The Fireproof Girl


Loretta Lost - 2016
    When the constant danger became too much to bear, she ran away, thinking she could survive on her hacking skills alone.That was until she met Cole Hunter. He became the only person she could trust: her family, her friend, her partner-in-crime. Her everything. After struggling through college and starting their lives together, she believed that nothing could ever tear them apart. Until it did.When news of a brutal murder reaches Sophie, she’ll do everything in her power to fix what is broken. If it isn’t too late…---------When Cole was nine years old, he watched his whole family burn to death in a house fire. Fueled by years of obsession, he started one of the world’s leading architectural firms, with a mission to design homes resistant to fire, earthquakes, floods, and every threat known to man. Sophie was his secret weapon. She was his purpose. Since they were teenagers, he was determined to build a better life for her, so she could finally be safe, and they could be together. But disaster has always followed Cole around, ripping away everything he loves. This time, if he isn’t careful…His enemies might just take him down.

Celilo's Shadow


Valerie Wilcox - 2017
    No matter how much time has passed, it’s always there, ready to punch you in the chest when you least expect it. All it takes is something ordinary—a brief glance, a certain food, or a melody on the radio—and regret strikes hard and fast. For Odessa Feldman, the trigger is a Pacific Northwest storm. When the muddy bones of a murder victim buried over fifty years ago are discovered in the storm’s aftermath, Odessa overcomes her long struggle with guilt to finally reveal the truth. But her overdue confession comes with a difficult price—reliving her role in the tragic summer of 1956 and worse, betraying the best friend she’d ever had. Dessa and Ellie Matthews were both fourteen-years-old when they met that summer. Ellie’s father was a foreman at the dam under construction on the Columbia River. At least that’s what he said. But, like murder and the motives behind it, some things in life are rarely as they seem.

Sleight of Hand


V.F. Streets - 2021
    But with a past that still haunts her, she prefers to serve justice on the bad guys, instead of helping them go free. So when she gets offered a job to frame a wife-beating police officer, despite her reservations, she takes it.But when the facts don’t add up, and the man she’s hired to frame turns out to be the lead investigator for a suspicious death, Bristol decides to change sides before more lives are lost. Unfortunately, that means teaming up with her rival, Cole Sullivan, a move that carries risks of its own.As the questions pile up and every lead dead ends, Bristol's move to double-cross her employer leads to the discovery that her past choices have made her a pawn in a much bigger game, a game that now threatens those closest to her.Now, there is only one choice she can make to save the ones she loves … she must surrender herself to the truth she’s spent her whole life running from. A truth that could destroy her from the inside out.

Trigger Point


Andy Maslen - 2015
    Ex-SAS and haunted by the ghosts of his fallen comrades. He left the army with a chest full of medals and PTSD. Now he faces the toughest challenge of his life. Preventing a hostile coup in the UK. He's recruited by Britta Falskog, a former member of Swedish Special Forces now working for MI5. There used to be something between them, but it's all business now. Read Book One - Trigger Point - now Sir Toby Maitland claims to be standing for Parliament. But his ultra-nationalist rhetoric is more than just a vote-grabber. Set up by MI5, he hires Gabriel as a spokesman/enforcer. Working undercover, Gabriel travels to the US with Maitland. His brief, discover Maitland's plan and then stop him. With deadly force. He gets embroiled in a drugs-for-cash deal with Hells Angels. Then must convince Maitland where his loyalties lie, on a farm in Michigan run as an arms depot by an ex-South African security service operator. With the Prime Minister due to overfly Maitland’s estate en route to a military conference, and a paramilitary force gathered in preparation for a coup, time is running out for Wolfe. As the action swings from the English countryside to Chicago, upstate Michigan and back again, expect plenty of kinetic action in calibres from 5.56mm up to the mighty "fifty cal". Plus martial arts, knife-fights and car chases. Wolfe may be learning the ways of spooks, but his military skills are still razor-sharp. As he gathers intel along the way he teams up with an ex-Delta Force operator, Shaun Cunningham. The two men bond over shared experiences in service until a horrifying development smashes the partnership. It all starts here Trigger Point is the first novel in this series of all-action thrillers. It follows Wolfe from the SAS into the murky shadows of covert assassination ops for The Department. Other books in the series see him combat Chechen terrorists, a death cult in the rainforest, political corruption and Russian crime gangs. But first there's a planned coup in the UK and Gabriel is tasked with killing its leader. DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY OF TRIGGER POINT NOW

Steele Intent


Kimberly Amato - 2015
    THIS IS A NEW EDITION."Don't think you're untouchable…you or your son." Then a dial tone..Shrewd, hardened New York homicide detective Jasmine (“Jazz") Steele’s just come back from a grisly crime scene involving the body of a brutally-beaten young girl, the second she's investigated this week. That was horrendous, but with these eight words, ending ominously in “your son,” Jazz’s immediate fear is for her vulnerable nephew, Chase, who’s already been through hell in his seven short years. In Kimberly Amato’s hard-boiled yet deeply emotional police procedural, no one is spared tough breaks and turbulent anguish. A lesser cop than Jazz would barely be able to cope.A year ago, a gruesome car accident claimed the lives of her only brother and his wife, making her the de facto mother of 7-year-old Chase. The sudden household change ended in the loss of her life partner and still best friend, chic police psychologist Frankie, not to mention the dashing of Jazz's lifelong dreams of becoming a successful mystery novelist. Now every day is a battle against Chase’s demons—and her own.Quick reconnaissance reveals the call wasn't a clever joke courtesy of Hadley, Frankie's droll actress roommate, nor was it Victor, the wry police department coroner who happens to be Jazz's confidante. Further detective work shows the caller wanted Jazz to find him—along with the fresh dead body he left for her in a Harlem warehouse.With a shadow on Chase and the aid of Frankie's grace-under-fire, not to mention Victor's brandy-fueled heart-to-hearts, Jazz--who has more 'tude than even the toughest investigator, male or female--navigates the cruel streets of New York City while struggling to keep custody of the only family she has left, doggedly in search of the elusive, psychopathic murderer who seems to be summarily killing off women who look suspiciously like someone close to Jazz... and she's not willing to lose yet another person she loves. Fans of the exciting new wave of hard-boiled women sleuths created by writers like Megan Abbott, Laura Lippmann, Lisa Lutz, and Vicki Hendricks will be attracted to the author’s take-no-prisoners style, and her unflinching attention to harrowing detail.Yet lovers of traditional mysteries will appreciate the web of fierce loyalty tempered with fearful caution that links Jazz’s tiny but hardy support system—Victor, Frankie, and Hadley, not to mention Chase himself. Somehow or other, Amato manages to mix all the excitement of an action thriller with the swirling emotions of a mainstream psychological novel.Those with a weakness for badass female cops like Mary Shannon of In Plain Sight and Olivia Benson of Law & Order SVU will revel in Jasmine Steele's gritty determination laced with compassion. Readers of lesbian mysteries will be reminded of Sandra Scoppettone’s Lauren Laurano and Laurie R. King’s Kate Martinelli.And it's also a great read for fans of resilient heroines of psychological thrillers like Liz Keen of The Blacklist and Carrie Mathison of Homeland, who will love Jasmine Steele's fearlessness, tinged with the very real emotional roller coaster of love turned to grief. "(Amato) makes Detective Steele a winning female character, and... introduces comic relief at just the right moments. This is very fine writing by a lady who knows the idiom!"-- Grady Harp, San Francisco Review of Books

Ash


Jason Brant - 2013
    10:32 AM EST: An entire floor of government agents leap to their death from their office building. 12:57 PM EST: All the police officers inside a station murder each other. And the day has just begun. Lieutenant Asher Benson left Iraq with a traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and a Purple Heart. His doctors warned that the symptoms would be life altering. They had no idea. As his body healed, the thoughts of those around him began to echo through Ash’s mind, stretching the boundaries of his sanity. Five years later, Ash is drowning the voices with copious amounts of booze and self-loathing. When unidentified intelligence agents abduct him in broad daylight, Ash is thrust into a world of espionage and assassinations. A unique terrorist is operating on U.S. soil, and the government needs Ash, and the malady that has plagued him for half a decade, to find the killer. *Ash is the first book in the Asher Benson thriller series, which is full of snarky humor and nonstop action.

Never Buried


Edie Claire - 1999
    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!

Bandwidth


Eliot Peper - 2018
    But when a close brush with death reveals that the influence he wields makes him a target, impossible cracks appear in his perfect, richly appointed life.Like everyone else, Dag relies on his digital feed for everything—a feed that is as personal as it is pervasive, and may not be as private as it seems. As he struggles to make sense of the dark forces closing in on him, he discovers that activists are hijacking the feed to manipulate markets and governments. Going public would destroy everything he’s worked so hard to build, but it’s not just Dag’s life on the line—a shadow war is coming, one that will secure humanity’s future or doom the planet to climate catastrophe. Ultimately, Dag must decide the price he’s willing to pay to change the world.

Trespassing


Brandi Reeds - 2018
    Her latest round of fertility treatments not only failed but left her on edge and unbalanced. And her three-year-old daughter, Elizabella, has a new imaginary friend, who seems much more devilish than playful. So when Veronica’s husband fails to return home from a business trip, what’s left of her stability begins to crumble.Given her family’s history of mental illness, and Elizabella’s insistence that her daddy is dead, Veronica starts questioning herself. Every move she makes is now suspect. Worse still, Veronica is positive that someone wants her and her daughter dead, too—unless it’s all in her mind…Somewhere beneath her paranoia is the answer to her husband’s vanishing. To find it, she’s led to a house in the Florida Keys. But once there, she isn’t sure she wants to know the truth.

Crooked Man


Tony Dunbar - 1994
    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.

Little Boy Lost


J.D. Trafford - 2017
    But when eight-year-old Tanisha Walker offers him a jar full of change to find her missing brother, he doesn’t have the heart to turn her away.Justin had hoped to find the boy alive and well. But all that was found of Devon Walker was his brutally murdered body—and the bodies of twelve other African American teenagers, all discarded like trash in a mass grave. Each had been reported missing. And none had been investigated.As simmering racial tensions explode into violence, Justin finds himself caught in the tide. And as he gives voice to the discontent plaguing the city’s forgotten and ignored, he vows to search for the killer who preys upon them.

An Equal Justice


Chad Zunker - 2019
    It’s a personal victory for the rising superstar—a satisfying reversal from his impoverished and despairing childhood. Now he has the life he’s always wanted: an extravagant salary, a high-rise condo, a luxury SUV, and no limit to how far he can go in the eyes of the top partners.But after the shocking suicide of a fellow associate—one who, in his final hours, offered David an ominous warning—he feels the pull of powerful forces behind the corporation’s enviable trappings. The suicide leads unexpectedly to David’s discovery of a secret enclave of the city’s homeless, where he can’t help but feel an affinity to these outcast souls. Nor can he ignore the feeling that they hold the key to the truth behind a dark conspiracy.When one of his new street friends is murdered, David’s clear doubts about his employer start shifting into a dark reality. Now torn between two worlds, David must surrender all that he’s achieved to fight for a larger cause of justice—and become his firm’s most dangerous acquisition.

Tollesbury Time Forever


Stuart AyrisStuart Ayris - 2007
    I was a psychiatric nurse at the time. The owner of the house was one of my patients. He had not been seen for two weeks - neither had his wife or his son.What I saw that evening will stay with me forever. On the walls of the lounge, in tiny, neat black writing, were thousands and thousands of words. The torch beams picked them out as if they were groups of well-ordered flies. The words continued up the stairway, onto the landing walls and into the main bedroom. I had been in the house before and had seen some of the writing upstairs. Still I was mesmerised.What you are about to read are the words that I saw on those walls...Tollesbury TimeNothing is realAnd there's nothingTo get hung about...

Morbid Thoughts


Michael McGovern - 2017
    For years he has kept that fact hidden, but one bad day is about to bring it all out into the open. When Jane Flannery walks into his computer repair store, he becomes obsessed. He wants to know every detail about her life. Unfortunately for Jane, Aaron already has everything he needs to accomplish that goal. Her computer. Jane is in great danger and she doesn't even know it yet.SPR says, "It's strange to claim that a book about a guy who is this downtrodden as 'fun', but Walsh is a spirited narrator, no matter how spiritless he claims to be. Mind you, he's an extremely creepy narrator and person, even hateful at times. Profane and grotesque, he's still compelling; you're driven to keep reading to see just how downtrodden he can be. If you're in the mood to explore the dark depths of human behaviour, Morbid Thoughts is a riveting read."Kirkus says, "Although this story is often somber and grotesque, McGovern injects enough nuance to prevent it from being a mere blood bath. A riveting character study even during its most appalling moments."

Steel Force


Geoffrey Saign - 2019
    Now they want him dead. Can he defeat a conspiracy before he becomes the next hit?The Jack Steel series is now in development for a major motion picture. Black Ops expert Jack Steel believes in honor above all else. But he’s horrified when his latest covert mission orders him to terminate a site full of innocent civilians. And when he assaults his commander to save a mysterious monk, he unleashes a fierce backlash, sending the whole of U.S. intelligence hunting for his head. With the help of an alluring counterterrorism analyst, Steel digs deep for the truth behind the unauthorized operation. But with everyone from his former Ops leader to the president out for blood, Steel doesn’t know who to trust. Can one man bring down a billion-dollar conspiracy before it blows up in his face? Steel Force is the first book in the high-octane Jack Steel thriller series. If you like action-packed scenes, formidable threats, and electric characters, then you’ll love Geoffrey Saign’s heart-stopping adventure.