Her life and death intersects the drama of a professional football team and the detectives who are on the case. The story takes place in Miami Beach, Florida. The author, C. K. Laurence, has been a student of crime activity and weaves an exciting tale of mystery and intrigue, and creates an unexpected ending to a suspenseful adventure. Ms. Laurence is a long-time rowdy Miami Dolphins football fan and uses her knowledge of the sport to develop a side-story that rings true in football culture. The book moves quickly from hot Miami Beach parties to the football field to the murder scene. Look out! The ending is a shocker!

    No one cared. But a stranger, bent on revenge, is out to change all that. Kit Griffin has finally overcome a painful childhood at the hands of her mother, former actress Alana Stevens. No longer living in the grasp of the cold, tyrannical woman, Kit has found a new life tucked away in little San Madrid, California, running a business she loves, surrounded by friends she considers family. For the first time her life is on track. That is, until Alana is found brutally murdered on Mother’s Day, pulling Kit back in to the dark horrors of her past. To make matters worse, the police consider her the prime suspect.Jake Boston, an old family friend and the man Kit has loved since she was a teen, is fighting his own demons as a suspect in his wife’s murder two years earlier. Despite his past, he’s determined to win Kit over once and for all. But before that can happen they need to convince the police there’s a killer working his way down a list with cold-hearted vengeance in mind. Forced to delve into Alana’s dark past, it becomes clear someone is out to settle a score. When Jake and Kit uncover a forty year old double murder that leads them straight to the door of a legal dynasty, they soon find out just how far the heirs will go to keep the past buried and eliminate all the loose ends to protect their empire. Will Jake and Kit become the next victims or will they find an unexpected guardian angel?

    Though Jonie attracts the suspicions of local police as she finds herself in the middle of other related crimes, she continues her investigation, risking her job, tentative family ties, and the chance of romance with the alluring lead investigator. Storm Surge follows Jonie through cat fights, vandalized laboratories, and klutzy mishaps in Wilmington, North Carolina.

    A rebirth, one might call it. And, she intends to do this spiritual resurrection in a small, abandoned fishing cabin, built over forty years ago by her deceased father.Not quite abandoned…A lethal serial killer has taken up residence in the basement of Sami’s remote cottage, using her father’s carpenter table for a hobby much more sinister than woodcutting.Sequestered deep within forty-two acres of tall pine trees, bristling brooks and fresh water lakes, Sami Saxton is about to fight for her life.The hard truth… nobody will ever hear her scream!"Wickard’s novel colorfully illuminates the two synchronized protagonists, each displaying profound characteristics: Sami has trouble adjusting to her new life and Smitty balances his secret life with his normal one, with a (living) wife and infant daughter at home." ~ Kirkus Reviews

    Then he brings a "souvenir" Dead Sea Scroll home from the Holy Land and things go from bad to worse. A Palestinian terrorist group invades his home, fails to find the scroll, and takes his wife, Jill, hostage. Greg finds himself with an ancient Hebrew scroll worth millions, wanted by both the Palestinians and a radical far-right Israeli organization. When he tries to exchange it for Jill's freedom, everything goes wrong. Then the police target him as a suspect in his wife's disappearance, and he sets out alone on a perilous chase to save her life.

    His clients are all renegades from the asylum, including a transvestite entertainer with curious medical issues, a buxom deadbeat blonde, a doctor who refers his own patients to a malpractice lawyer, and the driver of a Mardi Gras float shaped like a giant crawfish pot. He also has his hands full with an ex-wife and three teenage daughters, who are experts in the art of wrapping Tubby around their little fingers. And somehow, between work and family, Tubby finds time to sample the highs and lows of idiosyncratic Crescent City cuisine, from trout meuniere amandine and French roast coffee with chicory to shrimp po-boys and homemade pecan pralines. Tubby is asked to take on a new client: Darryl Alvarez, the manager of a local nightclub, who has been caught unloading fifteen bales of marijuana from a shrimp boat. At their first meeting, Darryl entrusts Tubby with an ordinary-looking blue gym bag. But when Darryl is later found shot at the nightclub, Tubby realizes he must tighten his grasp on the gym bag - and its million-dollar contents. Tubby can't just give up the cash. But if he gets caught, he'll be in jail. And if the wrong people catch him, he'll wish he was.

    . . until the residents begin seeing their private conversations posted online for everyone to read. Then it’s neighbor against neighbor, friend against friend, as paranoia and violence escalate. The police scramble to identify the person responsible for the posts and pull the plug on the Website before it destroys the town. But what responsibility do the people of the town have for the words they say when they think no one is listening? Life and death are in the power of the tongue.

    After having lost his wife to cancer, he is drawn back from the brink of an emotional abyss by the murder of a young girl who looks just like her. With nothing else to assuage his grief, he throws himself into the case with every ounce of passion still left inside him. But with little evidence to go on, his case quickly grows cold. When another victim is killed in exactly the same manner over five hundred miles away, Reilly realizes that there may be a serial killer at work. Going against the advice of his superiors, he flies to North Carolina to continue his hunt for the sadistic murderer. Reilly knows that his only hope of success is to convince the Sheriff of Camden County that both crimes are connected. To his relief, Claire Stiles immediately recognizes the undeniable similarities between both cases. Fueled by the furious and unrelenting desire to find the killer, they work together day and night. Unexpectedly however, they find themselves growing closer in the process. In order to understand what tenuous link binds the victims together, Claire and Reilly leave no stone unturned in their desperate search for the killer. But when yet another girl is abducted, Claire and Reilly must put their own lives on the line in order to stop the madman, before it's too late.

    He left Officer Mary Walker alive, but he crushed her leg, her confidence, and her spirits.Now a private investigator, Mary takes sleuthing work as it comes and keeps a watchful eye over her shoulder. But, during a routine surveillance job on a chilly October night, a ghost from her past leaves her future uncertain.***SLEDGE is a fast-paced, suspense thriller short story from the author of SARA'S GAME.

    It's an ok job, but it isn't as exciting as most people think, and that's fine by him. He makes it a rule not to get involved in active police cases or in any case where people are likely to get hurt—especially him. So why does the mob suddenly want him dead? Sure it’s all a mistake, but dead from a mistake is still dead.Taking advice from his friend, The Juke, he starts on a cross country drive to LA (what can I tell you, he has a few phobias, and flying is just one of them), and makes it as far as Mystic Falls, New Mexico before the borrowed Mercedes conks out. Mystic Falls? Think Green Acres—without the sophistication.All he had to do was lie low and wait for the car to be fixed. A good plan too. It might have worked if only the local "character" hadn’t turned up missing, with him as the prime suspect. Now if he ever wants to get out of this sleepy desert asylum, he’s going to have to find her. Fat chance.

    He meets a fan, an attractive woman, in a coffee shop and she plies him with compliments and a Mickey. The next morning he wakes up at a seedy motel naked, reeking of alcohol, alone, and confused. A blackmail ensues and he becomes entangled in a shadowy underworld involving strippers, prostitutes, gangsters, corrupt politicians, and cops. His wife and son leave him and he plunges into the mean streets of San Francisco seeking answers to the riddles at the heart of those seeking to destroy him.My main character in Between a Smile and a Tear, Jack Waters, a successful novelist, is a recovering alcoholic coming to terms with the damage his drinking has caused to his family and friends. He's trying his best to make amends, but is it too late? Is it impossible to right some wrongs?I've read a number of James Hall's antic thrillers set in Florida (primarily the Thorn books) with their wild and crazy bad guys and they inspired me to create my villain here: Wallace Unger. I tried to make him both humorous and scary, a counterpoint to the serious and darker action and themes of the novel.Wallace is wild and crazy, funny and dumb, but also unpredictable and a dangerous antagonist made even more fearsome by his employer, the amoral gangster boss, NIck Ravelli.This is a "bigger" novel than others that I have written, featuring multiple point-of-view characters, more subplots, a wider range including political and social forces impacting the characters, as well as a deeper attention to location and geography.I've tried to make San Francisco a major character in its own right here. I grew up in the city and know it well, but supplemented that knowledge with research and maps and a couple of trips back to the Bay Area. I think San Francisco, in all of its beauty and mystery, comes alive in the novel and I hope you agree.I put my heart and soul into this book and hope you feel that while you read.Thanks for taking the time.

    It is an isolated Cornish fishing community, largely untouched by the modern, developing Victorian world, hanging onto its old traditions, superstitions and beliefs – a community that lives with a disturbing secret. So too does Denning. He is a reluctant visitor, and though he is supposedly joining his one-time artist friend Terrance Wilkinson to form an artists’ colony it is circumstances that force him there. Denning is still haunted by the brutal death of a young woman in Brittany, and shouldering guilt for the fact that he covered up for Wilkinson when he suspects the man of having been been involved with the murder. But Porthgarrow is haunted by its own demons and secrets. He learns about the savage murder of a woman by her husband Jowan Connoch thirteen years previously, and of Jowan’s son who has returned to Porthgarrow to uncover the truth and to clear his father’s name. Yet it is far from over. Before long three more people are destined to die in Porthgarrow before the village gives up its sinister secrets, and Stephen Denning will learn of his own family’s mysterious involvement. The house of the Wicked is peopled with larger than life characters – the powerful businessman Gerran Hendra and his beautiful daughter Jenna; the Reverend Biddle who collects photographs of the dead; Benjamin Croker, the journalist; and Tunny, the village wise man and healer. From its atmospheric Gothic undertones to its shocking and unexpected end, ‘The House of the Wicked’ is D. M. Mitchell at his darkest and most imaginative best. Some secrets will not stay buried...

    Leading the hunt is Gabriel de Sade, a tough Manhattan detective. What should be a straightforward murder investigation escalates when yet more dismembered bodies are found. A very sick, psychotic murderer is loose on the streets of the city. Yet the case is to become more complicated than he could imagine. The nightmare is just beginning for de Sade, a Delta Force veteran of Afghanistan.The FBI are also hunting for the serial killer and their evidence points to a Russian Mafiya baron, Grigory Gordieva. The pursuit leads Gabriel to Moscow with an FBI partner, Special Agent Faith Ward. They find themselves pitted against political interference from both American and Russian governments. Yet when they ask for help from the Moscow Militia de Sade finds them both corrupt and on the Mafiya payroll.Their only assistance comes from an unexpected quarter, a Russian Orthodox Bishop. With his help, de Sade reaches the heart of the Gordieva’s Mafiya operations. The Russian retaliates by kidnapping Faith Ward. With only a discredited Militia detective to help him, he takes on the Moscow Mafiya. De Sade adapts his Delta Force tactics to wage a secret war on the Moscow streets. The action builds to a climax that is shattering and extraordinary.

    But with a natural nose for crime, Allie soon suspects murder—leaving her dejected canine client as possibly the sole witness to the crime. With the scent fresh, Allie is quickly on the case – but a second murder curtails her investigation. Before taking another step, Allie needs to count her enemies: several suspicious dog owners, a boyfriend with a temper (and a demand for vengeance!), and a mysterious door-to-door salesman with a curious tale to tell… Bizarre salesman, vicious boyfriend and suspect dog owners – one thing is for sure – Allie’s life may never be safe until one of these characters lands in the pen…

    But when her trophy red Cadillac is found tail-fins up in a nearby lake, the police ask why a widowed piano teacher, who couldn’t possibly see beyond the hood ornament, was found strapped in the driver’s seat. Reeling from an interrogation with local homicide, Lalla is determined to extricate herself as a suspect in this strange murder case. Unfortunately, drug running pilots, a cross-dressing convict, a crazy Chihuahua, and the dead woman’s hunky nephew throw enough road blocks to keep Lalla neck deep in an investigation that links her family to a twenty-year old murder only she can solve.