Never Back Down


William Casey Moreton - 2011
    He encounters an old friend from college, a man named Brian Ripley, whom he hasn't seen in nearly 20 years. Ripley is with a beautiful young woman and is clearly in a hurry to leave. Coburn could have never been prepared for Ripley's reaction to seeing him, and he is even less prepared for what happens next. The following morning, the young woman with Ripley is found dead in Washington Square Park, the victim of a brutal murder. Coburn goes to the police and tells them of his encounter with Ripley the previous night. What the police tell him shakes him to his core - Brian Ripley has been dead for 15 years. The story moves at breakneck speed as John Coburn searches for the truth behind the woman's murder and whether or not he really saw his friend, or merely a ghost, that night.

Killing Down the Roman Line


Tim McGregor - 2012
    Until now, when a stranger rolls into town claiming to be a long lost Corrigan. Inviting the locals to a tour of the derelict property, the stranger regales the townsfolk with a gruesome tale of how his family was slaughtered by an armed mob. The murderers, he claims, were the ancestors of everyone assembled before him. Jeered as a fraud, the man’s claims are dismissed but doubts linger over what happened all those years ago. Dissent grows as the stranger agitates for retribution and long dead feuds reignite. Caught in the middle is Jim Hawkshaw, a struggling farmer living near the old house. As he digs for the truth, Jim is forced to choose sides when the locals decide to take matters into their own hands and punish the outsider for his lies. While the town prepares for its first heritage festival, a band of vigilantes march on the old Corrigan house to exact revenge but this time... this time the Corrigans are ready for them.

Test Pilot's Daughter: Revenge


Steve Ward - 2010
    Molesters and pedophiles be warned, don’t mess with Christina Matthews!Romance, adventure, murder, and revenge, Christina Matthews does it all. An obsessed fly-girl with the Right Stuff and True Grit finds love in the oddest place, the cockpit. A beautiful and brainy college girl born with jet-fuel in her blood is haunted by a gripping family tragedy and the violent murder of her best friend. The only thing she truly fears is sleep. Tortured by nightmares, this test pilot’s daughter has to find a way to save her sanity or die. Mike Clark, call-name Lazer and a real Top Gun, looks to be the best kind of therapy.With dreams of becoming an Astronaut-Commander, Christina struggles through heart-stopping perils in the cockpit and crash-lands on a deserted island. Without hope for rescue, she concocts an oddball plan to return survivors to civilization.Risking her future at NASA, Christina delivers on a promise to a dying friend and faces her evil nemesis in the sky. Only by overcoming deep-seated fears can she exorcise her ghosts and pursue a lifelong dream of flying in space.Will true love conquer Christina's curse, or will she auger in?

Murder in a Good Neighborhood


K.K. Chalmers - 2011
    So when Roxanne finds the body of a beautiful young woman the week before Halloween, she is more than happy to leave the detecting to her son Marc, an Eastport, Virginia homicide detective...until a retired astronaut who also happens to be an old flame is arrested and the abbess from a nearby monastery insists Roxanne must help clear his name. Only neither woman realizes that by unmasking a killer, Roxanne is placing someone she loves in mortal danger.MURDER IN A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD was the 2009 winner of the Best Unpublished Novel Contest sponsored by James River Writers and Richmond Magazine. (63,800 words)The author is currently writing a sequel.

Ascension Day Part 2 of 2


John Matthews - 2011
    Trouble is, everyone thinks Larry's guilty, from the Louisiana Governor right down to the accused, who has confessed to the crime and now wants to make peace with his maker.Jac soon discovers that someone doesn't want anyone - especially a lawyer - digging around this case. And they'll stop at nothing to make sure Larry's execution goes ahead on schedule. Now Jac must decide whether he's prepared to risk his career, his reputation and his life to save a man who, by his own admission, is a murderer . . .When DEATH is your only hope...Ascension Day is the most exciting and compelling death-row thriller since The Shawshank Redemption.

Safely Buried


John Pesta - 2011
    I had just come off I-65, and my high beams lit her up from behind. She was walking along the road between dark, endless cornfields, and her right leg was in a cast. She wore denim shorts and a yellow tank top that didn’t quite reach the shorts. Without crutches, she moved as fast as she could on the gravelly shoulder. She would take a long step with her good leg, stiffly swing the cast forward the same distance, and immediately start the next step. Tilting jerkily, she looked as if she would fall with every stride. I crossed the centerline to give her more room to fall. Just as I was about to pass her, she glanced over her shoulder and stuck out a thumb.When Phil Larrison picks up a hitchhiker, he gets more than he bargained for.

Lawyers, Guns and Money


J.D. Rhoades - 2011
    Local crime boss Voit Fairgreen has just dropped a bag full of cash on his desk and hired him to defend Voit's brother Danny on a murder charge. Andy's one of the movers and shakers in the small southern town of Blainesville, and Voit figures Andy's the kind of inside guy that can cut a deal to get his baby brother out of the jam. The problem is that Danny just might be innocent. But someone powerful needs this case buried, and if an innocent man dies for that, so be it. Andy Cole is a guy who's made a good living by going along to get along. He's been willing to bend every rule, except Rule One--always get paid. But this case will cause him to re-examine his life and push him and his lover, beautiful newspaper editor Elizabeth Sinclair, to risk everything--including their lives-- for the truth. J.D. Rhoades, author of the Kindle bestseller BREAKING COVER and an attorney himself, turns his eye on his own profession in a book that combines the hard-boiled tone of the classic P.I novel with the white-knuckle suspense of the legal thriller.

The Jackpot


David Kazzie - 2011
    She's been passed over for partner at her law firm, she's coming down with the flu, and she's just learned that her parents' business is teetering on the brink of failure. But when she discovers that her financially desperate boss has stolen their new client's gigantic winning lottery ticket, she realizes her day is just getting started. Now, to return the ticket to its rightful owner, Samantha must stay one step ahead of her nothing-to-lose boss and a homicidal mercenary who's been hired to hunt down the ticket at all costs. And as her pursuers close in, Samantha can’t help but think about showing up at lottery headquarters, smiling for the camera, and walking away with one of the richest lottery jackpots in American history.

Final Passage


Timothy J. Frost - 2009
    Twenty-five years later, Martin discovers hidden logbooks in his mother's attic, and vows to find out the truth. His quest takes him racing across the Atlantic in the Columbus Cup, the world's largest-ever regatta, an event that becomes a personal voyage of discovery and disaster. On the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, with his enemies closing in, Martin must make one desperate final sea passage to discover the shocking truth about his family - and himself.

The Potus Papers


Bryan Mooney - 2011
    A former agency friend hires him to verify a simple suicide claim for his insurance company. Nick sees it as an open and shut case, until he meets the victim’s beautiful daughter, Adriana. She convinces him that her father would never commit suicide and asks him to investigate further. Nick soon discovers that everyone her father had talked to prior to his death is turning up dead. The headstrong investigator pursues every lead across three continents, until the trail ends with the President of the United States, POTUS as he is called by the Secret Service. No one is who they appear to be. Suddenly, Nick Ryan finds he is next on the list to die. Nick is running out of time. He must solve the mystery of, The POTUS Papers…

A Man Overboard


Shawn Hopkins - 2012
    content rating: some mild language

The Public Pretender


M.D. Cliatt - 2011
    On her last day at work, a juvenile probation officer she despises drags a weeping young girl before an irritated judge for an unscheduled hearing. Maeven can’t resist the girl’s pitiful pleas for help and decides to intervene. While defending this girl, she discovers people are profiting from imprisoning innocent kids in juvenile placement facilities, but whom? A juvenile psychologist who tries to expose the kids-for-cash scheme is murdered, but he’s left clues. When her oldest son is arrested and detained on false charges, her husband receives a message proposing an offer: Maeven quits her job and the case or they lose their son. Her husband insists that she choose their son. The problem? She won’t sacrifice one for the other.

Rejection (Lou Drake Mysteries)


Thomas K. Matthews - 2010
    Ten years later, fifty pounds heavier and three months from retirement, Drake works patrol in the backwater borough of Malcolm New York. He spends his idle time reading crime novels and writing one of his own.When Drake breaks protocol on another brutal murder scene, endangering his rookie partner, his captain demotes him to the booking cage. But when another body is discovered and both victims are identified as struggling literary agents, the NYPD Chief of Detectives decides Lou's writing experience could benefit the case and pairs him with his old partner one last time.As they look for clues in the struggling publishing industry, Drake finds himself thrust into the middle of a serial murder case where a methodical perpetrator is systematically killing those who rejected him. Drake must revive his old detective prowess and trust his writer's intuition to try and solve the case, while possibly exposing the truth about the old Hennings investigation - a secret that would expose a web of corruption that could shake the NYPD to its core.

The Lamp


Jason Cunningham - 2012
    A terror in the boxing ring, most of his opponents didn't make it past the first round... and those who did lived to regret it. After a careless decision sends him to prison for seven years, Levi returns to a life in ruins: his fiance has split, his friends -- gone.While struggling to pick up the pieces, Levi receives an inheritance from the mysterious figure known simply as K.S. He soon learns that the gift -- an antiquated lamp -- might just have bizarre supernatural powers. This inheritance, however, proves costly as a fearsome enemy now hunts him. Levi's boxing days might be behind him, but the most dangerous fight of his life lies ahead.

Amelia's Last Secret


Eric Wilson - 2012
    Was she part of an American spy mission? Was she eloping to escape a suffocating lifestyle and marriage? Or did she die as a stowaway on a remote island? With Hillary Clinton's announcement that a team would be investigating new evidence in the Phoenix Islands, this story is as timely as it is well-researched.Take flight in this fast-paced adventure, from a NY Times bestselling novelist.