He’s looking forward to a well-deserved vacation. His plan includes nothing more than a little fishing, a bit of fooling around, and a whole lot of hammock time. Little does he know that this small, cute, skateboarding time bomb will lead him into a mystery with a tangled web of secrets and lies involving small-time hoods, powerful gangsters, corrupt politicians, paranoid hippies, and most dangerously, his long-time nemesis, a twisted casino operator at the heart of the city’s criminal trade. As Max races to untangle the convoluted case and find the little girl’s sister, the mayhem and dead bodies pile up. Finally, he realizes that the only way to get the whole truth involves risking his own life. But for Max Plank, this is just the price of admission to the game he’s decided to play. Stray Cat Blues is the first Max Plank mystery. Coming soon the next two adventures: The Ties That Bind and Devil’s Arcade.

    This is a man who has lied all his life.Roy is a conman living in a small English town, about to pull off his final con. He is going to meet and woo a beautiful woman and slip away with her life savings. But who is the man behind the con? What has he had to do to survive a life of lies? And who has had to pay the price?When Roy meets a wealthy widow online, he can hardly believe his luck. Just like Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley, Roy is a man who lives to deceive—and everything about Betty suggests she’s an easy mark. He’s confident that his scheme to swindle her will be a success. After all, he’s done this before.Sure enough, Betty soon lets Roy move into her beautiful home, seemingly blind to the web of lies he’s woven around her. But who is Roy, really? Spanning almost a century, this stunning and suspenseful feat of storytelling interweaves the present with the past. As the clock turns back and the years fall away, long-hidden secrets are forced into the light. Some things can never be forgotten. Or forgiven.

    This subterranean labyrinth inhales three million bustling commuters every day. And every day, it breathes them all out again... except for one. Software millionaire Joe Tesla is set to ring the bell on Wall Street the morning his company goes public. On what should be the brightest day in his life, he is instead struck with severe agoraphobia. The sudden dread of the outside is so debilitating, he can't leave his hotel at Grand Central Terminal, except to go underground. Bad luck for Joe, because in the tunnels lurk corpses and murderers, an underground Victorian mansion and a mysterious bricked-up 1940s presidential train car. Joe and his service dog, Edison, find themselves pursued by villains and police alike, their only salvation now is to unearth the mystery that started it all, a deadly, contagious madness on the brink of escaping The World Beneath.

    Twelve years later, her brilliant twin sister, Jenna, is still searching for her, and ends up on the radar of the CIA. When evidence that her sister may still be alive in North Korea comes to light, Jenna will do anything possible to rescue her--including undertaking a daring mission into the heart of the regime. Her story is masterfully braided together with two other narrative threads. In one, a North Korean peasant woman finds a forbidden international aid balloon and uses the valuables inside to launch a dangerously lucrative black-market business. In the other, a high-ranking North Korean official discovers, to his horror, that he may be descended from a traitor, a fact that could mean his death if it is revealed. As the novel progresses, these narrative strands converge and connect in surprising ways, ultimately building to an explosive and unforgettable climax.

    Bright and brilliant, they are destined for great things, and the youngest of the group—Aurora Jackson—is delighted to be allowed to tag along. The evening starts like any other—they drink, they dance, they fight, they kiss. Some of them slip off into the woods in pairs, others are left jealous and heartbroken. But by morning, Aurora has disappeared. Her friends claim that she was safe the last time they saw her, right before she went to sleep. An exhaustive investigation is launched, but no trace of the teenager is ever found.Thirty years later, Aurora’s body is unearthed in a hideaway that only the six friends knew about, and Jonah Sheens is put in charge of solving the long-cold case. Back in 1983, as a young cop in their small town, he had known the teenagers—including Aurora—personally, even before taking part in the search. Now he’s determined to finally get to the truth of what happened that night. Sheens’s investigation brings the members of the camping party back to the forest, where they will be confronted once again with the events that left one of them dead, and all of them profoundly changed forever.

    Though newspapers have dubbed him ‘the Torso Killer’, this murderer’s work is overshadowed by the hysteria surrounding Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel crimes. The victims are women too, but their dismembered bodies, wrapped in rags and tied up with string, are pulled out of the Thames – and the heads are missing. The murderer likes to keep them.Mayhem is a masterwork of narrative suspense: a supernatural thriller set in a shadowy, gaslit London, where monsters stalk the cobbled streets and hide in plain sight.

    After months of job hunting, Daria, a young engineer, finds a plum position at a foreign firm as a secretary. But every plum has a pit. In this case, it’s Mr. Harmon, who makes it clear that sleeping with him is job one. Daria evades Harmon’s advances by recruiting her neighbour, the slippery Olga, to be his mistress. But soon Olga sets her sights on Daria’s job. Daria begins to moonlight as an interpreter at Soviet Unions(TM), a matchmaking agency that organizes “socials” where lonely American men can meet desperate Odessan women. Her grandmother wants Daria to leave Ukraine for good and pushes her to marry one of the men she meets, but Daria already has feelings for a local. She must choose between her world and America, between Vlad, a sexy, irresponsible mobster, and Tristan, a teacher nearly twice her age. Daria chooses security and America. Only it’s not exactly what she thought it would be… A wry, tender, and darkly funny look at marriage, the desires we don’t acknowledge, and the aftermath of communism, Moonlight in Odessa is a novel about the choices and sacrifices that people make in the pursuit of love and stability.

    Not marriage, not office etiquette, not saving his boss’s daughter, not even public accounting. So when he’s tasked with constructing an alibi for the firm’s biggest client, everyone has low expectations. Including Edwin. In Alibi Aficionado, Edwin Burrows is an accidental investigator, an accountant without tact or a filter, or any kind of interest for investigations. A cross between Myron Bolitar and Archy McNally, Edwin says, does and behaves in the strangest manner. Cursed with an investigation that's doomed from the start, Edwin knows that everyone expects him to fail. But when the police arrest the all-important client, tensions rise at the firm and the stakes get as big as they'll ever be. Edwin must decide whether he will use his knowledge to be the hero that helps a guilty man avoid prosecution, or be a zero by telling the truth and burying the firm.

    A Presidential election. A Constitutional crisis. And a terrorist who may get away scott-free. It could happen again. Perpetrated by anyone, anywhere . . . at a financial cost of next to nothing! A short story -- the secret behind President Christopher Wall's rise to power two years before Loss Of Reason.

    Attempted murder? Inexplicable accident? Either way, a PTA mom struggled for her life in an elementary school cafeteria, poisoned by wolfsbane. Now all eyes are on the accused, the victim, and a woman hired to look deeper.Ambitious defense attorney and single mother Allison Barton is anxious to escape the shadow of the low-down dog of a marquee partner carrying their renowned Virginia law firm. A win for her high-profile new client will give Allison the career she deserves. And PTA president Kira Grant certainly appears innocent—except for the toxic bloom in her backyard and perhaps a bit of a malicious streak. But no one said the innocent had to be likable—or entirely honest. Besides, with an image as carefully cultivated as her garden, Kira would be insane to risk everything on something as outrageous as the attempted murder of one of her closest friends.What about those in Kira’s orbit, a sunny suburb of moms behaving badly? What do they really know about Kira? What does Kira know about them? For Allison, the answers are getting darker every day.

    A rogue operative.A secret war that could destroy them both.Olesya hunts the augmented operatives she was trained to become. But when a clandestine mission takes her from the illegal bio-clinics of Brazil to the icy borderlands of Kaliningrad, she encounters a rogue assassin with a dangerous secret. As operatives and hunters start vanishing, one thing becomes clear…They aren’t the only players in this deadly game.This is the first episode in the new USA Today bestselling series of cyberpunk thrillers by Australian ex-recon soldier Nathan M. Farrugia. Do you like conspiracies and genetically-enhanced operatives? You’ll love this action-packed cross between Jason Bourne and Altered Carbon. Find out why readers are calling it “the most addictive action series” they’ve read.

    She is also a serial killer. She kills neatly, three victims every six months, moving around the UK, hiding in plain sight. Everything goes according to plan until she moves to Bath. Because in Bath the police are hunting a serial killer who kills and tortures his victims. A psychic connection develops between the two killers, Nicola sees him and what he does to his victims in her nightmares.She is starting to lose control and she really can't afford to do that. In an attempt to break the link, to have the other killer caught, Nicola goes to the police with what she knows. But can she help them without exposing herself? A serial killer and a burnt out policeman - can they really work together to stop him? And at what cost?

    Jude claims he's innocent, even as the evidence against him keeps piling up.FBI Special Agent Erica Novac focuses on Jude even as she finds herself wanting to believe in his innocence. Is Jude Rowland a devious murderer playing a game only he knows the rules to, or is there an unseen hand framing Jude in an attempt to seek vengeance?This is Book One in The Revenge Series

    Formerly the Pinkerton Detective Agency’s best gun-hand, investigator, and tracker. No sooner does he arrive at San Francisco’s stockyard than he rescues Mai Lee, a little Chinese girl, from a pair of thugs intent on kidnapping her.Slade finds out that the girl is wanted by Huang Sun, the leader of the dominant tong – a Chinese crime syndicate that runs opium dens, fan-tan parlors, and prostitution in the city. And Slade can’t walk away, even if he wanted to. His first paid job as a free agent is to keep Mai Lee out of Sun’s hands – no matter the cost!Can a gunslinger used to the open plains and prairies of the West deal with the criminal underworld of a crowded metropolis? Even with the help of his friend, sea-captain Amos Harding and the backing of a pair of bawdy-house madams, the odds are long at best!

    After an unspeakable crime shatters her life, she changes her identity and moves to a small town in Illinois, hoping to spare her children from further trauma…or worse. But crime follows her everywhere.When the former mayor winds up dead, Rachel can’t help but get involved. Where local detectives see suicide, she sees murder. They resent her for butting in—especially since she’s always one step ahead. But her investigative genius may be her undoing: the deeper she digs, the harder it is to keep her own secrets buried.Her persistence makes her the target of both the cops and a killer. Meanwhile, the terrifying truth about her past threatens to come to light, and Rachel learns the hard way that she can’t trust anyone. Surrounded by danger, she must keep her steely resolve, protect her family, and stay one step ahead, or else she may become the next victim.