Untreed Reads

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.

Traveling across the Martian polar cap, the second TransPolar Expedition is tracing the shape of the hidden lands beneath the ice and snow. Sita, the expedition’s cartographer, has a talent for interpreting the shades and squiggles that the computer produces from satellite photos and sonic recordings. She takes ambiguous data and makes a clear and precise map of lands no one has ever seen.

But Sita knows that maps are black-and-white portraits of a world that exists in shades of gray and, like cartographers before her, she knows that dragons lurk beyond the edges of every map. At night, in the darkness of her dreams, she believes in the yeti, the messengers from the secret lands, the dark-eyed dream beasts that haunt the crevasses and move as softly as the blowing snow.

The world is not all that it seems on the surface. Beneath the polar ice lies danger and discovery.

A novelette.

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 Lady Meriden’s eldest stepson and husband die within days of each other, the estate passes to the second stepson. No one has seen him in years, yet he inherits everything, including his father’s gambling debts and guardianship of his seven siblings. Jane Ash rushes to her aunt’s aid. Months go by before the new baron comes, and Jane is left to cope with her ailing, self-dramatizing aunt and bewildered cousins, all of whom have problems. Lady Meriden alternately spoils and neglects them. Julian, the heir, has his own problems and wants nothing less than to play the heavy parent to his unknown siblings. When he does come, he and Jane form an unexpected alliance that might lead, by twists and turns, to romance.

A young woman attempts to take care of her father who struggles with inner demons from his time at war. Can a daughter’s love overcome the ferocity of a battle being waged in the mind? Flash fiction from the Nibs literary short story line.

ONE BETRAYAL SHOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH

Enchantingly lovely Laura Dalwood was little more than a girl when she was given in marriage to a man whose glittering wealth concealed a dark secret revealed to her only on her wedding night.

Now her husband’s death had freed her from that odious union—and Laura vowed never to make so grievous an error again.

But how could she reject the handsome and brilliant Mark Cheney, Earl of Dartmouth, when his proposal was one that no young woman of sense or sensibility could rightly decline?

And what could she do when, as his bride, he carried her over the threshold to allow her to discover just how much she could love a man—and then, to her distress, just how much she could fear him…

When supermodel Patsy Clark found herself in big trouble with an unscrupulous investment syndicate, she turned to her best friend’s kid brother for help. Like Patsy, dark-haired, dynamic Michael Melville had come a long way since junior high. A brilliant accountant and former Justice Department gangbuster, he was just the man to protect her from the mob…and just the lover to make all her previous romances seem as unreal as her own commercials. But when the excitement of trapping the country’s most-wanted embezzlers was over, would he still want Patsy…or would she just be good old “Red” again, the girl next door?

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?

Young Lady Jane Fitzmaurice had everything that Regency society approved of—flawless beauty, perfect breeding, and a respectable fortune.

But she also had a mind and heart of her own that set heads shaking and tongues wagging.

Whoever heard of a well-born Miss spending more time in the saddle than in the drawing room? How could she prefer the company of David Chance, her handsome horse-trainer, to that of Julian Wrexham, the most attractive nobleman in England?

Lady Jane had taken London society by storm—but now a whirlwind of scandal was rising as she rode roughshod over all conventions and prepared to take a leap that could destroy her good name, and leave her heart forever broken…

Zane Martin’s teenage daughter is pregnant. Meg Evan’s son is the baby’s father. Because Zane grew up not knowing who his father was, he’ll be damned if he’ll let his grandchild live with that shame. Meg was forced into an abusive marriage because of an unplanned pregnancy, so she knows that love is the only good reason to marry. Neither Meg nor Zane expects or welcomes the attraction that sparks between them. As they await the impending birth of their grandchild, old wounds open and long hidden family secrets come to light. The young couple build a newer, stronger relationship, while Meg and Zane reach for a love passionate enough to overcome the past–if they’re strong enough to trust it…and each other.

Felicia, a beautiful innocent faced with the passion of an irresistible rake. Adela, unable to forgive her husband for what he has done to her. Bronwen, forced to choose between a proper marriage and an impossible desire. Marjorie, an unpolished heiress who becomes the target of society’s most jaded gentleman. Rachel, a wife who finds that the marriage game is played with shocking rules in high society. Five enchanting heroines in five dazzling tales, strung like jewels on a single narrative thread. Five new triumphs by the on and only Edith Layton.

SPOILED AND UNGOVERNED, FITZ WAS NOT SUITABLE COMPANION FOR A LADY OF FASHION….

And certainly no proper chaperon. Fitz begged to disagree–after all, a dog was a true Incomparable as far as friendship, loyalty, and protection–and soon lovely Miss Sonia was plucked by her rusticated roots and packed off, dog and all, to London. Perhaps there she would find a husband to tame her free-spirited ways–and keep her out of trouble.

Sonia, however, always had a soft spot for the underdog, and Darius Conover was such a fellow. Scorned by society for a scandalous deed, Conover was not redeemed even by his heroics in battle. Until he met Sonia and Fitz, two passionate souls undaunted by even the most odious circumstances–and decidedly determined to undo the shackles binding his heart.

The long-awaited third anthology of Edith Layton’s Regency romance Christmas stories includes four enchanting holiday tales. Originally published in separate anthologies, and out-of-print for many years, these holiday novellas by legendary Regency romance author Edith Layton are in one volume for the first time ever! This collection includes the following stories:

The Christmas Thief

High Spirits

Best Wishes

The Two Dancing Daughters

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…

It’s 1985. Threatened by the spectre of mortal illness, beautiful Abigail Winslow suddenly forsakes her glittering world of high-priced antiques and New York, solely for a daring struggle with her past. Desperate, she plunges into a brief but passionate affair with a strikingly handsome young doctor, retraces the course of her troubled childhood, and searches for the one man she has never stopped loving.

But when Abigail returns to her life and to her career, she realizes that in one wild, frightened moment she had been offered everything she could ever desire…and emerges ready to live again, with a joy she had never dared imagine.

Viscount Aubrey “Stony” Wellstone is at the end of his rope—and the end of his family’s once-great fortune. Desperate, he tries his luck at the gaming tables, where an offer to exchange his debts for a gentlemanly favor leads to a profitable new profession…as an “honorable escort” accompanying the cream of the ton. The fiercely independent, flame-tressed Miss Ellianne Kane would normally have no use for an upper-class attendant—even one as striking as Stony—but she needs Aubrey’s help. Will Aubrey prove to her that there is far more to him than want of money?

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…

Two sisters, one Season. Chloe won’t be content with her first Season unless she catches the eye–and the heart–of the ton’s most wealthy, most handsome, most interesting bachelor. And she has no intention of sitting around waiting to be noticed. Phaedra just wants the Season to end so she can return to the country, unburdened with anything so useless as a husband. The only thing interesting about London is its cultural treasures, which she intends to sample liberally.

The men in the sisters’ court aren’t quite sure what to make of them. Lord Wilderlake is intrigued, Mr. Dervigne intends seduction, the Earl of Everingham is enchanted, Mr. Martin wants a big sister, and Reggie Farwell is merely amused. Faced with such an assortment of suitors, how can Chloe and Phaedra realize their dreams? Only time–and the course of true love–will tell.

Every family is dysfunctional in one way or another, but mostly the Blankenships get along in spite of themselves.

Cecile, the family matriarch, has invited (read commanded) everyone to a family reunion at the ancestral ranch near Yellowstone. Annie brings inconsolable sorrow, Hetty dreads her parents’ reaction to her latest lover, Evan has a secret, and Serhilda wants to be anywhere else. With four generations living in each others’ pockets, everyone expects bickering, spats, hurt feelings, and perhaps a few secrets finally revealed. When the week is over, even Cecile wonders if the reunion brought the family closer together, as she had hoped, or created rifts so great that they’ll never be mended.

First published in 1958 and then turned into a film of the same name in 1959 featuring Troy Donahue, Sandra Dee, Dorothy McGuire and Richard Egan, this classic romance is available for the first time in ebook format.

Ken and Sylvia met twice at the Summer Place.

The first summer they were in their teens. Their intimacy was without love. They’d met too early.

The second summer they shouldn’t have fallen in love…and did. They were in their thirties-married-each with children. Had they met too late?

Ken and Sylvia decided to break two marriages to make the one they wanted together.

They almost broke a third that hadn’t even started yet. Because Ken’s daughter and Sylvia’s son met at the Summer Place. They were in their teens. For them, it was neither too early nor too late.

This novel is about how marriages are made on earth-and unmade. It is about the price people pay for changing their minds about love.

After the cold-blooded murder of her odious husband, Marisol Pendenning, a lovely but pregnant young widow, and Lord Kimbrough, the handsome aristocrat who had been the last to see the victim alive, are drawn into the search for a killer.

With her sunset hair and flashing mocha eyes, Cristabel Stew is a rare jewel for any man. But for Old Captain Whiskey, the most notorious pirate sea dog of the Caribbean, his daughter is more precious than the richest swag of gold and silk. When he brings back a proper English gent from his latest plunder, his plan for her future seems secure. The prized captive is none other than Magnus Titus Snow, Viscount of Camcen Hall, a blue-blood with wealth enough for a freebooter’s ransom. In a hasty ceremony, Captain Whiskey weds the unwilling nobleman to his spirited brigand lass, making her Lady Cristabel Snow—a TRUE lady.

But Cristable, too, has a scheme. Raised among cutthroats, she has vowed never to surrender to any man. She will sail back with her new spouse as far as London. Then she will bid him and her pirate life farewell, and seek her fortune as a free woman. But, in a moment’s breath, the dream is dashed. For her reluctant husband reveals a secret of his own, a surprising and scandalous truth that will turn her father’s heart as black as his sins…and draw her into the arms of a dangerously seductive man she will not, dare not, love.

A bloodsucker discovers he’s not the only monster stalking the streets of Victorian London, when his nightly search for sustenance brings him face-to-face with the city’s most notorious butcher – Jack the Ripper. A short story from our Spectres horror line.

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.

Aurora Halle McPhee, a girl of humble (some might say unconventional) background, cannot believe her luck when she is betrothed to the dashing, well-bred Harland Podell. Aurora soon learns, however, that the match is too good to be true when the nuptials are interrupted–by the brother of the groom’s wife!

Kenyon Warriner, Earl of Windham, is determined to foil that bigamous bounder Podell, before he disgraces another innocent female as he did Kenyon’s own sister. The earl will save Miss McPhee’s honor.

Even if he must wed her himself…

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.

Denise is taking her son to a fete; her ex Chris is taking his daughter too. Thrown together when the kids decide to spend the day together, Denise and Chris confront their feelings for one another, and about last weekend. A short story.

It’s easy to be positive when the seas of life are calm and peaceful. But when we are thrown into the turmoil of a chaotic circumstance, such as a life-threatening disease, can unflappable positivity be maintained?

Join talent agent, musician, and author Karl B. Sanger as he details the long and arduous journey he walked with his wife Teresa through her diagnosis and battle with Hepatitis C. Through their faith in God and the support of family and friends, Sanger concludes that “Absolute Positivity” can only be found when we tap into the source of all good things: the Creator of the Universe.

A classic work from author Barbara Metzger, now available in ebook format for the first time!

Never did Alexander “Ace” Endicott, the Earl of Cards, imagine himself to be thrice-betrothed against his will by the doings of three desperate debutantes. So he escapes London to his property in the country, where he follows through with his deceased father’s last wish-to find his long-lost step-sister. His search takes a detour and leads him to Nell, who piques his interest. Now, Ace may have to reconsider his rejection of marriage and see if two mismatched lovers can make a royal pair.

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.

This book is not written as a professional journal – though counseling professionals will certainly appreciate the practical application of therapy techniques found in its pages. It is what it proclaims to be: A guidebook for parents and teachers who deal with children on an everyday basis who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. Dr. Marlow does not attempt to trace the history of the Attention Deficit Disorders, as that has been done in other, far more scholarly works. Rather, this book addresses symptoms and solutions, ideas and results, situations and practical applications.

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.

In this ground-breaking and highly controversial book, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson attacks the very foundations of modern psychotherapy from Freud to Jung, from Fritz Perls to Carl Rodgers. With passion and clarity, Against Therapy addresses the profession’s core weaknesses, contending that, since therapy’s aim is to change people, and this is achieved according to therapist’s own notions and prejudices, the psychological process is necessarily corrupt. With a foreword by the eminent British psychologist Dorothy Rowe, this cogent and convincing book has shattering implications.

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.

Kerri Ellen lives each day with the haunting memory of the day her sister Kimmi disappeared on her way to work. Every night, she lights a candle in the hopes that her lost sister will somehow, miraculously, find her way home.

When fellow college student Burke’s little sister goes missing, Kerri teams up with her sorority sisters to help comb the area to try to find her. As she makes her way through the woods and eventually back to Burke’s house, all she can hope for is an outcome that’s better than the one she’s anticipating for her own sibling. When the investigation takes an odd turn, Kerri soon realizes there are some mysteries in life where finding the solution doesn’t necessarily mean closure.

A short story.

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.

Lucinda’s life was tragically cut short in a most scandalous manner, and her only means of entering Heaven lies in saving Lord Stanford from Hell. Perhaps while guiding the notorious rake onto a virtuous path, she can show him how true love will save his immortal soul…

SHE WAS A MOST UNUSUAL MISS, TO BE SURE!

Lovely Lisanne Neville had always found solace in the verdant beauty of Sevrin Woods. But now the woods were about to be destroyed in order to pay off the gambling debts of the Duke of St. Sevrin. Clearly, drastic measures were called for. So Lisanne proposed marriage to the duke. The deal: her fortune for his woods.

The Duke of St. Sevrin put aside his bottle long enough to consider this mad bargain, recognizing he had nothing to offer this sprite of a girl save his crumbling home, hellish reputation, and mountain of bills. He accepted. It was not the beginning of a fairy-tale marriage–but never underestimate the power of love . . . and a little bit of magic!

The long-awaited second anthology of Edith Layton’s Regency romance Christmas stories includes four heart-warming tales. Originally published in separate anthologies, and out-of-print for many years, these holiday novellas by legendary Regency romance author Edith Layton are in one volume for the first time ever! This collection includes the following stories:

The Earl’s Nightingale

The Hounds of Heaven

The Rake’s Christmas

The Dark Man

Nathan Gray has trouble making friends, his alcoholic father ran out on him, his mother is preoccupied with work and finding a new husband and his dog Chewy has just died. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Nate comes to believe that his beloved Chewy has returned from the dead to once again be his best friend. His mother is alarmed, but the therapist predicts that Nate will grow out of his habit of “seeing things” once he comes to grips with his emotional traumas.

But then, on his way to school, Nate stumbles upon what he can only describe as a miracle – a man seemingly healed of a fatal head wound by a smudge on an old, dingy concrete wall. Nate might be on to something that can’t be attributed to his imagination, as many in his small industrial Pennsylvania town, quickly ascribe spiritual significance to the smudge, and healing powers too.

Some of the town’s leading citizens decide to capitalize on the sudden influx of tourists by turning the smudge into a shrine and charging admission. Not everybody is on board with the notion that the miraculous has somehow intruded into their mundane routine, and Nathan soon finds himself at the center of a raging controversy. AN IMPERFECT MIRACLE is a moving piece of literary fiction dealing with love, loss and one boy’s attempts to find substance and clarity in a chaotic world.

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.

The end of segregation made little difference in the daily lives of old Miss Minnie and her day-helper, Lula. But when a figment of Miss Minnie’s addled imagination threatens Lula’s long-held job security, Lula uses the old, entrenched rules of segregation to dispel that figment — with surprising results. A short story.

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.

Sixth-grader Adam Krasner wishes every family decision wasn’t based on his brother Jeremy and Jeremy’s problems. The Krasners have even moved to a new town because it has a great school system for kids with disabilities. If only Jeremy didn’t always act so goofy. And if only their mother didn’t insist that both brothers be placed on the same Little League team, especially since Jeremy couldn’t catch a fly ball if his life depended on it.

Making friends in a new school isn’t easy, which is why Adam’s excited when Eddie, his coach’s son, starts spending time with him. Eddie’s the best player on their team and in seventh grade, like Jeremy. Eddie invites Adam to join some of the team for pizza before Saturday’s game. Adam’s about to ask if Jeremy can come, too,, when Eddie tells him, “And don’t bring Jeremy.”

Adam becomes friendly with some of the members of the team. Eddie, he soon learns, often lies and makes fun of Jeremy every chance he can. Still, when Eddie comes to apologize, Adam agrees to be friends again. Issues continue to escalate between Jeremy and Eddie. And then Jeremy’s accused of doing something truly awful, forcing Adam to take a stand and support his brother.

Nora’s grandchild is due to be born any minute. The occasion is marred by her son’s mother-in-law, who never accepted Nora’s partner, Jacki, as his other parent. Jacki tells Nora to stop dwelling in the past and dismisses her fears for the future. Can Nora forgive and forget? Should she? What will a mother do to hold onto her family? A short story from our Nibs short story line.

Sometimes, it’s the uninvited guests that make a dinner party more memorable…

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.

Sometime in the near future, Jack Pence finds himself in New York City . . .

. . . ALONE.

A sole survivor, apparently, of an unstoppable pandemic. He begins a journey west, hoping to find someone—anyone—who has also survived.

The search proves fruitless, and Jack stops in the tiny hamlet of Luna, New Mexico, slipping into despondency, and then despair, on the brink of defeat.
But when he suddenly finds he is not alone after all, what happens next re-ignites his consciousness, provides him a home, and launches him on an unforgettable mission.

Jack Bronson desperately needs a job. In fact, there isn’t much he’d say no to if it meant a paycheck to keep a roof over his family’s head.

When an opportunity arises to become the maintenance worker at an apartment complex, Jack jumps at the chance. During his interview, however, he can’t help but wonder if there’s something wrong. His new boss offers him the job in under five minutes, there’s an enormous willow tree that seems to have taken over one building and there’s a maintenance shed filled with unusual liquids.

Will Jack survive as caretaker of Apartment Building E, or will something sinister take care of him?

Desperate to reinvent her life after her wedding is canceled, Calliope Marshall chooses an exotic vacation in Costa Rica. The guidebook, however, neglects to mention steamy nights and strip poker games with a man who looks like an archangel. But even an archangel can come, it seems, with a devious, meddling grandmother, and soon Calli finds her quest for independence diverted in an entirely unexpected way.

Matt Holloway is on vacation to keep an eye on his grandmother. He doesn’t expect to be rescuing a cute, curvy muse from territorial monkeys and carnivore-infested rivers. The strip poker games in the wee hours of the morning are a bonus, until he finds himself losing more than his clothes.

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.

John wants to turn his life around, and that starts with a marriage proposal to his girlfriend. All that’s standing between him and this act is a simple journey on the London Underground. Except that this journey will be anything but simple.

Strange old ladies, apathetic passengers, a nervous Asian man and a deepening sense of unease are all obstacles to overcome, but will John gain redemption and an easy passage? Or, will this train ride lead to somewhere darker, dimmer and altogether horrifying?

A short work of horror from our Spectres line.

Rane Ballantyne is instantly attracted as he watches his niece’s riding instructor, Brit Andover, flying over jump after jump as she pilots her big gelding around the Grand Prix level course.  When they meet, he is gratified to see she feels the same spark of attraction he does. But while Rane wants to see where it leads, Brit is wary of any possible romance. She’s busy, too busy, trying to keep her head above water in the uncertain and demanding business of training and showing horses as well as giving riding lessons.

Rane  becomes her newest student, and insists on private lessons.  Brit cannot afford to turn away a paying client but she does try to dissuade him by turning his lessons into torturous episodes of endurance. Over time, his determination slowly overcomes Brit’s resistance.  She admits she, too, wants what he wants for them: Even as Brit aches for what he describes, even as they do grow closer emotionally and physically, she is still afraid because she has never told how he reminds her of her first love, a man who is still very much part of her world.

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.

Back when he was just Lon Kardl, before he knew he was the crown prince of anywhere, he’d had a pretty good life, all things considered. No, he and his stepfather hadn’t gotten along very well, so he’d had to learn how to take punishment. Yes, he’d had his troubles in school, so he’d had to know how to fight.

But it was good he’d learned those things, wasn’t it? Because the Old Court was a bad place for a boy, just turned fifteen, who looked older than his age. He was going to have to fight–he was going to have to win that fight–if he wanted to get out of the trouble he was in now.

Paige Holbrook needs help to bring her son out of a coma. In desperation, she turns to Bidwell Bear, young Jamie’s TV idol.

From the first meeting between Paige and Hunter Blackwell, the man inside the Bidwell costume, each experiences an attraction neither can ignore. But Hunter is about to realize his life-long dream–to be a singing star.

Glitz and glamour aren’t Paige’s thing, not after what she’s been through with her star quarterback, playboy ex-husband.

Is Hunter’s love worth the glare of the spotlight?

When Dani Donovan got a new heart, she also got something else–psychic abilities. Knowing things she shouldn’t know has taken some getting used to, the reason she hasn’t told her parents. They’d definitely flip out or, worse, take her to another doctor. The head kind this time.

Wanting to know more about her gifts, Dani decides to answer a World Security League call for psychics to help in the capture of the world’s most wanted criminals. She heads to a Birmingham hotel so her new abilities can be tested. There she meets another psychic, Ren Mallett, who bursts into her mind while she’s trying to read his. Their connection is so incredible that the WSL agents testing them promise to recommend that they work together.

Although Ren and Dani part ways after the testing, distance doesn’t hinder their connection. And as she gets to know him better, their relationship evolves into a friendship, maybe more, at least on her end. Strange? Absolutely, but no stranger than finding a match on an online dating site. The difference is that she can’t be catfished if she’s reading his mind.

To make her parents happy, Dani finishes her current semester of college before heading to Rutledge. Ren, on the other hand, starts there immediately. When their mental conversations become less frequent and finally stop altogether, she chalks it up to whatever training and work he’s been assigned. They’ll talk face-to-face when she finally gets to The Rutledge Institute, herself. But when she gets there, Ren is nowhere to be found. She finds out that he’s working undercover and seems to have lost contact not just with her, but with everyone.

Lee and his Grampa Myles share a rare and deadly secret. Most of the time, they’re able to control it. But once, when Grampa was younger, it got away from him. Ever since that day, something has been eating at his insides. Now, Lee faces his own deadly moment. Will he be able to resist the temptation? A short story from our Spectres horror line.

And who has a more perfect life than Olivio and Edwin Butler? So gorgeous and popular, they don’t really have friends, just hangers-on. And though Rachel doesn’t remember ever having spoken a word to them, her resolve becomes clear. She must find a way into the Butlers’ home and into their family.

In this marvelously compassionate first novel, Penny Jackson deftly depicts a young girl’s search for family – and her discovery that family is a state of mind.

Bedtime Dance is an entertaining story about a little girl’s bedtime routine. Marley makes getting ready for bed fun by turning it into a playful dance. She is excited to skip and twirl her way through cleaning up her room and brushing her teeth as she prepares to go to sleep. Come join Marley as she dances her way to bed!

Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder create havoc in families and classrooms in our society today. In this book, Dr. Marlow addresses these problems in a case study format, outlining therapy techniques and problem solutions for children, teachers and parents. The case studies are taken from real-life situations, though names and other identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the confidentiality of the people involved.

This is a practical manual, and all techniques and procedures detailed have been used successfully many times by the author and his colleagues.

She’s brave, crazy, dangerous… and your best shot at crossing the galaxy alive.

For once, things are going well for space smuggler Shaen Morris and her sentient ship the Belle Starr. Which should have been her first clue that something was about to go very wrong. When an anomaly in the Passage causes all transportation in the galaxy to grind to a sudden halt, she is forced to help out an old adversary – and put an old friend in grave danger.

Shaen could uncover the secret to what created the Passage, and why it drives humans insane. But what will this ancient knowledge cost?

On a buying trip for her interior design firm, Kat Feldman is unprepared for Africa’s rough, exotic wilderness. This is nothing like the civilized streets of Europe and New York. There are monkeys committing mayhem in the trees outside her hotel room, gigantic insects in her bathroom and a man prowling the corridors who is inspiring her body to break all her dating rules.

Jackson Roarke is an avid outdoorsman. Baby-sitting a high maintenance city girl is not his idea of a perk. Except the city girl surprises and captivates him with her determination, adventurous spirit and courage. Poached ivory and Jackson’s past collide to threaten their future, but in this primitive land, Kat discovers new strengths and a love she has only dreamed of, and Jackson learns there are second chances.

Does your life look the same as it did the day you put your faith in Jesus Christ? Or have you discovered the power of the Spirit within you enabling you to live a holy, righteous life? For that matter, is it even possible to be holy?

Many Christians today are wading in the shallow end of the infinite relationship God desires to have with His children. They are strangled by addictions and idolatry, or distracted from the pursuit of spiritual maturity by a cheap imitation of moralism. Whatever the reason, their spiritual growth has been stunted; they’ve never gone beyond mere belief in Jesus Christ.

Beyond Belief: Jesus Saved You…Now What? explores what God has in store for you and what He wants from you. With a firm foundation on the centrality of Christ, this book will help you see exactly who you are and what you are called to, based on, and enabled by, His righteousness alone. Through intense study and humbling application of both the Old and New Testaments, Beyond Belief, will show you what a mature Christian life looks like and what it takes to get there.

This 2019 edition of Beyond the Blues contains the most current pregnancy and postpartum resources for prevention and treatment of mental health challenges for all parents. Updated information and research about medications, as well as complementary and alternative options are included. Direct and compassionate, it is required reading for those suffering before or after the baby is born and for all professionals working with them.

“An indispensable guide to understanding and treating prenatal and postpartum depression. This book is a gift not only to healthcare providers but also to family and friends of mothers suffering from these devastating perinatal mood disorders.”

—Cheryl Tatano Beck, DNSc, CNM, FAAN
Professor, University of Connecticut, School of Nursing
Coauthor of Postpartum Depression Screening Scale

“In Beyond the Blues, Bennett and Indman offer a compact yet surprisingly comprehensive manual on prenatal and postpartum depression. Readable and practical, they systematically address screening and assessment, finding a therapist, myths about nursing and bonding, and treatment. Interesting and helpful are suggestions for family and friends. For health professionals, there is detailed diagnostic and treatment information. Beyond the Blues is a quick read with an easy-to-handle format. Recommended for consumer health and health sciences collections.”

—Library Journal

“This book will be of great help for both women and their health care providers, providing information on all aspects of depression in pregnancy and in the post-postpartum, including safety/risk of medication therapy.”

—Adrienne Einarson RN
Assistant Director, The Motherisk Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada

“Take prenatal vitamins for the baby, but for the long-term health of the mother, this is a must read for both her and her doctor.”

—Timothy A. Leach, M.D., F.A.C.O.G.
OB/GYN, San Ramon Regional Medical Center, John Muir Medical Center

All Lindsay wants is a normal life. What she’s got is anything but.

Betrothed to the Devil by her greedy father, Lindsay was blissfully unaware there was anything unusual about her life until her twenty-first birthday, when the groom appeared before her and presented her with a black diamond wedding band.

Displaying uncharacteristic patience and soft heartedness toward his young wife, Big Red (as Lindsay calls him) endures all her attempts to annul their union and forge an independent life as far away from his world as she can possibly get. In the end, all he really wants is her happiness.

When the ghost of Lindsay’s father visits and offers her exactly what she wants, will she still be so eager to rid herself of her husband?

A paranormal romance and a Hell of a lot of fun from our Orbits sci-fi/fantasy short story line.

Based on actual events, this gripping tale unfolds as young Trace Savage follows a trail of blood and plunder across the rugged frontier of the late 1860’s in dogged pursuit of the brutal band of border bandits who murdered his parents. One by one, he overtakes and faces the killers, branding the corpses he leaves behind with the mark of the serpent.

Savage becomes partners with Stalkin’ Sam Irons, an aging mountain man, and together they travel the rugged backbone of the Rockies. When Sam is killed in a pitched battle with warring Blackfeet, Trace continues to Idaho Territory.

An exciting horse race, a life and death struggle with a marauding grizzly and a tender love affair move this fast-paced adventure toward an exciting, powerful climax, pitting Trace Savage against the leader of the murderous raiders.

This title was previously released in print as Mark of the Serpent.

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?

The whole world has been terrorized and we wallow in terrible fear of getting sick. We placed our faith in medicine and now we pray for redemption. That’s why our police kidnap the sick and send them to the furnaces.

After we conquered a return of the Black Death, our scientists celebrated the triumph of modern medicine and the awesome power of antibiotics. But our bodies became weaker and the bugs became stronger and soon they were immune to anything our doctors could throw at them. It wasn’t long until just the right conditions, high mercury levels in our food to be precise, came along and gave the super germs the breeding grounds for the elimination of the human race. That’s what’s happening to the United States; that’s what happening to my family.

First, Dad went missing, presumably dead overseas, then Mom caught the common cold and the Sanitary Police came and took her. Now I’m all alone. And I’m tired of wasting away, day-by-day, waiting for my turn to fall ill and be taken to the incinerators. I’ve decided I’m going to rescue her, even if it means the death of all of us. She deserves it. I deserve it. And the whole world deserves another chance to live.

A short story.

For countless millions, Humphrey Bogart’s screen performances and real-life persona merged to make him one of the world’s most fabled figures—a legend of mythic proportions. Or, as his Sam Spade would have put it—the stuff that dreams are made of.

But for his only son, Stephen, eight years old in 1957 when his father died of lung cancer, Humphrey Bogart’s giant shadow was a burden he carried until he finally came to understand the private man behind his father’s public face. And now, in this candid and insightful biography, Stephen Bogart explores and illuminates Humphrey Bogart’s life, work, and relationships as they never have been before.

Writing with the encouragement of his famous mother, Lauren Bacall, Stephen calls on his memories, and take full advantage of the extraordinary access he has had to friends and colleagues of his father. The result is an intimate and personal profile of an enigmatic man whose tough image contrasted with very human ambitions and vulnerabilities. It is also a vastly entertaining book, filled with fascinating stories involving Frank Sinatra, Katharine Hepburn, “Swifty” Lazar, John Huston, Stephen Bogart’s stepfather, Jason Robards, and many others.

Here is Humphrey Bogart, the pro’s pro on the set and the Hollywood renegade off it. The man’s man, the ladies’ man, the hard worker, and the man who liked to drink too much. The husband in three roller-coaster marriages and finally one perfect match, the proud father and absentee parent, the good friend and even better enemy. Here are eye-witness accounts of his most celebrated public misdeeds and moving testimonies of his most unexpected private moments. And finally, in perhaps the most compelling chapter of this shining saga, here is the close-up of Bogart’s last months, where his courage, dignity, and humor made his most stirring celluloid roles seem pale.

Combining the drama of Humphrey Bogart’s life with that of a son whose path of reconciliation first had to move through a very difficult time, this is biography at its best—at once a loving tribute and a fascinating revelation. This ebook edition includes photographs directly from Stephen Bogart’s personal collection.

The Irish Giant – that’s what Londoners called Charlie Bryne, an enormous country lad standing 8 feet tall in his bare feet. He made his fortune by exhibiting himself, but Bryne was far more than a human oddity. He had the magical power of healing, a deep connection to the natural magic of the earth, and the blood of Irish kings in his veins. In 1782, he came to London with a single goal — to bring the Irish home to the island they had left.

John Hunter was a man of science and insatiable curiosity — a surgeon, a natural philosopher, and a tireless collector of natural oddities. With analysis and dissection, Hunter strove to understand the natural world — and he wanted to add the bones of a giant to his collection.

This novella, winner of the 1990 World Fantasy Award, examines what happens when the quest for scientific knowledge meets ancient natural magic.

This compelling saga about a beautiful Celtic princess who gives her heart to a Saxon prince explodes with the passions of love and war. When the Saxon army, in its bloody charge against the Celts, captures the child-princess Niniane, they bring her to Cynric, King of the West Saxons. Enchanted by her innocence and beauty, he makes Niniane a favored prisoner. But she soon discovers that the King’s court abounds with tempestuous intrigues and tormented rivalries. And when the adulterous and envious Queen arranges for a duel between the King’s beloved illegitimate son and her own son, heir to the throne, intrigue turns to deadly peril. With this epic novel of the star-crossed passion that swept the Celts and Saxons to the brink of war—and two lovers to the edge of oblivion–Joan Wolf brilliantly brings alive a little-known but fascinating age.

Both Sides Now is a vivid and compelling account of how one man’s search for wholeness led him through multiple, complex, and life-threatening surgeries that transformed him not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. Born with the body of a female, Dhillon Khosla knew very early on that his true identity was male, yet he spent nearly two decades repressing that knowledge and trying to embrace his female form. Shortly after turning twenty-eight, he came across an article about men born with female bodies who had undergone surgeries to reclaim their male identity. When he read their stories, Khosla felt flashes of recognition stirring within and—for the first time—hope.

In this riveting memoir, Khosla discusses openly and honestly what it was like to live as a woman, and how that life shaped the man he is today. Through anecdotes, he shares unique and profound insights into the sexes. Ultimately, however, Both Sides Now is a story about what it means to truly love oneself, and the willingness to turn away from the dissenting voices that tell us who we ought to be…and toward that one, lone voice that has known all along.

He sailed to England for revenge…
She journeyed there for love.

Five-year-old Della Kensington first saw the proud, half-starved bond boy who dared call himself a dispossessed earl on the docks of Virginia Colony. The moment she laid eyes on him she loved him. And from that day, in spite of all evidence, she believed his bizarre story, that he was truly Jared St. Andrew Bellington, Earl of Aveston—nobly born, kidnapped, and sold into bondage.

Della had grown into a woman wanting him. Jared had grown into a man burning for revenge. When at last he could return to his beloved Hawkstone Hall, he entered a world of bejeweled ladies and elegantly attired gentlemen, a world he intended to conquer—no matter the cost to his life. Fashionable Georgian England dazzled sweet Della, but her eyes remained clear. She saw that if Jared gained everything he’d sought, she might lose him forever, and he might lose his chance at real happiness. She was ready to fight on this new terrain for his love—dancing a quadrille of intrigue and desire, risking all, and challenging his elegant world with her irrepressible heart.

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.

A hot appendix is about the only thing that would get Montana Thomas out of the isolated mountain valley he calls home, especially when his reappearance into the world could endanger the people he loves. All he wants to do is go home. But the weather doesn’t cooperate, and the treacherous mountain passes are closed for the winter.

Dr. Jericho Jax lost his wife to an auto crash a year ago. Worse, the medical team that was supposed to save her life failed. Now he has vowed vengeance on them all. One by one he checks names off his list, until he comes to Bisi Sinclair’s, the doctor who just saved Montana’s life. The woman he is falling in love with.

Montana senses something not quite right about Jericho. When he starts asking questions, arousing Jericho’s suspicions, he becomes the next target. In order to get to Bisi, Jericho has to go through Montana. And that may not be as easy as it looks, for Montana will do whatever it takes to protect what is his.

Head of Janas Corporation and local counselor on Pallas Four, Maegan Shale is a highly respected member of the community in the paradise destination of the Grogon Asteroid Belt. But Maegan leads a secret life. Operating in a relay network in this remote corner of the Crestar System, she intercepts Taragon vessels and rescues children destined for armies being built to destroy the life she knew as a child.

Alerik Mariltar had a choice—governor of an insignificant asteroid cluster, or the more prestigious position of junior counselor for the Coalition Council. Alerik wants a mate, and the Match Key has chosen for him—a highly unsuitable, rebellious female from his past who happens to live in the Grogon Asteroid Belt. And so, in defiance of the training of a lifetime and all that he has been groomed to be, Alerik chooses a woman over the best interests of his career.

Grogon is not the sleepy, uneventful corner of the Crestar System it should have been. Rumors of death matches and flesh trading surface, and Maegan’s covert activities seem to be linked. Forced to incarcerate her for treason, Alerik attempts to unwind the mystery of six Taragon children and Maegan’s elusive uncle. Something has attracted a great evil to his jurisdiction, and that evil is focused on the woman he loves and those close to her.

Convinced the Coalition’s Vision is flawed, Maegan isn’t about to cooperate with the man who is the quintessential servant of the Coalition. He might be her mate, but the cause for which she fights demands all her passion and her loyalty. Then what are these growing feelings she has for him, and why does she care so much how her illegal activities will affect his career?

As the threat to the galaxy grows, Alerik and Maegan struggle to reconcile their beliefs to defeat a common enemy.

After Bette Davis posthumously funds a museum-theater complex at her hometown college, the Producer-on-High fulfills her longtime dream of playing Scarlett O’Hara. But Bette has no idea how much she’ll shake up her career and her love life by appearing in Gone with the Wind.

And that’s only the beginning. Her cosmic do-over also derails eighty years of world history.

To curator Dana Foster’s horror, the casting reboot plays havoc with her exhibits and replica Hollywood Walk of Fame. It turns egotistical superstar Patrice Clark into a nobody just as she is about to become the museum’s first Hall of Fame inductee.

Desperate, the two form an uneasy alliance to unravel the mystery before the induction ceremony. As they spend a stressful but enlightening day trying to restore order, the Producer takes Bette on a bumpy multi-media ride of her own. She sees favorite film roles elude her and her onetime husband marry another, and mourns all she has sacrificed by starring in the Civil War epic.

When Patrice and Dana’s efforts stall, Bette gets permission to make a cameo appearance on earth and lend them a hand. Together they learn new lessons about film, fate and roads not taken.

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?

Duff Pringle has bought his first car. (Used.) He’s got six days to drive 3,000 miles cross-country to California and start a new hi-tech job that will make him wealthy. (Sort of.) Nothing can stop him. (Or can it?)

On his return from the Peninsular War, grievously wounded and troubled in spirit, Alexander Quainton decides that an insouciant manner is the best way to avoid the pity he abhors. Exercising his damaged body with daily walking excursions proves an excellent way of avoiding social engagements. Carolina Finmere, shy and no more than passable in looks, has failed in three seasons to attract a suitor.

For three months, they tramp Bath and its surrounding hills together, gaining in strength and–unwittingly–in intimacy. When September comes it is time to part, unless they admit their love for each other. Carolina knows she must initiate the declarations of devotion, for Alexander is convinced that a man so damaged is no fit mate for a gently bred woman. How can Carolina love someone so scarred and deformed as he?

Plucking up her courage, Carolina declares her love for Alexander. Will he admit his for her, or will his fear of seeing revulsion in her eyes put paid t

Many people own pets. Some people are owned by their pets. And a few, like elderly widower Rolf Stenstrom, take the concept of animal care to the extreme.

A short work of horror from our Spectres line.

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.

Nick Novaczek is a cautious soul, a 17-year old with a boring life, a predictable future, and a quiet thirst for danger. On the eve of his beloved grandmother’s funeral, danger finds him by the motel swimming pool. Her name is Celia and she’s everything he’s not. This foul-mouthed beauty is hitchhiking across the country to make amends with her estranged father and doesn’t carry an ounce of fear or hesitation in her tattered suitcase. She’s bad news all around, but for a rule-follower like Nick, she’s intoxicating.

Twenty-four hours after speaking to Celia for the very first time, following one extremely lucky night, Nick is hopelessly hooked and “borrows” his parents’ car to join her cross-country mission, even though her story is full of holes. It’s the mistake he’s been waiting his whole life to make. Together, they dodge a train, jump off a bridge, and scam everyone in their path. Nick is blossoming into a teenage fugitive, just like Celia, and he’s never been happier. She may not be who she says she is, but she’s got his vulnerable heart.

After weeks of detours, with hundreds of miles left to go, their wild adventure starts to unravel. The money dries up, Celia’s dark secrets begin to surface, and it’s clear they both want vastly different things out of this partnership. Celia is all about no strings attached and severing whatever they may have between them once they reach their destination, while Nick is head over heels in love and wanting a future with the girl in his passenger seat. They seem to reach a new low on a daily basis, but she won’t turn back, no matter how desperate things get. After all, this is her trip and Nick is just the driver. Celia’s got a charming smile to pay her way, a willing accomplice, a hidden agenda, and an endless supply of lies. Not to mention a gun.

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.

Gil Archer was a man of the world—the high-pressure, high-society world of international finance and diplomacy. Cecilia Vargas, his daughter’s riding instructor, was a woman outside that world, but he saw in her the warmth and love his grand estate lacked, and he took it for himself. She had married him for love—he taught her the meaning of ecstasy. But Gil still hadn’t learned that love was not something to be acquired and ignored—and the price of the lesson might be the loss of Cecilia.

All Elizabeth hoped to do was to rekindle the love in her marriage. Yet despite ignoring her social obligations and immersing herself in her husband’s important work, somehow this only made things worse.

Her last hope is her unborn child, a source of unrequited love to fill the void inside her. But that too is taken from her. How? Why?

Her doctor avoids her. Her husband berates her. And there are whispers–whispers telling of things that cannot be.

Yet the more Elizabeth ignores the rumors, the more they press on her to seek the truth, so she concocts a plan to find it. To find it and hopefully exonerate both Robert and herself. To discover the reason she’s lost all that’s dear to her. And she will, even if she must venture into Whitechapel to do it.

Much as mortal youths once ran off to join the circus, this particular Sidhe ran off to join Actors’ Equity. She’s lived among us for over a century, but stage actress Juliet McKenna isn’t immune to loneliness. So when a castmate invites her home for Thanksgiving, Juliet accepts.

Her friend’s brother sees through her magical disguise–and has the knowledge to trap her into slavery. Now she must choose: return to Faerie and the High Court’s wrath, or satisfy Richmond Becket’s desire for power at any cost–including her life.

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…

Chasing Pancho Villa is a story of mystery, romance and adventure.

In the fall of 1917, Harrison James arrives in New Mexico to investigate the mysterious death of his brother. There he meets the beautiful Maria Washington, notorious gunrunner and revolutionary. Their romance sizzles while his list of suspects grows.

James is soon engulfed in subterfuge and drawn into a seamy underworld of gunrunning and sedition. To unravel the mystery of his brother’s death, he must outshoot bandits and outwit the Army.

Traveling deep into Mexico to arm the popular revolutionary and folk hero Pancho Villa, When James and Washington are betrayed by enemy agents, they must fight their way back to the Rio Grande where,armed with new information on his brother’s death, James risks all to unmask his killer.

It’s Christmas Eve morning, 1957, and John wakes up to find his parents are missing. When he realizes they never came home from a holiday party they attended the night before, John calls his estranged uncle, a man he barely remembers and hasn’t seen in nearly 14 years. Together, they face a life-changing tragedy and John discovers a family secret that’s been tucked away like the Christmas presents hidden in his parent’s coat closet.

A short work of fiction from our Nibs literary line.

Gary and Don are looking forward to celebrating the holidays: party planning, tree trimming, and getting ready for a visit from their son Josh. For Gary, however, the memories of past Christmases are beginning to fade, falling casualty to a cruel twist of fate. It’s up to Don to fill in the gaps…and hopefully make this Christmas another one to remember.

All author proceeds this quarter will go to Golden Horizons, an adult day care program in Bay City, Michigan that serves both seniors with Alzheimers or dementia and their families.

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.

It’s Thanksgiving weekend and workaholic photojournalist Anna Maria “A.M.” LaRusa returns to Federal Hill, a small Italian-American enclave in Rhode Island, to spend a quiet holiday with her only remaining relative, her Aunt Minnie, a hip, 96-year-old who texts and has a blog. But when a blizzard Nor’easter threatens New England, there is a change in plans. As A.M. and her aunt prepare for the holiday and the storm, A.M. unexpectedly runs into a man she hasn’t seen in ten years—a man whom she still refers to as “the guy who broke my heart in college”—and her weekend and her life are suddenly upended. Stuck amid the snowy deep freeze that paralyzes the region, A.M. begins to wonder if her cold, wounded heart from an unrequited love will ever thaw.

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.”

A comet, they say, signals change. In a picturesque village in Cambridgeshire, India Pottersby did not think the Great Comet of 1811 would change anything in her quiet life as the vicar’s sister. And she was content for it to be so. A difficult life had brought her at last to security with her younger brother in his vicarage, and she had no desire for alteration.

Peter Trevayne had likewise come to harbour in the shire after fifteen profitable years in India. His purchase of Fencombe Hall created a stir in the neighbourhood. Speculation was rife, and the doyenne of local society made no secret of her mistrust of the stranger.

Comet watching introduced India to Trevayne, and her preparation of ‘comet wine’ intrigued him. But nothing could come of their friendship unless the community–and India–could accept change.

Comfort and Joy is a small book that can engender big and welcomed changes in our lives and our attitude. It’s a book to keep handy, to turn to again and again. Lafia offers forty-five vignettes-small stories, pictures of comfort as simple and grand as a plush pillow, a warm cup of tea. Simply reading them is comforting and more than likely to inspire the reader to follow the suggestions in “Cultivating Comfort,” which follows each passage. And because she knows that comfort taken and comfort shared make the world a very much better place, in a section called “Applied Comfort,” Lafia gives us inspiring ways to take comfort and pass it on.

The study of antiquities is no fit activity for a lady, according to Amaryllis Raven’s guardians, the aunt and uncle who took her in after her father’s death. Yet her Aunt Sessiletyn makes no effort to introduce her to the ton. Heir to a marquessate, Chaunce Boothsby would rather dig for buried Roman ruins than play a man-about-town. They might never have met, but for a duck-chasing dog.

Before long she begins to dream impossible dreams.

But Aunt Sessiletyn sees Chaunce as a perfect match for her beautiful daughter, and attempts to convince Amaryllis that his only interest in her is her father’s only legacy, the secret location of his antiquities site. Only a bold move will allow love to triumph, and Chaunce must make it soon.

The heyday of gold discoveries is over in Idaho Territory, but there are still fortunes to be found. Eliza Jane Dollarhide believes that one is buried somewhere near a tiny mining camp deep in the wilderness. Her guide is Micah King, young, widowed, highly recommended–and Black. Never having known a person of color, Eliza is at first apprehensive, but soon learns that Micah is both a gentleman and a superbly competent guide.

A good thing, too, for soon after they reach the isolated gold mining town of Yellowjacket, they realize they face deadly danger. Someone is after the papers Eliza came to retrieve, and will stop at nothing, not even wanton murder, to get them. Only one road leads out of Yellowjacket, so Micah guides Eliza along a dangerous trail through the wilderness, depending on dim memories of a long-ago journey through almost impenetrable mountains. As they travel, each learns to know the other, and soon love blooms between them.

Impossible love, for Eliza is white. So even if they survive their ordeal–and escape whoever is trying to kill them–sooner or later they will have to part.

Or will they? Surely there must be a way they can be together, be happy.

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.

Well-bred orphan Cristabel Swann tolerates her thankless teaching job — until her uncle dies unexpectedly. Arriving in London to claim her inheritance, Cristabel encounters something else entirely — a loutish naval captain who won all of the old man’s property in an evening’s gambling, leaving his niece nothing but debt! To his credit, Captain Chase recognizes her desperation and offers her a position as landlady of a “boarding house” in Kensington.

Cristabel is happy with her new situation and with the female tenants of the house. They are exceedingly well dressed for working-class girls and have many admirers. Cristabel soon has a beau of her own — the dashing Lord Winstoke, who seems just a tad familiar, both in appearance and in attitude. Of course, Cristabel maintains propriety in every situation. But she cannot understand why the men she meets are so forward. Could it be the company she keeps?

Cupboard Kisses won Romantic Times magazine’s Reviewer’s Choice Award and the Best Regency Comedy award.

Apart from running the family farm, Jake’s daily routine is simple: Late every afternoon he searches his son Joey’s room to make sure Joey didn’t bring something unwelcome or alien into their house. Joey doesn’t appreciate his father’s intrusions, but it’s Jake’s house, Jake’s rules, right? Besides, Joey has nothing to hide. Nothing at all. A short story.

The lives and schemes of frontier politicians, Northern Pacific Railroad executives, bonanza farmers, and homesteaders converge in the story of Frances Houghton Bingham, who marries the son of a Red River Valley bonanza farmer in order to remain near her new husband’s sister. Emotionally complex, willful and resourceful, Frances is seduced by the myths of opportunity driving the settlement of Dakota Territory, and dares to dream of a new world in which to realize her unconventional desires. Providing a counterpoint to the dramatic risks taken by Frances is the generous voice of Kirsten Knudson, the daughter of Norwegian homesteaders. As Kirsten grows from a voluble girl to a formidable woman, her observations (equal parts absurdity and insight) reveal the heart of the novel.

Aged Henry Lassiter knows well the temporal nature of life because his has ended.

In that moment between life and death, a time when the mind struggles to maintain contact with the physical world as forces from the spiritual realm tug, Henry sees clearly the reason for the overwhelming desire to reach back through the veil – to hold onto the world he’s known for seventy-six years-Josephine; his sweet Jojo.

In seemingly the blink of an eye, Henry and Jojo play together as children in the old neighborhood, move beyond the years of prepubescent games to teenage courtship and then to the stormy years of young marriage.

As the arc of life tilts to the downhill side, problems of a different sort test them. It’s in these times that the rhythm of life leads to the ultimate dance – of love.

A short story from our Candlelight line.

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.

FIRE IN THE OTHERWORLD

There are circles within circles, lands of magic and wonder that touch upon our own. But now war is on the horizon in the mystical realm of the Sidhe—a brutal clash of Faery against Faery that threatens to cross secret boundaries into the unsuspecting world of mortal men.

Once more young David Sullivan has been called upon to do the bidding of Lugh Samildinach, Lord of Tir-Nan-Og. Together with three friends—one white, one red, and one immortal—David embarks on an astonishing journey through a perilous kingdom of brittle brightness. But grim betrayal lies in the path of their quest for peace in the Otherworlds. And an inescapable doom in the terrifying judgment of Uktena, the great and hideous serpent…

Filled with the lyrical beauty of a now-vanished world, this magnificent novel unfolds during the last great ice age, amid the mist-shrouded mountains of the Pyrenees in prehistoric France. When tainted spring water fatally poisons the women of the tribe of the Horse, the clan’s young men set forth to kidnap new women from the matriarchal tribe of the Red Deer—a quest that must succeed or their people will die out. Golden-haired Mar, the leader of the young men, falls in love with the beautiful Alin, daughter of the Red Deer priestess. And though they are born to embrace different traditions, raised to worship different gods, Mar will fight to claim this strangely powerful woman as his own. Against a lush backdrop of ancient magic, mammoth hunts, and secret rites, this mesmerizing novel brings to life the ritual and adventure of a primeval world and tells a timeless tale of conflict between two societies…two beliefs…two sexes…and two people.

A Fae daycare teacher, and an exterminator under a family curse Need each other more than they can guess when magic goes wonky.

Glori loved working with children–and not just because children produced magic that fed her own Fae magic. But when her magic started going wonky and all her maintenance spells for the daycare started working backwards, not even her Fae administrator could fix what was wrong.

Lance Knight faced a lonely future, thanks to a family curse that turned him into a mouse at the dark of the moon. Lonely, except for the ghosts of all his angry, misogynistic male ancestors. And he would join them someday, if he didn’t find a woman to love him despite the curse.

He needed the kiss of a Faerie princess to break the spell. When he got called to Glori’s daycare center to deal with an unbelievable bug problem, and realized she was a Fae, he thought his problems were solved.
Glori hated telling Lance that the Fae didn’t have hereditary royalty anymore, but she promised she would try to find him a solution while they worked together to solve her problem. Things got sticky when she realized that she was going through the Fae equivalent of puberty, and Lance might just be the answer to her problem.

If only his nasty, ghostly relatives wouldn’t keep getting in the way.

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?

Fae use dark chocolate as a cure-all, so how did the Queen die of eating too much?

Epsi gave her former school chum a boatload (we’re talking Cleopatra’s barge here) of chocolate as a coronation present. Now she’s a prime suspect. Where’s a knight in shining armor when a Fae damsel in distress really needs one?

Enter Guber, Fae of royal blood, Human-phile and techno-geek. Mysteries and gizmos to test for substances harmful to Fae life and limb are right up his alley. Epsi is the prettiest damsel in distress that he’s ever seen–and she doesn’t think he’s weird.

Guber has been living in the Human realms for decades to avoid both the Fae who want to reinstate the hereditary royalty and those who want to eradicate anyone with the slightest trace of royal purple blood. Both of them are on Guber’s tail, and could focus on Epsi at any moment.

It’s a good thing they have an entire warehouse of possibly poisoned chocolate to use as a weapon.

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.

Amy has never really known family. Not like her husband, Brad, with his tribe of brothers, sisters, and cousins. Amy’s only ever had her Aunt Zara – ever since Amy was twelve and her parents died. It was Aunt Zara who took her in, raised her, and provided for all her needs and desires. Aunt Zara has been her world.

When Aunt Zara passes unexpectedly during Amy and Brad’s fifth wedding anniversary, Amy is at a loss. How will she be able to go on? Will she be able to go on without Aunt Zara’s nurturing and guidance, even if Aunt Zara has provided for them with an inheritance?

That night, Amy awakes to find a doorway glowing with a faint nimbus standing at the foot of her bed and the possibility that perhaps Aunt Zara hasn’t left her after all.

Ostracized for speaking her mind and standing up against a man she doesn’t wish to marry, a young girl is cast out of her village and forced to fend for herself in the mountains. When she ventures too closely to a lake and nearly drowns, she is rescued by a man from Athens who introduces himself as Herodotus. What transpires after the rescue is an education for the young girl, providing names for the things that surround her. When an encounter with a fish leads her to discover her own true name, she soon discovers the gift she can take back to her village to be accepted once again. A short story.

Halloween is rapidly approaching. In the chill of late October, three childhood friends gather in the forest to partake in a dangerous rite: David Sullivan and Alec McLean, who once walked the world of Faerie…and young Aikin Daniels, a “Mighty Hunter” desperate to join the select brotherhood of those who have trod the Straight Tracks. In the moonlight, in separate dreams, their quests are revealed to them—enticing each into the Otherworlds with promises of glorious adventure, lost love regained…and vengeance. But All Hallows is no time for a group of inquisitive college students to be traipsing back and forth across forbidden borders. For this Samhain night is owned by a dark and hideous power older than Faerie itself—an irresistible force that combs the Tracks in search of blood and souls. Only the dawn can save those whom he pursues—an eternity for David, Alec, Aikin and their friend Liz Hughes, who find themselves at the mercy of unrestrained chaos in a perilous, uncertain place. But suddenly there is no escape—not even in their own familiar mortal realm of cars and friends and rock ’n’ roll. For the World Walls are breaking down—and can no longer restrain the terrible mad ride of the Wild Hunt.

How would you respond when a friend drunk-dials you to make a prayer request? What do you say when you are furious with God, but aren’t willing to part with Him? How do you vent your frustrations to your Creator? When is it okay to be angry with God?

Drunk Dialing the Divine is an attempt to capture a glimmer of the darker side of the emotional struggle of the deeply faithful. Though each poem begins in a negative space, they resist both the angry and the naively optimistic ending–instead finding a ray of hope in the maxim “Things are because God is.”

Please Note: Due to the large file size of this ebook, we recommend downloading over a high-speed connection.

Due to Enemy Action tells for the first time a World War II story that spans generations and straddles two centuries, a story that begins with the dramatic Battle of the Atlantic in the 1940s and doesn’t conclude until an emotional Purple Heart ceremony in 2002. Based on previously classified government documents, military records, personal interviews, and letters between crew members and their families, this is the saga of the courageous survival of ordinary sailors when their ship was torpedoed and their shipmates were killed on April 23, 1945, and the memories that haunted them after the U.S. Navy buried the truth at war’s end. It is the story of a small subchaser, the Eagle 56, caught in the crosshairs of a German U-boat, the U-853, whose brazen commander doomed his own crew in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to record final kills before his country’s imminent defeat. And it is the account of how one man, Paul M. Lawton, embarked on an unrelenting quest for the truth and changed naval history.

Author Stephen Puleo draws from extensive personal interviews with all the major players, including the three living survivors (and a fourth who emerged as the book went to press); a senior U.S. naval archivist who worked with German historians after the war to catalog U-boat movements; and the son of the man who commanded America’s sub-tracking “Secret Room” during the war. Due to Enemy Action also describes the final chapter in the Battle of the Atlantic, tracing the epic struggle that began with shocking U-boat attacks against hundreds of defenseless merchant ships off American shores in 1942 and ended with the sinking of the Eagle 56, the last American warship sunk by a German U-boat.

Almost five decades of exhaustive research by Gladys Hansen, Official Archivist Emeritus of San Francisco, makes Earthquake, Fire & Epidemic the definitive discourse on one of the most devastating natural disasters in American history.

With coauthors Richard Hansen and Dr. William Blaisdell, M.D., Gladys Hansen offers a comprehensive account of the events leading up to, during, and following the April 1906 Earthquake and Fire that devastated San Francisco. The book includes narratives depicting the firefighters, military personnel, and first responders whose extraordinary efforts helped establish order out of chaos. Of particular significance, the authors discredit the deceitful efforts by San Francisco’s political and business establishment who, to protect the commercial viability of the city, minimized the death toll and diminished the true magnitude of destruction.

Earthquake, Fire & Epidemic offers new documentation and provides insight into the incomprehensible scale of disaster that killed thousands of people, utterly destroyed a quarter of San Francisco’s buildings, and rendered tens of thousands of survivors homeless in the Golden City by the Bay.

Eccentric Symmetries, 20 fantasy short stories spanning the forty-year career of author Nancy Springer, showcases tales ranging from the quirky to the transcendent. Including mythic tales of long ago and far away such as award-winner “The Boy Who Plaited Manes,” this collection also contains wry, sometimes humorous contemporary fantasy stories such as “Rumple What?” and “Snow Spawn,” plus mystic magical realism in which cabbage roses grow down from the ceiling (“Mariposa”) and hard-edged future fantasy stories such as “We Don’t Know Why,” a tale of failing “angels.” Like our lives, the stories in Eccentric Symmetries are mostly off-kilter, even laughable, but sometimes achieve a luminous moment of perfect balance, an epiphany. In this carefully selected collection, every fantasy reader should find something to love.

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.

Ein bolivianischer Arzt muss nachts auf der Straße als Schuhputzer arbeiten, um über die Runden zu kommen. Wird er überleben und sich und seiner Familie eine bessere Zukunft schaffen? Eine Kurzgeschichte aus unserer Literaturreihe Nibs.

This title is available in English as A DOCTOR IN LA PAZ.

Second generation Elvis impersonator, Elliot, is content with his small-town circuit and regular gigs at the Holiday Inn, until he attracts a fan who has never heard of the King. But stepping free of the shadow cast by both his father and Elvis may prove to be impossible. A short story.

Necessity dictates that Emilina Brook supplement her family’s income by accepting a position as music teacher in a young ladies’ academy. Fate decrees that she meet Dr. Secord Cardew while journeying by stagecoach to the school in a distant town. Dr. Cardew is in turn charming, unkind, amiable, callous, appealing, and occasionally rude. Emilina is drawn to him, but the real Dr. Cardew is a mystery. Is he a worthy admirer or does he have insuperable flaws?

In bleak, frigid Western Montana, a high school on a poverty-stricken Indian reservation is the scene of a crime: a valuable pocket watch has disappeared. The owner of the watch, a young white English teacher, plays detective attempting to reveal the culprit. His investigation yields unexpected results. A short story from our Nibs literary line.

On the space station known as Moon Talk, engineers and poets work together to prototype and manufacture communications satellites. The founder of the station decided to include poets because they specialize in communicating high-density information in very short bursts.

Angel, a 20-year-old robotics engineer, is visiting Moon Talk on a poetry/engineering internship when an accident on the station’s hull leaves her paralyzed. Unable to return to Earth where the relentless pull of gravity would kill her, Angel must make the station her home.

Though her body is trapped, the poets and engineers who run Moon Talk find a way for Angel’s consciousness to escape the confines of the station. The robotics staff jacks Angel first into a robotic unit on the station’s hull, and then into a body that can move about the station’s interior. She inhabits a robotic probe that prospects among the orbiting rocks of the asteroid belt. But that’s just the beginning of Angel’s journey.

A novelette.

Leeloo Brantley never dreamed she’d run into Nate Marshall, her long-time secret crush, after he graduated high school the year before.  Yet there he is, standing in Festivities, her mom’s party shop, a few days before Christmas with his brand new stepsister, four-year-old Anna.  Nate tells Leeloo he’s babysitting Anna while their parents honeymoon.  Leeloo tells Nate he’s not up for it, a fact proved when he calls her in desperation later that night begging for help.

Certain this is an early Christmas present straight from the elves, Leeloo eagerly agrees. And as the three of them begin to hang out under the decorated tree, Nate actually seems to see her with new eyes. Then a weather front brings scary thunderstorms no four-year-old can love. Though Nate assures Anna he’ll keep her and Leeloo safe forever, Leeloo has to wonder if he really means it or is simply trying to soothe a beloved little sister who’s afraid of thunder.

Dr. Dakota Thomas isn’t prepared for the gunshot victim who rolls through his emergency room doors. Michael Ricco looks like a young Marine in a world of trouble, his dog tags, however tell a different story.

How could the military have no record of him? Why was he shot in the back in the middle of the desert, and why were thirteen people murdered to keep his secret? More than that, how could he have a birth date of 1898?

In a world where genetic experimentation pushes the boundaries of what someone would do to live a little longer, the question may be, how many will die in order to keep one person alive?

The lovely Lady Leonora Talwin had heard all the stories about the rakish Marquess of Severne and vowed never to become one of his victims. But she knew far too little about her foolish heart to daunt this lord who feasted on such feminine frailties.

A war hero’s widow, Graceanne still has her adorable three-year-old twin boys to love–until she receives a letter from her late husband’s demanding cousin, Leland Warrington, the Duke of Ware. It seems that the duke–thirty-two years old, twice widowed, and with no forseeable plans to marry again–is in desperate need of an heir. And seeing that Graceanne has two boys, she could easily spare one. Well, couldn’t she?

Graceanne is too strong a woman not to stand up to Leland’s completely unreasonable expectations. When she does, she unleashes a hair-raising maternal fury that takes Leland by surprise. He also finds it all, quite frankly, magnificent. So much so that he’s now entertaining thoughts of winning Graceanne’s heart, as well as an heir–a romantic scheme that grows more mischievous, and more unpredictable, with each passing winter night.

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.

He was the rising star of psychoanalysis, an intimate associate of Anna Freud and Kurt Eissler, a member of the Freudian “inner circle” with unrestricted access to the Freud Archives. And then Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson threw it all away because he dared to break the psychoanalytic community’s deepest taboo: he told the truth in public. As he unmasks the pretensions and abuses of this elite profession, Masson invites us to eavesdrop on the shockingly unorthodox analysis he was subjected to in the course of his analytic training. But the more prestige Masson attained, the more he came to doubt not only the integrity of his colleagues, but the validity of their method. In the end, he blew the whistle–fully aware of the personal and professional consequences.

With wit, wonder, and unflinching candor, Masson brilliantly exposes the cult of psychoanalysis and recounts his own self-propelled fall from grace. A sensation when it first appeared, Final Analysis is even more provocative and engrossing today. Written with passion and humor, this is the book that revealed a revered profession for what it was–and launched Masson on his true career.

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.

Sometimes, crime occurs with the sound of a drip of poison, or the whispering whistle of a knife moving through the air. And, sometimes, it happens with a “flash and bang.”

The Short Mystery Fiction Society was formed in 1996 to promote the reading, writing and publication of short-form mystery and crime. This includes the yearly presentation of the Derringer Awards, which celebrate excellence in the writing of stories of up to 20,000 words in length.

With over 1,600 members worldwide, SMFS represents a unique pool of authors. Now, the Short Mystery Fiction Society is pleased to present all-new stories for its first-ever anthology of stories in the short form—Flash and Bang.

From Vikings to ancient Chinese judges, diners to pawn shops, and a variety of gumshoes and amateur sleuths, Flash and Bang not only represents a wide variety of tales, but also serves as a showcase for a sampling of the incredible talent in the SMFS ranks.

Within these pages are contributions from Herschel Cozine, Bobbi A. Chukran, Su Kopil, P.A. De Voe, Laurie Stevens, Tim Wohlforth, Suzanne Berube Rorhus, Sandra Murphy, Julie Tollefson, O’Neil De Noux, John M. Floyd, JoAnne Lucas, Andrew MacRae, Judy Penz Sheluk, Albert Tucher, Earl Staggs, Barb Goffman, BV Lawson and Walter Soethoudt.

A wayward hurricane comes to an abrupt halt over South Georgia, pumping out a flood with gruesome results.

At the same time, a young teen experiences such wanderlust that her own turbulent emotions reflect the storm and its terrible consequences.

A short story.

Orphaned in Florence, Lucy Raymond takes the only employment she can find, that of a castrato assistant to an art and antiquities dealer. But as she grows into womanhood, her masquerade chafes, for it allows none of the romance she craves.

In her loneliness she often visits the Piazza della Signoria, where she gazes at the magnificent sculptures and dreams impossible dreams. Until one day, when she is overcome by loneliness and the oppressive heat, she faints at the feet of an enormous sculpture, only to wake in the arms of its living embodiment.

Allowing herself to be seduced is the last thing Lucy should do. But Vido is warm and vital and the living image of David, so how can she resist?

Chinese by birth, Eurasian by blood, Mei-Ling Wang’s extraordinary life is a mirror of our time. Born in China in 1949, the year of the Red Army’s entry into Beijing, she is the daughter of an English mother and Chinese father who share the Communist vision of a more perfect future. Mei-ling grows to womanhood amid the violent passions and numbing brutality unleashed by the Cultural Revolution. In 1968, as a tidal wave of political turmoil engulfs the globe, Mei-Ling, penniless, is forced to flee her homeland. She embarks on an odyssey that carries her from China to Hong Kong to Europe to North America. Beautiful and intelligent, compelled by necessity and desire, Mei-Ling threads her way carefully among the men who love her and use her. She discovers the power of sex and the lure of wealth; she mastered the art of survival. When she returns to Hong Kong and China in 1997, the colony and the mainland are about to become one country again. The People’s Republic and the daughter who was forced to flee its shores so long before have been tempered by their struggles and stripped of their illusions. They are wealthy and strong. But they have been forced to relinquish the ideals that first brought them into being. Flowers for Mei-Ling is an epic story that propels the reader through fifty years of tumultuous events. With this panoramic first novel, Lorraine Lachs joins that company of ambitious novelists who explore both public affairs and private passions with understanding and conviction.

From the twisted mind of bestselling author Wade J. McMahan (“Bite This! A Richard Dick Mystery”) comes another hilarious short story. Larry the hairy-legged Fairy gets called up on the carpet by the Queen’s representative, Rupert the Low. A meeting of the two minds at a local Bug Bar, however, is about to change the situation. You’ll never look at stories about Fairies the same way again!

A LADY IN DISGUISE

Valentine Ardsley disguised herself as a teenaged boy to take a job as a groom on the magnificent Yorkshire estate of the arrogantly self-assured, imperiously handsome, Lord Diccon Leyburn. But her daring escape from the narrow confines of young ladyhood did not last long.

Valentine was unmasked by Lord Leyburn with shameful ease. Even worse, when Leyburn made her an offer of marriage, he made it insultingly clear that this was a matter of duty on his part, and certainly not desire.

Never would Valentine accept such an odious offer. Instead she would go to London to find a gentleman who would really love her—even if this meant pretending she could love any man but the infuriatingly irresistible Lord Leyburn in return…

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.

Megan Bradshaw lives up to her nickname, Miss Prudie. Until, that is, she spills ice water into the lap of the sexy soldier in seat 4B. Shamelessly she offers him a ride to wherever he’s going, never mind that her life is overly complicated already.

Captain Duncan Fraser wants to stay in the Army, but isn’t sure he’ll be able to balance the family he longs for and his obligation to his country. Still, Megan is a lovely, interesting woman and he can’t resist responding.

And that’s when their responsibilities get in the way of their budding romance. Her rebellious twin sisters, his looming deployment, her mother’s illness, his need to keep his destination secret, all threaten any chance of happy-ever-after.

When disaster strikes, will they realize that being together when they can is more important than being apart forever? Or is the cost of Freedom too high?

Looking for a healthy alternative to taking your loved one out to a restaurant this Valentine’s Day? Do you want to create a terrific dinner at home for a special anniversary, or just show that certain someone you care? Let author Lisa Wagner show you how to make a delicious, vegan meal that’s sure to fill the stomach and warm the heart of the person you love. This recipe book includes a main dish, side and dessert, using all natural ingredients to create a meal that’s not only good for romance, but for your body as well.

From Lisa with Love is the first in a new series of recipes designed for healthier eating and the vegan lifestyle.

A brand-new, never-released novel from the USA TODAY bestselling Regency author!

When a gentleman is found dead on a fishmonger’s doorstep in Regency London, a rugged Bow Street Runner has to pair with the man’s elegant noble nephew to solve the crime. They both find unexpected help—and infatuation—with the fishmonger’s very unusual young widow.

Individually, each has a reason for getting to the bottom of the mystery. And, as a trio, they find they are uniquely effective detectives with the ability to accomplish something few others can: solve a crime by scouring London, from its glorious heights of luxury to its rankest depths of depravity.

As the first wave of Baby Boomers begins to retire, their departure presents an awkward power vacuum in the American cultural, political, and business arenas. Though many members of Generation X expected to
inherit the reins of power and influence in the late 2000s, workplace trends at the time showed that the Boomers had taken a liking not to the Xers who were waiting in the wings, but the new Milennials in the workplace. Milennials, or Generation Y, are the cohort born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s, and their optimistic, group-centric workplace worldview presented a stark contrast to the isolated and cynical outlook traditionally seen in many Gen-Xers. Thus, as Xers found themselves overlooked in favor of their younger counterparts, many began to consider themselves the middle children in the workplace.

Matthew Henry analyzes this “middle child” position of Generation X using a Gen-X popular culture framework. Looking at the Boomers’ origins in post-World War II culture, and drawing parallels between Boomer and Millennial beliefs and attitudes, he makes several arguments for the May-December relationship between the two generations and suggests a possible solution for the Xers who often find themselves neglected in between.

Get inside the German market, Europe´s most dynamic and solid economy.

Germany has a long economic history and is a proud industrial country with a large service sector and high-tech industries. But also there is a big sector of small and middle sized businesses.

How does the German market look like and how can one get access to it? How to found a business in Germany and how to get in contact with Germans? What rules of interaction are important when doing business with German companies and how to get German customers without ever been to the country?

Get Into Business with Germany is written by an insider and offers an overview about several important questions that entrepreneurs face when they want get a foot on the German market.

What happens when a Jewish mother from Brooklyn moves in with her lesbian daughter and partner in small town, Delaware? Of course, Mother never acknowledges their relationship and the partner decides either she or the mother has got to go. What does a good daughter do? Maybe her and her mother’s shared love of film, and especially Bette Davis, will help them save the day. A short story.

There is a realm where the living are forbidden. It’s an infernal place of shadows and souls that only the damned may enter. And now a spirit beckons from this land of terrible fire, challenged a courageous young Cherokee sorcerer to walk a world of dark dreams and to confront a dread and powerful force of nature…in order to save the one he loves from a fate truly worse than death.

Last year, when they were still children, they went trick-or-treating. You followed them, in case there was trouble. Next year, when they’re teenagers, there could be problems – spiking the punch, necking in the corners, smoking illegal substances in the bathroom… You remember that sort of thing, don’t you? Of course you do. So, this year, on a holiday that gets wilder every year, let’s keep the fun under control. We’ll have a Halloween party. They’ll love it.

But what if guests show up who aren’t on the guest list?

The age-old question about alien existence and human contact is explored in a new way in this collection of six novellas, previously anthologized in Analog magazine. When disillusioned aerospace engineer Adrian Mast buys a book at a remainder sale, the last things he expects to find in its appendix are alien spacecraft designs. With the help of the bookstore owner, Adrian tracks down the author―only to find him in a mental institution anguishing over the intentions of the aliens who sent the designs to him. By bluffing a bureaucrat intent on thwarting their progress, the two friends continue their quest for the stars and go ahead with the spacecraft designs. Having successfully launched their ship 15 years later, the questions that remain are What were the intentions of the aliens? Is mankind ready to face what’s out there?

During the 1950s, young Jessica – Southern born but “being Yankee raised” — spends Christmas in the small town of Galilee, Georgia, in the company of her Great-Aunt Kate, two other aunts, and a cousin. During this relatively brief visit, Jessica is subjected to full “Southernization” by the entire family.

As one means of teaching Jessica “who she is,” they tell her the family story of the J.P. Stevens Percale sheet, a singular present that has circulated back and forth between Great-Aunt Kate and her late husband’s Aunt Frances in Dallas for over forty years. The story of how that tradition began and why it continued for so long provides Jessica with her greatest lesson in the crash-course of Southern culture and manners. Conversely, she is also initiated into the brutal burden of Southern history.

Of all the family, only Aunt Cana, an African-American woman who has “been with” the family for as long as anyone can remember (and whose church-going, God-fearing Mama named her in honor of Christ’s miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee), knows the real secret behind the story of the cyclic gift. Of all the women who try to influence Jessica, Cana is the one who finally leads the child into an acceptance and then a somewhat reluctant celebration of Family — “no matter how crazy it is!”

A light-hearted story on the surface, Gifts also portrays the full range of that era’s Southern history and culture: rigid racial and social stratification, a veritable worship of the past, an eternal honoring of Ancestors, an iron-clad adherence to good manners, and most of all, the restructuring of memory – the art of making a good story even better.

A terrified voice cried out in the night.
“Who are you? What do you want?

The sound of snapping twigs closed in on the five teenagers enjoying an evening around a glowing campfire at Gitchie Manitou State Park. The night of music and laughter had taken a dark turn. Evil loomed just beyond the tree line, and before the night was over, one of the Midwest’s most horrific mass murders had left its bloodstains spewed across the campsite. One managed to survive and would come to be known as the “Gitchie Girl.” Harrowing memories of the terrifying crime sent her spiraling out of control, and she grasped at every avenue to rebuild her life. Can one man, a rescue dog, and a glimmer of faith salvage a broken soul? This true story will touch your heart and leave you cheering that good can prevail over the depravity of mankind.

Through extensive research, interviews, and personal insight, the authors bring a riveting look at the heinous crime that shook the Midwest in the early 1970s. Written from rare, inside interviews with the lone survivor, who broke nearly four decades of silence, this shocking yet moving story will not soon be forgotten.

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.

It should have been a marriage made in heaven. Cheviot was aristocratic and gorgeous—a man tempered by his father’s downfall and his own experiences at war. Sarah was artistic and free-thinking, shaped by the best education her nouveau riche grandfather could afford. But there was one problem. The marriage was arranged. The Duke of Cheviot needed money. Sarah’s grandfather wanted a title. And so, what could have been a perfect love affair was begun in a most imperfect way.

“…so he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” Luke 10:29

In a society that is so thoroughly self-centered, that question becomes more pertinent than ever before. In this book of collected essays, articles, poetry, and devotionals, author Dana Yost explores not only the idea of regarding even “the least of these” as a “neighbor” by also emulating the life of Christ in acting as the “Good Shepherd” for those around us that are in need.

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

What does 12-year-old Sarah McDermott do when her mean uncle Frank threatens to commit her beloved grandpa to the County Nursing Home? She decides to “kidnap” Grandpa, with the help of her friend Joey, and take him to Chicago to find a doctor who will declare him competent. Granted, Grandpa has been doing some strange things since his stroke, but Sarah is convinced he is getting better.

The plan is set into motion, and what follows is a wildly hazardous and hilarious 180-mile odyssey from the family farm to Chicago over back roads in an ancient Model-A truck with Joey at the wheel. Joey’s observation that Sarah is “always making things sound so simple, and they hardly never end up that way” turns out to be true.

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.

For Sophie Hanes, life is predictable and relatively uneventful, until . . .

. . . she finds an old diary in her grandmother’s attic, written in the unfamiliar Irish language, Gaelic. In her quest to know more, she sets out to find an interpreter and runs into the sexy New Yorker, Kevin Gates, who is more than happy to help interpret the language.

Kevin finds himself moving too close, too fast, falling in love with a woman who may be too preoccupied to share his feelings. There is another man bidding for Sophie’s attention: a History Professor in Ireland, well versed in the diary’s language.

As events unfold, Sophie finds out too late she’s been targeted in a sinister scheme.

The diary pulls Sophie into the life of Ms. Anya O’Connell, the young woman who writes of her fate and discloses the dark behavior of those who surround her. Sophie’s only hope may be a spirit-guide, the one they call Three. If she is willing to believe, he is willing to assist her in a journey she won’t soon forget.

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.

It doesn’t matter if a cat is an Alley Cat or a Turkish Van or anything in between, all cats have traits in common. They’re in turn, annoying and endearing, maddening and loving, where they shouldn’t be and purring on your lap. A cat will put a smile on your face when it’s most needed, cuddle up when you’re sad, and just when you think you can’t take one more thing, they’ll make you laugh out loud. Who could ask for a better companion?

Bestselling author and editor Sandra Murphy (Peace, Love, and Crime: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of the 60s, From Hay to Eternity) has compiled a collection of quotes  celebrating all things cat; our furry friends who bring so much joy to our lives. Some quotes will be familiar, many will be new, but all remind us how wonderful it is to have cats in our lives.

Three years ago Jennie’s husband rejected her because she was unable to have a child. She filed for divorce in Nevada and waited out the residency requirement at Lake Tahoe. That’s where Rand met her, where he made love to her. Where she left him when her husband changed his mind.

He never forgot her, never stopped missing her and what might have been.

Now she’s a widow, still grieving for her husband a year after his death, still regretting that brief affair. When he appears at her door, she knows her life will never be the same. Even though she’s tried to forget him, done her best to forget that she’d been unfaithful to her husband, she can’t deny the past. Rand still hopes Jennie will someday be his, but after he meets her two-year-old daughter, his hope turns to steely determination. She will marry him, whether she loves him or not, because Miranda is his…must be his.

He is not unreasonable. He gives her six months to accept his ultimatum. He’ll wait six months while they date, get to know each other again. Six months until they marry…or else.

With the threat of a paternity test hanging over her, Jennie does the only thing she can. She dates Rand and allows him to become acquainted with Miranda. As time and his loving attention gradually wear down her resistance, she wonders if she will ever be able to overcome her guilt and shame over their affair and accept the love Rand is offering.

Ex-Dallas detective Sara Barrett doesn’t exactly believe in ghosts, but she doesn’t not believe in them either — until she has a disturbingly sensual encounter with the long-dead owner of her newly acquired ranch, cowboy Quinn Farrell. 

Quinn is a soul unwilling to rest. Now, nearly a century after he was betrayed by those closest to him, he is determined to keep everyone off his land.

Quinn can only materialize in two places: the cave where he was murdered and the bedroom in the old house where he was born. The same bedroom where Sara learns that it’s possible not only to make love with a ghost, but also to fall in love with one.

But little do Sara and Quinn suspect that a crooked land developer will use any means, even murder, to get possession of the ranch they both love.

Sean’s whirlwind courtship so dazzled blues singer Rivie that she married him two weeks after they met. They had three months of bliss, before her ugly memories caught up with her. Finally her unspeakable secret has driven them apart.

After six months of separation, he still wants her back, so he offers her a bargain. If, after six months of trying to make their marriage succeed, she still wants to leave, he promises he will let her go. She hesitantly agrees, knowing that she can never tell him the truth about her past, because it will make him hate her.

Sean is determined to convince Rivie that she can trust him to love her, no matter what. She is just as determined to keep her secret. Only one of them will succeed, but their love for each other could mean they will both win in the end.

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. . . .

Sarah Stevens experiences a bride’s worst nightmare: being dumped at the altar. When she goes on the Caribbean cruise meant to be her honeymoon in order to lick her wounds, she discovers her ex-fiancé has sent his brother Will Marshall, the former best man, on the cruise as well. Everyone on board thinks they’re newlyweds, and Sarah is too embarrassed to set them straight. There is nothing like a romantic cruise to bring two people together, particularly when they are pretending to be honeymooners. Sarah discovers she is in love, real love. She believes Will cares for her too. But will his loyalty to Brad stand in the way of their happiness? Can she convince Will that he is her best man?

Livia Hightower is more than a little intrigued when the morning mail brings a most unexpected delivery.

Dearest Livia,

The call of the nightingale is but a sorrowful, plaintive psalm
Next to the sterling hue of my lady’s eyes, gazing mine.

It is signed simply Your Humble Admirer.

Again and again similar notes arrive in the post. Could it be a beguiling coincidence that they coincide with the arrival in the neighborhood of handsome Mr. Framingham? Surely Livia’s childhood friend, James, would never indulge in such romantic behavior, especially when he openly distrusts whoever is sending the tender missives.

With each new note, Livia becomes more convinced that her future lies with the sender. If only she could learn who he is…

Erin has problems. Her parents are divorced. Her stepdad is a jerk. Her real dad, while willing to help her run away from home, insists that she hole up in a high school for psychics so she can complete her senior year. Why does he think this is a good idea? Well, that would be problem number four–ghosts. As in, she sees them, the reason Dad thinks specialized schooling is a good idea.

Although Erin has doubts, she quickly learns that high schools are pretty much the same everywhere. In fact, the only difference in this school and her last is the number of students who attend–way less–and her afternoon classes, which are all held in the Mind Studies Annex.

Since Mom is certainly looking for her, Erin keeps her circumstances a secret. Nervous, shy, and doubting her abilities, she’s still able to connect with a couple of other students. But it’s only when Erin meets Trace, a stone mason helping renovate the school, that she begins to relax. Her beloved dad is a mason, too. Trace is wonderfully blue collar. Even better, he’s not a mentalist like most of the guys on campus are. In fact, she feels very grounded whenever she’s with him.

But even down-to-earth Trace has his secrets. And the nature of them could be another problem Erin has to worry and wonder about.

When beautiful, dark-haired Vanessa MacIan met Edward Romney, Earl of Linton, she told herself she should hate this strong and handsome English lord. For Vanessa was daughter to a proud Scottish chieftain who was the sworn enemy of England, and a leader in a rising against British rule. But it was not hate but hunger that this man of so much power and passion woke within the Highland beauty. And as the flames of desire they felt for each other flared higher and higher, devouring all restraint and every barrier between them, even the violence of war could not defeat a blazing love that conquered all….

In high school, Sam Conner is a star quarterback and an artist. He dates a pretty cheerleader and seems to have it all. Behind the scenes of his school life, Sam lives in an unconventional family with two gay fathers, and lately he’s been having some thoughts that disturb him. When Sam presents his problem to his fathers, can their advice set Sam on the right path?A short story from our Nibs literary line.

Jessica O’Neill was the toast of London society—a stunning actress who had appeared from nowhere to take the stage by storm. But not even her most ardent admirers suspected how brilliant an actress she was.

Nothing that Jessica said or did betrayed her true identity as a high-born young lady risking her good name in a desperate gamble to save her family from total ruin. And when the dashing, handsome, immensely wealthy Earl of Linton made Jessica an offer that was simply impossible to reject, there was no way she could turn back on her dangerous path.

Jessica O’Neill had to play the part of a wealth-hunting wanton to the hilt—but one thing was not in her script. Falling in love…

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.

Their mother dead early, their father uninterested, the Wallace twins had grown up in the care of an ever-changing succession of housekeepers, with no one close but one another. Fortunately, they had always been content with that company and had almost never been apart.

Now, Adam has met someone and, without preamble, married her. Robert is bereft, and the stage is set for a Christmas nobody is likely to forget.

A short story from our Nibs literary line.

The new Duke of Lyndhurst, Lieutenant Colonel Miles Barclay, arrives home from the Peninsular War severely wounded, with no memory of how he was injured. He finds Seabring understaffed and the rector’s daughter in charge of his baby brother, Lord Peter, a child he wants nothing to do with.

Claire Trent has loved Miles since she tagged after him and her big brother when they were children. Widowed shortly after a youthful marriage, she has taken on the monumental task of holding Seabring together despite next to impossible circumstances. But now she must accept the greatest challenge of them all. She must save Miles’ life with her reputation intact, all the while hiding the fact that her feelings for him go far beyond friendship.

One, two, and then three inexplicable accidents put Miles, Peter and Claire in danger. Is someone trying to kill them all? Or just the duke?

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.

Ever wonder how contemporary singing divas protect their voice boxes? Well, wonder no more! In the satirical short story, How to Become a Bodyguard for Celine Dion’s Larynx by Kathleen Gerard, an over-achieving nine-year-old unknowingly embarks on an unlikely career path en route to working for Celine Dion, the popular singing sensation. You’ll laugh and you’ll cry as the narrator of the story, a gifted child with a MENSA I.Q., navigates through a journey of a lifetime. This short story is a clever, comedic read for adults and teenagers, who just might learn a thing or two about how the heartbreak of youth can become a gateway into living an unimaginable future!

[hyssop (his′ ep) n. 1. A fragrant, blue-flowered plant (Hyssopus officianalus) of the mint family, used in folk medicine as a tonic, stimulant, etc. 2. A plant used in purifactory sprinkling rites by the ancient Hebrews]

***

Red Greet, the narrator of Hyssop, is in jail again, as he has been often in his eighty-seven years. As he gives his jailer a dance lesson, Red begins to share with him his life story. Struggling to learn the simple steps, the jailer listens to Red’s outrageous, incredible, yet utterly convincing accounts of the miracles he has witnessed and sometimes participated in directly.

Red’s stories center around several constants: his impoverished life as a guilelessly honest thief and grifter in Las Almas, New Mexico; his love for Recita Holguin; and, the miracle story dearest to him, his seventy-two-year friendship with Bishop Francisco Velasco.

Frank and Red met in 1924 as Red’s mother, a healer, worked her folk magic to help Frank’s family survive violence and devastating turmoil. The boys immediately formed a deep and abiding bond. Frank, who becomes a Catholic priest and eventually a bishop, remains Red’s lifelong confessor because he is the keeper of Red’s secrets, and Red the keeper of his.

The men are not only friends, but unlikely accomplices: they argue over Frank’s car, a Monte Carlo with cathedral windows airbrushed on the hood; they promenade, naked, through the middle of the Hatch Chile Festival; they work to restore a statue of the beloved Virgen de Guadalupe, which “miraculously” begins to perspire blood—blood that bears a suspicious likeness to red paint. Through it all, Red confesses his many sins to Frank, always returning to the mysteries of a sin he feels he cannot be absolved of: his courtship of Recita during his wife Cecila’s long illness.

In telling how he has loved and been loved, in confessing how he has sinned and inspired others to sin, Red Greet seeks hyssop, the substance that might wash his soul clean. Hyssop is a stunning novel full of magic; it is an inquiry into the nature of religious faith and belief and into the power of moral dilemmas embedded in loving friendships and in spiritually rich but materially impoverished lives. Reading Hyssop, you will believe again in miracles of healing and in the haunting power of memories of the past.

***

“Hyssop is a wonderful gift of faith to a cynical age. Only a book this smart, tough-minded, funny, beautiful and, yes, humble could burrow so deeply into both the doubting mind and the yearning heart.”
—Richard Russo, author of Straight Man

“A radiant, mysterious novel, brilliantly lit by hard-won faith. Hyssop reminds us that we are all part of the last tribe of the unchosen: and that despite that we can be saved by the language of love.”
—Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever: Stories

Victim of brutal rape, Flower Jones longs for refuge in England, where she believes she will be safe. But she reckons without William King, an escaped slave, who wants her for his woman. Although he could live free in Cherry Vale, where no one will ever whip him again, William follows her as she travels to a seaport, risking capture as an escaped slave. The raw gold they carry excites the greed of outlaws, who force them to fight for their lives. Face to face with death, will Flower realize how precious life —and William—are to her?

From the number of figures on our paychecks to the digits staring back at us from the bathroom scale, we often gauge our success by the numerical standards of this world – but there are some things that cannot be measured. Immeasurable is the personal story of a young woman who has found freedom from “measuring up” by seeking the One who numbers and names the stars, the One who gives graciously from the overflowing abundance of His love.

PRAISE FOR IMMEASURABLE:
“As I dealt with years of eating disorders myself, I too was broken, depressed and hopeless. Diana is a beautiful example of sharing Christ and speaking truth and hope to women everywhere.”
Andrea Logan White
Actress (Mom’s Night Out)
Co-Owner, Pure Flix Entertainment

Welcome to Whiterock, Oregon, where Sally Carruthers nurses her dying father, and dreams of the day she can go back to her real life. Where Gus Loring seeks forgetfulness, but to find it, he’d have to do the impossible and forgive himself.

Whiterock is a town where people are from, because there’s nothing to hold them there. Every year more of the stores on Main Street close, and every year more of its young people leave to find their fortunes somewhere else. Where what you see today may be different tomorrow.

Maybe that’s why the town persists. Because there is more to Whiterock than its 639 residents, the elk statue by the park, and the Bite-A-Wee Café. More to it than a place where Gus and Sally find temporary passion together. Whiterock is more than just a town. A lot more…

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.

Ellie Boone bakes novelty cakes for a living. Kit Macchiano is the handsome photographer who lives down the hall. They occasionally have lunch together, but never without her best friend and other neighbor, Hanna. Both women are fascinated by Kit, whose bachelor lifestyle contrasts sharply with their where-are-all-the-good-men desperation.

Ellie never tells Kit that her parents hunt mythical monsters for a living and host their own cable television series. But they do, and they’re in a jam, with the threat of cancellation hanging over their heads. For that reason, Ellie’s mom begs her to accompany them on a hunt for the Cherufe, a legendary Chilean cave monster. Ellie, who hasn’t traveled with them getting lost in a cave at age six, reluctantly agrees, but only if Hanna can tag along.

Ellie tries to convince herself that she can overcome the lingering trauma of her childhood misadventure. For one thing, her resulting nightmares rarely recur these days, thanks to a male presence—a personal dream catcher–her subconscious inserted into a paraticularly bad dream years ago. For another, she’ll have sweet, funny Hanna around for moral support. But a last-minute emergency sidetracks her friend. And though Kit volunteers to step in for Hanna, Ellie isn’t thrilled and only agrees out of desperation.

To make matters even more awkward, her parent can’t be talked out of their assumption that the two of them are a couple. It’s only when Kit and a frightened Ellie are deep inside the cave looking for the Cherufe that déjà vu slams her. She’s suddenly sure they know each other way better than she originally thought. In fact, it almost feels as if Kit has helped her through this ordeal before.

But how? Her dream catcher is just a figment…isn’t he?

Even in the minor leagues, baseball is a cutthroat business. There are only so many places on team rosters for successful players, coaches and managers. The competition is fierce, because everybody’s looking to move up, to make it as a pro in the major leagues where fame and fortune await. On the diamond or off, winning is everything, and some people will go to extreme lengths to gain an edge…

A short story.

When Lizzie and Robert married, she thought he’d had enough of adventure to last a lifetime. After all, his voyage above the Arctic Circle had been a near-fatal disaster, and he never talked about it at all. He’d never even written about it, except in a long letter to his sister. But someone, somehow, had found out. And now, given another chance, he couldn’t resist that call.

When he came back, of course, she would share in his fame, glory, and wealth. But what would happen to her if he didn’t come back?

Iris is an imaginative little girl with the ability to make just about anything seem to come to life when she plays with it. After Iris’ death at a young age, her mother feels that there isn’t much left to celebrate when it comes to the holiday season. Little does she know that Iris has one last gift to give her mother this year, and it’s going to make it one Christmas to truly remember. An uplifting holiday short story.

The magic of the holiday season comes alive with six winning Regency romance stories by a master of the genre. Originally published in separate anthologies, and out-of-print for many years, these Christmas-themed novellas by legendary Regency romance author Edith Layton are in one volume for the first time ever! This collection includes the following stories:

The Duke’s Progress

It’s a Wonderful Christmas

The Gingerbread Man

The Last Gift

The Amiable Miser

Dogstar

Ivy Warren, owner of pagan supply shop Something’s Brewing, is a white witch with a secret power—the ability to read a soul by gazing into someone’s eyes.  Sometimes her power is wonderful; sometimes it’s not.  When Ember, a witch with nominal powers, tries to buy a love potion, Ivy won’t sell it to her and not because she has seen Ember’s soul. No man should be tricked into loving a woman. A glimpse of Ember and an unknown male on the sidewalk later that day pokes Ivy’s conscience. Should she warn the handsome stranger that Ember is after him?
Amos “Hutch” Hutchinson is the new pharmacist in town. He and Ivy meet when she picks up a prescription for her aunt. They wind up flirting with each other and making a coffee date, but she never shows up. He decides she didn’t like him as much as he liked her.

What Hutch doesn’t know is that Ivy missed their date because she was drugged. Even worse, her love potions were stolen. Now she has no ethical choice but to knock on his door, apologize for being a no show, and ask if Ember has offered him a drink. But will a down-to-earth chemist ever believe her crazy story? And what if it’s already too late to save him?

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

Bing Crosby’s rendition of the song “White Christmas” by Irving Berlin has long been a holiday classic. The snow that begins to fall this Christmas Eve, however, is NOT the sort most people would have been dreaming of.

A short work of holiday horror from our Spectres line.

Hedy is recovering from her devastating breakup with Robert. She likes her new job and the people she works with. Then, Robert calls to say he’s getting married and wants to see her before he ties the knot. Flummoxed by the announcement, she refuses and tells Robert she’s getting married, too. Robert’s not one to be put off, and insists that he come to see her. Hedy’s boss, Allen, offers to pretend to be her fiancée to get Robert to go away. The situation gets even more complicated after Allen kisses her and Hedy accepts a date with Robert. Finally realizing what’s best for her, Hedy decides to firmly take her future in her hands. A short story.

Years ago, Captain Jack Endicott’s half-sister vanished after a carriage accident. He now sets out to honor his father’s dying wish and find her. Jack plans to open a lavish gaming parlor and hire only beautiful ladies to deal cards, possibly finding his sister. All he needs is a little luck. Instead he finds prim schoolteacher Allie Silver, who needs a guardian for one of her most precocious pupils. With such an unlikely duo, all bets are off in a wild game of romance.

Jack of Hearts is a novel of literary fiction told from the point of view of a small, aristocratic dog named Shimoni. This imaginative first novel explores themes of fidelity and honor and offers a fresh perspective of Italian culture and amore.

Shimoni’s passion for Italian cuisine and Elvis are rivaled only by his devotion to his masters, a Roman Count and Countess. However, his discovery that Il Conte is having an affair imperils his comfortable life and plunges Shimoni into a quest to rekindle his masters’ love and preserve his home.

The path to reconciliation leads Shimoni from the bustling streets of Rome to his owners’ rustic villa in the Italian countryside, where he outwits man and beast to save his family, all while making time to fall in love and sample the local Chianti. Shimoni’s (mis)adventures yield poignant observations about the nature of love and longing, and the soul’s ability to find satisfaction.

An intoxicating blend of adventure, romance, and joi de vivre, Jack of Hearts will appeal to literary devotees, Italophiles and dog-lovers. Author, Robin F. Gainey dishes up a sensuous story with plenty of heart, and empathy for the human, as well as the canine condition.

“A wonderful, funny and touching novel.  Shimoni is not simply a dog, he is our guide; he is our friend.   Stay by his side, stay with his heart, and he will take you places you haven’t been, and show you things you haven’t seen: after reading Jack Of Hearts you will understand the true depths of love and devotion.
–Garth Stein, The Art Of Racing In The Rain

“This novel has freshness, originality and a huge heart of gold. Shimoni is one of the most unforgettable narrators I’ve ever read, and does he have a story to tell! I loved everything about this book.”
–Susan Wiggs, NY Times Best-Selling Romance Novelist, Just Breathe

“This is a most heartfelt and extraordinary work for a first novel.  Ms. Gainey moves easily out of the realities of our everyday lives into an unexpected turn of canine spirit.  It is an intriguing and wonderful read.”
–Lynn Andrews, NY Times Best-Selling Author of Medicine Woman

Changing racial perceptions in the tumultuous 1960s brings conflict to a rural Southern family. A short story.

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.

The journey from self-loathing to self-acceptance takes Midwesterner Tom Larson through the Korean War, pre-Castro Havana and, finally, Hollywood, where he is befriended by the elusive and charismatic Junior Willis and must decide whether he’s prepared for genuine commitment.

Petty thieves Kean and Ozzy are recruited by an eccentric collector to smuggle outlawed treeware. When the pickup goes wrong, they are hunted through the streets of Morocco. Running for their lives, they discover what lengths each will go to to save the other. A short story.

A shocking betrayal by the man she thought she loved is forcing Shawna Carlton to make some critical life choices. All she craves is peace and quiet this holiday season. The isolated cabin in the Mt. Hood National Forest seems perfect for reflection. But that’s before she discovers she has a woman-hating neighbor, and the old fishing cabin is home to more than just layers of dust.

Dr. Gregory Harris has his own heart-rending reasons for seeking solitude during the holiday season. What he doesn’t need is a noisy, helpless, forest-challenged city girl moving in next door. Before he know it, he’s chopping her wood, building her fires and letting her use his modern plumbing.

Fresh from the pain of lost love, can two people who sought solitude in the vastness of a forest, begin to heal together?

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….

Nellie Sanders persuades her uncle, a renowned botanist, to allow her to join an expedition to the Sawtooth Valley in Idaho Territory in 1872. Using an assumed name, infamous shootist Malachi Breedlove contracts to lead the botanical expedition into the wilderness.

A crazy old woman steals Nellie, believing her a dead daughter returned to life. As leader of the expedition, Malachi is forced to send others to seek the woman he now realizes he loves. Nellie finally convinces the old woman to take her back, claiming she will die without Malachi.

No sooner are Nellie and Malachi reunited than disaster strikes the expedition. Now the lovers must face the dangers of the wilderness must, conquer old weaknesses and discover new strengths. As the summer ends, Nellie faces a choice between academic acclaim and love, while Malachi wonders whether he can hang up his guns and survive. Can they find a compromise that lets them both realize their dreams?

Jackie is on her way to work one Saturday morning to fulfill yet another of her boss’s outrageous demands, but the love magic she doesn’t know is woven into the gloves made by her best friend sends her instead on an unexpected detour to true love.

Too bad there aren’t any knights-in-shining armor around when a girl needs one. But maybe one wearing chain mail will do just fine. Lance Masters, European Martial Arts Master extraordinaire, appears out of the misty Seattle rain when she runs out of gas. The zap of chemistry between them makes her wonder if she has met the man of her dreams, but her hopes are just as quickly dashed upon learning that her gallant knight is only in town to attend a huge local Live Action Role Play (LARP) event taking place that weekend.

Lance Masters has a chain of European Martial Arts studios back East and is thinking of expanding to the West Coast. When he meets Jackie, wet, bedraggled and pushing her dead-as-a-doornail car in the rain, he knows he must see her again. He invites her to cheer him on in tomorrow’s multi-state European Martial Arts tournament. But he suspects that won’t be nearly enough.

Natalie Dane is struggling. Against the advice of friends and family, she embraced selling real estate, a career that’s gone nowhere fast. In fact, the owners of her agency have issued an ultimatum: sell the McAdoo House or clear out your office. The problem? The structure in question is over one-hundred-years old, seriously run down, and, according to potential buyers, has an odd feel to it. Enter Simon Grayson, a man with questionable experience in haunted houses and talents no sensible person should trust. Worse, he’s clearly oblivious to Nat’s figure flaws, an attitude that flatters as much as alarms her. Focused on saving her career and struggling with low self-esteem, she has used her busy days as an excuse to avoid men. Simon, with his easy smile and blatant compliments, could easily break down her emotional barriers. She knows she’d be smart to avoid him. But times are hard, and Natalie is desperate–so desperate that she hires the guy in spite of his charm and good look.

Can Simon work his magic not only on the house, but on the woman trying to sell it? And what will happen when the job is done and it’s time for him to ride his Harley into the sunset?

Elizabeth Conway’s greatest ambition is to discover a comet. Unfortunately, she is the eldest of eight daughters of an earl, so her relatives expect her to take her rightful place in Society. The heavenly bodies she views through her telescope hold far more fascination for Elizabeth than any mere male, although her perpetual beau, dashing Lord Bevis, would change that if he could.

When Tom Conroy, a distant cousin and the new Earl of Clanross, appears after a year’s delay, Elizabeth offers him a cool welcome. He is a dull stick and ill-mannered to boot. Yet he is the only man who has shown respect for her astronomical work, and his concern for her younger sisters’ welfare reveals a different side to him. Then his heir, Elizabeth’s cousin Willoughby, appears with the obvious intent of making a match between his lovely but silly sister and Clanross–and as much mischief as he can. Lord Bevis presses his suit with Lady Elizabeth, until she agrees, at long last, to marry him. She resists making an announcement, though, until he tells his somewhat traditional father that he will not only be marrying an heiress but her telescope.

Elizabeth discovers a comet. Clanross proclaims his pride in her accomplishment, but Lord Bevis’s reaction is far more traditional. Willoughby introduces a beautiful woman into the mix and the twins further complicate it. Distraught, confused, perhaps even heartbroken, Elizabeth faces the question of what to do with the rest of her life. And what to do about Clanross, whom she just might love.

Miss Victoria Dawkins was in a most perilous position. Cast out of respectable society by a scurrilous slur on her good name, alone and penniless in the London lower depths, this proud but all too vulnerable young lady could not afford to turn down the Earl of Clune’s offer. The elegant, handsome, and clearly conscienceless nobleman wished to engage Victoria as a companion to an elderly woman on his great country estate.

Victoria had no illusions about the earl’s intentions toward her. But she was not prepared for a different kind of danger in a manor where the vengeful ghost of a scandalous past sought her as its victim.

Somehow Victoria had to stop the earl from suspecting he held the key to her heart. And she had to stop herself from yielding to a mysterious menace that she could not believe in or deny…

The slender young highwayman who held up Lord Raven’s coach was shocked to discover he had made a terrible mistake. He turned and fled, but not before Lord Raven had put a bullet in his shoulder. It was then Raven’s turn to be shocked. For the wounded highwayman turned out to be a beautiful young woman, the kind of woman the rakish Raven had been seeking all his life–Lady Tara. It was some time before Lady Tara could tell Raven the truth about this frightening masquerade. But when she did, she plunged them both into a dangerous mission that was to change their lives….

Raised in hiding, Athrar Warhawk emerges to claim his place and destiny as Warhawk’s Heir. Guided by Mrillis and Meghianna, supported by his foster-brother, Lycen, Meghianna’s adopted son, he tries to hold the alliance together as rebels and traitors fight for dominance. Young love turns to betrayal and loss, made worse by the political games of court and a growing schism between Noveni and Rey’kil.

When Athrar finds his soul-mate, traitors and politics try to tear them apart, and magic tries to force her to betray him with Lycen. A new prophecy emerges, speaking of the Lady Warhawk, promising sorrow and hope for the future–even as the Nameless One emerges from hiding and begins his final campaign of destruction. Mrillis and Meghianna risk all to protect the defenseless thousands who have fled to Moerta, and in so doing lock the defenders in with their enemy, for all time. Only the Lady Warhawk will hold the key to the future, and to freedom.

Where was Uncle Albert? The day of Lady Whilton’s nuptials was fast approaching, and the spiteful old lout had disappeared. Daphne Whilton, the bride’s daughter, knew what happened. She had found him dead in his chambers and vowed to keep it a secret, fearing the miser’s legacy would destroy her mother’s glorious wedding.

Lord Graydon Howell, the groom’s son-and Daphne’s former betrothed!-had lent his hand to the matter, moving Albert to the wine cellar. However, Albert’s adventure was only beginning, thanks to a pair of thieves, a house full of guests, and the reluctant conspiracy joining Daphne and Gray, who were hardly in the perfect circumstance for reawakening romance…

The World Walls separating the “real world” from the alternate world of Faerie are becoming so thin that Faerie can now be seen in satellite photographs. As craven mortal land developers threaten to exploit the magic lands, David Sullivan finds that it is up to him and his friends to prevent the High King Lugh from implementing his “final solution” to a most vexing problem—humankind.

Lark Dailey faces a weekend at the mountain lodge of her mother’s mentor, poet Dai Llewellyn, without enthusiasm, but Lark’s detective-lover Jay finds the proximity of a notorious pot-farm interesting. The setting, a remote Sierra lake, is idyllic, perfect for canoeing and wind-surfing, not to mention fireworks. Neither Lark nor Jay expects the Fourth of July to end in murder.

Surrounded by old friends, ex-lovers, devoted servants–and someone who does not love him–the poet collapses. He has been poisoned by tincture of larkspur in his Campari. The irony is not lost on Lark, whose bookstore is called Larkspur Books, nor on Jay, who is tapped to investigate.

Jay’s investigation is complicated by the murder of two key witnesses and by bizarre embellishments in all three killings. The embellishments suggest that something less straightforward than greed is driving the killer, something like madness. The tangle of suspicion widens to include not only the poet’s weekend guests but even Lark’s charming, book-loving clerk.

Lark worries that her mother, who comes to town after the San Francisco funeral, may be in danger too, because someone does not like poets, and Mary Dailey, a noted poet, is Llewellyn’s literary executor. Her co-executor may have his own reasons for wanting to control the relics of Dai Llewellyn’s past. As Jay awaits a search warrant, a cocktail party of survivors gathers to honor Lark’s mother, and Lark determines to crash it in time to prevent another poisoning. Unfortunately, she’s not sure who the murderer is.

Spanning decades and the globe, the remarkable odysseys of Aaron, Michael, and Rebecca were as compelling as the journey of their renowned mother, Leah. From the courageous struggle of the Hungarian revolution, to the dramatic strife of the civil rights movement in Mississippi…from Israel’s heroic fight for freedom, to the eve of the Six-Day War…Leah’s children confronted their own convictions and desires in an ever-changing world fraught with danger, idealism, and betrayal. Their uncompromising search for love and fulfillment carried them into dangerous emotional territory—where only the strength, courage, and imagination inherited from their mother could lead them to their own triumphant destinies.

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award of 1979, this classic novel of love and war is now available in ebook format for the first time!

Violence shattered her golden world, and Leah’s journey began…

It swept her from the burning villages of old Russia to the tenements of New York, from the glittering showrooms of Paris to the settlements of war-torn Israel. It brought her marriage to a man who yearned for her sweet, denied love – and passion for a man who yearned only for danger. It gave her a son born of shame, and a daughter born to destiny. It tested her love in the shadow of the Depression and the hell of the Nazi fury…

And then Leah’s journey brought her home.

When we first meet Aili MacIntyre, she’s doing what she’s been doing all her life: running in fear. She flees through a foreign jungle with two young girls and tries to save them from the forced prostitution ring that has been holding them in a virtual hell-on-earth. But tragedy meets them under the trees, and only one child escapes.

Three years later, Alexandra Adelaide has acquired a new identity in a radically different scene: the metropolitan jungle of Greater Los Angeles. She, though saved by Grace, has invented what she believes is the appropriate way to suffer for her own sins. Alex is raising the child who was orphaned by her insecurities. And she never, for a second, lets herself forget the pain caused by her mistakes.
Then the real tragedy strikes . . .

. . . she falls in love.

Matthew Gold is everything she needs and a lot more than she could’ve imagined. Bright, attractive, generous, and with his own vested interest in Grace, Matt works hard to earn Alex’s trust and a place in her life. He even loves and seeks to protect her daughter, who is the key to breaking open the biggest human trafficking case in recent history.

But Alex has lived in fear since she took her first breath. So how does she let Love start a new day? How does she choose courage even as very real dangers draw closer to her barred doors?

Fiery aristocrat, Eden Rose, uprooted from her native Scotland, has tended a foundering marriage and failing ranch at the corner of Crazy Woman Creek and the Powder River for a decade. Best friend, backwoods spitfire Maddie True, has her own woes a few miles away: widowed with a passel of young children, and caretaker to her addled father. Abandoned by her husband during the height of Wyoming Territory’s worst drought in history, Eden depends on her inept brother, Aiden, to see her through the coming winter. But when he disappears into the wild Bighorn mountains, she shuns Maddie’s fearful cautions, teaming with enigmatic Lakota holy man, Intah, to find her brother before the wicked snow holds them all hostage.

“Light of the Northern Dancers is a powerful novel of a woman’s journey, thought-provoking and unsettling in its authenticity and unflinching honesty.” — Susan Wiggs, NYT Bestselling Romance Author

“Half of what happens to us may have reason, the rest is chaos. Robin F. Gainey’s second novel, Light of the Northern Dancers, has this brand of existentialism. It’ real and it doesn’t let go!” — Tom Skerritt, Award Winning Actor, Writer, Director

For almost seven decades, ten ladies have met for lunch on May 8, to celebrate their friendship and shared history. Over the last few years the annual lunch has been fractured and interrupted, and Lily is convinced that modern technology is to blame. But “Lily the Luddite” as her friends call her, comes to recognize that we have to embrace the time were living in, before we can dial up the past. A short story.

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.

Peg O’Crerieh is a wife, mother, creative writing instructor, and occasional resident of the Everview Residential Treatment Center, which she is once again preparing to leave. Awaiting Peg at home are her devoted family; the normal pressures of daily life; and, most important, the students in her Nontraditional English class, where the assignment is always to write about Peg.

As Peg struggles to find her place in the outside world, she finds herself drawn into her students’ stories. Usurping their material, revising their facts, Peg slowly inches toward the truth until she is finally able to leave the worst behind. By turns brilliantly comic and achingly sad, Little Peg is a portrait of a single woman, in extremis and in exultation, and of a life transformed by the retrospective powers of a gifted writer.

Lovely Amanda Amberly was a young lady of unsullied virtue–against all odds. Her bewitching mother, the Countess of Clovelly, was notorious for her amorous escapades, and every hot-blooded gentleman in society expected Amanda to follow in the Countess’ straying footsteps.

So far Amanda had succeeded in steering clear of the clutches of those eager young blades. She even had begun to hope that the eminently respectable Sir Giles Boothe might consider her a possible match. But when, by her mother’s cunning design, Amanda found herself in the arms of the incredibly handsome and charming Viscount North, the most irresistible if infamous rake in the realm, she discovered she could defend her virtue only if she refused to listen to her heart.

Luke and Katie Savage, newly married and at the end of a danger-filled and arduous journey, finally reach Boise City, where her family awaits them. They both are tired and ready to rest. Katie is excited because Christmas is next week and they’ll spend it with her family. Luke isn’t sure he’s ready for a family celebration, especially when everyone–perhaps even Katie–is a stranger to him. Holidays should be happy events, but when you’re odd man out, it’s hard to get into the spirit of the season. But Katie loves him, so Luke will do his best.

WAS SOCIETY’S REIGNING BEAUTY IN LOVE WITH ADVENTURE—OR WITH ENGLAND’S MOST NOTORIOUS ADVENTURER?

Lord Richard Wells, Duke of Crewe, had shocked the Regency world by sailing off to darkest Africa. Now, five years later, his lovely daughter Julianne returned to London with a story of her father’s tragic death and her own miraculous rescue by the notorious English adventurer, John Champernoun.

Little did aristocratic society suspect what had really happened in Africa, nor did Julianne want that truth revealed. For Julianne was determined to leave her perilous past far behind, and find happiness in a supremely safe marriage to the splendidly handsome, wealthy, honorable and adoring Lord William Rutherford. But Julianne was about to learn that she knew more about the heart of the dark continent than she did about her own—when John Champernoun reentered her life to wake memories and desires as sharp-clawed as leopards, and even more dangerous…

Presentation at Almack’s is the pinnacle of every young lady’s social aspirations. Lady Genevra Haven has anticipated her attendance at the evening assemblies of the exclusive social club for weeks. The initial success of her introduction to society and the arrival of the coveted vouchers tempt her to extravagant dreams. But when the appointed Wednesday arrives, disappointment awaits her. Her mother will not allow her to wear her spectacles to the ball.

When she becomes separated from her companions, she takes a wrong turn and discovers that even Almack’s has a disturbing side. Myriad dangers lie in wait for a solitary and lovely young lady. If she keeps her head and employs courage and ingenuity, Genevra can return to the safety of the ballroom without incurring disapprobation or losing her reputation. But one mistake and her inadvertent adventure could spell social ruin.

Welcome to Clover, Kansas, a small town sitting in the middle of America’s Heartland. It’s a peaceful community, until the night that high school student Jeremy Rogers accepts an invitation to party with the “cool” older kids. After things go irreparably wrong, and Clover is thrust into the national spotlight, Jeremy keeps his involvement a secret. As the town heals from the tragedy, Jeremy falls into a psychological abyss from which he cannot escape, until he encounters the monster from his past and has an opportunity to redeem himself. A novella.

Lady Jean Conway is wildly in love with Owen Davies, a Shellesque poet who is cataloguing the Brecon library, whereas her twin, Lady Margaret, has a tendre for Lord Clanross’s private secretary, who is in love with Jean. Both Johnny Dyott, the secretary, and Owen are involved in Radical politics. So is the Earl of Clanross, who wants an immediate reform of Parliament, to the horror of Lady Anne, his political sister-in-law. His wife, Lady Elizabeth, wants to study comets, and his best friend can’t decide whether to give away the fortune he’s inherited or buy his wife the country estate she yearns for. These intertwined stories play against a canvas of public events, including the divorce of Queen Caroline, in 1820, the silliest year in English history.

The bombs have fallen, and the world as we know it has ended. In her final days, one robotics engineer works to ensure that life will go on, constructing the creatures that will inherit the earth. New times are coming. The future echoes with the rattle of metal claws. A short story.

“A superb spellbinder…weaving a glimmering tapestry of incredible richness…captures the heart and soul of the Regency era…a gem of a book.” —Romantic Times

TWO FACES OF LOVE

Miss Susannah Logan felt very fortunate to have not one but two gentlemen shepherding her through the first London season.

One was the cynical and brilliant Mr. Warwick Jones, whose wit and wealth gave him free entry into society and whose pretended scorn for women was matched only by the sensual intensity of his passion for them.

The other was the handsome and honorable Julian, Viscount Hazelton, whose fierce desire for an unobtainable beauty had led him to financial ruin but could not mar his irresistible, godlike good looks.

Warwick Jones and Julian were good friends until they took the inexperienced Miss Logan in hand…each leading her on a different path of love and passion toward a decision that threatened to intoxicate her flesh…and yield her ripe innocence to the one man whose tantalizing nearness she could no longer resist.

A perfect summer romance!

Louisa is left at the altar on her wedding day with no job, no home and an awful honeymoon on her own. Back home, she takes up living in her family’s dilapidated summer cottage in the Hamptons with a rescued dog and a bad sunburn, awful neighbors and a handyman who is anything but helpful.

The last thing Dante Rivera needs is another woman (he’s already burdened with an aging aunt, a needy cousin and an ex-wife) and this one has more issues than Sports Illustrated. The only problem is, he just can’t walk away from his intensifying attraction.

Then a hurricane threatens the village and the pair find themselves in the dark…and everything will change.

Julia Clemence had loved Simon Mancroft-Martley her entire life, but when she was sixteen and he twenty-one, he had bought a commission and gone to war. He had been gone nearly five years, and on his return an unexpected encounter in the village church convinces Julia that he loves her as she does him.

But Simon has lost an arm in battle, and is determined not to burden her with a crippled husband. Her parents concur with his decision, and she is forbidden to consider him eligible. Julia, by their actions and his, is denied the freedom to accept or decline an offer of love and marriage.

Her stratagems to achieve liberty fail, and she loses hope. But in the parish church that has been her solace, Simon admits the truth of her many arguments, and gives her the freedom to choose her future–with him or without him.

Robert Johansen’s and Todd Gaffaney’s breakout book, Making Love — How to Create, Enjoy, and Sustain Intimacy, is a beautifully written, easy to understand, clinically proven concept that teaches the reader how he or she can create and sustain love for their partner.

Making Love is an extremely important book for today’s times, given that a staggering sixty-seven percent of couples married after 1990 are divorced. Ironically, marriage counselors divorce at the same alarming rate as the national average. While these failed relationship statistics are troubling, there is hope for a better tomorrow.

Author’s Johansen and Gaffaney’s research evolved into a groundbreaking and clinically tested model that gives readers the tools to thrive in their marriage or relationship.

What Other Doctors Have Said About Making Love:

The authors have brought a refreshing and new perspective to the difficulties and complexities of the intimate relationship. Making Love offers a uniquely inspiring view on how partners can grow love for each other. I highly recommend it. – Sherry Lewis, PhD. LCSW

Drs. Johansen and Gaffaney have devised a very powerful model for effectively intervening in couples lives to improve their intimacy. Their model reduces strife while teaching relating partners intimacy-building communication techniques. This book will benefit professional therapists and lay people alike. – Diana Haberland, M.A., Marriage and Family Therapist, Private Practice

I had the great opportunity to put the principles contained in this book to a scientific test for my doctoral dissertation. The results of my research were very positive to say the least. But perhaps even more importantly, I have applied these principles with clients in my practice and have seen first hand how effective they are. By offerring an organizing perspective on the complex data couples bring to therapy, the model reduces anxiety in clients and treating therapists. The model changes our traditional views on love and marriage. I strongly recommend it. – Ian T. Johansen, PhD, Clinical Psychologist, Private Practice, Author, Private Practice

This book can change one’s life. The authors have lucidly presented profoundly simple principles that enable couples to understand their own needs, hear those of their partner, and work toward continued open and nurturing communication and fulfillment. My own professional and personal growth after thirty years as a psychologist continues to be informed by this landmark addition to the practice of couples therapy.” – Lester Mindus, PhD, Private Practice

Marcus wakes up in a surreal state of urgency and foreboding. Something is wrong, yet he can’t perceive exactly what. As he makes his way through the morning getting ready for work, little things begin to add up like clues to a horrible truth that awaits him. Will the dream hold up or fall? Will life? A short work of surreal literature from our experimental line The Lab.

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.

Solomon Greene made a deal with God.

If He’d send him an unattractive woman, he’d marry her on sight and do
what was spiritually right. After all, he needed that kind of wife to
help him escape from his sordid past.

Celeste Martin made a deal with Solomon. She’d be his ugly wife. All she
wanted in return was his name. She was in love with her sister’s fiance
and he would be the only man she’d ever love.

Solomon had no idea that he’d find his wife fascinating. Celeste didn’t
know that one taste from her husband’s lips would have her wanting more.
Yet many strange women were between them.

Could Solomon ever escape from his past?

Could Celeste ever love her husband?

A MOST MADDENING MATE

Nicholas Beauchamp, the Earl of Winslow, was baffled by Margarita’s infernally inconvenient anger.

True, he still visited his mistress, Catherine Alnwick, whenever his fancy dictated. True, he still availed himself of the fabled favors of the ravishing Lady Eleanor Rushton, who certainly never let her marriage vows interfere with her pleasures.

But surely Margarita should be able to see that as his wife she still possessed the best part of him, and be satisfied with the bargain.

Unfortunately, Margarita had so very much to learn about the ways of the world—and even more to teach the imperious earl about the secrets of the heart…

Aimee believes everything in her life is great. She’s got a boyfriend who’s terrific (in bed and out), a penthouse apartment, and everything else a girl of privilege could possibly want.

Well, except for a soul. That seems to have gone missing somehow.

After a trip to a Warlock Doctor confirms that her soul has indeed vanished, she’s left with two options: buy a prosthetic one, or try to figure out what happened to the original. Feeling that she must have left her first one somewhere where she could find it, Aimee enlists the help of her mother and grandmother in a hunt for the wayward soul. But Aimee’s search for the missing part of her is about to bring forth some long-forgotten memories, and she’s going to learn what it really means to have everything in life that’s really important.

A short story.

Author Steve Sharp tells his students that the thesis statement is the sun around which everything in their paper orbits. Every sentence must fall within its gravitational pull and obey rational orbital laws. Otherwise chaos ensues. If you really want to succeed in the academic world, you simply can’t afford to leave your readers scratching their heads after they’ve read your paper, wondering, What’s the point of this? Why was this written?

Mastering the Thesis Statement teaches you just about everything you need to know to write an effective thesis statement and improve the quality of your academic writing. Because writing is such hard work, you may have to revise your thesis many, many times before you discover the gem that shines brightest – a thesis that not only suits the content and purpose of your paper but also truly reflects what you’re trying to say.

Mastering Your Role as a Nonprofit Manager is a practical guide for managers who want to enhance their current skills and learn the strategies and practices of mid-level and senior-level managers.

In-depth discussions show how to increase your effectiveness in supervising people and managing programs. With “‘A Day in the Life”’ examples throughout the book, managers will have the opportunity to broaden their skills and practice newly acquired managerial acumen.

For new managers, the core tasks of supervision, delegation and evaluation are reviewed, and the steps managers can take to create a “‘best practice”’ are described.

For mid-level to senior-level managers interested in expanding their skill sets to include program management, elements of program development are discussed.

Mastering Your Role as a Nonprofit Manager provides managers with an activist/advocacy vision, the ability to incorporate the critical thinking habits and thought leadership practices that are essential elements of this role.

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.

A long-held axiom maintains that morality cannot be legislated; morality, after all, is a personal concept that comes from within each individual, while laws passed supposedly for the good of all are imposed from without.

So, what happens when the government steps in to regulate a particular human trait and everyone jumps on board to ensure the law doesn’t get broken? Conrad accidentally breaks one of the laws of the land and finds himself being pursued by bystanders and police alike, he quickly discovers that one simple mistake could be the end of his freedom…and possibly his life.

A short work of a dystopian future from our Orbits sci-fi/fantasy line.

On the run from “broken promises, cocaine and gin, wounds inflicted,” Terry Manescu turns to Alcoholics Anonymous for help. Abstinence alone fails to reform her, though; she resents the meetings, makes every effort to antagonize other AA members, and continues to chase the buzz by substituting sex for booze and drugs. She’s charming, bright, athletic, and not at all shy with the ladies, but also relentlessly self-destructive. Eventually she finds a lesbian AA group of women who’ve faced down their own demons and with their support, Terry learns to tame her rebellious streak and live with integrity.

Sexually charged, by turns harrowing and hopeful, Minus One: A Twelve-Step Journey is a tribute to the meetings and members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Miss Virginia Locks has a date tonight, but something is wrong. She finds herself standing outside her home without any knowledge of how she got there. But what waits for her once she is back inside, a crawling, gasping thing, is even more unsettling. A short story.

Still unwed at twenty-one, an unconventional high-spirited woman finds her affections sought by a handsome, devilishly charming Earl, who is nicknamed “The Ideal” by the ton–for his combination of wealth and looks. Though at first she fights his advances, slowly she forms a heated alliance with him. But sparring with words soon turns into a succumbing passion…

Hack Ward thought he had found a niche market for his skills as a private investigator when Hollywood came to Detroit. When washed up director Will Peyton gets pegged to direct a low-brow family comedy starring a chimp and a perpetual bad-girl pop star, Hack gets brought in by Peyton to keep an eye on starlet Haley Goslin. It’s not because Peyton is concerned about her image; it’s because Peyton is in love with the younger woman and doesn’t want her fooling around on him.

It isn’t long, however, before events on the set start turning sinister. Hack is on hand the day the chimp has a psychotic episode and attacks Haley. Saving her life sets off a chain of events that bring Hack and Haley closer together and puts them in more and more danger. On the morning she gets called into the set to shoot some additional footage, they have no idea they are getting called into a trap.

When it comes to murder, which is the more dangerous animal? Chimp … or man?

July 1969, and mankind is on the Moon. Both the United States and Soviet Russia have lunar bases, and both are in trouble.

Back on Earth, Anne Travers has learned she is about to be visited by an old friend from America, Doctor Patricia Richards. Lance Corporal Bill Bishop is aware of the visit, and is on hand to meet Richards.

She brings with her a surprise, one which the Americans and Russians wish to get their hands on. But the only man who can truly help Anne, Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, is away in Scotland.

It’s a game of cat and mouse, as Anne and Bishop seek to protect the life of an innocent baby – one that holds the secrets to life on the Moon.

The first book in the second series of Lethbridge-Stewart novels.

A series of novels from the classic era of Doctor Who, starring Anne Travers and Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, based on the characters and concepts created by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln.

Kate Lawless, nineteen, is all alone in the world and struggling at the moment to make ends meet. Although answering a World Security League all-call for psychics is dangerous in these phobic times, she is tempted by the promise of reimbursement for just showing up. Screenings take place in a hotel conference room. When hers goes very well—a shocker—she is checked in so that she can undergo further testing. Staying at the ritzy hotel is quite a treat for Kate. The Christmas decorations are beyond beautiful. The festive background music reminds her of past holidays, most of them celebrated with a foster family or with other kids living in the youth ranch or orphanages that have been her life since the age of two. Her holiday plans this year? Enjoy this surprise vacay to the max, take the money, and pay her past-due rent.

Nikolai Nycov, a Russian member of the WSL team, is assigned to her. While he claims that he’s only interested on a professional level, he won’t stop meddling in her personal life. He comes off as deliberately distant one minute; helpful, the next. Although annoying, this actually intrigues Kate, as does the fact that her clairvoyance gets a psychic boost whenever Nikolai is physically close.

Distracted by her growing feelings for him, she finds it harder and harder to lock onto Mbali Tinibu, the ruthless Sierra Leone civil war criminal she is helping the WSL locate. Kate finally asks to work alone and is given permission in spite of Nikolai’s objections. Only then does she realize how unpredictable and dangerous her psychic gifts can be. And having an annoying Russian around? Well, sometimes that’s not a bad idea.

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.

“A son is a son until he takes him a wife,” the old adage says, and Winifred, unwilling to give up her precious son at all, goes to outrageous means for preventing his wedding. A new short story from the acclaimed Southern author of Gifts, Flood! and Jesus Is Already Here.

A cardigan of a different colour, a cup of tea and a card game prompt Polly to confront problems in one of her most important relationships. She has to consider the feelings of her mother, her girlfriend and her little sister—but is there someone she’s forgotten? A short story.

Detroit. A tough town, where you have to be tough to survive. And few are tougher in facing the realities of the streets than the Firebird Scouts of Wayne County. But, are they tough enough to deal with the supernatural – in the form of a werewolf aiming to eat them up? A short work from our Spectres line from the author of Murder’s Not Cool. For readers ages 13 to adult.

Everyone’s favorite mountain man returns!

The year is 1843. On his way to Fall Rendezvous, Mount meets up with his old friend Patch, along with Sunshine, Patch’s traveling companion. What starts out as an expedition for fun, soon turns to an epic struggle for survival amid the dramatic and exciting Western wilds. The biggest escapade for Mount lies ahead in Oregon City, as his past adventures catch up with him in the form of the woman he loves…and is determined to make his own.

Filled with humor, grit and the sights and sounds of the 1800s, this is a slice of historical fiction readers won’t want to miss!

Mount, our favorite mountain man, is back for a third installment of action and adventure! It’s 1844 and Mount has returned to his secluded cabin nestled in the Rocky Mountains, bringing with him his new bride, Sandra, and stepson, Andy. The new family is happy beyond words, and just starting to build a wonderful future. Suddenly their lives are shattered, and that happy future in jeopardy, when Sandra is kidnapped by a ruthless band of outlaws, led by the notorious assassin, Li Zhang. The resulting adventure is packed full of excitement, danger and surprises, and of course, plenty of Mount’s special brand of humor.

Author Arlen Blumhagen is once again at the top of his game, and book three of the Mount trilogy, Mount: The Adventures Continue, is definitely a must read.

Arlen Blumhagen captures the feel of the western wilderness of the late 1800’s in this story of one man’s adventures across the American wilderness.

Mount leads a simple life, using his skills to survive in his cabin on the side of a mountain. When circumstances require him to make a trip into St. Louis, Mount thinks it will be a quick visit to The Big City and then home. What he isn’t prepared for is the request of Andrew Worthington to lead his family through the wilderness and up through the Oregon Trail. What ensues is a series of adventures from attacks by Indians and snakes to blizzards and several near-fatal disasters. All Mount wants to do is get home to his life, but can he keep his band of travelers alive long enough to make it?

Combining adventure with a liberal dose of comedy, MOUNT crosses genres from historical fiction to western to humor to take the reader through one of the most memorable times in American history.

When John Bell tells his family that he saw zombies crossing their farm one October night, he asks them the keep it quiet so as to not cause a panic. But when his first daughter, Cecelia, draws a picture of the zombies in school, the cat’s out of the bag.

Now, some in the conservative little town want the little girl expelled. Some want to exploit the zombies for publicity. The media outlets catch wind of it and are in a feeding frenzy. All John wants is to keep the town from descending into chaos. One thing’s for sure – when the townsfolk descend on the Bell household to see the zombies for themselves, they’re going to get a lot more than they bargained for.

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.

My Daughter’s Boyfriends is a short story collection from the Pushcart Prize–winning writer Penny Jackson. Her female narrators explore the loss of love and innocence, as well as the strength to overcome adversity and the need for redemption. The setting of these stories ranges from a hotel in Jamaica to New York City during the terror reign of Son of Sam to a summer camp for teenage girls in New Hampshire. Original, entertaining, thought-provoking, My Daughter’s Boyfriends will prove to be of special appeal to readers with an interest in coming-of-age stories about women.

My Father is a universal narrative of a relationship between parent and child.

As a young gay man struggles to find common ground with his conservative father, he inadvertently discovers a friend in the man who raised him. Through two experiences shared decades apart, these two men of different generations and ideals forge a friendship by the simplest means. Opening their minds.

A short story from our Nibs literary line.

As a child growing up in the Hollywood Hills during the 1950s, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson thought it was perfectly normal that a guru named Paul Brunton lived with his family and dictated everything about their daily rituals, from their diet to their travel plans to his parents’ sex life. But in this extraordinary memoir, Masson reflects on just how bizarre everything about his childhood was–especially the relationship between his father and the elusive, eminent mystic he revered (and supported) for years.

Writing with candor and charm, Masson describes how his father became convinced that Paul Brunton–P.B. to his familiars–was a living God who would fill his life with enlightenment and wonder. As the Masson family’s personal guru, Brunton freely discussed his life on other planets, laid down strict rules on fasting and meditation, and warned them all of the imminence of World War III. For years, young Jeffrey was as ardent a disciple as his father–but with the onset of adolescence, he staged a dramatic revolt against this domestic deity and everything he stood for.

Filled with absurdist humor and intimate confessions, My Father’s Guru is the spellbinding coming-of-age story of one of our most brilliant writers.

Cynthia felt the time had come to tell the young boy the truth of his name, and of the fateful day of his birth. Time to tell the story of her beloved Olivia, a beautiful and vibrant woman full of love and happiness. Friend, lover, wife, savior – she would have been a great mother had she survived. So, Cynthia pulls her little boy onto her lap and recalls the day ten years ago; of Cynthia’s pain, Olivia’s parting words, and a baby’s powerful will to live despite his small and frail body. Today, the boy will learn why Mother’s Day means so much to Cynthia.

A short story from our Nibs literary line.

A young man heard a voice inside his head, “Get outta the car. Get outta the car.” He jumped out and, seconds later, the car was destroyed. 

This story of a supernatural warning is one of many mystical encounters Dr. Farrell heard in twenty-three years working as a prison psychologist. Men in solitary confinement have nowhere to go, so some go out of body. Prisons are ghost-laden, and some murderers are confronted by the ghost of their victim asking, “Why?” Other men are comforted by visitations. Some men learn to put themselves into a trance where they contact dead relatives for advice or to relieve loneliness. Many drug dealers tell of dead former comrades telling them, “Get off the street. Get out of the drug game.”

Dr. Farrell heard similar stories from his middle-class patients representing a variety of professions including teachers, nurses, construction workers, firefighters, veterans and others who had mystical experiences. People who have these encounters are transformed. After most mystical experiences people become more centered and less distracted by superficial excitements such as drugs, alcohol, gambling, or uncommitted sex. For this reason the final section of the book presents a variety of paths, including meditation, which induce spiritual experiences.

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.

What do an archaeologist from Back East and a cowboy from the empty corner of Oregon have in common? Not much, except the waterhole that Rock McConnell needs for his cattle and Genny Forsythe must approve. First she has to make sure there are no prehistoric petroglyphs near the site, and that could take months of study. Now Rock isn’t against preserving the past, but his cattle are gettin’ mighty thirsty.

Genny’s youthful dreams were filled with cowboys, tall, lean, laconic, and Levi’d. Rock is all of them rolled into one gorgeous, virile man. Trouble is, she’s had her fill of dominant males, and Rock is about as dominant as they come. Rock knows that delicate, feminine women can’t last in the harsh environment of Owyhee Country, pretty women like Genny, with silvery hair and painted fingernails. But his body sings another tune, one of immediate, demanding hunger for her kisses–and more.

Love will not be denied. Someone’s got to bend, but who, and how much?

Amelia Sinclair has lived all her life with the decorum expected of a 19th century banker’s wife. She remained faithful to a husband who never loved her, raised three children, and turned away the love of a lifetime. Now widowed at the dawn of a new century and facing her second fifty years, she decides she can no longer deny the love that has burned within her for decades. Can she throw away the only life she has ever known in order to find the only life she has ever wanted?

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.

Chad Thomas Johnston’s Nightmarriage is a whimsical memoir that explores the terrors of marriage and the perils of parenthood. Adapted from Johnston’s blog series of the same name, Nightmarriage proves that, when two people marry, their flaws tie the knot, too. In essays such as “My Wife, the Black Hole,” “Hearts and Jumper Cables,” “Knives and Wives,” “Honeymoonwalking (to Jail),” and “Blessed Are the Tentmakers,” Johnston weaves stories on his literary loom that are equal parts luminous and lunatic.

Writing as only a minister’s son with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder can, Johnston has crafted an observational ode to both the blunders and wonders of wedlock, and his writing is punctuated accordingly with absurd alliteration, appalling puns, and madcap metaphors. Nightmarriage is a must-read for fans of David Sedaris, Robert Fulghum, and Anne Lamott.

While Johnston created the cover art himself, the interior of the book features original work by artists BARRR, Dan Billen, Ben Chlapek, Megan Frauenhoffer, Danny Joe Gibson, Mark Montgomery, and Darin M. White. The appendices of the book also include Twitter stream excerpts, recipes, artist information, and other miscellany from the world of Chad Thomas Johnston.

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.

Independent Katie Lachlan has caught the eye and heart of a rich suitor who won’t take no for an answer. Luke Savage killed a man in a gunfight and swears he’ll never carry a handgun again. A strong attraction and mutual dependence link them together for a journey along the brand new transcontinental railroad, as she flees the suitor who stalks her and he runs away from his past. Instead of safety, they find new danger as they are forced to travel on foot across a wintry landscape. While Katie learns that independence is no match for force, Luke discovers that saving Katie is more important to him than the vow he made. Striving together against wilderness, gunfighters bent on retribution, and a frontier town on the brink of riot, they find their strength, their convictions, and their very love tested by adversity and danger.

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.

Sometimes what isn’t said between two people is louder than what is.

On the Wings of Angels (Book 3 of the Beyond the Blue Horizon Series), continues the saga of Otto Kerchner, the airplane-obsessed Wisconsin farm boy who becomes a hero of World War II in On Wings of the Morning (Book 1). He continued to lead his family, friends, and community into new ventures—and sometimes danger—in On the Wings of Eagles (Book 2).

The latest in the series picks up in 1954 with an unlikely mix of elements: a minor league baseball team, mobsters from Minneapolis, a Soviet jet, family discord, sudden death, an aviation camp, a kidnapping, and a marauding bear. Meanwhile, the Kerchners, their friends, and their community cope with a changing world.

Readers of the earlier novels have praised the easy style and realistic touches in the books which help recreate the ambiance and feel of those remembered years, including the simple pleasures of picnics, birthday parties, and pick-up baseball games. The characters are at once unique and identifiable, and their hopes, fears, and struggles still resonate today. This book is a must read among must reads for just about everyone.

On the Wings of Eagles features the warmth and rich characterization readers of all ages enjoyed in the first book, and is sure to become a new favorite among the many fans of Otto, his friends, family, and their little town of Pioneer Lake. This second installment in the Beyond the Blue Horizon series will inspire and engage readers from Young Adult on up.

Young Otto Kerchner dreams of escaping his father’s Wisconsin dairy farm and becoming a flier like his hero Charles Lindbergh. When a small airport is built on an adjoining property, Otto trades odd jobs for flight lessons and becomes a pilot at 16. When World War II breaks out, he enlists in the Army Air Corps and finds himself a year later high over Germany at the controls of a B-17. Otto and his crew fly 23 missions untouched, but then his world shatters, and he must draw on reserves of faith and courage he never imagined.

On Wings of the Morning brings to life the ordinary men and women of the Greatest Generation who, stirred by fate and fortune, accomplished extraordinary things. Faithful in its depiction of events and evocative across a spectrum of emotions, this gentle but incisive tale will engage, inform and move readers of all ages.

A panoply of images celebrating life, love, nature and the cycles of the seasons.

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.

Kelly Ray is nineteen and a recovering heroin addict. To stay sober, she lives by a severe set of rules, and the last thing she needs is a complicated guy. And who could be more complicated than the heir to the throne of a war-torn European country? But when, by chance, she meets Prince Tomas Teronovich, Kelly is hooked–not so much by his looks, his gentleness, or his obvious attraction to her, but by the idea of getting him on her Aunt Kit’s radio talk show. So begins one amazing night, during which she will need to keep Prince Tom entertained, hidden from his guards and the politicians who want to control his every move; keep secret for as long as possible her connection to the controversial host of “Kit Chat”…and keep herself from falling in love.

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.

Ally desperately wants “normal” for her half-sister Kayly, something she never had herself thanks to her liberated mom. First on her list of to-dos is contacting Kayly’s dad, who promised he’d stay out of Kayly’s life just as Ally’s own dad once did. When Kat leaves the country on assignment, Ally drops in on the guy to introduce him to his baby daughter. But Kayly’s dad doesn’t live there–her half brother, Zach, does. And his shocking offer to help Ally find “normal” is nothing compared to what happens next.

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.

This title releases on April 18th, 2023. All efforts will be made to have print editions reach you by that date.

From her very first day at Willard College for Women in the late seventies, Elizabeth Breedlove is trapped. The school’s motto promises an oasis “where a woman chooses her own destination,” but so many faculty members and students have already decided what Breedlove’s destiny should be—based solely on her small-town high school picture in the frosh photo pamphlet, Mugs and Plugs.

She magically gets a choice room in Fey House, the upper-class dorm, and a gorgeous “Big Sister” keen to help her navigate the social world of Willard. And even though she’s an English major, her assigned advisor is the notorious feminist psychology professor Jojo Crews—who immediately makes her feel she is part of some double-blind gender clinical trial. That’s especially true after her new late-night poker buddies warn that everyone at Willard is instantly branded either “a Virgin, a Debutante or a Lesbian Vampire.” And she struggles to explore her own identity in a thick web of academic rivalry, secret codes of domination, all manner of swordplay, and the constant threat of long-ticking secrets about to explode. Everyone wants a piece, or a bite, of her.

Which makes her story an intensely dark and witty saga of friendship, lust and, at long last, love.

Originally published in the early 2000s, Other Girls was decades ahead of its time in its exploration of women’s friendships, gender fluidity and feminist satire.

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.

Ever since they outlawed giving presents, only outlaws give presents.

What would happen if gift-giving and Christmas were outlawed? Some guys would do stuff just because they were told they couldn’t. For a couple of young desperadoes, looking to make reputations, laws were meant to be broken … especially when they’re hungry for pizza.

A short work of alternate history from our Orbits line.

Ian Baptiste was finally starting to see some light in his life after the tragic death of his wife. Following a significant promotion, he’d been able to move with his son into WhisperWood, an exclusive, gated neighborhood. His son was thriving and getting ready to go off to college. Ian’s most recent work with predictive analytics was attracting even more attention to him from the company executives. Still, something nagged at him. Something didn’t feel quite right. Something was off. All of his feelings came to a head when he looked through a crack in the wall behind his home and discovered something that both broke and awakened his heart. In the spirit of 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451, Parable of Weeds is a speculative look at a possible future. A novelette (50 pages).

Presenting a never-before-published, holiday short story from Regency author Edith Layton!

Christmas is coming to Victorian London. A poor boy living with his milliner sister in a marginal part of town discovers his cat is missing. His old dog can’t live without the cat, so he searches—and hears that the Queen has kidnapped his cat! Queen Victoria’s favorite moggie strayed, and her minions scooped up the wrong cat—or so the boy and his sister think.

This Christmas novella tells how an earnest young Beefeater, his world-weary superior, and one of the wiliest criminals in London each try to find the right cat without disturbing the old queen, win the boy’s cat back—and woo the pretty sister—before the Queen leaves London for her Christmas holiday.

From the servants at the palace and the Queen’s own chambers, to Billingsgate and the mudlarks’ favorite taverns, the adventures are many among the high- and low-life of Victorian London.

In a near-future world where the car is king and the people are divided between those who ride on a network of highways connecting the glittering hubs of the city, and those left on foot — the lowly “Peds” — who inhabit the lands that lie between them, Robert Balkoner has always believed these latter, even if disadvantaged, are well cared for by the city as a whole. These beliefs are shattered, however, when a freak auto accident thrusts him among the Peds, and he discovers a system more varied, complex, and sometimes horrific, than anything he might have imagined. Yet even here Balkoner also can find love, as well as a handful of rebels willing to barter their lives in a quest to improve conditions for themselves and their fellows. A novelette.

Breathe. It is the most important thing that you do. It is the common denominator that touches every dimension of your life – mind, body and spirit. Every thought that passes through your mind, every word that you speak, every muscle you move, every beat of your heart depends on the steady flow of oxygen to every one of the 50 trillion cells in your body.

Although the breath is automatic, we can consciously control it. Modern science and thousands of years of experience have shown us that conscious control of the breath can lead to dramatic changes to your mind, body and emotions. It impacts your health, your ability to heal, your emotional intelligence and wellbeing, your mental, physical, and creative performance, as well as your spiritual experience.

Conscious breathing techniques are routinely used by fighter pilots, astronauts, elite climbers and divers, Olympic athletes, Zen archers, dancers, musicians, actors and performing artists, as well as healing professionals from every discipline, and spiritual seekers from all traditions.

Perfect Breathing: Transform Your Life One Breath at a Time can help lead you to this remarkable source of energy, awareness and health. Grounded in cutting edge science and research as well as fascinating interviews with renowned experts and peak-performers, Perfect Breathing shows you how you can easily take advantage of this powerful source of energy, awareness, and healing in your personal and professional life in just minutes a day.

While serving as an artist-in-residence at a small Pacific Northwest college, stage actress Juliet McKenna is directing Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Sorcerer. Rivalries among the student cast are only to be expected–but are other troubles the work of the theater’s restless ghost?

Nonsense, Juliet insists, and with Sidhe-born senses to back her conclusions, she should know. But as the curtain rises on opening night, she’s forced to revise her opinions. With one performer in chains and another possessed, the show seems poised to end in disaster–because even if Juliet can improvise a new ending, she may not be able to free her students without revealing her own Sidhe origins.

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.

Phoebe Rackson is determined to help her family’s faltering finances. When she learns of the Soho Bazaar, established specifically to aid the widows and orphans of war casualties, she sees a way. After convincing her widowed mother of the wisdom of her plan to take counter space at the Bazaar, she organizes the entire family and sets up in business.

The Honourable Tobias Wavendon likes the Soho Bazaar. Prohibited from a military career by his family, he takes an interest in helping the families of deceased soldiers. Whenever he can he makes purchases at the Bazaar and his three sisters are among the fashionable clients of the popular establishment.

He finds the goods and the young woman in attendance at one counter of particular interest. The finely crafted needlework provides him with gifts and the detailed wooden carvings intrigue him. The dedicated, determined young lady who operates the stall fascinates him. When his idle brother, heir to their father’s earldom, learns of his interest in that certain stall holder, he decides to make mischief.

Phoebe Rackson is confused. One of her customers, dark-haired and attractive, is reserved, polite and kindly one day and flirtatious, indiscreet and merry the next. The turmoil he causes escalates until she forbids him to visit her stall.

Their mutual attraction, though ill-fated, cannot be denied. Class, pride and fortune stand in their way, and duty becomes a curse.

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?

Stephanie will do anything to make partner at her law firm, even if it means going on the totally unnecessary Caribbean vacation her boss sends her on, and returning with all the items on his stupid scavenger hunt list.

Little does she know that magic is hitching a ride on this vacation from hell, courtesy of her friend Nichole who has knit a little pirate-y magic into the sexy monokini bathing suit Stephanie has tucked away in her suitcase.

She may find all the items on her list, but what is she supposed to do about the pirate who sails away with her heart?

PLACES AND TIMES IS . . .

“. . . vibrant and alive; wholly embodying place and time.”
-William S. Tribell, Poet

“A product of a keen, observing mind . . .”
-Joanna Kurowska, author of The Wall & Beyond and Inclusions

“. . . a must have book for anyone who enjoys poetry.”
-Alicia Salabert, Poet

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.

When her husband comes home from work one day to announce he’s moving out, Samantha Rutgers thinks it’s a joke. She hopes it’s a joke.

It’s not. He packs his suitcase and moves out.

For twenty-five years, Sam was a corporate wife, a stay-at-home mom. Now she’s divorced, adrift, and alienated from her daughter who blames her for the divorce. Ill equipped to be a single woman in a whole new dating culture, she would have foundered without help from an old friend who challenges her to finish up the art degree she put on hold when she married. Her classes open the door to a job at an advertising agency, where Sam makes several new friends and one enemy. There she meets Frank Reynolds, who invites her to take that first step into new love. Gradually, as she slowly builds a new life for herself, Sam learns how to stand strong in the face of adversity, personal and professional.

Cicero Clayton and his gal pal, Suzy Mack, have had plenty of adventures in their fictional version of Halifax. After all, life as a cartoon character should be nothing but fun and excitement, right?

All things may be possible in the world of Cicero and Suzy, but the real adventure won’t begin until their show is cancelled – and that’s exactly what’s about to happen.

Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone is David Perlmutter’s follow-up to his previous life-of-cartoons short story release, Tooned Out.

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.

“Mas. Gill Jamieson, poor innocent lad, has departed for the Unknown, a forlorn ‘Walking Shadow’ in the Great Beyond, where we all go to when the time comes.”

Those words, printed in a handwritten letter delivered to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on the morning of September 20, 1928, told the city of Honolulu that 10-year-old Gill Jamieson, the only son of Hawaiian Trust Company vice president Frederick Jamieson, was dead. What had begun as the search for a kidnap victim quickly turned into a search for Gill’s body and for his killer—a 19-year-old Japanese man named Myles Fukunaga. Poor Innocent Lad: The Tragic Death of Gill Jamieson and the Execution of Myles Fukunaga uses trial transcripts and court documents, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, official government records, and a detailed confession from the killer, himself, to tell this tragic story of the kidnapping and murder of young Gill, and the arrest, trial, conviction and execution of Myles.

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.

Project Gus is a personal short story exploring how we see ourselves and the often inhibited guise brought out in social situations by how we believe others perceive us. It is also about friendship and lessons learned. For one middle-aged man, his memories of being bullied as an adolescent sometimes cause him to automatically modify his public behavior. While spending time with Gus, the young son of a close friend, his suppressed insecurities surface. But nine-year-old Gus sees things very clearly – and Gus just wants to play football. A new, personal essay from the author of the emotional nonfiction short My Father.

Proof of Divine presents the journey of author Andrew Murtagh as he straddles the fence between faith and cynicism in an all-or-none look at the greatest story ever told. Blending his family’s incredible stories of survival, faith, hope, and love, matched with his own walk from hockey player to coach to husband, father, and career man, he embarks on a five-year expedition towards the intersection of faith and reason.

Is there a God? Are science and faith mutually exclusive? What is truth and what of logic, morality, and meaning? Who is the historical Jesus, and why Christianity? The faith of scientists, the science of skeptics, the questions of time, life, and purpose, Murtagh looks back at his own life and the inspiring lives of his forefathers to decide if he is an accident or an intention.

The graze of a bullet, a soldier surrounded, an armed robbery, and a fateful desert drive – Murtagh puts the faith of his youth to the ultimate test: the Proof of Divine.

Caleigh, a fledging empath, is thrilled to be at Rutledge Institute a.k.a. “Psychic High.” She has three goals: fit in at the institute, earn her high school diploma, and get a handle on her psychic gift. Miles has too many psychic talents to count. His cocky self-assurance and his know-it-all attitude annoy Caleigh. Even worse, he’s gorgeous  and knows it. But in the classroom, he is all business. Caleigh is irresistibly drawn to that professional, mature persona, and soon they discover that they work well together.

Because of this, the World Security League asks them to help a young woman who survived a mass murder in which five of her friends were brutally slaughtered. Her memories of the horror are repressed. Miles will have to hypnotize her to get the answers needed to solve the case. As for Caleigh, she’ll monitor the emotions of their subject to avoid irreversible trauma.

Simple enough, right? Only if things are really what they seem.

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.

A woman discovers that some Thanksgiving traditions carry on even after death. A work of flash fiction from our Nibs literary line.

All of London knows the story of the vanished Lady Charlotte Endicott and the handsome reward that will accompany her safe return. Scores of blond-haired, blue-eyed impostors have tried their luck at Jack Endicott’s casino claiming to be the girl, only to be turned away-but Queenie Dennis just might be the one.

Fate takes a turn when she returns to London posing as a dressmaker fresh from France. Queenie quickly becomes the talk of the town, catching the eye of the handsome Lord Harkness. As her love for him grows, Queenie’s lies begin to catch up with her. Will Harkness call her bluff, or does love hold the winning hand?

Frances Carter, daughter and sister of wreckers, stands a gruesome vigil on the Cornish coast, her only solace memories of her childhood love, Mateo Sandoval. Though Frances’ father has promised her in marriage to Ewan, a greedy government agent, Frances knows she can never give up on the future she and Mateo had planned.

As a child, Mateo Sandoval was powerless when his father insisted the family return to Spain. As a man, he will let nothing stop him from claiming the life and the woman he has always wanted.

When the sea washes Mateo ashore at Frances’ feet the week before her wedding, they know their second chance could be their last. Only love can do the impossible.

Winner of the 1987 Nebula Award!

Rachel has the mind of a teenage girl, but the body and the innocent heart of a young chimp. Sometimes when she looks at her gnarled brown fingers, they seem alien, wrong, out of place. She remembers having small, pale, delicate hands with painted fingernails. Memories lie upon memories, layers upon layers, like the sedimentary rocks of the desert buttes.

Aaron Jacobs, the man Rachel calls father, was a neurologist who discovered how to capture the electrical pattern of a living brain’s thoughts and memories. When his daughter died unexpectedly, the grieving father imposed the electrical pattern of the girl’s brain on a young chimp, creating Rachel, a chimp he recognizes as his daughter.

Rachel knows that she is a real girl – but when Aaron Jacobs dies, she must make her way in a world that treats her as nothing but an animal.

“I did not want to fail, because the stakes were too high. After all, I was after nothing less than the secret of human harmony.”

The challenge that bestselling author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson set for himself was formidable: to create a true interspecies peaceable kingdom within his own household. He hoped to learn if several different species–some, natural enemies–raised together from an early age could live peacefully side by side. So he took into his home seven young animals–a kitten, a rabbit, two rats, two chickens, and a puppy–and set about observing the whole process of socialization (or non-socialization) from the very beginning.

The initial results were mixed. Tamaiti, the kitten, made herself instantly comfortable, but Hohepa, the Flemish giant rabbit, remained inscrutably reserved. Kia and Ora, the rats, slept all day and became active at night. Moa and Moana, the Polish frizzle chickens, bonded with each other but to no one else. Mika, the stray pup, barked much too much. But as the hours and days passed in this never-before-attempted environment, the animals began to change in startling ways, as Masson wondered which animals would bond, and which would recoil from one another? Can animals, including humans, truly change when direct experience tells them it’s safe to do so? Would the experiment end in triumph, or in tragedy?

Raising the Peaceable Kingdom poses universal questions we’ve all had about relationships, social strife, and peaceful coexistence. In its intimations of the potential for planetary harmony, this elegantly written book is a work of major significance. As a unique account of life in an interspecies community, it offers unmitigated enchantment, joy, and delight.

Madcap Tomboy…
When the local magistrate jailed Jacelyn Trevaine’s pet dog as a public nuisance, the country miss knew he meant to blackmail her into socializing with his nephew. High-spirited Jacelyn decided to free her dog by kidnapping the precious nephew, but unfortunately she abducted the wrong gentleman! Her captive was none other than handsome Lord Leigh Claibourne–returned war hero and rake extraordinaire. And four hours alone with the libertine Earl was tantamount to social ruin. Of course if she was already ruined, Jacelyn may as well give society something to be scandalized about…

Hardened Womanizer…
Claibourne found country life tiresome and dull … until he was kidnapped by an irrepressible chit whose candor was utterly disarming. Even rakes have their points of honor, however, and when the situation threatened to compromise Jacelyn, the cynical nobleman was forced to give the appearance of being betrothed to her. Claibourne never gave something for nothing. And in the case of the deliciously appealing Jacelyn, he’d hold her reputation hostage…for a rake’s ransom.

Australia. The Outback. It was a cracked, red land. A cruel land, where tusked predator and prey locked in a cycle that predated man. It was in that land that the American conservationist, Beth Taylor, vanished. And where her husband must go to avenge her, to find the men who killed her, discover the way she was killed—and ultimately to learn the primitive ways of the razorback, the cruelest predator of all. Only then would he know who. And how. And why. If he survived….

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.

HER HEART WAS DIVIDED IN THREE

Jessica Eastwood’s country sweetheart, Tom Preston, wanted her to be the free and independent spirit that her gallant officer father had raised her to be.

Jessica’s irresistibly attractive distant European cousin, Anton Von Keller, wanted to mold her into a sophisticated woman of the world.

Society’s most eligible aristocrat, the dazzling Lord Leith, wanted Jessica to be the star of the London Season, a model of feminine beauty and fashion.

But before Jessica could find out which of these women she truly was, she had to decide which one of these maddeningly desirable men she really loved…

Will Ballard fought for the South, but he’s not ready to go home when he walks away from Appomattox. Old wounds still fester and only time will heal them.

He joins a wagon train heading West, and finds a ready-made family. When events drive him away, he becomes a cowpuncher, just in time to fight land grabbers and a rancher who figures his land is more important than men’s lives. Before he can make up his mind to go home, he’s got himself a job building a railroad. All goes well until the carpetbaggers set their sights on it, and once more he’s adrift.

On the move again, he hires on with a freighter and finds a temporary home on the seat of a wagon. Hard work and friendship finish his healing, and it’s finally time for him to go home. Trouble is, those men in their fancy black suits are still grabbing land in the South and West. It’s more than Will can take, and he’s not shy about saying so.

Eventually he fights his way back to Four Corners, only to discover the same land grabbers and carpetbaggers at work, and a pretty girl who thinks highly of him. There’s only one thing for Will to do: hold onto his home, keep the land, marry the girl. And it ain’t gonna be easy.

John falls in love with Peggy the moment he meets her on New Year’s Eve. Nine years of marriage and two children later, nothing has changed. The beautiful Irish girl with the thick, black shining hair and sparkling, brilliant blue eyes is still the center of his world.

But when Peggy tells him one Saturday night in July that she can’t go sailing because she’s too tired to move, John’s concerned. When Peggy is diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia later that week, he’s terrified. And when she dies seventeen days later, he’s shattered, his world destroyed.

So why then just days after Peggy’s death does John call Nancy, the young woman who once lived next door, and ask her out to dinner? Why does Nancy say yes? And what happens when people ignore the rules of propriety and allow themselves to be drawn into a relationship they know will shock and offend family and friends? What price do they pay for breaking one of society’s most time-honored rules of behavior?

Rules Get Broken deals with love lost, love found, and the collateral damage along the way and demonstrates what love is…and isn’t.

We’ve all heard the fairy tale of the girl who could spin straw into gold, and the creature that would demand her first-born as payment for helping her achieve the horrible tasks put to her by her father.

Let’s face it, though, The Brothers Grimm couldn’t get the facts of a story straight if their lives depended on it, and this classic tale of excess and woe is certainly no different. Here, revealed for the first time, is the absolutely true account of the events surrounding the spoiled little gold-spinner and her entire wretched family and the poor, innocent imp cheated out of what was rightfully his.

A hilarious retelling of a classic fairy tale from legendary wordspinner Nancy Springer.

Rebellious teen Robin “Robbie” Willette thinks her life sucks.

Her grades aren’t the greatest. Her dad hates her “older” boyfriend. And her mom keeps Robbie on a short leash after her straight A, perfect, older sister gets pregnant and has a baby. As the tension builds in her family, Robbie runs away with her boyfriend Lane only to wind up sleeping on the sofa of her ostracized sister.

But it’s not all that bad. Robbie has a taste of independence. She’s working on getting her diploma through night school. She has a job–not a great one but it’s legit. And she’s finally beginning to figure out that her relationship with Lane is a dead end. For the first time in a long time, Robbie Willette is getting her life together.

Just as her life is improving, the world around her begins to crumble. Literally. A plague crawls over the planet, mutating humans into blood-lusting zombies that help spread a deadly fungus. It isn’t long before society collapses. In fact, in less than a year, all of society’s norms are gone. Robbie quickly finds herself separated not only from her family, but from all humanity. Hoping to reunite with her sister and niece, Robbie sets off with the most loyal companion she’s ever had: a yellow Labrador she names Yuki.

The road she travels is not easy. She must confront personal fears, untrustworthy humans, and aggressive mutants. Will Robbie fulfill her dream of finding her family, or is the world just too dangerous a place to discover what she needs most–hope?

Alaska, 1987. In a world where Alaska is still a Russian possession, charter captain Grigoriy Grigorievich has a stained past. As a major in the Czar’s Troika Guard, he was cashiered for disobeying a direct order.

Now, ten years later, Grisha charters out to a Cossack and discovers his past has not only caught up with him, but is about to violently change his future, and the future of all nine of the nations of North America as well.

Revolution against an oppressor, continent-wide alliances, and an epic struggle of a people to be free—spanning Alaska from the Southeastern Inside Passage to the frozen Yukon river, this is an epic tale of one man’s journey of redemption and courage to face old fears, new challenges, and help birth a new nation.

Poet T. S. Eliot once noted that when it came to cats, naming them was quite the difficult matter. At the Haven for Life Animal Rescue, worker Xenia knows this all to well. Glad to have a position, regardless of the fact that she suffers from paranoia, developmental retardation and depression, Xenia wants only to give the best care to the rescued cats that live in the shelter. When Xenia realizes that the kittens are being adopted shortly after she gives them new names, she discovers a new mission for her own life, and a realization about what it really means to take care of something that may not be able to take care of itself. A short story.

Fantasies aren’t supposed to come true. What happens when they do?

Workaholic, Carrie Marks, leads an uneventful, predictable life. Her weekdays are spent coaxing difficult customers into compliance and sorting out problems. The limited leisure time she has is filled with fantasy videos and dreams of a hero.

Until, on a rain-soaked night, a hero wrenches her from the brink of disaster as she crosses the street. Nick Casey is everything she’s ever dreamed of in her fantasies and nothing like any man she has ever dared to date.

Then her life spins horribly out of control. She’s fired from her job. Her rent check bounces. Her bank account is wiped out. Her credit record is trashed. Nothing makes sense. She is thrust into an escalating nightmare. Someone has stolen her identity.

Carrie doesn’t know whom to trust. Can this stranger who rescued her once help her now? Yet what is his connection to her ex-boss? And how can she resist the hero of her fantasies when his wacky housekeeper, his moonlighting lawyer, his alien nephews, his gorgeous ex-girlfriend and even his skeptical sister all seem to be conspiring to drive them together?

Kirsten needs a new, inexpensive place to live. To see a good possibility, she must talk to a preacher, of all people. He’s the most gorgeous man she’s ever laid eyes on, and the perfect property is more than she ever dreamed. She can ignore the preacher. Besides, a church is the last place she’d ever go, not with her shady past. At first she’s drawn by the church carillon’s music, then by Hope, his toddler daughter with a mind of her own.

His hands full with a needy congregation and single parenthood, the last thing Michael wants is another distraction. Kirsten is too attractive, too…enticing…to a father desperately in need of someone to care for his daughter who won’t spoil her rotten. He is far too aware of her beauty and compassion. She stirs his senses and thaws his frozen heart. Worse yet, he needs someone to help with the church’s youth group, and Kirsten is, after all, a teacher who conveniently lives across the street?

A cantankerous member of the church’s Board has taken Kirsten in extreme dislike. His wife has been babysitting Hope since her birth. Both are furious that out of nowhere Kirsten has supplanted them, and has, in fact, become Hope’s favorite person next to her father. When an ice storm forces Michael and Kirsten into a compromising situation, Hazel and Horace think the worst and do their best to stir up the congregation, as well as drive Kirsten and Michael apart.

Michael and Kirsten are each others’ best hope for a bright, loving future, but the obstacles facing them seem too great to overcome. Can time, prayer–and love–overcome their dilemma?

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.

Saturday Night is the intimate history of the original Saturday Night Live, from its beginnings as an outlaw program produced by an unruly band of renegades from the comedy underground to a TV institution that made stars of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Joe Piscopo and Eddie Murphy.

This is the book that revealed to the world what really happened behind the scenes during the first ten years of this groundbreaking program, from the battles SNL fought with NBC to the battles fought within the show itself. It’s all here: The love affairs, betrayals, rivalries, drug problems, overnight successes, and bitter failures, mixed with the creation of some of the most outrageous and original comedy ever. “It reads like a thriller,” said the Associated Press, “and may be the best book ever written about television.”

Available for the first time in ebook format, this edition features nearly fifty photographs of cast, crew and sketches.

Please Note: These ebook files are considerable in size. We recommend downloading them over a high-speed connection.

When his betrothed leaves him stranded at the altar, Lord Galen Woodbridge is more embarrassed than broken-hearted. Desperate to deflect attention from his humiliating plight, he decides to stir up a bit of a scandal — by wedding London’s most eligible and elusive songstress, the magnificently sensuous Margot Montclaire.

After Galen proposes, Margot confides that her sexy demeanor is merely an act. A baron’s daughter, she took to the stage to escape the clutches of a diabolical uncle — and reluctantly left her fragile young brother behind in his care. To win Margot’s hand, Galen agrees to save her sickly sibling — but in this marriage of mutual convenience, he never planned on losing his heart….

It’s time for Annie to put grief behind her and get on with her life. What better way than to go to the State Fair? That innocent first step leads her into a confusing series of events in which she attempts to revive an old love, keep her eighty-year-old cousin out of trouble, finish a quilt left to her by a beloved aunt, and oh, yes, support a new friend suspected of killing her husband. Cousin Sam may be old, but he’s not dead yet. His sudden love affair with a brand-new widow shows Annie that it’s never too late to love, even though it might be safer not to try to relive the past.

The disparate bits of Annie’s life slowly come together, as Magda teaches her how to put pieces of fabric together into a pleasing quilt. While she watches Sam and Magda fall in love, she finds herself wondering if she might find a future with Dan, a handsome fireman. But before she can look too far ahead, there’s the quilt show to get through. And that’s a whole different complication.

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…

Mother’s Day is an unhappy time for Stella, who is approaching mid-life and is grieving the loss of her mother and her job. After reminiscing on the history of her larger-than-life mum, Stella looks to find the courage to believe her ‘season for singing’ has finally arrived. A work of short fiction from our Nibs literary line.

When psychic Leah McKenna “sees” the abduction of a small boy, she knows she must help find him, no matter the danger to herself. David Logan, the boy’s uncle, doesn’t believe in psychic phenomenon. He believes Leah knows who kidnapped his nephew, and plans to stick close to her to discover the truth. As they search for Jeremy they uncover truths about themselves and the way they feel about each other. Can Leah convince him her visions, and her love for him, are real before time runs out for all of them?

Eighteen-year-old Virginia leaves her childhood Idaho farm with her sister Nellie, and they head to California to support the fighting forces of the United States. Nothing about their promising new life, working as war plane riveters, turns out as planned. Neither girl intended to fall in love, but who can really plan for love? Virginia fights heart wrenching battles when she has to choose between her fun-loving sailor and her down-to-earth marine. Nellie s sailor is charming; he s her true love, but his involvement in the secret service turns her life upside down.

Innocence was blown out of the trenches during WWII. It didn’t matter if it was the trenches of war, or the trenches of love. It was a time to find out what you were made of; a time to learn who you were. Bravery and valor were braided between flesh and soul.

Some people call them the greatest generation. Maybe they were simply the generation of greatness. It was everything for God, Country, and Family or nothing at all. True love fell easily, and it stayed where it landed because they were always faithful Semper Fidelis.

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.)

Syl Gordon just wants the perfect career and she thinks she’s found it. What could be easier than collecting plant specimens, even if she has to be a little deceptive about it? The jewel-eyed chancellor at The Simjul Research Institute seems to have fully accepted her less than truthful reason for being there. Now all she has to do is stay out of the way of temptation, and find her target specimen.

Jarek Mariltar has dealt with competitors anxious to learn more about his research, and friends anxious to find him a mate, but he has never before encountered anyone like Syl. He knows the accident-prone, fashion-conscious female is a fraud. He just can’t figure out who might have sent her. And he must protect the rare plant specimen from her amateur attempts to retrieve it at all costs.

Someone is manipulating them, but neither has a clue. They know they shouldn’t be spending so much time together, but they can’t seem to help themselves, nor can they refute their growing feelings for one another despite a relationship rooted in deception.

1908, Simple, Colorado

Lilly Luna’s mother gave birth to her in an asylum for the mad. Growing up in an insane asylum exposed her to horrors few could imagine, and yet her compassion and ability to heal frightens the broken and the healthy alike. The town fears her. The sane shun her. Morgan Healy’s father runs the creepy and rumor-maligned asylum. Morgan’s lineage is filled with insanity. Morgan holds together his crumbling family, hoping to escape his father’s legacy and the terrible secret it holds. When Lilly is hired as companion for Morgan’s sister, Morgan and Lilly form a reluctant alliance to corral the evil that seeps from Tranquil View and threatens not only the town, but also their growing love.

A spirited, adventurous twelve-year-old, Jessie Hanson, witnesses a hit-and-run accident in which a young girl is injured. With the help of her best friend, Tina Adams, she uses her detecting skills to cut through the victim’s amnesia and track down the driver of the deadly automobile.

This is the third in The Willow Lane Mysteries novella series, aimed at readers ages 9 to 12.

Sophie’s doctoral thesis stated magic was a psychosomatic phenomenon. Few took her seriously–she had a family reputation for strangeness and pointed ears to live down. In her research, she ran into Kevyn at a science fiction convention. When strange things happened, she slowly realized that she wasn’t going insane–magic was real.

Kevyn was a Fae trying to avoid family traditions. He lived on the run in the Human realms, making his living as a day actor, staying under the radar. On an acting gig at a convention, he met up with Sophie and realized that she could not only see through his magic, she had magic.

When Hunters showed up to drag Kevyn home and make him become an Advocate, he let Sophie capture him and take him home for research, thereby rescuing him from a fate worse than death — respectability and responsibility. Somewhere along the way, the lines between researcher and lab rat became blurred, then switched places, and the two of them discovered a magic of their own, and rescued each other.

Julie is a woman on the edge. The strain of raising a handicapped child and the pressures a small town rumor mill creates have taken their toll.

All her life she has been ridiculed or, even worse, ignored.

But that stops today.

A new novelette from the author of Man Falls Down.

Jamie Race is on the run. Not surprising for the world’s first shapeshifter.

All that stands between Jaime and a lifetime of incarceration are his wits, his unique ability and two girls, Amy and Celeste. A clandestine government organisation, the Company, killed his mother and is pursuing him relentlessly. Things couldn’t get much worse.

Wrong.

To complicate matters, Jamie suddenly develops the ability to change into females. How does a nineteen year old boy of limited sexual experience cope when he suddenly finds that a macho biker who saves his life has the hots for him? Or rather, her. What is his circus star girlfriend, Celeste, going to say when she learns out that he slept with a biker? Not to mention the gay martial arts instructor, Amy, who falls for him when he is a girl…

Jamie seeks refuge with Theo Tanis, a millionaire businessman with a secret life. His first mistake is discovering Theo’s deadly passion. His second was falling for Theo’s super model girlfriend, Samantha. He soon learns it isn’t wise to piss off a serial killer.

Jamie leads Theo and Dr Locke, the Company’s ruthless scientist, on a wild and hair raising chase through the wilds of outback Australia, with his freedom and his life at stake.

Lambda-nominated author Dorien Grey (The Dick Hardesty Mysteries, The Elliott Smith Mysteries) knows more than just how to write a great murder novel. He’s also had amazing life experiences in the military and around the world. Here, for the first time, are the collected blog and journal writings of this prolific author. As Grey notes, “Sometimes things are more clearly seen through the eyes of others.” The hope is that the reader will see similarities to his/her own life, and recognize the commonality of the human condition.

Mia Tagliaro was born with the ability to communicate with the dead, the reason her parents sent her to a weekend camp for kids with similar talents when she was just eight. With the help of seasoned clairvoyants, she learned that she wasn’t a freak at all. There were lots of other people just like her, in particular a boy camper her age named TC, who got vibes from the living and the dead.  By the end of their stay, Mia and TC had shared more than just secrets about their “sidekicks,” their nickname for psychic abilities. They shared a first kiss and a vow they’d never lose touch.

That was then. Now eighteen, Mia is quite comfortable in her skin and frequently passes along messages to the living from departed friends and family. She also helps the police with missing persons cases, loving the rush she gets when the lost are found. Though she hasn’t heard from her first crush, TC, for nearly a decade, Mia still thinks of him.  So it’s quite a shock when they run into each other at a school dance. Tall, athletic, and definitely gorgeous, TC, who calls himself Cooper now, seems just as amazing as she remembers. Then he tells her that his sidekicks deserted him years ago and actually uses the word freak when talking about them. Even worse, he lies when he says they can be friends again. Just when Mia is ready to give up on him, the ghost of Cooper’s dad begs her to try a little harder. But how can she reach a guy who not only thinks she’s a freak but deliberately keeps his distance? And what will happen when the spirits of local murder victims suddenly begin haunting her?

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.

Alexi’s malfunctioning magic made him a sitting duck when it came to husband-hunting Fae women. He knew he had to find a place where he could hide and make a living before he became completely bereft of magic, and ended up in Vegas, where his wonky magic wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

Megan was a Halfling Fae who made her living as a magician. She had enough magic to know Alexi was in deep trouble, and enough sense not to tell him she was a halfbreed. She took him on as her assistant because she thought they would both be safe with each other, and because he needed her help even more than she needed his.

Eventually, their working friendship turned to close friendship, partnership, looking out for each other. And then they realized they not only needed each other, but wanted each other.

However, there was Alexi’s doomed magical heritage, and hungry Fae women caught in Need still on the prowl, and what chance did a halfbreed woman have against all that?

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.

Quinn Riley wasn’t born. He was created. Constructed of artificial DNA, he was designed as the perfect soldier, explorer or assassin. His destiny is clear…until the scientists who created him abduct him in infancy.

Quinn was raised as human, oblivious of his true origins. He had a normal childhood, planned for a normal career as a doctor. But the day he got his M.D., his whole life changed. Socrates, the company that funded his creation, found him. And Quinn learns the truth of who or what he is.

With the help of his best friend, a renegade scientist, and a Hawaiian girl who shares his love of surfing, Quinn goes on the run. Or tries to, until Socrates catches up with him.

It’s time for Quinn to fulfil his destiny, and Socrates will use any means, up to and including murder, to force him to become the inhuman creature he was bred to be. The only question that remains is whether the years of being part of a family, of being loved and taught to love, will be able to overcome what was bred into him.

Can Quinn’s learned humanity override his man-made genetic programming?

Meredith agreed to marry Quinn McAllister if he would promise that theirs would be a childless marriage. They were made for each other, having come from similar unstable backgrounds and pulled themselves up by their own ambition and determination.

Five days after their wedding, Quinn learns that his best friend, his “brother” from Boys Town, is dead, leaving his three young children orphaned. Years ago Quinn promised to care for the children if anything happened. Now he is faced with keeping his vow. But what about his promise to his wife, that theirs would be a childless marriage?

Meredith has a secret, one she fears could doom her marriage if she ever reveals it. The choice is hers: her secret or her marriage? She must take the orphans into her home, despite her conviction that she will be a terrible mother to them.

Love may not be enough to save their marriage when one promise must be broken if another is kept.

Seeking to fill a heart left empty by the death of her fiancé, Madeline Pierson conceived twins by artificial insemination. She needed something–someone?–to make life worth living. One foolish night with Erik Soloman brought her both healing and guilt, so she did her best to forget him. Eight years later they meet again, to discover that time has not lessened the fiery attraction between them. When Erik encounters Madeline’s son, he sees his own face–the twins must be his. Now Madeline is forced to face her feelings about him–how closely is she willing to let him share in her children’s lives? Does Erik, who has never really had–or wanted–a home, have the staying power to be the man she needs? And will he?

Regally beautiful, Lady Alexandra Wilton has refused to wed without love. She will not compromise—until her father dies and his shocking will reveals that Alexandra will lose everything unless she marries his heir. Much to everyone’s surprise, the next earl is an upstart, a fiery Highlander just as outraged at the prospect of wedding a frosty Englishwoman as Alexandra is at the very idea of bedding him. But for this romantic lady, the unexpected is about to happen, an explosive meeting of two strong-willed forces that will change everything she believes about desire and her own heart.

Though Everly Sayers makes every effort to be friendly to new student Roone Thorsen, he doesn’t actually acknowledge her until he needs help with physics. Tall and a little on the teddy-bear side physically speaking, Roone falls somewhere in the middle when it come to the guys in her senior class, words actually imprinted on the black cause bracelet he wears.

Turns out they have more than seventh period study hall in common.  They’re both avoiding dating if for different reasons. Since the best way to deter wannabe suitors is to be involved in a real relationship, they decide to fake one even if it means they’ll have to show up at the Christmas dance as a couple.

That night is an eye opener for Everly on several levels. First of all, Roone is quite a sight in his tux, which shows off his muscular frame instead of camouflaging it the way his boxy casual clothing does. Second, the kiss they share just for show somehow rocks her world. And third, with a flick of a finger, Roone mysteriously maneuvers a rogue chandelier that crashes to the crowded floor, saving a lot of dancers in the process.

Or did he? Not quite believing her eyes, which suddenly have hearts in them, Everly is reluctant to admit that Roone is not only as far from somewhere in the middle as possible, he just might be out of this world.

Tony Dalby finds himself on the wrong end of his 80s, confined to a nursing home, with his days as a dancer a thing of the past. The appearance of Drew into his life brings a welcome distraction, as well as a bit of mystery as to why Drew constantly visits the wheelchair-bound, comatose Jesse. As secrets are revealed, Dalby finds he may have a renewed purpose for living after all.

Bizza Johnson has just started her sophomore year at boarding school. Struggling with the idiosyncrasies and irritations of high school that every teenager faces, she also experiences and voices life’s fears and insecurities; the roommate who touts homemade lasagna and Bible verses, the parents who won’t get off her back and the girls everyone publicly hates and privately envies. Her occasionally dry sense of humor and irreverent observations point out the nearly universal, but often unacknowledged, experiences that make up the life of the most tortured creature on Earth: the teenager.

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…

When Tom and Fiona Garner visit their father on his fiftieth birthday, they find that his new girlfriend is a lot more than they bargained for. Squalling Brats is a story about prejudice, parental relationships and the difficulty in washing up sieves.

A short story from our Nibs literary line.

Sixteen-year-old Merlin Lachlan dreams of knight errantry, but with only one eye, doubts he’ll ever be more than a squire–a knight-in-training. He soon has the opportunity to play the hero when he befriends Calista Smith, a girl-child traveling alone to her father in Montana.

Eight years later Merlin receives a telegram from Callie, a cry for help. Her father is taking her to an unknown destination, possibly to a fate worse than death. Abandoned at the depot in Cheyenne, along and virtually penniless, Callie finds work. When Merlin arrives he finds not a damsel in distress but a woman standing on her own two feet. Still, she is Callie, and he has a tender memory of her. As she has of him.

Merlin weds Callie to ensure that her father will have no more control over her fate. Thwarted, Lem Smith seeks revenge and ends their brief idyll with fire and blood and terror. Afterward Merlin has no memory of her, beyond what his friends tell him. Callie is captive and helpless. Each believes the other dead.

Time heals most wounds, but not broken hearts. Callie escapes from her father and builds a life for herself. Merlin returns home, all of his youthful dreams shattered. Until a child’s smile awakens old memories, and a family calls to its own.

IN THE GLAMOROUS WORLD OF THE THEATER, THEY WERE GIFTED, HOPEFUL, AND HUNGRY FOR FAME…

KATHY, whose brilliant performances rose like fire from her soul; LAUREN, regal, golden-voiced, fleeing a desperate past; MELANIE, sophisticated and sexy, prey to every temptation; DAVID, driven by pride and passion; PAULA, searching for love, afraid of success, hoarding her talent like a hidden treasure; MIKE, slipping from mask to mask, the stage his only home…

Together they shared the magic of rehearsals and opening nights, of love and heartache and grand ambition…bursting from the safe cocoon of the college drama club to struggle, suddenly alone, for the spotlight. For two decades, from New York to London to L.A., they held on to their dreams, playing the starving actor or flying high on movie deals and cocaine, marrying rich or making fortunes, far from the bright lights. But only one would soar to the heights, swept away by the thunderous applause, the magical glow, the love of millions of fans…at last a STAR.

When Elderly Miss Allie sees her new great-grandbaby for the first time, she discovers a shocking truth about her own past, a truth that causes Miss Allie to sneak away into the woods with the baby — who, in Miss Allie’s memory-addled mind, is only a heavy doll, one she can carry no longer.

Cassie Gordon is up for sale on the notorious flesh auction block of the Fortis Cluster. The man who pays a fortune for her promises to deliver her to sanctuary. His only demand is for payment in kind—rescue from an untenable situation. The price—marriage.

The rogue trader who travels the shadowy byways of questionable commerce in three star systems may not be what he seems. Sebastian Asteril’s past begins to surface as Cassie builds a new life for herself in the Crestar System. How could her husband have once been a high-ranking officer in the elite Seventh Fleet of the mighty Mariltar Nation when all the evidence points to his illegal trade in shlil dust?

The mission that has consumed him becomes an intolerable burden when Sebastian learns that the evil that delivered Cassie to the auction block stalks her still. Somehow, he has to keep her safe. Somehow, he must protect his wife from the vicious alien force that wants her back.

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…

The war in Faerie is over, and David Sullivan’s Cherokee friend, Calvin McIntosh, has returned to Georgia. But the young brave has unknowingly left the portal to Galunlati open…and Spearfinger has entered his world.

A Stoneskin with powers over rocks and earth, who feeds on mortal flesh, Spearfinger has brought her Otherworldly terror into the realm of humanity. And now Calvin, with his newly awakened magic skills, must confront the insatiable fiend…and destroy the evil that would devour mankind!

Think a baby monitor is just to keep tabs on the baby? That’s what Jessie Hanson believes until she hears a sinister conversation coming through her little brother’s monitor. Instead of baby chatter, Jessie hears a rough-talking man and a woman with an accent planning a robbery somewhere in her small Nebraska town. Twelve-year-old Jessie, with the reluctant help of her best friend, Tina Adams, decides to track down these thieves before someone gets hurt.

Strangers in the Lane is the second in this novella mystery series. Recommended for ages 9-12.

When author Ethan D. Bryan sent an email to W. P. Kinsella (author of Shoeless Joe and the basis for the film Field of Dreams) describing the scope and vision of his latest project, Kinsella replied in short time and form:

“I’m very distrustful of anyone who claims to hear voices. It is the fiction writer’s job to create weird characters, but I wouldn’t want to know any of them in real life.”

—W. P. Kinsella

Journey with Ethan D. Bryan, a self-proclaimed real-life “weird character,” in his quest to attend the Kansas City Royals’ Fantasy Camp in Surprise, Arizona, and the unforeseen twists in the journey that led Ethan to take up a new cause: to raise money and awareness for High School baseball coach Howard Bell, a Springfield, Missouri legend recently diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease).

A portion of all proceeds will be donated to “Help Coach Bell Strike Out ALS” Charity.

The Randalls are “the nice family down the street”: close-knit, resilient, facing day-to-day conflicts and gradual change, with the shared love and deep understanding that has seen them through the years.

Laura Randall and her professor husband, Trace, are proud of their accomplishments, even as they try to balance their own identities with increasingly independent children and while caring for their aging parents. Their college-age sons, Bart and Philip, see the family as a reassuring touchstone as they begin building their adult lives. And for independent, vivacious, sixteen-year-old Annie, the Randalls’ only daughter, the family is both a much-loved support, and an obstacle, as she struggles to discover her own awakening dreams and needs.

Then Annie dies in an unforeseeable accident—and their family’s world is turned upside down.

Electra Hamilton is expecting to welcome a lover. What she gets is his annoying, nerdy brother. The man has always made her uncomfortable, always disapproved of her and, frankly, drives her stark-staring crazy. Yet all her friends seem to think he is perfect husband material.

Drew Bolinger knows that courting the woman he has secretly loved for years will be his toughest challenge yet. She thinks he’s an interfering know-it-all. She also happens to be his brother’s best friend. But when the sleepy town of Little Creek becomes a hotbed of intrigue and murder, Drew not only has to fight hard to keep a skeptical Electra safe, but convince her, at the same time, that he is her true hero.

From the 2011 cd release Heartless World.

Chris was a struggling actor and Mary a struggling scholar, but their marriage was a perfect, passionate union—until the glitter of Hollywood and a dazzling starlet stole Chris away. At the time when she needed him most, he betrayed and failed her, and she swore never to see him again. Chris became a world-famous actor, and Mary a respected professor, and only in the darkness of the movie theater did she allow herself to think of him. Then, in the flash and glare of reporters’ cameras, they met again, and the smoldering love reignited. They had never officially divorced. Had he come back to reestablish their marriage…or end it irrevocably?

WAR OF THE WORLDS

An evil brew has boiled over in the mystical realm of the Sidhie…a great conflict has devastated the lands of Faerie—and its earth-shaking repercussions can be felt across the boundaries of the mortal lands.

Young David Sullivan has been to the Otherworld, and knows of its mysteries…and its terrors. Now he must somehow find his way past the magically sealed borders of Tir-Nan-Og—for the life of a mortal friend hangs in the balance. And if the dreaded war continues unchecked, the harnessed power of the Sun will unleash the forces of chaos and death in two separate worlds on Midsummer’s Day…

“Deitz  gives every indication of having several more equally impressive tales up his sleeve. Few writers match personal crisis with epic conflict as effectively.” Dragon

A young writer travels to Mexico for inspiration, where he meets an elderly American couple with a colorful history. He has no idea how colorful until the wife excuses herself and her husband tells the writer a shocking secret about his wife. But is it true? Supreme Reflections is a short story of how people replace the real world with fantasy, then spend their lives trying to make their fantasies real.

Miss Eliza Merriman knew how difficult it would be to capture Julian Dylan. For Julian was the handsomest lord in England, a prize women would and did do anything to win. Somehow Eliza had to be more dazzling than her captivating cousin Constance, aristocratic society’s most celebrated beauty. She had to be more endearing than her friend Anthea, who was everything that a man could seek in a wife. And she had to weave a sensual spell stronger than that of the ladies of pleasure who swarmed around Julian like bees around honey.

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.

Time is running out…

When thirteen year old Jessie Hanson witnesses a kidnapping in broad daylight, she and her friends, Tina Adams and Bryce Peterson, use their combined deductive reasoning to help authorities find the culprit before the young victim is whisked out of Fairfield to be lost forever. Taken is the fourth book in ‘The Willow Lane Mysteries’ series set in rural small town Nebraska.

Changing the world.

It’s a concept that gets thrown around in political campaigns and Miss America pageants. But what does it really take to spark real change?

In his book, Tales of the Taylor: Songs that Changed the World, Ethan D. Bryan shows us just what one person can do, as well as the truth of the saying: “A journey of one million miles begins with a single step.” Join Ethan as he meets former KC Royals great Frank White, future leaders of America and prisoners who have had very visceral encounters with the living Christ.

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

After twenty-seven years of marriage – and twenty-seven years spent with an artificial Christmas tree – Edward and Annie finally purchase a fresh pine. When they bring the tree home, however, the presence of the ample Scotch pine suddenly stirs a range of emotions in this long-married couple.

Tangled is a powerfully moving, compact short story from our Nibs line that captures the deeper essence of the Christmas spirit.

Wise beyond measure, in Tao-Girls Rule!, author and motivational speaker CJ Golden examines girlhood in all its glory. By combining the philosophy of Tao with a healthy dose of boldness, she offers a lightening rod to direct teen and preteen girls on how to be strong, courageous, and confident.

Following her first book, Tao of the Defiant Woman, Golden now brings her rare, uncanny insight to teens and pre-teens. In three parts, which include “Tao and Dynamic,” Living Life as a Tao-Girl,” and “Confident, Balanced, and Bold,” twelve chapters with titles such as “A Tao-Girl is Imaginative,” “A Tao-Girl is Radiant,” and “Celebrity Tao-Girls” show girls how to be spirited individuals that make the most of their uniqueness and strive to live a life of grace by combining the acceptance of ancient philosophy of Taoism with a healthy dose of bravery. One thing is certain, as our young girls face the challenges of growing up in an ever-changing and complex world, the anecdotes and biographical sketches found in this collection will lead them to appreciate that they are not alone. Being a Tao-Girl means embracing power and being a role model. It means keeping a dynamic attitude and having a loving and grateful spirit. There are gads of Tao-Girls out there to look up to. Kelly Clarkson is one. Queen Latifah is one. Miley Cyrus is another. There are Tao-Girls in every city and if you want, you can be one too.

Despite taking steps to ensure a healthy winter, Debbie Redman develops mysterious aches and pains that persist over the Holidays, making the busy season at her hair salon increasingly difficult to endure. Several doctor appointments, emergency room visits, and overnight hospital stays fail to yield answers or relief as her pains transition into paralysis.

Eventually, Debbie is rushed to a university hospital, where she is diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome. To make matters even more desperate, she soon succumbs to respiratory failure.

Almost completely paralyzed, she is in complete agony and unable to move or communicate. When she is finally stabilized, Debbie’s sight, her only sensory means of communication, is also taken away.

Her mother, friend, son, and husband Jim provide support and tough love with a sense of humor, helping her endure her torturous condition. Surrounded by machines, tubes, and beeping noises, they faced each day with a mixture of fear and courage. What did God have in store for them? A lesson in faith and love? Jim’s steadfast love for Debbie held strong through this unbelievable quest to bring inspiration to his wife. With stubborn grit and strength from loved ones, she ultimately rallies through recovery and rehabilitation to return to work one year later.

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.

Strikingly beautiful young Julia Hastings had been an inexperienced innocent when handsome, high-born Robin Marlowe induced her to elope with him—only to abandon her on their wedding night without a word of explanation.

Julia was left with her virtue intact but her reputation in tatters. Her life became a struggle to defend herself against gentlemen who henceforth considered her easy prey.

By now, Julia knew better than to trust any man, even when that man was the overwhelmingly attractive Lord Nicholas Daventry, Robin’s own uncle. But if Julia had learned how dangerous blissful ignorance was in matters of the heart, she had yet to discover what folly it was to be too wise…

Welcome to South Mississippi in post World War II. In spite of the war, it is still a wholesome time when most citizens try to do right by their neighbors.

Jack and Billy Joe are two boys who have little money. For entertainment, they use the forest, swamps, streams and rivers to their best advantage. Adventure seems to be just behind every bush.

When these boys were not involved in adventures, their other friends of the time were, and they passed the tales along unabridged (or so they say). These stories have been bandied about in South Mississippi since their inception, and each telling has minutely altered the previous teller’s story.

Tall tales or true stories? Adventure and excitement, or a look into the past? Ultimately, this book is about the boys and their interaction with others of their age and the adults of the time, in a collection of stories to be enjoyed by readers of all ages.

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.

Young and lovely Tracy Bodmin was as spirited and independent as the America she came from—but love for her father made her yield to his heart’s desire. Though William Bodmin had made his fortune in the New World, he dreamed of a title for his daughter in his native England—and his wealth won a marriage proposal to Tracy from the proud Duke of Hastings.

Thus it was that Tracy voyaged full-sail into the world of the aristocracy as wife to one of its most splendid lords. Behind she left Adam Lancaster, the handsome, rugged New Englander who adored her. Ahead lay fear and danger in the arms of a powerful, magnetic man whose mode of life and love she did not know…

When the Earl of Althorpe dies, his daughter Julia is horrified to learn that the new earl is an American. Her father has left their estate, Stoverton, burdened with enormous debt and the only good news about the new earl is that he’s a millionaire. Julia’s hope is that he will bail out the estate and go back home to America, leaving her to run Stoverton, as she always has.

Evan Marshall, the new earl, has no use for the British and certainly does not want to be an English earl. However, he finds not only has he inherited enormous debts, but he is now the guardian of two girls—Julia and her younger sister Maria.

On the advice of his aunt, he agrees to give Julia a London Season so she can catch a husband and take care of Maria. Then he’ll be able to go home to America, where he belongs.

Nothing goes according to either of these very determined people’s plans.

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 Eve Dixon decides to make her own way in a man’s world, she doesn’t count on having to do it disguised as a young man. When James Quinton, misogynistic entrepreneur, hires a secretary, he doesn’t expect to be attracted to hi… her.

Once employed, Eve finds herself discovering that her taciturn, solemn employer is a charming, likable fellow, one she could easily fall in love with—if she were a woman. To further complicate her life, Quinton’s younger sister develops a tendre for her brother’s handsome secretary. Now Eve is caught in a tangle of her own devising. When her deception is revealed, Quinton is outraged—and intrigued. The outrage wins, and Eve’s future extends barren before her, with only memories of love in her heart. Will Quinton, who sees her as one more treacherous woman in his life, find forgiveness possible?

Accepted writing style conventions change very slowly, but they do change. That is all the more reason why this favorite reference book for students, writers, and educators requires periodic updating. In this new edition, the authors review the fundamentals of correct sentence structure, then present twenty basic sentence patterns that encompass virtually every effective way of writing simple, compound, and complex sentences. They give advice on ways to vary rhythm and sentence patterns to produce a more interesting writing style. Example sentences as well as brief essays by recognized writers are presented and analyzed. This brand-new edition, updated with many contemporary examples of fine writing style, will inspire both students and seasoned writers to make their own essays sing.

This work is published in electronic format by Barron’s, and is available from most ebook retailers in a variety of formats.

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.”

In 1896, Sigmund Freud presented his revolutionary “seduction theory,” arguing that acts of sexual abuse and violence inflicted on children are the direct cause of adult mental illness. Nine years later, Freud completely reversed his position, insisting that these sexual memories were actually fantasies that never happened. Why did Freud retract the seduction theory? And why has the psychoanalytic community gone to such lengths to conceal that retraction? In this landmark book, drawing on his unique access to formerly sealed and hidden papers, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson dares to uncover the truth about this critical turning point in Freud’s career and its enduring impact on the theory and practice of psychoanalysis.

The Assault on Truth reveals a reality that neither Freud nor his followers could bear to face. Bracing in its honesty, gripping in its revelations, this is the book that prompted Masson’s break with the psychoanalytic community—and launched his subsequent brilliant career as an independent thinker and writer.

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?

In February 1962, Earle and Rhoda Brooks, a young sales engineer and his schoolteacher wife, left home and friends in Illinois to serve as members of the Peace Corps in Manta, Ecuador. This book is an account of their life in the Peace Corps. The first book ever written by Peace Corps volunteers, it is a revealing chronicle of personal involvement, of people from vastly different cultures learning to know one another on the level of their common humanity.

Earle and Rhoda begin their story with their decision to enlist as trainees in President Kennedy’s people-to-people grassroots aid program. They describe their jubilation at being accepted, the initial testing in Chicago, and the briefings in New York. With warmth and humor, they recount their experiences during the four-month training period in Puerto Rico. This was a time of trials and learning, of physical exertion and mental and emotional challenge. Of the 100 men and women who had formed their original group, 61, including Earle and Rhoda Brooks, graduated from trainees to volunteers.

Earle and Rhoda were assigned to a community development project in Manta, a small fishing village on the coast of Ecuador. Here they would spend two years, working with the people, helping them to help themselves.

The Brookses’ story of Peace Corps life in Ecuador is no simple success story, no tale of triumph over staggering odds, rather it is one of beginnings, as these two young Americans put all their skills, knowledge, compassion, and ingenuity into an effort to provide humanitarian grassroots help in alleviating poverty and disease.

Their story also shares what they learned from their humble fisher-people friends and neighbors. From their rich and varied experience emerges a picture of Latin American life far different in focus, and in many respects, far truer, than that of learned economists and political pundits. It is an intimate, human picture of a land filled with paradoxes and beset by problems that yield no easy solutions. It is a picture of a quest for learning and sharing, not on a soapbox or in the press, but in the hearts and minds of the common people.

Now, in 2012, on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps and fifty years after their decision to join the Peace Corps, Rhoda Brooks has created a new Foreward and Afterword, to highlight the intervening years during which she and her husband adopted two Ecuadorian youngsters, ages 2 and 4, and brought them home to Minnesota. She tells of the growing up years of Carmen and Koki (Ricardo) in a suburban community west of Minneapolis, the birth of their biological son and the adoption of a mixed race daughter three years later. Brooks explores the challenges and opportunities presented in the raising of their bi-racial family, the pain and sorrow of the untimely deaths of her husband Earle and their daughter, Josie, as well as the excitement and apprehension generated by the return to Manta for a visit when the children were in their teens. Brooks continues the Afterword with the return to Manta of her five Ecuadorian grandchildren who, then in their teens, went to explore their roots and meet their own biological grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She concludes the final part of her story with an update into the lives of her seven grandchildren and the arrival of new great grandson, Brooks.

“It’s good to be ambitious. Only remember, the nearer you get to the front of the line, the more people with knives can see your back.”

That’s Louie Riller giving advice to his son, Ben, who happens to be the most successful producer on Broadway. Louie Riller himself happens to be long dead.

“Joan of Arc heard voices,” Ben Riller’s secretary tells him. “Why shouldn’t you?” But Ben isn’t just hearing voices; he’s having a running argument with the late Louie about life, love, and Ben’s newest production, The Best Revenge, a play that has already gobbled up too much of other people’s money and is in danger of closing before it opens.

When, on Louie’s advice, Ben visits his father’s master shylock, Aldo Manucci, we are suddenly involved with two generations of wonderful underworld characters. One of them pulls the trapdoor under Ben’s feet, forcing him to choose between his moral and financial ruin.

In turn hilarious, poignant, and profound, The Best Revenge takes us on a vastly entertaining excursion behind the scenes of the Great White Way, where the drama is often more suspenseful than anything that happens onstage and where the best revenge is, of course, success.

In The Best Revenge, the author of the million-copy seller The Magician, out-triumphs all his previous work. Saul Bellow has said of The Best Revenge, “It reads itself.” And The New York Times affirms, “If you bury yourself in a Sol Stein novel while walking, you’ll walk into a wall.”

Miss Kate Thacker is bright, beautiful, and working in a London office to help support her young brother. When her holiday bonus comes in the form of a giant turkey, Miss Kate needs to figure out how to sell a bird—and it sets in motion a drama, and a romance. Originally published in the Signet collection A Victorian Christmas, this quick holiday romp by a masterful romance author delivers all the joys of the season.

Men with dreams of gold flocked to the strikes in Idaho Territory in the early 1860s. Some were lucky, but only a few people managed to hang onto their fortunes. The Plummer Gang jumped claims, robbed miners, and murdered anyone who got in their way. Until Pokerface Bob Bainbridge showed up, seeking the man who’d ruined his sister–and out for personal revenge.

From the saloons of Oro Fino to the tent cites of the Boise Basin, Bob follows the iniquitous gang, determined to bring law and order to the Territory and to save the woman he has grown to love from a fate far worse than death — at the hands of Plummer himself. Only incredible courage and steely determination will win the day.

The Bitterroot Trail was originally published in 1935, both in the United States and in England. It is a classic Western novel, but it is also an exciting romance and one heck of a remarkable historical novel.

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.

The year is 2325, three hundred years after the Great Catastrophe, which wiped out most of Krinton. It’s now a world ruled by the legendary emperor, Treanthor, where technology is limited, education is discouraged and children become adults on their thirteenth birthday.

Marcus MacMillan embarks on an uncertain quest with his best friend, Rindel, driven by the pursuit of a crazy vision concerning PathOne – the route that is detailed in The Book Beyond Time, a mysterious ancient volume.

Ever since a new Era of Pleasure was announced in Krinton, gadgets, games and grench ports have been on the rise – made possible by the power of xanth crystals. The common Wryxl tribes are a happy people, and stuff like the feel-good sekrin is easily available. Why should Marcus tackle all kinds of challenges and danger, when everyone else is getting on and enjoying life?

So many voices and choices are demanding his attention. What will Marcus choose?

The Book Beyond Time is a fantasy adventure for a new generation of pre-teens as they prepare to navigate the tricky pitfalls ahead and explore issues of faith.

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.

Derek relishes being the bully of his Catholic school, and when Julian arrives with his purple hair, he seems like an easy target. When Julian starts asserting that God might actually be a woman, Derek is immediately enraged and becomes determined to get Julian to recant his thought, no matter the price. It soon becomes apparent that perhaps Julian has some strength Derek isn’t quite prepared for, and that the boy with the purple hair knows something more than he’s telling. A short story.

When a young man mysteriously shows up in the stables of Lord Robley and demonstrates an amazing ability to braid horse manes and tails, the Lord and Lady are quite taken with his abilities and have him stay on. Sure, he doesn’t speak a single word and there’s truly something odd about him, but his talents at braiding are second to none. When the Lady finds herself in need of the man’s skills for her own head of hair, the situation is looked upon as a bit scandalous, but nobody is prepared for the outcome that befalls them as a result. A short story.

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.

In this sentimental, didactic fable, Masson imagines how the lone, nonsocial, domesticated animal came to share hearth and home.

Billi, an Asian leopard cat, lives in a mango forest in ancient India. He enjoys his independence, but he feels pangs of loneliness and curiosity about the “two-foots.” He learns their languages – Hindi, Malayam and Sanskrit – and he can “see the appeal of south India’s three major religions.”

Billi embarks on a quest to learn more about humans by discovering what their animals think of them. A water buffalo mourns being underappreciated; a parrot bemoans his cage; a mongoose tells a chilling story about human ingratitude. Billi reminds a cow that it’s worshipped by humans. “Oh, great,” the cow says. “That and five rupees will get you a chapati.”

Nine months of travel and no truly good word for humans leaves Billi undeterred and, back home, he seeks out a young girl he’d often watched. It’s not easy proving his good intentions or trying to be “the only animal to have a mutually satisfying relationship with humans,” but Billi makes it happen in a story that’s heartwarming not only for the passionate cat fan but for all readers.

A novelette from the author of Raising the Peaceable Kingdom.

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 Anderson twins had asked for a pony for Christmas since they were five. At the age of twelve their dream comes true. They get their pony, and are two of the happiest kids on earth!

Their joy is short-lived, however, when their precious pony wanders off into the wilderness. The children’s sadness turns to horror when they try to find their beloved colt, only to become lost themselves, wandering in the mountains with a frigid Montana winter night bearing down on them.

Are the kids savvy enough to survive the December night? Can their parents endure the night, not knowing what’s happened to their children? Will the pony be found, or fall victim to some mountain predator?

The Christmas Pony is a heartwarming story, filled with excitement, danger, and adventure

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…

Tired of war and killing, Earth’s Global Director Alexa Lange has developed a method of creating world peace by altering the population’s brainwave activity. Assisted by her hyper-intelligent and quirky helper Jonas, Alexa is excited that her plan is becoming a reality. That is, until something goes terribly wrong. A sci-fi novella.

Travis Coble didn’t kill and eat his family. At least that’s what a jury decided twenty years ago. But like Lizzie Borden, Travis Coble was branded guilty by an angry public and consigned to a life of suspicious whispers and sidelong stares. Now, Professor Dick Myers wants to clear Travis’s name once and for all. An interview with the reclusive mountain man would not only bring Myers fame—it could save his job.

But Myers will find more than a good story in Coble’s isolated shack in the Smoky Mountains. He will find the truth about what happened twenty years ago…and the true meaning of horror.

A new work of terror from the author of the worldwide bestseller Old Order.

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….

Mosey on over to the campfire, take a load off, and let me tell you about the adventures of J-Bar and me, Fret Maverick.

J-Bar is my dad, a multi-state cowboy action shooting champion.

To the best of my recollection, in nearly forty years, I had shot guns twice in my life.

Returning home from a family vacation, I suddenly felt compelled to take a risk and try something completely new. So, I joined my recently retired father in playing the cowboy action game. Competing under the alias “Fret Maverick,” I was introduced to a slice of Americana I would have never known otherwise. The Cowboy Year is a quirky and beautiful, Midwest-set, father-and-son memoir.

But ultimately, The Cowboy Year is a story about having the courage to tell new stories.

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?

Step into your virtual time machine and set the controls for 1961. Then sit back, put your feet up, and relax as you join nine-year-old Karen Schmidt in her attempts to navigate Crab Hollow Road amidst the overwhelming male majority who beleaguer her at every opportunity. Does Karen have the fortitude to weather toadnappings, midnight escapades, false impersonation, and more? Along the way, relive the people, products, music, sports, and headlines of the early 1960s.

Carolina Costandini is a first generation Italian-American living in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania—just outside of Pittsburgh—in the mid-1920s. As the only daughter in the family, she finds herself in a traditional role of cook and maid—a role she longs to escape. Her brothers attend school and work, but her own education ended at fifth grade.

The Italian neighborhood that she lives in is full of characters with complicated lives inevitably intersecting.

Sara is a middle age woman, a dear friend of the family, who is persecuted by an abusive husband, Luca Vassari.

Angelo Marchetti is the town barber and a widower with a mentally challenged daughter and an aging mother. A good and decent man, he finds himself forced to do battle with evil and risk imprisonment in a justice system that sees Italians as second-class citizens.

The Mano Nero (the local mafia) has a strong hold on the town, threatening its citizens, but it also finds itself at war with the emerging power of the Ku Klux Klan.
Nicoletta Pantuzzo is another neighbor to the Costandini family—a widow shunned by the women of the town because she is a prostitute.

Zia Izzy is Carolina’s aunt who has the Italian gift of being a “witch,” which she hopes to pass on to Carolina. It is a temptation that Carolina entertains at the disapproval of her mother, Lena.

As Carolina struggles to navigate the rough waters of discovering her identity, she is befriended by Sr. Norbert, who acts as a confidant and guide. But ultimately, it is up to Carolina to make a decision that will impact the rest of her life.

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.

Dall is eager to prove himself a worthy prince, but what do you do when your older brothers have already slain every dragon and rescued all the princesses? You heed the advice of an old woman and set off on a quest! When Dall starts finding diamonds along the way, he discovers his quest may have a more unique ending than he had planned. Ages 6-12 and great for parents to read with their children.

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?

Miss Catherine Robins took a position as companion to the Dowager Duchess of Crewe, little suspecting what kind of strait she would find herself in. For the not-so-good Duchess expected her hired companions not to please her, but to please the gentlemen she adored having swarm around her.

By the time the Duchess forced Catherine to come with her to a Paris filled with shocking amours and sinister intrigues, Catherine was painfully aware that her reputation and virtue were both in fearful danger. And when the infinitely attractive and thoroughly notorious Marquis of Bessacarr picked Catherine to be his paid plaything, her risks were compounded. This proper young lady in peril had to fight not only the Marquis’ audacious advances but her own unsettling responses if she hoped to prove that all her love was more precious than all his gold…

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.

The Drunk Logs is a narrative of life within the walls of Stone River, an addiction treatment center found among a picturesque countryside. The serene setting belies the frenzied mindsets of those who, for a short time, call it home.

Matt Hoffman is the newest arrival at Stone River. In a state of denial and with his defenses on high, Matt comes to realize that he has been a longtime member of society’s outcasts, though he never wanted to admit it. Alleviating the pain of his situation, Matt focuses on the darkly comical side of addiction as he is befriended by an odd assortment of patients, resulting in funny, pathetic, and surreal experiences.

Through this last chance at recovery, and indeed life, Matt discovers that in the end, it is the experiences he both learns and shares from the other patients that transform his life.

Silas Dewitt, newly arrived in an Idaho gold camp, saves two Chinese boys from a mob of drunken miners. But one of them turns out to an independent, stubborn, lovely woman who decides her role is to protect him.

Soomey, shaped by poverty and sexual slavery, sees Silas as her means to freedom and independence—until she falls in love with him. Knowing that she is assisting in her own heartbreak, she guards his back as he searches for a cache of gold nuggets.

A vicious killer stalks them both, hating Soomey for her race, Silas for his wealth. Silas faces him in a desperate knife battle, but is too late to save Soomey from painful torture. Scarred in body and soul, Soomey tries to leave him. Can Silas holds her with passion, tenderness, and a promise of eternal love?

Garret Kenning, the Earl of Therneforde, strives daily to conceal the strange secret that had plagued his family for generations. His home, Kenning Old Manor, is dominated by the last remnant of Kenning Castle–the Red Tower. The Tower has the strange capacity to transport people across time, and the constant possibility of peculiar arrivals encroaches on his freedom and his choices. Despite this worry, his life is ordered in comfortable lines with his aunt Lady Margery Kenning as his housekeeper, and his good friend and steward John Debray to support him.

As Therneforde begins to plan his future around marriage to a suitable spinster of his village, the arrival of a traveller from a distant past upsets all his arrangements. He is required, in the following weeks, to reexamine all his beliefs from his opinions of women to his life’s most important choices.

Ysmay of Scarsfield’s medieval world has changed with a single step. That one stride across the threshold of the Red Tower takes her to a new life, a new family and a new future in a world that is eerily familiar yet distressingly alien. New freedoms beckon, and she is reprieved from a difficult destiny. However, the challenges of adjustment may be too great and her hard-won peace is threatened by a suspicious newcomer to the village.

Reconciling the past and the present and confronting the future present huge obstacles to both Ysmay and Garret. As their world, and the people around them change, they will both require courage and tolerance, and their strength may lie in unity.

There once was a king’s reign when England’s fate was forever decided, when the Danes swooped in to conquer, and one splendid ruler stood between savagery and a glorious new dawn. The Edge of Light is the magnificent tale of those faraway times, of that monarch, Alfred the Great, and of the woman he could not help but love…

The beautiful Elswyth, Princess of Mercia, is a woman-child already promised to a lord of the realm. Young Prince Alfred, fifth son of King Ethelwulf of Wessex, never dreamed he would don the crown of Britain, though he was destined to become its greatest king. Two headstrong lovers vow to fight to change the world rather than forfeit their passion—in a grand and glorious saga that explodes with the passions of love and war.

Note: This book is an updated version of the author’s novel Royal Bride.

One of the last acts performed by the post–Waterloo Congress of Vienna is the granting to Jura the status of a free and independent state. To safeguard against domination by its giant neighbor, Austria, Prince Augustus allies himself to Britain by taking an English wife. That wife was supposed to be the eldest granddaughter of Princess Mariana, but when she runs away with someone else, the youngest daughter, Charity, is pressed into service as a substitute.

Charity has always hero-worshipped Gus, who has spent the last ten years leading guerilla fighters against Napoleon’s troops, but she is not prepared for the responsibility of her new position. The novel is about the growing love between Charity and Gus, as together they encounter political intrigues and dangerous plots against Jura and the rule of Prince Augustus.

Inspired by the wonder of his own experiences as a parent, former psychoanalyst and New York Times best-selling author Jeffrey Masson offers a remarkable look at one of the most fulfilling roles in the animal world: fatherhood. In The Evolution of Fatherhood, he examines the extraordinary behavior of outstanding fathers, heroes among animals, including: the male emperor penguin, who incubates the egg of his young through Antarctic blizzards; prairie dog dads, who teach their pups to play; the South American tamarin monkey, who “coaches” his mate through labor and delivery; and the wolf—and why wolves make good fathers, whereas their close relatives, dogs, don’t. With captivating writing and impeccable research, Masson celebrates the unique and often surprising role that males play in the lives of their young.

Masson also looks at nature’s worst fathers: lions, langurs, bears—and humans. He shows that when a father cares for his young, as does the beaver, we immediately look for a biological, and not an emotional, explanation. But Masson demonstrates that for these animals fatherhood is a profound, all-encompassing experience. Compelling and inspirational, The Evolution of Fatherhood is a book that will forever change our perceptions of parenthood and family love.

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.

In The Fifth Station, Matthew, the youngest of three brothers, has died at nineteen, inside a foundry smokestack in Illinois. The surviving brothers take their grief and misfortune to the desert landscape of New Mexico. There, one brother indulges the family failing…alcoholism. The other settles for life on the bum. The two compelling narratives–one by each of the surviving brothers–describe the process of making new lives from the ashes of the old ones.

The kiss was as nothing she’d ever known…the warmth and sweetness of his mouth was so new to her…

Beautiful young Mary Monk was trembling when she surrendered her innocence to dashing Cavalier nobleman Gideon Hawkes to save herself from the destitution the Great Fire of London had assured. Gideon took her on a whim, to satisfy a fleeting desire. Yet what began as a coupling of a jaded man’s lust and a desperate girl’s need soon turned into something far stronger and deeper. Gideon had the power and the purpose to make Mary blossom as a woman, with a woman’s passions and a woman’s fulfillment. And in Mary, Gideon discovered something he had never known, even with the most dazzling ladies and captivating courtesan who frequented the lavish and licentious courts of Europe. For what he had set aflame in Mary and what she returned to him a hundredfold—was love…

Emily Storey has just flipped her entire life: new town, new apartment, new roomie, new job. She has also gone blonde and lost some weight. What Emily hasn’t managed to do is kick other people’s random thoughts out of her head. That’s no easy feat for a psychic, especially one who has spent the last three years training to enhance her abilities, not suppress them.

Emily soon volunteers to feed the homeless one night a week, hoping she can help change other people’s lives, too. But her good intentions are annihilated when Detective Bastian Rossi, a cop who speaks at her orientation meeting, warns them all against giving rides, loaning phones, or offering shelter to the street people they’re feeding. Homelessness, he tells them, is a chronic problem that no single person can solve. All they’re supposed to do is hand out sandwiches.

In spite of all that, Emily’s first night on the street with her assigned partner goes very well until she begins intercepting random thoughts of the people they’re feeding. She quickly learns that some of them aren’t that needy while others have family willing to help out. But it’s the scattered thoughts of a mystery male presence that bother her most– “…blonde passing out sandwiches …thinks she’s saving lives…maybe I’ll do her next…” Is she the “blonde” and if so, what, exactly, is this creep planning to do to her?

Though Emily could easily confide in the dashing homicide detective who has somehow found a place in her heart, she hesitates. Bastian already has his hands full with a local serial killer. She can definitely take care of herself…unless the guy inside her head is actually the evil murderer he’s trying to find.

It’s not that I approve of blackmail, but sometimes survival takes precedence over virtue. Unfortunately, the Earl of Winterdale has not proved to be quite the sort of victim I had envisioned. To be honest, I find that my heart is in far more danger from the handsome earl than he is endangered by my nefarious schemes.

All I ever wanted was a home for my sister and me, but I fear Winterdale is about to exact a price of his own, one I’m not ready to pay. Or am I? Where he is concerned, I’m far too vulnerable.

Damn.

Georgiana (Georgie) Newbury

Francesca Wyndham knew the folly of gambling. She had seen her father, Lord Wyndham, lose the family fortune, forcing her to become a plain chaperone to an empty-headed young Miss.

But now Francesca was taking a gamble even her father would have blanched at. She was falling in love with the irresistible Arden Lyons, a gentleman who was clearly anything but a gentleman when it came to winning what he wanted, whether a hand of cards, a test of strength, or a lady’s favors.

She knew nothing about this man except that she wanted him from the moment she saw him…and though his past was a dark mystery, his motives for choosing her over other seductive or wealthy young beauties were even more mysterious. Still, Francesca dared to pit her innocence against Arden’s expertise—in a game where passion took all….

When the townspeople hire The Ghost Hunter to tell them whether or not a spectre haunts a mansion on the edge of town, they get more than they bargained for. In the end, the town would have been wiser to have read the fine print. A work of short horror from our Spectres line and the author of The Clarent Pin.

Libby has devoted her life to Mia ever since their parents died. Now Mia’s marriage to Rob threatens all Libby’s big plans for little sis, making it very hard to be happy for the couple. So far, Jake, big brother of the groom, has ignored Libby’s pleas for help derailing the wedding train. In fact, he’s actually footing the bill for their siblings’ last-minute Christmas nuptials. And though Jake is good looking, smart, and funny, Libby is determined not to like him.

When a winter whiteout results in a lodging crunch, Jake volunteers to share a room with Libby, who can’t say no without making a scene. It’s only when they’re alone that she learns he has an ulterior motive for choosing this particular Ozark Mountain hotel for the honeymoon. Jake, host of a paranormal television show, hopes they’ll be visited by the ghost supposedly haunting the old building. He’s even focusing his video camera toward the bed he has graciously turned over to Libby. A ghost? Really? This cinches it. The guy is not only self-serving, he’s clearly bonkers.

But sometimes things aren’t what they seem. A wedding that closes one door might open several others. And the guy who comes off as a jerk? Well, he could actually be kind of cool. As for the ghost Libby doesn’t believe in…maybe he’s only dropping by to nudge her in the right direction.

If you ever thought that animals can’t know true love, you never knew the girls. This emotional short story from legendary author Victor J. Banis will appeal to both dog lovers and all fans of Banis’ writings.

There is no doubt in Liz Dolan’s mind where her urge to write came from. Her old man never shut up. He had the Irish gift of the gab which often drove her nuts. Sometimes he was hysterically funny, sometimes deliberately cruel. In hindsight, Liz believes all of the bluster was a cover up for loss, especially that of three infant girls and a son at five years old. Still, her father’s voice haunts her reverie; still she laughs and cries. Collected here are the anecdotes that not only bring either laughter or a tear to the eye, but also help to paint a portrait of perhaps one of the most important and influential people in a young woman’s life: her father.

This is the first in the new Untreed Reads Essay Series, giving a voice to authors for short commentaries on all categories of nonfiction.

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.

Time travel is impossible. It calls into question everything that governess Avice Palsham knows about the natural world and believes about the mystical universe.

Nevertheless, when she and her young orphaned charge, Jacob Milden, experience a profound change in their circumstances in the Red Tower of Kenning Old Manor, time travel is the only explanation. They were somehow undeniably transported from their Victorian world of 1865 to the Regency era, fifty years earlier.

The first person they encounter in their changed world is Kendall Marbury, an unsympathetic and suspicious economist accustomed to dealing in facts and figures, who is staying at his cousin’s Manor. At first he scoffs at the idea of time travel, but Kendall is nothing if not pragmatic. What is, is, and if they must all accept the fact of time travel, then they must.

For Avice, the idea of being transplanted into the world of the Regency, which 1865 calls decadent and immoral, is repugnant. Though her life in Victorian London is less than ideal, she mourns the loss of gaslight, photography, steam travel, telegraphy and lawfulness. She feels she is out of place and she tries everything to return to her own era. Her sense of duty to the little boy in her care is part of her desire to return to 1865. He cannot understand their strange journey, and he cannot make for himself the momentous decision to stay in 1815.

Together Avice and Kendall must come to terms with the transference in time of Avice and her charge, and their growing attraction to each other. If Avice succeeds in engineering a return to 1865, she–and Jacob–will be where they belong. But will they be happy?

Librarian Livvy Swenson lives by her notebook planner, organizing her life to the nth degree. When she decides her biological clock requires that she now get married, Livvy sets about the task with a list of what she requires in a husband. 

But she’s forgotten one requirement–what the Ladies’ Prayer Circle of Ophelia, Texas, calls “zing.” Miss Daisy Hemphill and her friends pray for the right man for Livvy, but their prayers are answered by bartender Tex Braun.

Livvy is attracted to Tex but is positive he can’t possibly meet her intellectual requirements.

Multi-millionaire Tex Braun is in hiding incognito as a roadhouse bartender to escape a high society gold-digger who wants to hook him. Tex doesn’t realize it, but moving in the social circle of the roadhouse opens his eyes to the kind of woman he really wants to spend his life with–one exactly like Livvy Swenson. He’s making progress convincing Livvy that he can be all she needs in a man when his ex-fiancee tracks him down and announces to everyone in the bar — including Livvy–that she’s pregnant.

Tex is caught in the middle of a mess he had never imagined in his wildest dreams. And caught with him is the woman he loves. Winning Livvy back will be one heck of a lot harder than fixin’ drinks behind the bar in his Gucci loafers.

The Ladies Prayer Circle of Ophelia, Texas, has undertaken the task of seeing that Hannah Murphy gets married. But when a bad-boy biker in leather and skin-tight jeans rolls into town, will stubborn Hannah be the first to ruin the Prayer Circle’s long string of successes?

Texas rancher Winnie Davis had a husband and doesn’t want another one. She keeps men at arm’s length with wolf whistles, dragging them to the dance floor, and calling out her appreciation of the “stock.” But her sassy behavior is only a wall to keep men away and protect the secret she has kept from everyone, even her very best friends. Winnie’s great aunt, Miss Daisy Hemphill and the ladies of the Ophelia, Texas, Prayer Circle seek heavenly assistance in finding husbands for the town’s single women. When they take on Winnie’s case, she’s not glad for the attention.

Ophelia’s new doctor, Will Barker, is fascinated by the sexy lady rancher, and intrigued by her brash sassiness. He’s not looking for anything permanent while he establishes himself in his new hometown, but Winnie’s charms are too much to ignore.

To send the Prayer Circle ladies on to another victim, Winnie agrees to Will’s plan for a pretend romance…until it becomes more.

Gentle Reader:

My husband is dead and my four-year-old son is the new Earl of Weston. Perhaps even more catastrophic, however, is the news that my husband named his brother, Stephen, the guardian of Giles and of all the immense Grandville estate.

Five years ago, Stephen was banished to Jamaica and now he is coming home. Once the thought of Stephen coming home to me was all I wanted out of life. But not anymore. I have made my life without him. I have my son, my horses, my home.

There are some things that are unforgivable, as Stephen will find out if he thinks he can take up where he left off with me.

My fondest regards,
Annabelle Grandville

Is a deception ever harmless? Can dishonesty ever be justified? Tansy Evens thinks so, as does milliner Grace Whitton. The scheme they propose will harm no one and will provide them with a basis for introduction to the high society of London. Their deception will afford well-born Grace an opportunity to take her rightful place, if only briefly, and it will supply Tansy with a brief, dazzling season. To Tansy’s brother Rufus, the Baron Evenswood, it offers nothing at all. However, he is convinced to take part against his better judgement. But their plan does not allow for the complications created by new friends, new loves, and old family connections. No deception can take place without harm to someone. And this one may have grave consequences for all.

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?

What is it like to be the richest woman in the kingdom? For Emma Lambert, a wealthy widow who married to save her family from poverty, it means nothing if she can’t have the man she has always loved.

Michael Hayden, fourth son of an earl, has been badly injured in the war. When he returns home, he finds a family tragedy has made him the earl—and he is now a desirable catch on the marriage mart. Can Emma reawaken his heart, or has she lost the one great love of her life forever?

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.

In the lush green valleys of southern France, long before the mists of time, as humankind takes its first defiant steps to tame the earth, one special tribe among the Kindred is ruled by the Priestess Arika. But a feared change is coming, for the distant thunder of hooves brings terrifying whispers of a fierce race of conquerors whose astonishing horsemanship gives them the power of conquest…a power that threatens to enslave Kindred women, murder their men, burn their villages.

It is left to the exiled Ronan, Arika’s handsome young son, to meet this challenge. But first he must reunite with his true love, Nel, whose charisma and magical talents with animals may help him master the wild horse. And as the young lovers and their band of loyal renegades race to stem the invaders’ relentless advance, the grasslands quake with the sound of battle to determine the Kindreds’ destiny. Against the lush backdrop of a vanished primeval world, this spellbinding novel tells the timeless tale of adventure and conflict, rivalry and revenge, love and passion.

Coryn, Earl of Ardeth, has spent an eternity in Hell. Fed up, he gambles with the Devil and wins a second chance: if he can find his heart, his soul, and his hourglass in six months, he can return to life. Then he meets Genie, a disgraced water-girl at the Battle of Waterloo. Now, her only hope is this crazy stranger-and she’s half-terrified of and half-in-love with the eccentric earl. Together they have to find his humanity, her social acceptance, and overcome someone bent on destroying their lives.

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.

Shiloh Nilsen lives at one end of the street. Nathan Conti lives at the other. In all her eighteen years, they’ve never met in the middle. Why? Because he attends a special school for psychics in Wyoming while she goes to their neighborhood public school, Dillon High, right there in Montana.

Nothing changes until Shiloh loses a treasured family heirloom–a ring that dates back centuries. Desperate to find it before her mom figures out it’s missing, Shiloh crashes a birthday party just to meet Nate. If the local newspaper is right, he has psychic gifts. She hopes one of them will help her out of a mess she can only blame on herself.

Nate reluctantly agrees to accompany her to a local ghost town, the last place she wore the ring. With the weather getting worse by the minute, they search everywhere she hiked until the skies open up and they’re forced to take shelter in the ruins. Huddled there, they talk about his psychic abilities, a conversation that opens Shiloh’s mind to what’s really out there.

Unfortunately, Nate’s conclusion about the ring’s location isn’t at all what Shiloh was expecting. Instead of getting closure, she’s faced with a new dilemma. She can either confess everything to her mom, who will be crushed, or she can confront the person who has the ring, a guy who, according to Nate, gives off some very bad vibes.

Edgy. Controversial. Thoughtful. Brilliant.

There are a lot of adjectives that have been used over the decades to describe the writings of Victor J. Banis. From his start in gay fiction, to forays into other genres such as mystery and horror, Banis’ unique voice has brought to life a myriad of characters and creatures, excitement and entertainment, as well as the trials and tribulations of love between both gay and straight couples. Gathered here are stories spanning more than five decades of Banis’ incredible career, including “Broken Record,” his first story to ever be published.

From start to finish, this collection demonstrates why Publisher’s Weekly declared that Victor Banis has “the master’s touch in storytelling.”

“The really top-notch writers are rare birds indeed, but their works merit rereading again and again. Victor Banis is definitely a member of this exclusive club…” author Robert Reginald

Tony Dewitt, his reputation in tatters, is hired to install a newfangled telephone system in Hailey, Idaho. Racial prejudice is rampant, so Tony, who is Chinese, passing as white, conceals his ancestry.

Lulu King is of mixed race and proud of it. Having seen firsthand what misery bigotry can cause, she has devoted her life to the campaigns for women’s suffrage and equal rights for all.

They were childhood friends, but conflicting goals drove them apart. Now fate has brought them to the same small town and the old attraction is difficult to deny.

Sabotage to the telephone system and a wave of Anti-Chinese hysteria threaten Tony’s career and Lulu’s convictions. The consequences of their one night of love shadow their future. How long before their very lives are endangered?

Miss Faith Hamilton was sent from America to England to find a proper husband among the cream of the upper-class crop. But the beautiful Miss Hamilton had her own notion of what she sought; freedom from the wants and whims of any man, and from the enslavement that amorous enticement would surely breed.

For Lord Barnabas Deal, society’s most renowned rake, Faith was a quarry he could not resist. For the elegant and witty Earl of Methley, whose mountain of debts was as towering as his august title, the American heiress was the ideal answer to both his financial and physical needs.

Never was a young lady courted by two such seductive suitors—and never was a young lady so determined not to surrender…

When nineteen-year-old Raquel McKnight’s car is stolen from the mall parking deck on Christmas Eve, she is sure that her family’s jingle bell jinx has struck again. And then she runs into her eighth-grade beau Gabriel McKnight. Although his kisses say he never got over her, she can’t help but wonder if he’s somehow part of the jinx. Has the holiday hex finally come to an end? Or will she add a broken heart to a long list of Christmas calamity?

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.

Nothing says Thanksgiving like food and murder. If you’ve ever thought about knocking off Uncle Seymour when he grabs the last slice of pumpkin pie or you think the turkey might be giving you the evil eye, this is the anthology for you!

Authors Barb Goffman, Stephanie Beck, Laird Long, Beth Mathison, Earl Staggs, Lance Zarimba, Lesley A. Diehl, Jack Bates and Kathleen Gerard bring you servings of your favorite Thanksgiving dishes with a dash of mystery and a hearty helping of humor.

You may still have to deal with the in-laws, but this anthology may make Aunt Esmerelda’s green bean casserole a bit more tolerable to handle.

Just when you thought it was safe to head to the table for Thanksgiving feasting, the Killer Wore Cranberry series is back with a fifth course of pure chaos!

The Killer Wore Cranberry has been acclaimed worldwide for its wicked combination of humor and Thanksgiving-themed mysteries, and this year’s installment is sure to carry on everyone’s new, favorite holiday tradition.

This year’s contributions come from 14 of today’s best and brightest short mystery authors that could be seated at one dinner table: Barbara Metzger, Arthur Carey, Earl Staggs, KM Rockwood, Herschel Cozine, Kelley Lortz, Bobbi A. Chukran, Lesley A. Diehl, Albert Tucher, Maryann Miller, Liz Milliron, Terrance V. Mc Arthur, Betsy Bitner and DG Critchley. And, back by popular demand, Lisa Wagner provides delicious recipes, proving that murder and mystery work best on a full stomach.

So have a seat, pick up your fork and knife (on second thought, maybe not the knife) and get ready to have so many laughs it’s criminal!

The Killer Wore Cranberry anthology is back with an all-new set of flavorful stories, guaranteed to whet your appetite for both your favorite holiday fare and a tasty crime story. In this collection of humorous short mysteries, see what happens when sisters are pushed over the edge, dentists dine with crime bosses, 1950s private detectives deal with dames and sweet potatoes and a family has a bit of a problem with their future son-in-law. And that’s just the tip of the turkey leg!

Join us at our table for ten great stories from returning Cranberry authors Big Jim Williams, Lesley A. Diehl, Earl Staggs, Barbara Metzger, Steve Shrott, Laird Long and Barb Goffman. We’ve brought along some new friends too: Sandra Murphy, Rob Chirico and Debra H. Goldstein. And, again this year, Lisa Wagner presents three recipes in-between the stories that are sure to have your guests killing for seconds!

At the head of our table is J. Alan Hartman, the Editor-in-Chief of Untreed Reads Publishing who has curated all four installments of The Killer Wore Cranberry plus the anthologies Year’s End, The Untreed Detectives and Moon Shot.

So, turn off that football game. Tell Grandma you just don’t have time for green bean casserole or gelatin mold. Let Uncle Bernie sleep off the tryptophan in the recliner. Then, find yourself a comfortable spot away from the carving knives and get ready to laugh, solve crimes and experience our fourth meal of pure mayhem!

It’s the Thanksgiving mystery anthology everyone’s been dying for!

In 2010, The Killer Wore Cranberry showed how funny murder and food could be. Now, in 2012, Untreed Reads presents a new installment of the worldwide, bestselling anthology with a table full of seasoned authors and new voices alike.

Join all of these fantastic authors as they make your holidays murderous and fill you with laughter: Arthur C. Carey, John Weagly, Earl Staggs, Amanda Lundberg, Betsy Bitner, S. Furlong-Bolliger, Steve Shrott, Andrew MacRae, Zoe Burke, Arlen Blumhagen, Lesley A. Diehl, Gail Farrelly, Herschel Cozine, Linda S. Reilly, Stephen D. Rogers, Barb Goffman and Laura Hartman.

So make some room for that extra portion of turkey, scarf down another slice of pumpkin pie and make room in the basement for all the dead bodies in this hilarious short story anthology that’s destined to become a holiday classic.

Everyone’s favorite Thanksgiving-themed mystery anthology is back for a sixth outing, celebrating not just the best in murder-most-fowl short stories (not a turkey among them) but also ten years of Untreed Reads Publishing!

In addition to enjoying the holiday magic that is bumping off family members we don’t like, this year’s Killer also honors the dedication to the writing world by the late TKWC contributor Earl Staggs.

Serving up a sixth season of stories are the following dinner guests: Bobbi A. Chukran, Bert Paul, C.C. Guthrie, Catina Williams, Herschel Cozine, J.B. Toner, Joseph S. Walker, Kari Wainwright, Lesley A. Diehl, Steve Liskow, Steve Shrott, and Trey Dowell. Lisa Wagner returns with all-new recipes, helping you to fill your stomach and tickle your funny bone at the same time.

So have a seat, grab a plate of food (we wouldn’t try the stuffing if we were you) and get ready to laugh until you’re cranberry in the face!

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….

The daughter of the High King has a regal name, but she is small and plain, so everyone just calls her Wren. As a mere girl, she is not her father’s heir; her cousin Korbye is. But Wren’s infallible sooth-sense tells her that Korbyn would make no good king. Nor is sooth-sense her only fate. Wren is the Kingmaker. When an ancient and dangerous ring of power finds its way to her, how should she use it?

Alyssha promised her father she wouldn’t return to Bandor, and for six years she has kept that promise. But the hit-and-run victim she found dying on a Granville street was a man she met in that other world, and his family won’t know what happened to him unless she goes back to tell them. She really has no choice, has she?

And the other dead man, the body lying in a willow grove near the road to Bandor Gan… Finding him there was just a terrible coincidence, wasn’t it?

Alyssha fervently hopes so. Yes, six years ago Bandor had troubles – cruel and repressive laws, workers exploited in the city’s woolen mills and the northern mines. Growing pains of the budding industrial revolution. Some people were angry, ready to fight. But these problems seem smaller and easier to solve, somehow, than the problems she’s left behind. Bandor is cleaner, kinder, more peaceful, more right, than the frantic world she inherited in 21st Century America.
Anyway, the problems aren’t hers to solve. There’s so much country here that these troubles don’t touch. She’ll go to the nomadic village where her friends are, where she was happy all those years ago.  She’ll study with the old kura, learning to be a teacher, a healer. Her life will mean more, here among these cheerful, pleasant people, than it would mean in Granville. She’ll find her home here, and she’ll be content.

And, as in a fairy tale, there’ll be a happy ending. She and Kardl loved each other back then, when they were children. Now they’re grown up, and the daydreams that sustained her in Granville will come true at last. Kardl will be here, waiting for her, as she’s waited all these years for him…

Won’t he?

In a future world of deadly solar flares and cloned dinosaurs, an investigative journalist sets out to uncover the truth about an urban myth: the Laundress of Silver Lake. As he wanders the banks of the lake he discovers some mysteries are better left unsolved.

A short story from our Orbits sci-fi/fantasy line.

Lawyer H.L. Snodgrass has it all: a successful practice, a devoted wife and a passionate boyfriend. When he decides to sell off a family heirloom, his cozy life takes a drastic turn for the worst. Now, he and the ghost of his great-great-great grandfather have to get it back before a Gypsy curse destroys everything. Add in a furry junk dealer, a leaky waterbed and a nun in jail, and Snodgrass is in more trouble than Dickens ever dreamed up for Scrooge!

Set in Pittsburgh in the early 1900s, The Leap Year Boy is the story of a working class family and an extraordinary boy named Alex Miller, born in the family’s home on February 29, 1908. What makes Alex so remarkable is that even though he’s full-term at birth, he weighs just two pounds one ounce, and is nine inches long.

Despite his size, Alex is perfectly healthy. However, his body grows at one-fourth the rate of a normal child—so that after one year, he’s the size of a three-month-old—but his mind grows much quicker. Eventually, so do certain parts of his body and his ability to do various and unusual things with them. As Alex’s special abilities become apparent, those around him see him as both a miracle child and a freak of nature—a freak to exploit.

How Alex saves himself from the designs of others—his religious fanatic grandmother, who sees him as the new Messiah; his money-grubbing immigrant doctor, who wants to put him on display; his unstable nanny, who believes Alex is her lost child; and his father and father’s mistress, who are eager to tap Alex’s commercial potential—is at the heart of the novel. Ultimately, a family that has been fractured by ambition and circumstance rediscovers loyalty and love, thanks to Alex’s courage.

Previously published individually, these four great novellas are collected in one book for the first time!

“The Legacy”—Valerian Blackwood is summoned to his aged uncle’s country estate to help the old man settle a problem with his heir. What Valerian finds is a mystery—and the love of his life. He only has to decide which is more important to him: solving the mystery or winning his lady.

“Buried Treasure”—What is Hannah Jenkins to make of the wildly attractive silver-tongued man villagers bring to her family’s house after he is found injured on the shore near her seacoast home? He says he was the victim of pirates. But who is the pirate, and who is the prey?

“Something Blue”—June Heywood’s coming wedding day is clouded by a vicious remark she overhears, causing her to wonder why the handsome and clever Lawrence, Lord Morrow, ever asked for her hand. Who should she believe? Gossip or her heart?

“A Marriage of True Minds”—The bride’s sister and the groom’s brother, alike in temper, lock horns—all the while missing what their relatives can so plainly see.

Ethan is a Doughboy wounded in the battle for Belleau Wood. Davy is a reviled British conscientious objector serving in a military hospital. Two young men drawn to each other in the midst of the horrors of the Great War. Neither has a family, for the soldier’s has all died and the CO’s has cast him off in disgust for refusing to take up arms.

The bond of love that grows between Ethan and Davy takes them to Ethan’s beautiful Appalachian hills, where they build a home and make a life. It is there they find that their love is strong enough to conquer everything, even time and death.

A new short story from our Candlelight literary romance line, from the author of the bestsellers Song on the Sand, The Lawyer, The Ghost and The Cursed Chair, Burma Girland Mr. Newby’s Revenge.

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.

In all his wanderings, Buffalo Lachlan has only once before seen eyes winter-sky blue like Siri Trogen’s. He promised a dying man he’d find a lost twin, and he’s been following nebulous clues and vague rumors halfway around the world ever since. His search leads him to Astoria, Oregon, the cold, rainy winter of 1873.

Could Siri be the lost sister, heiress to a barony? Before Buff can find proof, he becomes caught up in her hunt for her stolen children. Inexplicable accidents and unexplained disasters complicate their efforts. Is someone trying to prevent Siri from finding her children, or him from finding the missing heiress?

Shared danger drives them into each other’s arms. Shared adventure teaches them that they each have a streak of recklessness, a core of courage, and a heart full of love to share. But before they can make any decisions about the future, they have to find Siri’s children, prove she’s the lost baroness…and stay alive.

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.

When Daniel Dereham makes his first appearance in London, it doesn’t take long for English aristocratic tongues to wag with curiosity. Who is this rich, gorgeous mystery man?

Lady Anne Sexton needs a wealthy husband to hold onto the Grex estate and restore it to its former glory. If marrying Dereham allows her to stay in her home, then she’ll do what she needs to do.

Is it a business arrangement…or potentially the start of something more?

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.

THE EXQUISITE PRETENDER

In dress, manner, and speech, Miss Elizabeth DeLisle seemed every inch a leisured lady. No one could guess she had been forced to take a position in trade—or that she had come to the Earl of Auden’s estate to entice him into naming her dismayingly disagreeable cousin Anthony heir to a fortune that she then could share.

But Elizabeth had stiff competition for the Earl’s imperious favor…from the schemingly seductive Lady Isabel Courtney and her odious little boy, Owen…from the implacably upright Richard Courtney and his unfortunate honesty…and from the memory of the Earl’s first wife, who had made him despise women who deceived.

Elizabeth knew she could never reveal the truth to the Earl—even when she forgot about gaining his fortune and began losing her heart….

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.

In this first outing of a new short story series by Staff Sergeant Robert Evans, Sergeant O’Quinn finds himself battling in an underground mixed martial arts fight in Iraq. Is the fight really just two men battling, or is it a setup for something far more dangerous for the American soldiers involved?

Things go awry from the moment Staff Sergeant Mickey O’Quinn arrives in Qatar. SSG O’Quinn, the brawling mixed martial arts fighter from the 4th Infantry Division, finds himself going from rescuing a frightened young American woman to landing in the middle of the toughest and deadliest underground MMA bout of his life. Will O’Quinn win the fight and the girl? Or has he finally taken on too much?

This is the second in THE O’QUINN FIGHTS series.

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.

October 1912

Deputy Matt Hargreaves is assigned to serve a warrant miles from home, but a simple mission soon goes tragically wrong, and a father and child lay dead. Consumed with guilt, Hargreaves flees from the carnage and begins a downward spiral leading to gut-wrenching hallucinations and a strange passage through an alternate reality.

At the same time, Jody Simms is transporting a prisoner. As they pass through an abandoned mining site with a grim history, Simms spills a sick fantasy to his prisoner before realizing his now-revealed secret could destroy him. There’s only one answer to his dilemma: a loaded pistol in a box under the seat.

Not far away, a train is crossing the badlands. Among the passengers is Rachel Adler, a stubborn young woman who has spent her childhood in an insane asylum. Now, she has fled Montreal high society and is determined to see the Old West. Her precognitive mother has warned Rachel that a demonic force awaits her in the wilderness, and Rachel’s rail journey will soon lead her to a devil of a man with a plan of his own.

So begins The Phantom of Witch’s Tree, a novel that shatters all the shoot-’em-up conventions of the traditional western as it shifts seamlessly between dark fantasy, horror and the supernatural, unleashing a wild ride through an Old West never before experienced.

Kat Tremaine is cursed. After crushing a phoenix egg on expedition to Egypt, she now goes up in flames each equinox and solstice, only to rise from the ashes in a new body. This limits her relationships to one-night stands since no guy could ever explain her if the two of them accidentally fell in love.

Along comes Jase Cooper, a doctor with the schedule from Hades. Their chemistry is undeniable, but she keeps her secret. As the seasons–and her appearance–change, she is drawn to him again and again even though she knows better. Is it love? For her, yes. As for Jase…how can it be, when he thinks he’s with a different woman every time?

What she doesn’t know is that Jase is special, too. And his connection to Mount Olympus just might help them end the curse.

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.

Isabel Besson’s father owns a French Equestrian Circus in which she grew up, touring throughout France and performing with her brilliant horse, Alonzo. In the audience at a performance in London is Leo Sommers, Earl of Camden, who is stunned when he sees in Isabel the replica of his famous great-grandmother, whose portrait hangs in his drawing room.

This is no coincidence, as it soon comes to light that Isabel had been kidnapped as an infant and adopted by “Papa” and his wife when an English woman attempted to sell them the baby.

Isabel isn’t interested in meeting her natural family, but when she learns that her birth father, the Earl of Mansfield, has left her a great deal of money, Isabel sees a means for her Papa to retire from circus life, and she heads for a summer at Camden Hall to prove her right to the inheritance.

Camden Hall is one of England’s Great Houses, and everything about it feels alien to Isabel. She misses her Papa, the circus, France…everything from the life she knows. She does not like her new relatives: Lady Augusta, Leo’s elderly aunt who is always correcting her; Leo’s cousin Roger, who calls her “circus girl” and undresses her with his eyes; her own brother Henry, Earl of Mansfield, who doesn’t want to surrender their father’s money to her.

There is one person at Camden Hall who Isabel comes to love…the Earl of Camden—and Leo feels the same about her.

Which will win out…love, or money?

Even in the Regency, marketing plans were useful, especially when parents were seeking to marry a daughter advantageously. Lord and Lady Curran expect their daughter’s portrait to convince potential suitors of her beauty, her worth and her desirability. Of course, it must also show her as a perfect, obedient, demure lady.

Kermit Sutherland is a popular portraitist, so of course he is engaged to produce the portrait. What Chastity’s parents don’t understand is that Sutherland paints more than the surface. He has a knack for seeing into a woman’s heart and soul.

Under her obedient façade, Chastity harbors a rebellious heart, and Sutherland sees it and encourages it. When her portrait is finished, it might show more than her parents–or she–have bargained for.

Lady Susan and Lord James Haythe, twin siblings of the Earl of Cheriton, have always been unpredictable. Intelligent, attractive and easily bored, they find their privileged life in the heart of the beau mode unfulfilling. For three years they have supplemented their unsatisfactory daily round of balls, plays and conventional entertainments with mischief, trickery and decidedly unconventional activities.

When they announce in the summer of 1820 that they wish to undertake a journey of exploration by coach around the northern counties of England, their family waves them off with relief. Surely such a trip will satisfy the twins’ need for novelty, and offer no opportunity for disorder.

The novelty of concealing their aristocratic heritage with plain clothes and simple living soon wears off. But Susan and James discover by chance a failing theatre near Sheffield, and set about ‘saving’ it.

What begins as a lark soon becomes very serious as Susan and James recognize they are playing with people’s lives and futures. They offer hard work and good ideas but also trickery, and they realize the partners in the theatre, care-worn Badgworthy and the enigmatic Redwick deserve better. Redwick, who harbours his own secrets, finds Susan irresistible. And he is determined to discover the twins’ identity.

The twins’ futures are threatened by the difficulty of unraveling their lies. If society learns of their performances on the stage, they will be plunged into disgrace. When exposure of their masquerade looms, the possibility of scandal turns their adventure into a discreditable exploit.

The girl named Saffron knows family and clan the way she knows earth and sky, as absolutes. Of course, after a separation of four years, she looks forward to seeing her grandmother again, and makes a gift for her, a clay spindle. When Grandmother does not know who she is or what her gift is for, Saffron’s world is shattered. What good is a circle of clay now? How can anything ever make sense again?

Gentle Reader:

At the time it seemed like a good idea. Reeve and I had been friends since childhood, so when he needed to persuade his trustee to turn over his inheritance, we decided to pretend to get engaged. Reeve was the Earl of Cambridge, after all. It wasn’t fair for him not to have his money.

Who would have thought that Lord Bradford would insist we actually marry before he handed over the dibs? Who would have thought that my feelings for Reeve would change so radically, that I would want him as a lover as well as a friend? And who would have thought that someone would be trying to kill me before I even made it to the altar?

—- Deborah Woodly

Though Maggie Redmond expects to get a wannabe jack o’ lantern when she drives her twin brothers to The Pumpkin Patch, she actually winds up with more. Brendon Fletcher, handsome grandson of the owner, can’t take his eyes off her. Naturally she’s thrilled when he calls her later, asking if he can tag along while she takes the boys trick or treating. Can this be true love? Maybe…but only if they survive the plans a nefarious black cat has for them.