Trouble in Paradise


L.T. Vargus - 2021
    And an old flame to complicate the trip.Check out this beach-y Violet Darger short featuring Darger, Loshak, Owen, and Spinks.When 17-year-old Micaela Tolliver goes missing during her beach vacation, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Curacao to investigate. The case vexes local law enforcement, with plenty of suspicious characters around and comparisons to Natalee Holloway aplenty.Red herrings. False starts. People who will go great lengths to protect the island's long held secrets.Further complications emerge due to someone else entangled in the case -- Darger's old friend and former lover, private investigator Owen Baxter. They're working together for the first time after a bad breakup. The tension is palpable, and Darger begins to question the knot of conflicts in her own heart.Corruption. Death. Sand. Romance.Once again, Violet Darger shines her light into the shadows. And what she finds there in the darkness will change her.

Floodgate


Johnny Shaw - 2016
    After discovering explosive information that reveals corruption within the highest levels of the police department, Andy is kicked off the force, framed, and disgraced, left to wage a lonely one-man crusade against conspiracies he can’t prove.Andy’s investigation plunges him into a blackly comic maelstrom of one-armed gang members, slick pickpockets, criminal syndicates, hired mercenaries, escaped convicts, sewer dwellers, and one sinister ice cream truck. At the same time, he must contend with a mystery closer to home: the true identity of his parents, his most unshakeable obsession. Understanding their past may be the key to Auction City’s future as it teeters on the brink of chaos.If Andy can’t solve this case, the Floodgate will fail…and his city will burn.

Touch (Book One): A Zombie Sci-Fi Thriller


Steven Jenkins - 2021
    

Devil in the Hole


Charles Salzberg - 2013
    In an upstairs bedroom: an elderly woman and the family dog, both of them shot as well. The only person missing is the husband, father, son, and prime suspect, John Hartman, who's got a three-week jump on the police. Through the eyes of almost two dozen characters, including the neighbor who reports the crime, Hartman’s mistress, a dogged state investigator, the family minister, and some of the characters Hartman meets on his escape route, we piece together not only what happened and how these shocking murders affect the community, but how John Hartman evades capture, where he’s headed, and maybe even why he committed this gruesome crime in the first place. Based on the notorious John List murders and already compared to works by Norman Mailer and Russell Banks, Devil in the Hole is gripping, literate, and haunting.

Containment


Nick Thacker - 2020
    In the awful aftermath, he hung up his detective’s badge for good. Now ex-military, ex-police, he has embraced a simple civilian life. But when a deadly new disease begins to threaten American lives, Jake is dragged out of his self-imposed retirement.When a young family at a remote detention center die from a mysterious illness, Jake is contacted by a government official to launch a covert investigation. An unknown disease has entered the system, causing agonizing death and visible signs of blood pooling beneath the skin, and it seems to be spreading. If Jake can’t get on the ground quickly to eliminate the threat before it becomes an epidemic, countless more innocent lives could be at risk.With the help of medical professor Eliza Mendoza, Jake heads to the border, but what they uncover there is evidence that this devastating disease is man-made, and part of a calculated plot aimed right at the heart of government. With powerful forces ranged against him, Jake must use all his ingenuity to bring down the ruthless organization behind the attack. Failure is not an option.A pulse-pounding action thriller from a USA Today bestselling author. Fans of David Baldacci, I Am Pilgrim and Jack Ryan will be gripped.

Burn the Rabbit: Rabbit in Red Volume Two


Joe Chianakas - 2016
    He's looking forward to learning the craft, renewing last year's friendships, and above all, to seeing Jaime, and finally asking her to be his girlfriend.But before he even gets to see her, one of their own is violently attacked. JB goes on the hunt, and the students learn about his troubled past, which changes their views of him forever. As their project, they create Rabbit in Red's most terrifying and disturbing challenge yet, Hellfire, and use it to recruit a new class of horror students.Then the bodies start piling up, and the mysteries become more and more dangerous. Is this another one of JB's dark games-within-a-game, or will Rabbit in Red--and everyone in it--burn in the end

A Season to Kill


Michael Mucci - 2017
    With the small town of Macon, Pennsylvania now in a panic, will DeAngelo uncover the clues in time to prevent another murder? Or will his attempt to stop the killer make him the next victim?

Take Warning


E.M. Smith - 2019
     FBI profiler Victor Loshak works a brutal murder case in Watertown, New York -- a woman found strangled in her basement, her face gone purple and baggy. But as he sifts through the crime scene details, his mind keeps drifting back to Kansas City, his last job. The human trafficking case there ended in something of a cliffhanger, and it's a loose end that everyone else in law enforcement seems in no hurry to tie up. The truth is out there. Always just out of reach. Loshak finds himself changed by the events that transpired in Missouri. His worldview shifted. His priorities shuffled. He reaches out to the people close to him, hoping to make major changes in his personal life. But they are watching. When Loshak pursues leads relating to Kansas City, however, the warnings start. They are watching him. Seem to know everything about him. If he keeps working the human trafficking case, everything -- and everyone -- he cares about will be in jeopardy. Justice bears a heavy cost. How high of a price will you pay? The shape of a man's life is largely defined by what passions he pursues, Loshak decides. Now he will choose what that means for him. While the Victor Loshak novels can be read in any order, we recommend reading this short after having read the earlier books in the series. Here is the full list of Loshak books in chronological order: Beyond Good & Evil (Victor Loshak Book 1) The Good Life Crisis (Victor Loshak Book 1.5) What Lies Beneath (Victor Loshak Book 2) Take Warning (Victor Loshak Book 2.5)

South of Good (Hardin Steel #1)


Randall Reneau - 2014
    Twice divorced, with a bit of a drinking problem, he’s now dating Rory Roughton, a fiery sixth-generation Texan who’s as rich as she is beautiful—and hell-bent on keeping Steel on the straight and narrow. But then his best friend, Wes Stoddard, is nearly shot down flying in a load of pot, Rory is kidnapped by a Russian mercenary working for the most dangerous cartel in Mexico, and the Cuban Mafia decides they’d like the former DEA agent—dead. Steel is forced to take unsanctioned, unconventional—and mostly illegal—action in order to save himself and those closest to him . . .

Falling Suns


J.A. Corrigan - 2016
    Then his body is discovered. Her cousin Michael is found guilty of his murder and incarcerated in a secure psychiatric unit.Four years later, now divorced and back in the police force, Rachel discovers that Michael is being released to a less secure step-down unit, with his freedom a likely eventuality. Unable to cope with this, she decides upon revenge, assuming a new identity to hunt him down and kill him. However, as she closes in on her target, her friend Jonathan, a journalist, uncovers some unnerving information about her mother and others in her family and begins to suspect that Rachel’s perception of the truth might not be as accurate as she thinks – that she might be about to murder the wrong man…

Kill Joy


Holly Jackson - 2021
    Especially one that involves 1920’s fancy dress and pretending that their town, Little Kilton, is an island called Joy. But when the game begins, Pip finds herself drawn into the make-believe world of intrigue, deception and murder.But as Pip plays detective, teasing out the identity of the killer clue-by-clue, the murder of the fictional Reginald Remy isn’t the only case on her mind …Find out where it all began for Pip in this prequel to the best-selling A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and Good Girl, Bad Blood.

The Moose Jaw - (Book, #2)


Mike Delany - 2013
    2nd in the Fergus O'Neill Series

Mossy Creek: A Maggie Mercer Mystery Book 1


Jill S. Behe - 2015
    We're small and easy-going with a lot of community pride and camaraderie. What we don't have a lot of is crime. A close-knit laid-back little borough, so close to the southern border of Pennsylvania we're almost in West Virginia. Townsfolk like to say: "We're south enough to lend credence to our slight drawl, but sufficiently north of the Mason-Dixon to be 'damn Yankees'." None of us were prepared for murder ... especially involving a teenager.

After the Execution


James Raven - 2012
    He's lost everything - his wife, his dreams, his future. He finally enters the death chamber at the famous 'Walls' prison in Texas. He's strapped to a gurney and given an injection of lethal drugs in front of witnesses. Minutes later he's pronounced dead. But that's not the end of it. After the execution comes the shocking revelation - Jordan is still alive. And to stop him talking he has to die all over again - before he brings down the entire American justice system.

The Adams File


Diana Xarissa - 2021