia, Claudia notices that several young women have gone missing, and while suspicion falls on a mysterious character who lives in the woods, she isn’t convinced. Marcia only employs perfectionists for her projects.

Nor has it escaped her notice that each victim is unblemished and in the fullness of bloom.

Just like Claudia…

Luke Dayton, a sophomore at a Virginia college, is walking home form the corner store when out of nowhere a man literally snatches him from off the street. To his horror, Luke learns that the man is a recent prison escapee – and that his plan to keep his freedom involves taking Luke’s.

Over the next five days, Luke is forcibly taken on a cross-country journey across several states, witnessing a crime spree that has no rhyme or reason, except to his captor. The only hope Luke has of returning home to the life and loved ones he was removed from is to figure out where he is ultimately being taken…and what plans his kidnapper has for him once they reach their mysterious destination.

A new work of suspense from the author of Hostage at the Kitchen Table.

Emaline Banister fancies herself a sleuth because she helped her favorite cop, Harry Jordan, solve a bizarre murder case. But Harry’s out of town on special assignment, one so dangerous he can’t tell her where, or when he’ll be back. When two of her friends lose their beloved dogs to what seems to be an epidemic of canine heart attacks, she starts wondering if more than coincidence is at work. After all, chasing a serial killer, even if the victims are dogs, is better than sitting home and worrying about a man she might or might not be in love with.

The first three novels in the award-winning Amanda Pepper mystery series are now available in one volume!

CAUGHT DEAD IN PHILADELPHIA
The debut of Philly Prep English teacher and accidental sleuth, Amanda Pepper, (and of C.K. Mackenzie, homicide detective) won the World Mystery Convention’s “Anthony” for best first mystery.

When the body of a colleague is found dead in Amanda’s living room, she has to clear herself of suspicion—and make sure she isn’t the next victim as well. And all she’s got as a clue to the real killer’s identity is a locket shaped like Winnie-the-Pooh.

PHILLY STAKES
Amanda attempts to instill the spirit of Christmas by having her students prepare and serve a meal for the homeless, but her plan backfires. A wealthy and politically ambitious parent, Alexander “Sandy” Clausen, turns the event into a lavish, catered publicity and personal photo-op. Worse, his party ends in fire and death with his daughter, Amanda’s student, one of three people who insist they alone started the fire. Amanda wants to solve the crime with her sometime boyfriend and cop C.K. Mackenzie, and is equally determined to teach the the elusive killer a lesson or two as well.

I’D RATHER BE IN PHILADELPHIA
Amanda is sorting books for a school fundraiser, when she comes across a book for battered women that contains a special and frightening message from its original, anonymous owner. Desperate to learn who donated the books, Amanda’s search leads her to deliberate brutality and its cold-blooded consequences.

Books four through six in the award-winning Amanda Pepper mystery series are now available in one volume! This collection includes:

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE
Well-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 VACATION
Amanda 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 SUMMER
Mellow 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.

Books seven through nine in the award-winning Amanda Pepper mystery series are now available in one volume! This collection includes:

THE MUMMER’S CURSE
In her new novel starring Philadelphia schoolteacher Amanda Pepper, Gillian Roberts once again mixes mystery and mirth. This time Roberts explores Philadelphia’s unique flesh and blood “historical monument”– the Mummers, who live (and perhaps are willing to die) for a few hours of glory every New Year’s Day.

The famous Mummers’ Parade is an extravaganza that draws enormous crowds who cheer through chattering teeth, as more than thirty thousand clowns, string bands, and fancy brigades strut their stuff up Broad Street. But this year, while the music blares and the Mummers dance, a reveling Pierrot suddenly sinks to the ground, shot dead.

Amanda is, at first, only a horrified spectator. But when the prime suspect–her friend and fellow teacher at Philly Prep–falsely claims to have been with her at the time of the murder, Amanda can no longer stay on the sidelines.
Is the murder a flare-up of deadly rivalries? Is it connected with the disappearance, the week before Christmas, of another Mummer, the heir to a meat-packing family? Does someone disapprove of the Mummers’ feathers, sequins, and string bands? And why is no one in the tight-knit world Amanda investigates willing to tell the truth about anything?

THE BLUEST BLOOD
The ultra-elegant fund-raiser in a fabled Main Line mansion benefits Philly Prep’s Library, and gives Amanda a chance to play Cinderella for a night. The first clue that all might not go well is the host’s figure hanging in effigy outside the estate, put there by the Moral Ecologists who have a long list of classic books that “pollute the mind.” When murder follows, Amanda becomes enmeshed in old secrets and young lives.

ADAM AND EVIL
Includes a new introduction from author Gillian Roberts and an exclusive interview with Amanda Pepper herself!

When a high school senior shows signs of mental illness, Amanda attempts to get him help, but she’s rebuffed by his parents. When the same boy then becomes the prime suspect in a murder at the Philadelphia Main Library, and runs away, Amanda, who knows he’s confused and in need of help—whether or not he committed the crime—has no choice but to run after him. And to run into the possibility of becoming the next victim herself.

Books 10 through 12 in the award-winning Amanda Pepper mystery series are now available in one volume! This collection includes:

HELEN HATH NO FURY
In the stately nineteenth-century homes on Philadelphia’s Delancey Street, the wilder passions scarcely ruffle the peace. Murder is unthinkable, particularly a murder involving an upscale book discussion group, of which schoolteacher Amanda Pepper is a devoted member. Nevertheless, on the day after a heated discussion of a fictional heroine’s suicide, book group member Helen Coulter falls to her death from her roof garden. Helen’s death is declared a suicide but Amanda is convinced otherwise. Why is this admirable woman dead? And if she was killed, who performed the heinous act? Amanda’s investigations will draw her into a zone of great danger, where Helen Coulter’s ice-hearted killer is once more ready to strike. . . .

CLAIRE AND PRESENT DANGER
In the City of Brotherly Love, nobody knows a thing about Emmie Cade, a young widow who “appeared from nowhere,” and in the blink of an eye was engaged to Leo Fairchild, a middle-aged bachelor with a fortune. However, as her marriage date approaches, Emmie’s mother-in-law to be, the ailing, autocratic Claire Fairchild, receives anonymous letters. They suggest, none too subtly, that there’s a great deal to learn about the mysterious young woman, none of it good, and much of it involving the violent deaths of the men in her life.

Enter Amanda Pepper who, after completing her day of teaching English at Philly Prep, now moonlights as a P.I. along with C.K. Mackenzie, former homicide detective, current graduate student at Penn. The two of them are hired by Mrs. Fairchild to find out who the charming but evasive Emmie Cade really is. At thirty-two, the young woman has changed her address and name more often than some women change nail polish—and deliberately or not, she’s provided no clues or access to her past.

For Amanda, becoming C.K. Mackenzie’s investigative partner is an exhilarating change from the politics and problems of the new school term, and a welcome distraction from the ordeal of meeting her own prospective in-laws. She’s determined to prove herself an able investigator by ferreting out Emmie Cade’s secrets, but almost immediately, instead of looking at events of the past, she’s forced to deal with the here and now—including murder.

TILL THE END OF TOM
Traditionally, Old Philadelphians keep a low profile. They associate with one another and leave life as discreetly as they have lived it. So Philly Prep English teacher Amanda Pepper, who thinks her only current problems are keeping her well-meaning family from hijacking her wedding, is understandably stunned to discover a perfect specimen of the species dying at the foot of the school’s marble staircase.

It is anybody’s guess what led to Tomas Severin’s apparent fall and, indeed, why he was in the building in the first place. More questions arise when Amanda enters her otherwise empty classroom and finds a take-out cup of herbal tea laced with the party drug her students call roofies. Why would a middle-aged Philadelphian have a date-rape drug in his tea? Why does he have Amanda’s name scribbled in his pocket notebook?

Hired by a member of the Severin family household, Amanda and her fiancé, C.K. Mackenzie, realize that many people felt their lives would improve if Tom’s life ended–-making it seemingly impossible to determine who’d been harassing Severin with threatening phone calls. Tom Severin leaves behind angry ex-wives, one recently dropped fiancée, and the current (about to be exed) Mrs. Tomas Severin. As secrets are unearthed, and cruelties old and new revealed, it’s apparent that the end of Tom is just the beginning of the grief he caused.

Books 13 and 14 in the award-winning Amanda Pepper mystery series are now available in one volume! This collection includes:

A HOLE IN JUAN
No matter the season, the Philadelphia private school where Amanda Pepper teaches English is never a center of tranquility. But with Halloween and the annual Mischief Night party only days away, the hope is that nothing more than old-fashioned vandalism and pranks will take place.

No such luck. Trouble erupts long before the witching hour, as the school is plagued by a series of mishaps ranging from the trivial to the potentially deadly–and most of which seem to center on a group of popular seniors.

A fire alarm rings during a test; all the orange and black paint is stolen from the art room; the mustard packets are taken from the cafeteria. Perhaps more serious: chemicals and equipment disappear from the science lab, as does one of Amanda’s exams and her attendance book. And the dapper new science instructor, Juan Reyes, receives a threatening message recalling that a teacher was once flayed to death by his students.

As Amanda juggles teaching, moonlighting as a private investigator with her husband, C.K. Mackenzie, and coping with C.K.’s visiting sixteen-year-old high school-dropout nephew, she tries to find out what, or who, is behind the ominous events.

Before she can unmask the tricksters, the turmoil in the school increases when students rise up against the administration’s censuring (and censoring) of a campus poet. Then unrest escalates into a lethally explosive menace, and Amanda receives a warning that there is more–and far worse–to come.

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS
Amanda’s friend Sasha’s stepmother has just committed suicide—although, according to Sasha, Phoebe Ennis would never have killed herself, especially not while having a drink and wearing a red silk blouse and red sandals with four-inch heels. Amanda isn’t persuaded, but reluctantly agrees to help investigate the woman’s demise, though the evidence for foul play is slim. True, the middle-aged compulsive collector of knickknacks wasn’t universally loved. Phoebe’s own son hated her, and she bored her friends to death with hints of her “royal” lineage. And with four marriages behind her, she was already preparing to announce her renewed availability on the Net. But when another woman is found dead in Phoebe’s house, it becomes clear that something is indeed murderously amiss, and much closer to home than Amanda or anyone else could have imagined.

Grant Jefferson joins the Gay Men’s Chorus as a protégé of its biggest supporter, and begins causing more dischord than harmony. Determined he’s going to Broadway, Grant sees the chorus as the means to his end, and doesn’t care much how many of the other members he uses as his stepping stones—or how hard they get stepped on.

So, when a car bomb ends Grant’s plans to be a star on The Great White Way, there is no shortage of possible suspects; and when the chorus’ board of directors hires Dick Hardesty to see what he can find out about the murder, he ends up in a case as complicated as a madrigal.

When your profession is thievery, you’re bound to find trouble. Artie Applegate just wants to have simple heists with no complications, but the women in his life repeatedly keep that from happening. More often than not, Artie ends up trading his burglary skills for mystery-solving talents instead.

Collected here, for the first time, are four short stories previously released by Untreed Reads containing Artie’s many exploits as he attempts to pull off burglaries while solving a crime or two in the process. This collection also contains a brand-new Artie short story, “Artie and the Big-Footed Woman.”

When the obnoxious owner of a gay bathhouse begins receiving threatening messages accusing him of not admitting people inside that he doesn’t deem “hot” enough, he enlists the services of private detective Dick Hardesty to find the person behind the notes. When the owner is murdered following a heated argument with Dick, Hardesty becomes a suspect. Following a succession of other seemingly unrelated deaths — all involving individuals noted for their cruelty to other gays — Hardesty begins to suspect the actions are of someone who is looking to “take out the garbage” of the gay community. Can he solve the case and clear his name before the body count rises even further?

The ultra-elegant fund-raiser in a fabled Main Line mansion benefits Philly Prep’s Library, and gives Amanda a chance to play Cinderella for a night. The first clue that all might not go well is the host’s figure hanging in effigy outside the estate, put there by the Moral Ecologists who have a long list of classic books that “pollute the mind.” When murder follows, Amanda becomes enmeshed in old secrets and young lives.

New Year’s Eve at a popular Denver night spot. Undercover police officers and a Denver lawyer named Adam Larsen—all pursuing the same drug dealer. Their plans go up in smoke when a bomb kills the police informant. The clock is ticking and the murderer must be identified before the stroke of midnight.

Hired to find a missing man—an alcoholic—Dick Hardesty discovers that an unusual number of alcoholic gay men have vanished within a relatively short period and never heard from again. Clues lead him to a support group for gay couples, where one partner is alcoholic and the other is not. Dick and his partner Jonathan infiltrate the group by claiming Jonathan is an alcoholic. When two more men from the group appear to suffer the same fate as the previous victims, Dick is determined to find out why…and who is responsible.

Dick Hardesty, working for a public relations firm, is assigned the task of helping elect a rabidly homophobic police chief governor. Dick’s being gay himself, coupled with rumors that the chief had one of his identical twin sons murdered for being gay doesn’t make Dick’s job easier. He soon finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of politics, drag clubs, a do-good reverend’s homeless shelter, and an arsonist torching the city’s gay bars.

Chiana Ryan, PI (sort of) is deep in the middle of an exciting mystery, and everything is coming up eggs. First there’s the 120-million-year-old dinosaur egg that disappears from its stand at the museum. Then there’s the shed full of eggs she stumbles across while investigating crazy Professor T. Goodenough’s scary signs.

What do these eggs have in common? What are the strange creatures hatching from the eggs in Professor Goodenough’s shed? And how can Chiana find time to follow clues when the owner of Treehaven Riding School keeps her busy riding and looking after the horses?

Chiana and her friends are determined to crack the case, even when the clues bring them to the egg thieves themselves. Suddenly, it’s horses against motor bikes in a desperate race for survival…

More blood, guts and grease paint from the world of crazy mimes, man-children and corrupt clown cops in this tawdry tale of circus noir. A novelette.

Roger Maxwell was a successful banker. He was the new owner of a beautiful old house in the country. He was the loving husband of a captivating and sensual woman. He was the proud father of four “great kids.”

Then, on one long holiday weekend at his isolated home, Roger Maxwell began to learn the truth about his children, his wife, and himself—as his whole world of illusion came apart in bloody pieces…

The first two Claudia Seferius mysteries are now available in one volume! 

I, CLAUDIA 
Claudia Seferius has successfully flattered her way into marriage with a wealthy Roman wine merchant. But when her secret gambling debts spiral, she hits on another resourceful way to make money – offering her “personal services” to high-ranking Roman Citizens. 

Unfortunately her clients are now turning up dead – the victims of a sadistic serial killer. 

When Marcus Cornelius Orbilio, the handsome investigating officer, starts digging deep for clues, Claudia realizes she must track down the murderer herself – before her husband discovers what she’s been up to. 

VIRGIN TERRITORY 
It just wasn’t fair. When you marry a man for his money, you expect him to leave you a shining pile of gold pieces. Not a crummy old wine business. How was the new young widow Claudia going to pay off her gambling debts now? 

So when Eugenius Collatinus asks Claudia to chaperone his granddaughter to Sicily she jumps at the chance to escape Rome. It should be easy–Sabina Collatinus, she is told, has recently completed thirty years’ service as a Vestal Virgin. 

Or has she…? 

Claudia suspects she is escorting an impostor. And then a woman’s brutalized body is discovered…

Books three through five of the Claudia Seferius mysteries are now in one volume! 

MAN EATER 
On the eve of the Roman festivities, the last thing you’d expect Claudia Seferius to be doing is heading out of the city. Unfortunately, even hedonistic young widows have to put business before pleasure when their vineyards are threatened with arson. 

Taking a shortcut through the Umbrian countryside, she is forced off the road, and her beloved cat goes missing in the skirmish. Refusing to leave without her, Claudia accepts the hospitality of Sergius Pictor and the menagerie of wild animals he is training for the Games. 

Then a stranger knocks at her bedroom door, with a knife sticking out of his belly. 

And Claudia finds herself being framed for murder… 

WOLF WHISTLE 
Five slave women have been murdered on Market Day, so it isn’t a safe time for Claudia to be chased by dogs into the darkest streets of Rome. 

In the back alleys of the capital city, Claudia finds an abandoned boy, Jovi, and takes him home with her. A killer is stalking the streets, his victims linked by a tattoo that marks them as the “children of Arbil.” But Arbil is no loving father–he is a baby-snatcher who runs a slave-rearing empire. 

JAIL BAIT 
The death toll was rising…and not all the symptoms tallied with the plague… 

A deadly contagion may have sent many of Rome’s wealthier citizens fleeing to the country, but for Claudia Seferius a plague is the least of her worries. 

For she has “temporarily borrowed” 3,000 sesterces from local millionaire Sabbio Tullus. OK, so she’d had to break into his depository to get at it, but did he really need to set the army after her? Desperate to escape arrest, she seeks refuge in the beautiful spa resort of Atlantis. 

Once there she meets the charming Cal, and a little flirting in tranquil surroundings seems an ideal way to pass the time. Except, within hours, Cal is dead. And he’s not the only one. 

Pretty soon Claudia begins to wonder whether Atlantis isn’t far more dangerous than the disease-ridden streets she left behind…

Books six through eight of the Claudia Seferius mysteries are now available in one volume! 

BLACK SALAMANDER 
If we’re going to make a new order for Rome, a better order, I might add—sacrifices have to be made. We have set the assassination date for the Ides of July … 

What better opportunity for a beautiful young widow than to join a prestigious trade delegation bound for Gaul? There was the fanfare as the procession left Rome, the breathtaking journey through lush Alpine meadows. And let’s not forget the promise of riches for delivering a certain pouch, sealed with the sign of the black salamander. 

Except things are never that simple when Claudia Seferius is involved. There’s a rockfall, for a start, which leaves the party stranded, as well as five men dead—and one death is not accidental. 

All Claudia wants to do now is to get out of the valley they are trapped in and hand over the pouch. But there are those who will go to any lengths to stop her. 

And suddenly Claudia finds herself plunged into a deadly game of high treason, in a land where warriors still hunt human heads and where wicker-man sacrifices are far from rare… 

DREAM BOAT 
Claudia Seferius is broke. Skint. Borassic. Cleaned out. Bust, and on her uppers. So when her teenage stepdaughter Flavia is abducted, Claudia can’t just throw money at the problem. The cash simply isn’t there—since her husband died, his fellow businessmen have banded together to freeze her out of trade. And the frustratingly delectable Orbilio can’t help—he’s been placed under strict house arrest after a skeleton was found walled up in the house that’s been in his family for three generations. 

Now, with the Games of Apollo—a series of festivals and frolics, feasting and tomfoolery—due to start in two days, Claudia has saddled herself with the job of playing tag with the kidnapper. Meanwhile, a mysterious Egyptian cult, the Brothers of Horus, is growing in popularity with Roman citizens. But several of its young female members are beginning to experience strange disturbances…. 

DARK HORSE 
The demon stirred. Its sleep had been long, but in its sleep it grew restless. It had smelled the blood of its past in its dreams. Now it wanted to taste it. 

When Claudia is caught doping racehorses, an island in the Adriatic seems the perfect refuge. Shaded by figs and pomegranates, Leo’s villa is surrounded by plunging cliffs, sandy coves and hillsides scented by carpets of wild herbs. 

Then a pirate ship anchors in the bay, and almost immediately a fire breaks out, an apprentice is murdered, and sinister messages are delivered on the point of a spear. 

Too late, Claudia discovers that three hundred miles isn’t far enough from Rome to escape the law. 

Or a bloodlust that goes way beyond evil.

Books nine through eleven in the Claudia Seferius mystery series are now in one volume! 

SECOND ACT 
The corpse in the shallow grave couldn’t find rest. “You’ll never get away with my murder,” she cried. “They’ll find you in the end. One way or another, they will find you. And then you’ll have to pay.” 

But her killer has no intentions of being caught. Joining a troupe of traveling actors (aren’t all killers actors at heart?), there’s no better place to hide out. Until the group is invited to spend Saturnalia with Claudia Seferius… 

WIDOW’S PIQUE 
Five generations under the eagle. Butchers under the skin. 

When the King of Histria invites Claudia to visit, she assumes the contract he wants her to sign is for wine. How wrong can she be? Virtually a prisoner in a land where brutality is ingrained, she is deeply suspicious of the recent run of bad luck that has befallen the King’s family. And where is he? If the King was so desperate to meet, why will no one take her to the Palace? 

And why, when she witnesses a murder, does no one believe her..? 

STONE COLD 
The Watcher waited until she bent down to gather a handful of bilberries. The woodland floor was soft and springy. The Watcher’s feet made no sound. 

Claudia was just ten when her father marched off to war and never came home. Now it’s time to uncover the truth about his disappearance. 

Her search takes her to the dark forests of Gaul, where Druid Law rules and human sacrifice is still practiced in secret. Staying at the villa of the cold, commanding Marcia, Claudia notices that several young women have gone missing, and while suspicion falls on a mysterious character who lives in the woods, she isn’t convinced. Marcia only employs perfectionists for her projects. 

Nor has it escaped her notice that each victim is unblemished and in the fullness of bloom. 

Just like Claudia…

Books twelve and thirteen in the Claudia Seferius mystery series are now available in one volume! 

SOUR GRAPES 
Deep in the reed beds, the water shimmered and rippled. After three days’ submersion, the gases inside gently raised the body to the surface. Setting a seventeen-year-old youth on his final journey downstream. 

When a wealthy horse trainer starts courting her mother-in-law, Claudia knows love has bugger-all to do with it. Especially with the number of hangers-on who’ve moved in. But exactly what is his game? Can it be connected to a string of local misfortunes? 

At first, Claudia is simply curious. 

Then a young man is found dead… 

SCORPION RISING 
Blackmailed into investigating the murder of a child, Claudia is plunged into a bizarre world of nature priestesses, who have no use for men other than as slaves. But there is discord within this secret society and, as the conflict spreads, she cannot accept that an outsider was responsible for the little girl’s death. 

But while Claudia works to uncover the truth, a sinister force moves in the background. A master of disguise, the Scorpion is the spearhead of an uprising designed to unite the tribes against Rome. No one crosses this man and lives. Especially fiery young Roman women…

The first two Conan Flagg mysteries now in one volume!

Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat

The police called it an accident. The dead man’s wife insisted it was murder. Either way it was maddeningly mysterious. 
 
Captain Harold Jeffries, swaddled in his robe, had settled down for a cozy evening with Crime and Punishment when his wife left the house for a bridge party. An hour later he was dead. What could have induced him to dress and go out into the stormy night—much less to walk on the beach, which he hated and never went near? 
 
Conan Flagg, proprietor of the Holliday Beach Bookshop and Rental Library, is persuaded by Jeffries’ widow to investigate privately; and astonishingly, all the clues lead to Flagg’s own Dickensian establishment. With passing assistance from Meg, the bookstore cat, Flagg baits a trap to catch a rat—and finds himself dangerously involved in a crime with implications far beyond this lazy seaside village.

A Multitude of Sins

“I’ll be on your patio at four o’clock. If you aren’t there I’ll understand.“

This is the gist of the mysterious plea for help that Conan Flagg finds lying on the counter of his Holliday Beach Book Shop. The writer is beautiful Isadora Canfield, a concert pianist and daughter of the late Oregon Senator John Canfield, in whose will she would become a millionairess.

Isadora wants Conan to find out who is keeping her under twenty-four-hour surveillance, but she becomes strangely quiet when asked for details of her father’s death and of how she had spent the weeks following. In fact she is disinclined to talk about the family at all–not her blind stepmother or her irrepressible stepbrother or her sadly altered stepsister, Jenny, who had once been a promising artist.

Conan soon realizes that he and his gifted client are sitting on dynamite. He thinks he knows who has the matches, but he can’t be sure. And proving it, is dangerous work, even for a pro like Flagg.

Books three through five of The Conan Flagg Mysteries now in one volume!

Oh, Bury Me Not

The war between the McFalls and the Drinkwaters had taken a nasty turn: someone had dynamited a reservoir, depriving the Drinkwaters’ Double D ranch of its precious water supply. And Aaron McFall’s eldest son George was found dead at the site, apparently killed in the blast.

It looked as though George had been the victim of his own plan for wanton destruction, but his old friend Conan Flagg thought otherwise.

Sensing mysteries beyond the immediate tragedy, Conan began to search for both families’ secrets and found that revenge was but one motive for murder. There were also romantic entanglements to consider, and something frightening and unnameable as well….

Nothing’s Certain But Death

There he lay in a freezer—the late Eliot Nye, IRS auditor. He had been investigating Brian Tally, owner of Surf House Restaurant, for tax fraud. He was last seen alive late the evening before when he had burst in on a boisterous party at the Surf House bar where Tally swung at him.
 
Tally was the obvious suspect, but Conan Flagg, bookstore owner and amateur detective, discovered enough strong passion among Surf House staffers to make any of them kill.
 
The big problem was that Nye left a message pointing straight to Tally as his killer. Flagg was stuck with refuting the irrefutable…and pinning the ugly crime on the real killer.
 
“A fascinating mystery.”
Minneapolis Star & Tribune

Seasons of Death

In 1940 Leland Langtry ran off with his redheaded secretary and $10,000 in company funds… 
 
Or so everyone believed…
 
Forty years later, Langtry’s remains are found in a boarded-up silver mine tunnel. And as the knife still jammed between his ribs had belonged to his partner in Lang-Star Mining, Tom Starbuck—also long since dead—a jury decided that Tom had killed Langtry.
 
But Tom’s widow, Delia, resists that verdict and persuades that very private investigator Conan Flagg to find the real murderer—an impossible job made tougher by the curious reticence of nearly everyone in town whenever Leland Langtry is mentioned….

Books six through nine of The Conan Flagg Mysteries now in one volume!

DEAD MATTER

The celebrated author Ravin Gould, his equally celebrated actress wife, the media, the locals, and as many tourists as can cram themselves into Conan Flagg’s bookstore are all on hand for that electric moment when Cady MacGill, the sheriff’s son-in-law, threatens to cut off a vital portion of Gould’s anatomy with a chain saw.

Less than twenty-four hours later, Ravin Gould is dead, and Cady MacGill has been charged with his murder.

But bookstore owner and private investigator Conan Flagg doesn’t read the situation that way. Not with an election for sheriff coming up. Not when a covey of hotshot New York publishing executives wings into town, lured to the quiet Oregon beach resort by word of the tell-all autobiographical novel that Gould had just finished writing. A novel worth millions, which has vanished without a trace . .

WAKE UP, DARLIN’ COREY

Who killed darlin’ Corey?

In the sixth novel in the Conan Flagg series, the Oregon detective is investigating the mysterious, untimely death of his friend Corey Benbow.

It seemed to Flagg that the police were asking too few questions about the fatal automobile accident that claimed the young woman’s life—especially since it was common knowledge in the town of Holiday Beach that more than one person stood to gain from her death.

It wasn’t long before Flagg began unraveling motive and opportunity to disprove the verdict of accidental death in the case…and, in a chilling re-creation of the crime, to demand equal justice for the deadly conspiracy of silence that murdered Corey Benbow.

KING OF THE MOUNTAIN

When conservative millionaire A. C. King hosts his annual house party at his spacious mountain lodge, he has no idea it will be the last family reunion.

Yet the mellow autumn air is tension-filled with the presence of A. C.’s beautiful second wife, the constrained animosities of his two older sons, and the tippling of his flower-child daughter-in-law. But it is the unwelcome arrival of youngest son Lucas, with a ravishing black fiancée in tow, that is the true kiss of death.

Even Conan Flagg, an old family friend and private investigator, doesn’t foresee the sudden tragedy that leaves the party diminished and vulnerable to a cunning killer. As a blizzard seals their isolation, Conan attempts to identify the murderer among them before he or she strikes again….

Montana Thomas goes in search for a father he never knew and finds the reasons behind his mother’s years of silence.

With his mother recently dead and with not even a name to start with, Montana and his brother Dakota begin a journey to find not only their unknown father, but their culture, and the Indian heritage denied to them from the moment of their births.

Will Montana accept his father and the truth behind his disappearance? Will he be able to accept the truth about himself once his past is revealed? Or will he wish he’d left those secrets buried?

The time: the 1960s. The place: a mid-sized town in northern Florida.

Police patrolling a middle-class neighborhood discover Waldo Fleenor bleeding profusely in the driveway of his own home. As the officers wait for an ambulance, stanch the young man’s wounds, and question him about his attacker, Waldo mentally revisits past events that led to his present situation.

The trouble begins with the arrival of his baby brother, Jamie, who replaces three-year-old Waldo as the primary object of their parents’ affection.

As time passes, the differences between the brothers become more apparent. While intelligent, sensitive Waldo grows up homely and sickly, Jamie develops into a handsome, athletic youth. By the time the siblings reach their teens, the contrast between popular, good-natured Jamie and brooding outcast Waldo is as obvious as day and night.

Waldo’s vague animosity towards his brother crystallizes into bitterness. Ultimately, Waldo decides the only way he can step into the light is to eliminate the long shadow cast by his brother. For Waldo to truly live, Jamie must die, and Waldo sets in motion a twisted plan to remove his hated rival once and for all.

A novella.

Arrogant and homophobic Tony T. Tunderew, author of a muckraking bestseller, hires Dick Hardesty to look into blackmail threats he’s been receiving. When Tunderew and a male hustler die in a mysterious car crash, Dick’s investigation reveals Tunderew was working on a new book exposing an evangelical husband-and-wife team and their religious-based community for troubled teens. Is Tunderew’s death “divine intervention,” or something far more sinister?

When rugged construction worker and biker Cal Hysong is killed, Dick knows the reason. Cal was widely suspected of deliberately spreading AIDS to other gay men. Like the rest of the gay community, Dick’s initial reaction is “good riddance.” But when Jake Jacobson and Jared Martinson, two of Dick’s closest friends, become suspects, the case turns personal, and Dick sets out to clear them and find the real killer. His search takes him into the unfamiliar world of gay bikers and leathermen, and through a labyrinth of suspects, motivations, blind alleys and memorable characters.

Mike O’Hara is an ex-Navy officer, ex-astronaut and serial ex-boyfriend. He is also an engineer and a crash investigator for the NTSB. When a private jet owned by global mega-corporation ZYCO mysteriously crashes, Mike and his team find hacked software in the plane’s control computers. Mike and computer expert Sally Montez race to track down the hackers before they can strike again. They are thrown into a world of extreme wealth, international financial intrigue and corporate espionage, and as they close in on the killer, the hacker strikes again. ZYCO’s founder, celebrity billionaire-genius Eric Zygler, joins the effort to help find the hacker, but as the case comes together Mike realizes that the evidence points to Zygler. Mike must trap and force a confession out of the murderer or lose his career–and maybe his life.

A new work of short fiction from the 2012 Derringer-nominated author of Ballistic.

When you need to hunt down a god, call a sniper.

The D.E.A. believes Marine Corps Sergeant Matt O’Connor is their best bet to capture the deadliest meth kingpin in the United States—Herman Estevez, the self-proclaimed “God of Speed.”

Special Agent Sam Brookings drops O’Connor into thick Ozark mountain country with a simple directive: stake out backwoods drug labs and pinpoint Estevez, a man who has eluded the D.E.A. for years. When O’Connor finally verifies the kingpin’s location, Brookings leads an assault team to bring in the D.E.A.’s most-wanted, using the Marine sniper as an observer only.

O’Connor, though, isn’t built to merely observe.

Brookings soon finds himself in the worst position imaginable: trapped between a heavily armed outlaw and a warrior with a rifle who lives to dispense swift justice—the kind that comes at 3,200 feet per second.

All Tom Brady wanted was to be a good cop; to keep a low profile and prove to a notoriously homophobic police department undergoing its own internal upheavals that gays deserved the right to be among them. But when he and old friend Dick Hardesty go out for a quiet evening, an incident leads to Tom shooting two thugs attacking patrons of a gay bar. Dick finds himself trying to protect Tom from being outed, while heading off a violent antipolice rebellion by the gay community.

School-teacher Lara Reynolds was dying…until the gift of a heart transplant gave her another chance to live a full life. The only problem was her donor Mo Priestly wasn’t giving up on bringing his murderer to justice. Beset by nightly dreams filled with Mo’s final moments of life, she fears she’s going crazy. When Mo starts talking to her, she comes to care about him and knows she has to report what she knows to the police, even though she knows they won’t believe her. 

With no suspects and no new leads on the Priestly murder, San Antonio detective Kurt Andersen has no choice except to take Lara’s statement. Her details fit the facts of the case, and he considers her a suspect, though she was on the heart transplant list and wasn’t physically capable of murder. How else would she be able to so accurately describe Priestly’s murder?

Lara agrees with Mo’s opinion that Detective Andersen is “yummy,” but she won’t allow herself to feel anything for him. What man would want a woman with an eighteen-inch scar on her chest? 

Repeated attempts to silence Lara convince Kurt that she’s telling the truth and his protective instincts kick in as his attraction to her grows. But he’d already failed to protect one woman he cared about. Would he be able to keep Lara safe?

When private investigator Dick Hardesty is hired by businessman Stuart Anderson to conduct routine background checks on potential store managers, he becomes reacquainted with a former trick, Phil Stark, who has undergone an amazing transformation from bar hustler to professional escort. When Anderson is murdered, Hardesty is hired by the escort services owners, Arnold and Iris Glick, to keep Phil and the agency away from police scrutiny. Two subsequent murders make this impossible, and Hardesty embarks on a mission to find the identity of the killer.

Victorian England, 1880—Sherlock Holmes is at it again! But this time, instead of his faithful chronicler Watson at the helm, his tales come from another source…Mrs. Hudson, the housekeeper. A new set of tales for a new generation, Sherlock Holmes is given to us in a whole new light: “The Great Detective” before he became great. From their first meeting to her place as a permanent resident of Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson helps us rediscover the ever-logical detective who has become a literary icon.

Aaron Greene is a shy, stay-in-the-background young Jewish boy, the child of shy, stay-in-the-background parents. Only a year out of high school, he has a part-time job as a mailboy in a large Atlanta bank. One morning, on his way to work, he is kidnapped and the kidnappers demand a ransom of ten million dollars – not from his parents, but from the bank that employs him.

The bank rejects the demand.

And what begins as a curious crime – the abduction of an unknown, a nobody – soon ignites a national crusade for Aaron’s safe return, because everyone, in one way or another, understands what it is like to be a nobody.

For the kidnappers, the money has no meaning. The mastermind, Ewell Pender, is a wealthy eccentric, an elderly board member of the bank, yet also the man who organizes the campaign to raise Aaron’s ransom. His criminal associates are young nonconformists, dreamers and daredevils. Keeping Aaron in the luxury of the Pender mansion is, to them, a clever and teasing adventure. For Aaron, it is not life-threatening; it is life-changing.

Caught in the mystery is a journalist who unwittingly is used as a pawn by the kidnappers to tell Aaron’s story, and also a detective who bends rules and follows his instinct as much as his training. For both, the kidnapping reveals a profound understanding of their own lives in the complex workings of the world around them.

Richly written, driven by baffling twists in plot, and featuring powerful portrayals of memorable characters, The Kidnapping of Aaron Greene goes beyond the elements of a classic crime. It is an experiment in human manipulation and behavior, and a riveting study of the passions and apathy historically exhibited by society.

The beautiful, majestic Boulder Valley. Where locals can enjoy everything that the Montana wilderness has to offer. Where tourists can “get away from it all,” and relax beside a rushing mountain river.

The Boulder Valley. Where a deranged, psychopath hunts for his next victims.

The Killings in Boulder Valley is a terrifying short story of murder, love, and revenge.

Crime reporter Samantha Adams is working on a book called American Weird when her boyfriend, Harry Zack, persuades her to join him at a barbecue cookoff in Tupelo, Mississippi. As Harry puts it, the King’s birthplace “ought to be lousy with weird.” Besides, they’re driving there in a genuine pink Cadillac….

Also driving toward Tupelo is Mary Ann McClanahan, who more or less killed her worthless third husband, Carlin. She’s discovered Carlin was already married to a woman in Tupelo who’ll collect his life insurance—unless Mary Ann does something about it. Then an 18-wheeler driven by a novice Elvis impersonator blows Mary Ann off the road into a snake farm. Before you can say “Hound Dog,” Sam’s giving mouth-to-mouth to a barbecue contestant zapped by his own electric smoker. At the Elvis Memorial McDonald’s, Sam’s little dog has to be rescued by a Biker for Jesus. When someone takes a potshot at Sam and Harry’s host, who turns out to be the meanest man in town, and Lovie Rakestraw, a junior high classmate of Elvis, is found electrocuted in her whirlpool, things really start to cook….

Brig Detroit is a professional poker player who has fallen through the cracks of modern society. Living his day to day life one hotel at a time, he grinds his living on a leather chair, in comfortable obscurity.

After receiving news of his cousin’s murder, Brig’s best friend, Benny, convinces him to drive to New York to investigate the crime. When Benny goes missing, Brig must unravel a strange chain of events leading him to one of New York’s most feared Mafioso’s, the supposed bastard son of John Gotti. Brig is drawn into a cat-and-mouse game with local authorities and thugs alike. Using all of his resources, he must evade violent criminals and dirty cops while he searches for answers about his friend’s disappearance.

Bloody and bruised, Brig finally lands on Gotti’s doorstep. Gotti’s price for information on Benny’s disappearance puts Brig, and his entire bankroll, at risk when he decides to raise the money the only way he knows how.

Bullets and aces must fly before Brig can finally know peace and find closure.

As Israel braves Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles, a Torah from Iraq disappears in China. Can the “Jewish Miss Marple” find the historic religious scroll in time for a momentous diplomatic breakthrough?

Lily Kovner, while scoffing at her nickname, the “Jewish Miss Marple,” undertakes the improbable quest of finding a Torah gone missing in Shanghai. Political intrigue and long-buried resentments of an ancient community figure into a journey plagued by threats, physical attack and murder. And the ultimate unraveling of the theft opens a Pandora’s box of personal history in a Jewish community that endured a diaspora that stretched over 2500 years in Iraq, India and China.

Over 2 million copies sold in print, and now available in digital format for the first time!

At their big prom, Ed Japhet scares the wits out of the attendees with his fantastic and dangerous feats of magic. Then when the young man and his girlfriend leave, they see four figures sitting inside his father’s car, one with a chain around his fist. That’s only the beginning of this story of a screwed-up justice system and a high-school student who decides to use his magic tricks to stop a tough gang of extortionists from bothering him and his girl.

The New York Times says, “I cannot recall a gripping novel of this type with greater pleasure.”

The Library Journal declares, “A shark-like bite that won’t be easily forgotten. Fast moving, incisive, angry, fine, and dramatic!”

First published in 1971, this literary thriller shows off the masterful storytelling skills of its legendary author, Sol Stein.

Rookie Officer Flora Vastine of the Swatara Creek Police Department is called to Creekside Rest, a nursing facility, where a female guest has been murdered. Ray Fertig, another guest who claims to have been the victim’s lover, is found in the room with the body.

Fertig shocks Flora with tales of senior sexuality and asks to speak with former police chief Dan “Sticks” Hetrick. Now a consultant to the department, Hetrick knows Fertig’s unsavory past and is reluctant to discount him as a suspect despite evidence to the contrary.

Hetrick and Vastine’s investigation soon turns up more lovers from Fertig’s past, and an unexpected solution to the crime.

A short work from our Fingerprints mystery line.

July 16th, 1942

André Dumont is a collaborationist who has made a fortune buying art and valuables from Jews who sell their collections and heirlooms at ridiculously low prices in order to quickly obtain money as they attempt to escape from Europe. Dumont has befriended the Schwartzmanns so he can evaluate their art collection. He not only becomes a “friend of the family,” but he becomes the lover of the Schwartzmanns’ eldest daughter, Anna.

André Dumont, using his influence and friends in the Nazi hierarchy in Paris, manages to get the Schwartzmann family listed for deportation. He wants to rid himself of any person who can claim the art he plans to have “confiscated” from the Schwartzmanns. The Schwartzmanns are arrested, but Anna, who has been living with Dumont, escapes the round-up. Dumont denounces his lover to the Nazis in order to rid himself of the last person who may lay claim to the Schwartzmann collection.

Present Day

After her mother dies, Mimi is putting away her mother’s things and she discovers that the woman who she thought was her grandmother was not her biological grandmother. Her real grandmother’s name was Anna, someone who, along with all of her family, died in the Nazi death camps. She comes to know all of this through Anna’s diary. In it, she finds out that her family’s art collection was stolen and she decides to embark on a quest to recover it.

In Paris, Edouard Dumont, son of André Dumont, is the French Minister of Culture. He desperately needs money to finance his political career and save the financially struggling family business, a huge art gallery and auction house, from bankruptcy. He wants to sell the art his father left him, art stolen from the Jews.

Edouard Dumont’s and Mimi’s destinies are about to cross as part of her plan to find out what happened to her family’s art collection, Mimi gets a job at Edouard Dumont’s art auction business. While working there, Mimi discovers that some of the art that will be sold at auction has very shady provenance. Could this be part of her family’s collection?

Enter Guillermo Lombardo, a retired police inspector, who rents Mimi’s Paris apartment for a week and finds himself romantically entangled with the woman.

Things soon take a turn for the worst for Lombardo. Upon his arrival in Brittany to see friends, a policeman shows up to question Lombardo. It seems Mimi has been reported missing and Mimi’s friend, Sophie, has been found strangled in her own apartment.

As Lombardo was the last person to see Mimi before she disappeared, the police consider him a suspect in Mimi’s disappearance. To clear his name, Lombardo must find his missing lover, and stay one step ahead of a vicious killer.

Adam Kingston uses his psychic gift to assist law enforcement agencies solve crimes. In The Missing Sniper, he travels to Florida to help a young sheriff stop a killer who tried to assassinate a politician and threatens to try again.

Adam quickly learns the sheriff is not telling him everything and finds himself involved in much more than he bargained for. To figure it all out, Adam needs the help of a legendary singer, an old Army blanket, and a mischievous two-year-old with busy fingers.

A short story featuring the main character from Memory of a Murder by Earl Staggs.

In her new novel starring Philadelphia schoolteacher Amanda Pepper, Gillian Roberts once again mixes mystery and mirth. This time Roberts explores Philadelphia’s unique flesh and blood “historical monument”– the Mummers, who live (and perhaps are willing to die) for a few hours of glory every New Year’s Day.

The famous Mummers’ Parade is an extravaganza that draws enormous crowds who cheer through chattering teeth, as more than thirty thousand clowns, string bands, and fancy brigades strut their stuff up Broad Street. But this year, while the music blares and the Mummers dance, a reveling Pierrot suddenly sinks to the ground, shot dead.

Amanda is, at first, only a horrified spectator. But when the prime suspect–her friend and fellow teacher at Philly Prep–falsely claims to have been with her at the time of the murder, Amanda can no longer stay on the sidelines.

Dick Hardesty is hired to investigate the mysterious death of a client’s lover. The police assume the death is drug related. In the course of his investigation Dick learns of eight similar deaths, all seemingly unrelated. The victims had nothing in common other than being gay, and all dying the same way. The police, to whom the deaths of “perverts” means very little, conclude that a serial killer is randomly killing gays, but Dick disagrees and believes that what tied the men together will lead to their killer.

At the gala opening of a new library filled with homosexual writings collected by the late Charles Burrows, known for both his taste in writing, as well as his eccentricity, Dick Hardesty and his partner Jonathan are enjoying a rare night out since four-year-old Joshua joined their household. The evening takes an abrupt turn when cataloger Taylor Cates is found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs in the library. The library foundation enlists Hardesty’s help in determining the truth of what happened—accident, or something more—which leads Dick to opponents of the creation of the library, and into the world of a long-dead, secretly gay writer, whose remaining family is determined to conceal his sexual orientation.

It’s Thanksgiving Day and Josh Katzen finds himself just off the coast of Turkey aboard the Diogenes, the converted minesweeper used as a dive platform for underwater archaeology. All is not well in the kitchen because the Turkish cook couldn’t find pecans for the pecan pie. Trying to escape the volatile kitchen atmosphere, Josh hitches a ride into the city of Bodrum in search of a peaceful breakfast — and maybe a few nuts. As usual, nothing goes quite according to plan. A holiday short story.

Gay investigative reporter Victor Koseva is working on an exposé about doping within a boxing syndicate, when he mysteriously disappears. Hired by the journalist’s sister-in-law, P.I. Dick Hardesty takes on the case, following a cast of unsavory suspects ranging from construction unions to bitter ex-boyfriends to a middleweight boxer determined to win a championship. When Koseva’s body is found, not only does Hardesty have to determine whether the death is from foul play or an accident, but he also has to make sure he’s not the next victim.

Long-time residents of T-Ville, Mrs. Plaid and Old Mr. P, are dismayed to see that their obituaries are published prematurely (and with little regard for facts) in the local newspaper. They decide to “lay low,” though, in case someone is trying to do them in.

Before heading out of town, Mrs. Plaid handwrites a memo to her office staff, which accidentally gets transmitted all over the world. Due to her atrocious handwriting, everyone interprets the memo differently, causing problems.

Meanwhile, a devious person (or group) makes replicas of the famous Large Hadron Collider and conducts their own “Big Bang” experiments in the U.S., but without safety precautions, causing random black holes to appear and disappear, along with the hapless people who get sucked into them. One such hapless person is the only person, other than Mrs. Plaid, who can read Mrs. Plaid’s handwriting and might be able to clear some things up.

Old Mr. P and Mrs. Plaid are tried together for each other’s murder in a combined trial that has everyone confused.

A hilarious short story from the author of Out of Order Murder Mystery.

Following the death of the parents of Jonathan’s four-year-old nephew Joshua, Dick and his partner find themselves in a new role: parents. As if fatherhood didn’t bring enough of a set of challenges, the mother of one of Joshua’s new friends is murdered, sending Dick on a trail to find out who killed her and why. With a list of suspects ranging from a lesbian ex-partner to the boy’s race-car-driver father, Dick is soon embroiled in a case so complicated that child-rearing begins to look easier than solving the case.

Tough-guy private detective R.J. Brooks is back in New York City after solving the hardest case of his career, the murder of screen legend Belle Fontaine – his mother. His famous parents left him little but a few memories and one of the best-loved movies of all time – As Time Goes By. They costarred in the classic film, an almost sacred tribute to their lives and love for each other. It is unthinkable to Brooks that anyone would ever attempt a remake. When he finds a camera and a reporter in his face, asking for a reaction to the news that Andromeda Studios is filming a remake of As Time Goes By, Brooks speaks first and thinks later – a move he will soon regret. Every TV station in the country runs the clip of him threatening to do anything to stop the making of the remake. And when Andromeda Studios employees start turning up dead in Los Angeles and New York, Brooks finds the police are taking his words literally. Now he’s got to stay one jump ahead of the law on both coasts and overtake a madman before more innocent people die.

For most women in the business, Atlantic City is hooker heaven, but Diana Andrews hates the downtime. She can watch her client at the blackjack table for only so long, and the in-house entertainment holds no appeal. When a new man offers her some easy money on the side, the job lands Diana in the middle of a casino rip-off, a cold murder case, and another killing so fresh that it might rub off on her. A novelette.

New York homicide detective, John Webb, is having a bad week. Mind you, family reunions are bad enough, but since the focus is the brutal and sudden murder of his favorite uncle, Reverend Carl Rivers, it’s even worse. And, it doesn’t help John one little bit that his investigation is hampered by a local sheriff’s deputy with a chip on his shoulder, the local homegrown psychic, an amorous librarian who just won’t shut up and a flock of wild peacocks. John soldiers on through it all, even when more bodies start cropping up all over the place. Not to mention when the details of his own family’s misdeeds become entangled in his investigation, and when the prime suspect winds up being entirely too close for comfort.

Surrounded by bizarre personalities and a social scheme that is completely foreign to him, John Webb must attempt to resolve his own issues while unraveling a mystery that began before he was even born. Set amongst the picturesque backdrop of a small Georgia town in 1942, The Rivers Webb tells a tale of unspoken crimes, hidden sins, and unrevealed guilt. Above all, it reminds us that nothing is ever really forgotten.

Dick and his lover, Jonathan, finally manage to take a vacation, and it is, to some extent, a sentimental journey for Dick—it is to New York City, the site of former adventures, and where his former lover is now settled in with a new lover, Max, who happens to be involved in a theater company. Dick and Jonathan fly in for opening night, but also arrive soon after one of the original cast is murdered—gunned down with a shot in the back, and ending up face down in a vacant lot. It seems Dick can’t even have a vacation without playing his usual role of sleuth, and there’s a different kind of role playing happening as well…

Tom and Son Jesus, two 12-year-old boys–one black and one white born the same hour of the same day–are best friends, bound by deep ties and who spend their days dreaming, fishing, and trying to escape work. But their fun comes to an abrupt halt when they discover a human bone, which later turns out to be part of the skeletal remains of Son Jesus’ long missing father. As sheriff Frank Rucker, a World War II hero, begins an investigation into remains, he unmasks the racially motivated killer known only as Pegleg. The sheriff’s findings divide the people of Overton County, forcing a surprising conclusion–or beginning of justice.

Set in the 1940s and using the relationships of two boys–one black and the other white–as a springboard for the beginning of desegregation in the South, The Runaway examines the joys, sorrows, conflicts, and racial disharmony of their historical biased environment.

P.I. Dick Hardesty listens with polite interest to his partner Jonathan’s stories of his days working for 90-year-old multimillionaire Clarence Bement, helping the old man tend his garden. But when Bement is found dead, an apparent suicide, Jonathan is adamant that the old man would never have killed himself, a theory also held by Bement’s grandson, Mel Fowler.

When Mel hires him to investigate, Dick learns Bement’s lawyer also died mysteriously, barely a week before Bement. Dick finds himself immersed in a world of greed and familial dysfunction, searching for a missing new will, and Jonathan becomes the target for someone who believes the old man entrusted Jonathan with a secret he is not aware he has.

When Dick Hardesty is hired to look into threats against former priest Dan Stabile, possibly from someone whose confession Dan heard while still in the priesthood, it’s just another case. Then, on a stormy Sunday, on a rain-slick road, Dan is killed, Dick’s partner Jonathan is severely injured, and suddenly, it’s personal. Was the accident really an accident…or murder? Dick learns Dan’s secret could involve a child murderer, and now it seems the man is stalking their son Joshua and tormenting Jonathan. The objectivity so vital to Dick’s role as a private investigator goes out the window as he pursues one lead after another, and it begins to look like Dan wasn’t the target after all.

Life suddenly grows a little more colder when Dan comes to the stark realization that his new supervisor at work just might be a real-life serial killer. The insight keeps Dan in a flurry to stay clear of the possible predator, but as fate would have it, it is his own folly that lures the monster into his life.

A work of of crime from our Fingerprints line.

A young policeman, anxious to make Detective, goes undercover on a drug bust. Will he live long enough to reach his promotion? Flash fiction from our Fingerprints mystery/thriller short story line.

Sometimes, wishing someone dead is not enough.
Sometimes, you need to make it happen.
Always, there’s someone there to make you pay.

From one of the best mystery short story writers of her generation comes this sparkling collection of ten chillers and thrillers, where justice takes many forms. Whether you’re a witch (“A Taste for Burning”), a soldier in the trenches (“Michelle”) or a demure churchgoer (“The Wickedest Town in the West”), you will always know that justice is served.

When Randolph Percy, a silver-tongued charmer with manners to burn, comes sniffing around Felicity Morris, a wealthy fading flower of Atlanta’s elite, Samantha Adams, reporter for the Journal-Constitution, rides to the rescue of her old family friend. On the other side of town, young debs are playing a dangerous game stripping, and more, for thrills and pocket change. There’s dirt here aplenty for Sam to unearth, including a 50-year-old scandal…and murder.

Montana Thomas falls asleep with the woman he loves in his arms, but wakes up to her bloody corpse. With the murder weapon in his hand and no memory of what happened, he needs his brother to help him deal with the confusion and grief.

But Dakota is three thousand miles away deep in government testing.

The stage has been set and all the players are in motion. All the unknown director has to do is sit back and wait for his true objective to be played out. In an expert game of cat and mouse, the Thomas brothers are subject to manipulation that has no equal. The only people they can trust is each other…if they can survive long enough to find the truth within the maze of misdirection and deceit.

A down-and-out man sleeping under a bridge stumbles upon the body of a murdered young woman stuffed in a trash bag and washed up at his campsite. The killers, seeking to retrieve a telltale item from the corpse, soon arrive at the bridge while following the river in search of the victim. The derelict soon finds himself hiding with the body and wrestling with the need for self-preservation, and the desire to bring the dead woman’s murderers to justice.

A work of short crime from our Fingerprints line.

Marin County is famous for its affluent pleasures and the beauty of its beaches, mountains and redwood forests. In Time and Trouble, a teen-aged runaway, a yellow hearse, an insurance scam, a heart-shaped talisman, a baby’s skeleton in a meadow, and something ugly and odd going on in a Sausalito houseboat all converge there to provide the first—and nearly last—case for Billie August, the new hire of seasoned P.I. Emma Howe.

Wilkins has always suffered from mild flight anxiety, but he’s always been able to cope. When a long-time acquaintance and pilot offers transport home from a business trip, Wilkins learns what terror at 20,000 feet is REALLY like as old deceptions and the very real threat of the elements combine. A work of short suspense from our Fingerprints line.

The Firebird Scouts of Wayne County, Detroit, Michigan. Somehow or another, they’ve managed to survive an attack from a werewolf in their last adventure, as well as each other’s competing personalities.

But this time, when they have to overcome a garden that literally takes on a life of its own, can they put their differences aside, again, to overcome it? Or will it eat them before they can eat it?

Another short story outing for The Firebird Scouts, first seen in Motor City Wolf.

Nachdem schließlich akzeptierte seine homoxualité Inspector Kimo Kanapa’aka bereitet sich auf Weihnachten als solche zu feiern, aber statt mit einem Freund, um die Feierlichkeiten zu teilen, findet er sich mit einer Leiche und einem Fall zu untersuchen. Wer ist der Mann trägt einen Hut Santa – und wer ihn getötet?

Selbst unter tropischer Sonne, Mord ist eine ernste Geschichte und Kimo muss alles, was er von seinem neuen Lebensstil gelernt, zu verwenden, um einen Mörder zu erfassen und zu erhalten Gerechtigkeit.

In an ongoing effort to help Harry find his way out of depression, Emaline enlists his help to clean out her grandfather’s attic. Among the surprises is an old shoebox holding letters to a great-aunt who was known for her distrust of men. What she discovers in the letters arouses a terrible suspicion, and Harry agrees to use his police connections to find answers that will prove them false. They hope.

Single mother Billie August is frustrated with her boss and sleuthing mentor, the gruff, perpetually dissatisfied Emma Howe. So far, their relationship has been a personal and professional disaster. To top it off, Billie seems like the only person in town who thinks mentally disabled Gavin Riddock, accused of killing his only friend, might not be guilty, but her inability to turn up any hard evidence could cost Gavin everything. Now, illness at home and dead ends at work have frayed Billie’s nerves. The last thing she needs is to come across Emma Howe in the warpath.

Meanwhile, Emma’s search for one girl’s real mother is being foiled at every turn by the lies and misdirection of the girl’s foster mother. When new clues suggest the case may have something to do with Gavin Riddock, seasoned Emma will have to learn to trust her young assistant, and together, mentor and protege must unravel the layers of posh Marin society to uncover the startling truth…

When Jack, a Philadelphia bounty hunter, goes to Texas to bring back a young bail jumper named Billy, he has no idea he’s being trailed by the chief enforcer for a major mobster. Is it because Jack roughed up the mobster’s brother, or is it because of what Billy did before he skipped town? In trying to stay alive and do his job, Jack also has no idea he’ll get tangled up in a legend of the Old West that turns everything he knows on its ear.

A new novella of humor and crime from the author of THE THANKSGIVING COOKOFF WAR.

Chicago real estate agent Laurie Atkins is gardening beneath the relentless August sun when her dog’s frantic barks divert her to a dead body sprawled on the front acreage of her Wisconsin summer home. She rushes inside to phone the police, but the body disappears. Laurie begins to doubt her own sanity. Then the unidentified body turns up on the driveway of Helga Beckermann, her devious neighbor.

When her emotionally withdrawn husband skips town on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Laurie uncovers truths she’d rather deny. Her family in peril, Laurie enlists the help of two women she thinks she can trust: former Chicago Tribune investigative reporter Mitzy Maven, and tough-talking CPD detective Maggie O’Connor.

“A brilliantly crafted story of what happens when life insurance companies play God, and how the dark desires of deceit and greed come home to roost.”

–R.P.Dahlke, author of A Dead Red Heart and A Dead Red Cadillac

“A dramatic, fictional portrayal of the issues health insurance claimants face when confronted by fraudulent claims handling practices.”

— Robert A. Shipley, AV Rated Trial Attorney

Well-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!

Have you ever thought about writing a mystery, and gave up the idea because you didn’t know where to begin? Now is your chance to write the mystery of your dreams. You Can Write a Mystery, written by Gillian Roberts, author of the Anthony Award-winning Amanda Pepper series, will help you start your mystery, and guide you through to the end.

With this book you’ll learn how to build your story from the ground up, based on what Roberts calls the “Seven Cs.” Examples and exercises will help you complete your story—filled with cliffhangers, intriguing characters and hooks. This book offers practical suggestions for handling problems likely to arise during the writing process. You will learn:

·The Seven Cs your book can’t do without—characters, conflict, causality, complications, change, crisis and closure

·The Fifteen Commandments for mystery

·How to design your sleuth

·How to hide clues and exploit red herrings

·Research techniques

·How to develop a style, find a tone and construct a killer plot

In addition to practical writing advice, Roberts offers expert guidance for editing, revising and submitting a top-notch manuscript, whether for traditional or independent publishing. With its easy-to-understand format, You Can Write a Mystery will help take you from writer…to accomplished mystery writer.