The Mystery Box


Eva Pohler - 2011
    Soccer mom Yvette Palmer lives an ordinary life in San Antonio, Texas when a box is delivered to her by mistake, and in taking it to its rightful owner—a crotchety neighbor named Mona who shares her back fence—is drawn into a strange and haunting tale.Mona’s ratty robe, mood swings, and secretive behavior all raise red flags, and Yvette is sure someone else is living there despit Mona’s claim to live alone, but Yvette is unable to break away as she listens to how Mona transformed from a young college woman about to be married to the odd, reclusive, ghost of a woman she is now.As Yvette listens to her neighbor's tale, she discovers a shocking connection, but doesn't know whether Mona's come to help or to harm her and her family.

The Traveling Man


Michael P. King - 2015
    Betrayal. Retribution. Married con artists, using the aliases Tom and Patty Brown, arrive in the small city of Seanboro with their partner, Buddy Ray, masquerading as land speculators. Their plan is to falsify the environmental reports on a contaminated tract of lakefront property and sell the land to a local gangster who is involved in real estate development. But as their plan progresses, and the double-crosses pile up, they find themselves pursued by their now ex-partner Buddy, seeking revenge, and by an old enemy plotting their murder. This novel is a dark crime thriller that will take you for a roller coaster ride.

Kill Game: A Cold Poker Gang Mystery


Dean Wesley Smith - 2014
    Retired Detective Bayard Lott hosts the weekly poker games at his home. The group calls themselves the Cold Poker Gang. And they succeed at closing old cases. Lott’s very first homicide case as a brand-new detective had gone cold more than twenty years earlier. But retired Reno detective Julia Rogers, new to the Cold Poker Gang, suggests they look at that case again for personal reasons. From that simple suggestion spins one of the strangest and most complicated murder mystery puzzles the gang has ever seen. “Dean Wesley Smith does for poker what James Patterson does for serial killers.” —Sheldon McArthur, former owner of Mysterious Books in Los Angeles “[An] exhilarating political poker thriller.” —Harriet Klausner, Genre Go Round Reviews on Dead Money

Grain of Truth


V.J. Chambers - 2017
    They tiptoe down the hallway, stepping over the blood spatter of her parents’ murder scene, never noticing. When they discover the bodies and call the police an hour later, they are prime suspects in the killings, and they are eventually convicted. But they are innocent. They have been trapped in prison for twenty-five years. Until now. The newly formed Conviction Review Unit has the power to overturn wrongful convictions. Heading up the unit is Elke Lawrence, former prosecuting attorney, running from a dark and painful past. She is joined by Detective Iain Hudson, who only trusts physical evidence, and former defense attorney Frankie Hart, whose passion is freeing the innocent. But as the CRU begins to investigate the case, malice surfaces from those hell-bent on making sure some secrets stay buried. The unit must overcome every obstacle, every threat. They must uncover the truth.

Harm None


Will North - 2014
    When an American archaeological team stumbles upon the skeletal remains of a missing child beneath a Stone Age burial quoit, irascible CID Detective Sergeant Morgan Davies and her Scene of Crimes partner, Calum West, unearth a growing list of suspects. Within days, another body is discovered. Is the killer the mind-reading village witch—who has long been a suspect in the child’s disappearance? Is it the drug-dealing partner of the child’s heroin-addicted mother? Or is it someone even closer to the investigation? Just as Davies and West close in on their prime suspect, another child disappears.

Alas, She Drowned


Monica Knightley - 2016
    Betrayal. Tea and Scones. When ex-novice nun, turned steamy romance writer, Maggie O’Flynn moves to the charming village of Stratford Upon Avondale to open a tea room she expects plenty of murders, betrayal, and duplicity. On the stages of the town’s renowned Shakespeare Festival. But when a theater critic is found murdered on the town’s riverbank and the prime suspect turns out to be the sexy bookshop owner Maggie has had her eye on, she takes matters into her own hands. Will she be able to dig through the layers of betrayal and duplicity to find the true murderer before that handsome bookseller, Nate Larimer, finds himself behind bars? With the help of her loud, brash, spitfire of a friend, Gina Mattucci, Maggie plans to do just that. With a bit of Shakespeare, copious amounts of tea, and a faux-English setting to rival anything the real England has to offer, ALAS, SHE DROWNED is the first book in THE STRATFORD UPON AVONDALE mystery series. Lovers of cozy mysteries will find a cozy home in Stratford Upon Avondale.

Redemption Lake


Susan Clayton-Goldner - 2017
    Guilt forces Matt to act on impulse and hide his involvement with Crystal.Detective Winston Radhauser knows Matt is hiding something. But as the investigation progresses, Radhauser’s attention is focused on Matt’s father. Matt’s world closes in when his father is arrested for Crystal’s murder, and Travis breaks off their friendship.Despite his father’s guilty plea, Matt knows his dad is innocent and only trying to protect his son. Devastated and bent on self-destruction, Matt heads for the lake where his cousin died—the only place he believes can truly free him. Are some secrets better left buried?

Squall


Sean Costello - 2014
    On a clear winter morning he sets out in his Cessna 180 to do some repairs on a remote hunt camp, leaving his five year old son and very pregnant wife snug in their beds.On the return trip, a squall forces him into an emergency landing and he winds up—quite literally—in the lap of petty criminal Dale Knight. Dale, now a fugitive from the law—and worse, from a merciless drug lord who just happens to be his brother—draws Tom into a web of mayhem and treachery that puts not only his life at risk, but the lives of his wife, son…and unborn child.SQUALL is a fast-paced, darkly-comic tale of murder and gang-style retribution that grabs the reader on page one and simply does not let go.

A Book of Truths


Ty Hutchinson - 2019
    She’s fearless. She’s fifteen. Meet Mui, the assassin’s daughter. When a book filled with cryptic handwriting falls into Mui’s possession, she thinks nothing of the scribbling—until she learns the writings are hidden messages, and one is connected to her past. But Mui’s not the only one interested in deciphering the symbols. Someone is killing anyone with knowledge of that information. Will Mui fall victim while figuring out her connection to the book? A Book of Truths is the first installment in a gripping series about a mother-and-daughter assassin duo.

All Good Deeds


Stacy Green - 2014
    She's just taking out the trash. Don’t call Lucy Kendall a serial killer. She’s fighting for the innocent, and she’ll do whatever it takes to bring justice. When a child disappears, Lucy quickly discovers the link to a predator she’s faced before–a man the state of Pennsylvania decided to turn loose on the streets. Determined to find the little girl and put a criminal behind bars for good, Lucy forces her way onto the case.As the search for the kidnapped child pulls Lucy into a web of evil beyond her darkest imagination, she’ll have to face her own dark truths to save the little girl–and herself.

Stateline


Dave Stanton - 2013
    The groom is dead. When a tycoon’s son is murdered the night before his wedding, the grief-stricken father offers private detective Dan Reno a life-changing bounty to find the killer.Reno, nearly broke, thinks he’s finally found himself in the right place at the right time. But when a band of crooked cops get involved, Reno finds himself fighting for his life.Who committed the murder, and why? Which cops can he trust, if any?Haunted by his murdered father and a violent past, Reno wants no more blood on his hands. But a man’s got to make a living, and backing off is not in his DNA.Traversing the snowy alpine winter in the Sierras and the lonely deserts of Nevada, Reno must revert to his old ways to survive. Because the bounty won’t do him much good if he’s dead.

Polar Bear Dawn


Lyle Nicholson - 2013
    But not with employees of the same company in Oil Camps in the high Arctic and Northern Canada. Two detectives, one from Alaska and one from Canada, are given the case. They find the murders are connected. Now, they have to work together to find out why the victims were silenced. What secrets did their deaths conceal?Frank Mueller, the Alaskan Detective, is close to retirement. He’s been through three marriages and two stints in rehab. He is on probation with the force. He knows the Anchorage Police department has given him this case because they don’t want it investigated fully and there’s no booze in the Arctic oil camps.Bernadette Callahan, the Canadian Detective, is in her mid thirties with a lot to prove on the force. She is Cree Indian and Irish, raised on a native reservation in Northern Canada. She’s been ingrained with the ways of the ‘people,’ by her grandmother that have given her instincts. Her instincts tell her there is something more than four dead people—someone is settling a score. The real crime will happen soon.The oil companies think the deaths are bad for publicity and they want them solved quickly. The detectives are under pressure to come up with a verdict they know is wrong.Callahan begins to unravel a series of unlikely suspects. A Chemistry Professor with a grudge against big oil, a Mexican low life gangster and Wall Street Executives. How are they connected?Something is about to happen to oil supplies in the Arctic. The two Detectives can sense it. They know it’s real—can they convince others to act?

Undertaking Irene


Pamela Burford - 2014
    To dead people.Life gets complicated for Jane and her Death Diva business when she’s hired to liberate a gaudy mermaid brooch from the corpse during a wake—on behalf of the rightful owner, supposedly. Well, a girl’s got to make a living, and this assignment pays better than scattering ashes, placing flowers on graves, or bawling her eyes out as a hired mourner. Unfortunately for Jane, someone else is just as eager to get his hands on that brooch, and he’s even sneakier than she is, not to mention dangerously sexy.Just when she thinks her biggest problem is grand theft mermaid, things take a murderous turn. But hey, when you’ve teamed up with a neurotic seven-pound poodle named Sexy Beast, how can you go wrong?

To Kill For


A.J. Carella - 2014
    do you trust yours?Money and a handsome fiancé from a good family. What more could a girl want?Jamie McKay appears to have the perfect life, but things suddenly start to go horribly wrong. A sudden death and a run-in with a would-be killer leave her alone, afraid and a long way from home.Kat McKay, long estranged from her family, returns to the small town she hasn't been back to since she walked away as a teenager. Determined to find out what happened to her niece, she must face the demons from her past and enlist the help of the man she left behind.Can the McKays survive the explosive results?

Hard Fall


P.T. Reade - 2015
    A case police couldn't solve. One chance at redemption... An ex-New York detective, now working as a freelance investigator in London; Thomas Blume hunts for the killers that tore his family apart. For justice, for closure, for revenge. But when Blume stumbles across a case that baffled local police, he unwittingly becomes part of a world full of criminals, thugs and corrupt cops that will do anything to stop him. Now, in a country he doesn't understand and a city stacked against him, Blume must fight to expose the truth… before it's too late. Over 20,000 copies downloaded. Discover the thrilling first book in the Thomas Blume hard boiled mystery series today! What people are saying about Hard Fall: 'It reminds me of Raymond Chandler’s work. It’s noir, dark, full of rainy streets, seedy bars and characters with their own secrets.' - Author, Victoria Randall 'I started reading it last night and didn't put it down until I finished. I highly recommend this book to anyone!' - Joe Schaeffer, EBL 'This book is the most perfect example! I love how it was written. The plot was very suspenseful!' - Penelope Pearson Click and get your copy now! “A dark, twisting mystery that will hook you right from the start! Meet your new favorite hero…” “Hard boiled detective fiction with a modern slant” Watch out for more from Thomas Blume A private investigator with a dark past, Thomas Blume will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. Get 45% off the full Thomas Blume box-set, 'Hard Boiled City' now: amzn.to/1nXVySv Tags: hard boiled mysteries, mystery, mysteries, noir, private investigators, hard boiled thriller, hard boiled detective fiction, hard boiled private investigator mystery series