Chip Taylor’s girlfriend Liza had the perfect plan to rip off her rich sugar daddy. It should have been an easy in and out kind of deal. Nobody would get hurt and they would come out of it with enough loot to solve their problems. But things started going wrong as soon as they were inside the rich man’s house, and for Chip it was only the beginning of the longest, most terrifying ride of his life.

    Now, the toughest of tough detectives are resurrected in sonic dramatization.

    His loyalty to his family is what put him behind bars, so it only seems fair that his older brother gets him a job working security for his boss – Oxford Pierce – owner of one of the wealthiest tobacco companies in America. Lexie Pierce has never been swayed by her father’s wealth. If anything, being heir to Oxford Pierce’s tobacco throne has given Lexie a hunger for independence outside of her father’s name and fame. All of her life she’s had one dream… one goal… and the will to achieve it on her own – until her father makes her an offer she can’t refuse. When Aali joins Lexie’s security team, he immediately finds himself enraptured by her. There are just two problems – Lexie is promised to another man, and even if she wasn’t… Oxford has absolutely forbid Aali to even lust after his daughter mentally. Unintentionally, Lexie uses her feminine influence just as Eve did in the garden of Eden. And just like Adam… Aali is forced to choose between obeying Oxford or satisfying his desire for Lexie. Will he take of her forbidden fruit and eat… or will he have the strength to resist a temptation that has never looked so sweet?

    As far as she knows, she’s alonein the world – till a mysterious letter arrives from India.Suddenly, Diya has a chance at being part of a family again.But moving from Boston to India also brings Diya closer tothe place where the horror of the Chakwa – the MasterTrickster – first started. As bodies and tragedies pile uparound her, Diya’s belief in the urban legend of the Chakwaincreases. Will the monster that ruined her parents’ life nowdestroy Diya’s happiness? Or will she manage to defeat it atits own game? With the help of her newly discovered friendsand family, Diya must fight not just the monster from hernightmares, but also make sense of a fast-unravelling web oflies that makes up her life.VINAYA BHAGAT is an IT professional and author. Her shortstories have been published in anthologies and have beenshort-listed in national and international writing competitions.Trickster is her debut novel.Vinaya lives in Bangalore, India with her husband, who isa radiologist and her eight-year-old son. Weekends find herinventing stories and games with her son.

    Fern, married and the mother of three boys takes us into her modern middle-class suburban Long Island world where one day she gets the "Big Idea" to learn the Chinese tile game called mah jongg. Weekly games provide the setting for deep-seeded friendships to form around the mah jongg table. These Monday gatherings become a source of support and strength for Fern as her husband is diagnosed with cancer. Fear, insecurity and potential heart-wrenching loss become challenges she must overcome. The author weaves the themes of destiny, faith, friendship, time and love throughout the story. Fern takes us on her journey around the mah jongg table, eastward to the seaport town of Greenport and through her husband's battle with cancer as she relies on faith, friendship and her personal relationship with God. Read this heartwarming story about the wonderful things that can happen when five women are destined to come together to play an old Chinese game, sitting around a table with 152 tiles, dice and a mah jongg card. Love always; love all ways, for time has no guarantees.

    

    Filled with poignancy and humor, The Eves captures the conversations we wish we had had with our parents, if we had taken the opportunity, and the lessons we would want to impart to our children, if they were ready to listen.Told through the voice of the psychologically complex Jessica Barnet, this is her story. As the primary witness in a messy trial she has been torn from the foundation of her existence—her connection to her children. With a partially finished doctoral degree, and incomplete renovations on her Washington, DC row house, she has let go of her ambitions and her appearance, but not her vodka or her sense of loss and guilt. When Jessica meets five diverse, determined, and sometimes ditzy old women living in a sustainable community everything and everybody changes. Through plot twists and turns that cover three continents, we learn the truth of Jessica’s life and lies just as we fall in love with the vividly drawn characters and the vibrantly described settings.

    Kitty Pangborn has chosen the crime-fighters, becoming secretary to Dexter J. Theroux, one of the hard-drinking, tough-talking PIs who pepper the city's stew. But after Dex takes an assignment from Rita Heppelwaite, the mistress of Harrison Dempsey, one of L.A.'s shadiest—and richest—businessmen, Kitty isn't so sure what side of the law she's on. Rita suspects Dempsey has been stepping out and asks Dex to tail him. It's an easy enough task, but Dex's morning stroll with Johnnie Walker would make it tough for him to trail his own shadow. Kitty insists she go along for the ride, keeping her boss—and hopefully her salary—safe. However, she's about to realize that there's something far more unpleasant than a three-timing husband at the end of this trail, and that there's more at risk than her paycheck. Richly satisfying and stylishly gritty, Death Was the Other Woman gives a brand-new twist to the hard-boiled style, revealing that while veteran PIs like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe spent their time slugging scotch and wooing women, it may well have been the Girl Fridays of the world who really cracked the cases.

    Follow the Crow (Book 1)Ben Dejooli is a Navajo cop who can't escape his past. Six years ago his little sister Ana vanished without a trace. His best friend saw what happened but he refuses to speak of what he knows, and so was banished from the Navajo tribe. That was the day the crows started following Ben. What the crows know will change his life, and the lives of those he loves, forever.Beyond the Veil (Book 2)The bell that holds power over life and death has been lost. The race to find it has begun, and our world hangs in the balance.Caroline and Owen search for the bell across the land of the living. Ben Dejooli, now known as the Walker, searches the land of the dead. Their mission is to protect the bell and keep it secret. Others seek the bell as well, but they have different plans... plans that could disrupt the careful balance between life and death that has stood since the beginning of time.When a young boy finds the bell out in the plains of Texas, he quickly becomes the target of a showdown between the lands of the living and the dead, and those that want to rule over both.The Coyote Way (Book 3)The Walker chases a rogue spirit, something dark and chaotic that broke through into the land of the living and took on the form of a coyote.Caroline and Owen have been on the move for years trying to find a place to call home. Caroline remains torn--her heart split in two. Half of her loves Owen, the other half still loves Ben. Grant travels with them, but he struggles with the weight of his position as Keeper and wants to carve his own path. Everywhere they go they find a strange malice and unease waiting for them. The coyote's handiwork.They don't know it yet, but all of them are travelling in the same direction. Back to Chaco Navajo Reservation . . . which is exactly what the coyote wants.

     Julia turns from murder suspect to England’s first crime scene photographer… 1895, London Taking risqué photographs is the only way Julia McAllister can retain her independence as a young widow in London. But one by one, her models are dying — and now she is being framed for their murders. The relentless Inspector Collingwood is on the case and Julia knows he’s watching her every move. With young women still dying, and her own life on the line, Julia must unmask the real killer before it is too late… Can Julia clear her name? Will Collingwood believe her? Or will the dark secrets of her past come back to haunt her…? SNAP SHOT is the first book in the Julia McAllister Victorian Mystery series: historical romance murder mysteries with a courageous woman sleuth embarking on a traditional British, private investigation in nineteenth-century London. Praise for Marilyn Todd: ‘wry and entertaining’ - Mystery Scene ‘delectably enjoyable’ - Daily Mail ‘Skilfully tangled plot’ - Booklist ‘never boring’ – Kirkus Reviews ‘thoroughly entertaining’ - The Bookseller JULIA MCALLISTER VICTORIAN MYSTERY SERIES BOOK ONE: Snap Shot BOOK TWO: Cast Iron

    Here, genteel dinner parties hide murderers; sparkling balls harbour dastardly villains; and every light society conversation hints at a darker scandal.The Earl of Calaway and his wife, Adelia, have raised and married off seven daughters. Now free of domestic duties, they are building an enterprise as private detectives of a very personal nature, guaranteeing to keep aristocratic reputations intact.In this short story, which can be read at any point in the series of full-length novels, Adelia and Theodore are invited to the trouble-ridden parish of Peverham where the local vicar is convinced that the death of Sir Phileas Hinge was no accident.After all, so many people wanted him dead. Sir Phileas’s ancestral home of Pever House is now occupied by the bombastic Vice Admiral Frankhaus, and both men hated each other. Then there are the Smiths – the oldest and most established family in the area – who look down on everyone else as being merely shabby new money. All three families – the Hinges, the Frankhauses and the Smiths – are vying for control of the parish, and this comes to a head when the vicar asks for money for a new bell in the church. Each family wants to be the one who contributes the most and to have the bell inscribed with their name for all time.The death of Hinge removes one of the players – but who will be next? Theodore and Adelia race to discover the murderer before death strikes again.This book is written in British English by an actual Brit who used to have to curtsey to the local aristocrat from “the big house” when she visited the village school at Christmas. The spelling and grammar is British English throughout. Splendid!

    Sam Russo, self-named and self-styled, would follow in the hard-boiled footsteps of Sam Spade, if he was hard-boiled. Up to his hocks in the murders of three young jockeys with both local cops and the track turning a blind eye, Sam is a closer. He's coming home if it kills him. Race horses, a gorgeous sassy dame, the Season at Saratoga, what more could a PI want? To become the "owner" of a dog named Jane who is smarter than he is. Sam is Jane's partner. Sam is the human half who gets the jobs that Jane solves.

    When he's asked to act for a young policeman accused of bribery, because he knows something about police corruption in New York City, he isn't too keen. He just can't see the profit - until he meets the man's fiancee. And then Kirk's motives become uncomfortably confused, and he finds himself descending swiftly into a grey world of bookmakers, gangsters, grafters and corrupt politicians, a world where setting up an honest cop is all in a day's work...

    "The English are dying too much," the city's police chief observes. And members of the foreign community in this quaint Italian backwater, both English and American, are indeed dying at an alarming rate and in an extraordinary variety of ingenious and horrible ways.      With the local authorities out of their depth, the distinguished resident Robert Browning launches his own private investigation, aided and abetted by an expatriot Robert Booth. Unfortunately, their amateur sleuthing is hampered by the fact that each of their suspects becomes the next victim in a series of murders orchestrated by a killer with a taste for poetic justice. A Rich Full Death features characters both historical and imaginary, ranging from an enticing servant girl to Mr. Browning's consumptive, world-famous wife, Elizabeth Barrett, in a tale lush with period detail, intricately plotted, and with a truly astonishing final twist.

     Known on stage as ‘Loraine Fontaine’; the public love her, and the critics predict a glittering future as one of Victorian England’s most celebrated actresses. But someone wants her dead. Scared for her safety, she confides her fears to her friend Mary, who happens to be married to Dr. John H. Watson… When both Lillian and Mary become hospitalised, Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes must push themselves to the limit to catch the poisoner before it is too late. They find themselves applying their powers of observation and analysis to the only clues they have: a poisoned pitcher of milk and a bunch of meticulously arranged flowers. In pursuit of the truth, the trail leads them to Lyceum Theatre, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Scotland Yard and even rural Hertfordshire. Who would want to kill Lillian? Could it be her understudy, Lily Harley, who is desperate for a leading role…? Her old director, Harrison Colby, bitter because Lillian left his scandalous play…? Or the elusive Mr. Henshaw, who keeps appearing in the case…? With a list of suspects to choose from, and plenty of possible motives, can Sherlock Holmes solve The Case of the Poisoned Lilly?