When a former client bequeaths Drayco a rundown Opera House in a Virginia seaside town, he figures he'll arrange for a quick sale of the place while nursing his battered soul in a peaceful setting near the shore. What he doesn't count on is finding a dead body on the Opera House stage with a mysterious "G" carved into the man's chest. With hopes for a quick sale dashed and himself a suspect in the murder, Drayco digs into very old and very dangerous secrets to solve the crime and clear his name. Along the way, Drayco must dodge a wary sheriff, hostility over coastal development, and the seductive wife of a town councilman - before the tensions explode into more violence and he becomes the next victim. Want to read a Scott Drayco novella for FREE? Sign up for BV’s Mysteries in Crimetime newsletter at bvlawson.com and receive a FREE copy of "The Maltese Moon Rock"! Scott Drayco Thrillers in order: PLAYED TO DEATH (A Shamus Award Finalist and Best Mystery, Next Generation Book Awards) REQUIEM FOR INNOCENCE DIES IRAE ELEGY IN SCARLET

    They were two tortured souls, looking for escape, and they weren't supposed to see each other ever again…Four years later, Sophie's FBI father, who is also Damon's mentor, is killed in a suspicious car crash after leaving Sophie a cryptic message to trust no one from the agency. When Damon shows up looking for her, she isn't sure if he's friend or enemy, but she knows he could easily rip apart what is left of her heart.The last thing Damon wants is to get involved with Sophie again. It was hard enough to walk away the first time. But she's in trouble, her father's reputation is under attack, and the lives of his fellow agents are at stake if there's a traitor in their midst. When someone starts shooting at them, they have no choice but to go on the run and off the grid. Everyone in their world becomes a suspect. They want to uncover the truth, but will it turn out to be the last thing they expect? Proving her father's innocence might just cost them their hearts…and their lives…

     That thought drove Dr. Georgia Dennis in every decision she made, personal and professional. A profiler with the Complex Crimes Unit of the FBI, she was tired of being second-guessed by her boss Michael “Hell” Hellbrook. Once they caught the sociopath responsible for stoning teenaged girls, she was gone from Hellbrook’s team faster than the ink could dry on the transfer papers. Georgia and Hellbrook are hot on the trail of a sadistic killer targeting women and girls with brown hair and brown eyes—women with a striking resemblance to Georgia. Hellbrook will do anything to protect his team, even the woman he never wanted on it in the first place. By keeping her at his side, he grows closer to her until the flame between them erupts and consumes them both. As they get deeper involved with the case and with each other, they do not realize someone else is watching, someone whose descent into madness threatens everyone around them. Is this watcher their killer, or someone much closer? PAVAD: PREVENTION & ANALYSIS OF VIOLENT ACTS DIVISION: PAVAD—the Prevention & Analysis of Violent Acts Division—is a special directorate of the FBI located in St. Louis. PAVAD was formed by Edward Dennis to combat today’s modern crimes in a modern nation. PAVAD consists of only the best of the FBI’s best, and addresses cases involving everything from kidnapping, money-laundering, extortion, all the way up to RICO violations. The PAVAD directorate has more than a dozen teams ready to mobilize at a moment’s notice to every corner of the United States…

    The town holds a secret—her birth mother’s identity. Gloria’s parents worry she won’t like what she finds, but once Gloria starts unraveling the story, she can’t be dissuaded. Gloria is armed with three pieces of knowledge about the woman who gave her up for adoption. 1) The woman was in her forties. 2) She lived in Rosewood. 3) She was accused of murder in 1974. No wonder Gloria’s parents don’t want her to dig into her past. How many women in Rosewood in 1974 could have been accused of murder? Only four, it turns out. Articles in the newspaper archives show a picture of four women dubbed The Thorns of Rosewood. The women were suspects in the disappearance of a judge’s wife, but once again, Gloria knows three things: 1) No body. 2) No proof. 3) No charges. It looks as though the Thorns got away with murder. Gloria wants the truth. Did these Thorns of Rosewood murder the judge’s wife? She finds the four women at an assisted-living facility in Lincoln, Nebraska. They tell her they are ready to confess. This is Gloria’s chance to get the story of a lifetime and find out who her birth mother is…and why that woman gave her away.

    He’s all dressed up with nowhere to spy. Josh Sulenski is an Internet prodigy with some serious James Bond fantasies and more money than 37 countries. Together, they’re out to save the world…in style. John Crane bursts onto the espionage scene in Rope on Fire. On only his second mission for the top secret Hurricane Group, the U.S. Government suddenly shuts Hurricane down, leaving Crane an agent without an agency. Adrift in Key West, he's approached by Internet billionaire Josh Sulenski, who asks him to find out why one of his charitable projects is under attack deep in Puerto Rico's rain forest. Crane finds himself battling corrupt police officers and drug smugglers with no authority and no backup. For the first time, he's on his own. Branislav Skala is an aging gangster whose ruthlessness and ambition helped him claw his way up from the gutters of communist Czechslovakia to rule a criminal empire. Skala thinks he’s reached the top of the heap and is ready to retire to his palatial country estate—until he discovers a whole new game of transnational power blocs, capital networks, and vicious battles among competing factions. Skala wants a seat at this new table, and he has a plan to get one. It’s a plan that puts him squarely in John Crane’s sights. When their destinies collide, Branislav Skala will learn that this new game doesn’t follow the same rules he’s used to. And John Crane will find a broken laptop with the power to change his life forever. So join John Crane for freewheeling adventure in a world of glamour, intrigue, and action. Because spy stories are supposed to be fun!

    Who could have killed rising artist Marc Solomon, and what does Castle Cay, the Solomon's mysterious Caribbean island, have to do with it? Before long, Julie's sixth-sense pulls a hidden string that unravels a deadly conspiracy...and her own troubled past.

    Too bad his body didn't!Advertising copywriter Leigh Koslow doesn't pack heat--just a few extra pounds. And she doesn't go looking for trouble. When she moved into her cousin Cara's refurbished Victorian house, she wasn't planning on discovering a corpse--certainly not one that had been embalmed ten years before. But as anyone in the small Pittsburgh borough of Avalon could tell her, her cousin's house has a history attached. A history dating back to two mysterious deaths in the summer of 1949.Someone wants Leigh and Cara out of the house--someone who has something to hide. But that someone doesn't know Leigh's impetuous cousin, and when Cara digs her heels in, Leigh looks to her old college chum, local policewoman Maura Polanski, for help. But the answers the trio find only point to more questions. Were the scandalous deaths of fifty years ago really an accident and a suicide? Or were they murder?The nearer the women get to the truth, the more desperate someone becomes. Because some secrets are better off kept. Especially when they hit close to home!

    Now she wants revenge…Accused of stealing artifacts from a five hundred year-old shipwreck, underwater archaeologist Erica Kesling is determined to clear her name. She’s concealed her past and taken a job certain to give her access to the buyer of the missing antiquities. She's finally closing in on her goal, when she's distracted by a sexy, charismatic intern who makes her want something other than revenge.But Lee Scott is no intern. He's looking for the lead conspirator in an international artifact smuggling scheme, and Erica is his prime suspect. He’ll do whatever it takes to win her trust and get her to reveal her secrets, even seduce her.As Erica and Lee struggle to conceal their real agendas, the one thing they can’t hide is the attraction that burns hot between them. When Erica’s quest puts her life in jeopardy, Lee must choose between old loyalties and a woman he never expected to fall for.

    Seeming to select his victims at random, he acts out the rituals of the Spanish Inquisition before committing their bodies to the sacred waters of nearby Sebec Lake. Anne Quinn, an investigator for the Piscataquis County sheriff’s office, and Detective Douglas Bateman with the Major Crimes Unit of the Maine State Police join forces in tracking him down. Hiding in plain sight, the killer is clearly from the local community and plays a deadly “catch me if you can” game with Quinn and Bateman. He seems determined to humiliate them and demonstrate his superior intellect, leading them to suspect that perhaps there is a deeper motive and purpose behind his string of murders.

    She doesn't need this. She's holding an old grudge and resents having her life interrupted. The brother doesn't come looking for trouble, he simply wants to get past his Philadelphia divorce and start a new life in Florida, but woman-trouble comes looking for him. Unfortunately, he arrives in the small Florida ocean side town just as someone murders the local gubernatorial candidate. The brother doesn't have a clue about women and gets seduced and framed. The brother hasn't bothered with his estranged sister up north for years, but now as a stranger in a hostile town she's his only hope. She reluctantly decides to at least check out her brother's predicament in Florida. This small step leads the sister into an ever-increasing entanglement of deceit, double-cross, and danger, and she must somehow persuade the irresistible investigating detective to play things her way. ONE DEADLY SISTER is the first book in this popular women sleuth mystery romance series. Followed by THE PRICE OF CANDY, SUCH WICKED FRIENDS, CHASING SUSPECT THREE, ALIVE AFTER FRIDAY and INTO THE HEAT.

     Moving through streets where people line up at soup kitchens, Maggie draws information from sources others overlook: The waitress at the dime store lunch counter where she has breakfast; a ragged newsboy; the other career girls at her rooming house. Her digging gets her chloroformed and left in a ditch behind the wheel of her DeSoto. She makes her way to an upscale bordello and gets tea – and information – from the madam herself. A gunman puts a bullet through Maggie’s hat. Her shutterbug pal on the evening paper warns her off. A new cop whose presence unsettles her thinks she’s crooked. Before she finds all the answers she needs, she faces a half-crazed man with a gun, and a far more lethal point-blank killer. If you like Robert B. Parker's hard boiled Spencer series and strong women sleuths, don't miss this one-of-a-kind Ohio detective from a time in United States history when dames wore hats -- but seldom a Smith & Wesson.

    Assigned to a desk job while recovering, Blackwell nonetheless manages to prove his resourcefulness as he matches wits with Al-Qaeda operatives in the dangerous regions of Kabul. Unable to fully heal, he resigns himself to the abrupt end of his military career as well as any hope to win the affections of the beautiful and intelligent Lieutenant Mallory Wilson.Upon returning state-side, the quiet civilian life is quickly left far behind when Blackwell’s colleague Zach Lambert calls him from a weekend camping trip in the throes of a devastating illness with forbidding implications.In a story out of today’s headlines, Blackwell and now-FBI Agent Wilson explore the possible diversion of a biotech’s project to develop an improved vaccine, scouring leads at the CDC and biotec company, putting their Army and professional skills to the test, and narrowly escaping agents with a murderous agenda at every turn. The closer they come to the truth, the quicker the bodies pile up, along with the suspects. To get to the bottom of the sinister scheme, can Blackwell still use wits when his body has failed him? And will he survive long enough to tell his colleague of the feelings for her he has long kept secret?

    His day to day consists of decomposing dead bodies and removing murderers from the general public. But, when two women’s bodies are found under similar circumstances, it quickly turns into more than your average case. The killer is clearly looking to make a name for himself, and his plans for these women go far beyond death. When the media runs with the story, the killer’s moment in the spotlight arrives. It’s up to Lieutenant Kane to bring the man the press has dubbed the ‘Psycho Surgeon’ to justice. Yet, being the lead on the case has its drawbacks—like becoming the focus of the killer yourself. As Lieutenant Kane closes in on his suspect, he soon realizes that the case has become far more personal than he could have ever imagined.

    Fiercely independent Carly is the number one suspect. When Carly asks Willa for due justice, Willa has everything to lose. But she risks it all to uncover the conspiracy and keep Carly alive. Can Willa possibly win?<**formerly titled Carly's Conspiracy

    Everything changes for Edwin when his wife files for divorce. On the brink of losing his home, his job and his little girl, Edwin orchestrates an intricate plan to eliminate his wife and regain his former lifestyle.The police are baffled when bodies begin to appear all over London with no apparent connection between them. Inspector David Morton must think outside the box as he investigates the deadly web of deceit behind the murders.