Diamonds and Cole


Micheal Maxwell - 2013
    In the past, Cole a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, worked for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Time Magazine. Now, he’s returned to the paper where he started his career, The Chicago Sentinel. Instead of writing the big stories, he’s doing the work of a rookie reporter. His “big story of the day” is a cat caught in a tree. During its rescue, the cat’s owner takes her Good Samaritan neighbor hostage. Cole witnesses something so disturbing it reawakens the journalist’s desire to write again.Returning to the paper, Cole finds a desperate message asking for help from Ellie, one that got away. The one that has continually haunted his life. Cole drops everything and flies to California. He must find what would make her so desperate, she would call him after so many years. Cole finds her terminally ill, and abandoned by her husband. He discovers while Ellie was heavily medicated, she mistakenly signed a Power of Attorney. Now her estranged daughter Erin’s inheritance, won’t go to her, but her abusive step-father. Cole vows to find the girl and right the situation.The path to keeping his word is blocked at every turn by the husband who abandoned her, his shady real estate deals, violent con men, street thugs and the lure of a fortune in diamonds that unite them. The anger, sorrow, and crippling guilt of twenty years fires Cole's drive to keep a promise, that in the end, will heal and return the soul to the great journalist.Beaten, bloody but determined, Cole Sage conquers greed and hatred with a strength that only love, and a will as hard as diamond, can achieve.

Back on Murder


J. Mark Bertrand - 2010
    Roland March is a homicide cop on his way out. But when he's the only one at a crime scene to find evidence of a missing female victim, he's given one last chance to prove himself. Before he can crack the case, he's transferred to a new one that has grabbed the spotlight--the disappearance of a famous Houston evangelist's teen daughter. With the help of a youth pastor with a guilty conscience who navigates the world of church and faith, March is determined to find the missing girls while proving he's still one of Houston's best detectives.

Bitter Roots


C.J. Carmichael - 2017
     On the surface Lost Trail is a picture-perfect western town, offering a simple way of life revolving around the local ranches and ski hill, but Zak knows the truth behind the façade. When his old school friend Tiff Masterson, whose family owns a local Christmas tree farm, moves back to town, the two of them join forces to get to the truth about the murder. Bitter Roots is the first of three Bitter Root Mysteries.

Killing Me Softly


Bianca Sloane - 2012
    Her body was discovered days later, her beautiful face bashed in with a rock. Police determine her brutal death to be a mugging gone wrong and drop the matter into their cold case files.Over a year later, Tracy’s sister, Sondra, still can’t come to grips with what happened. She throws herself into her work as a documentary filmmaker to try and forget the cruelty of her sister’s death. However, a chance encounter with a man from Tracy’s past rips the wound open and sends Sondra on a desperate search for answers about the secrets from her sister’s life that may have led to her death.As Sondra struggles to uncover what happened to Tracy, she’s launched into a tangled web of deceit and danger that put her on a collision course with life and death…

Saving Grace


Pamela Fagan Hutchins - 2012
    When she flees Texas for the Caribbean, Katie escapes professional humiliation, a broken heart, and a wicked Bloody Mary habit, but she trades one set of problems for another when she begins to investigate the suspicious deaths of her parents on the island of St. Marcos. She’s bewitched by the voodoo spirit of an abandoned house in the rainforest and discovers that she’s as much a danger to herself as the island’s bad guys are. As the worst of her worlds collide, Katie drags herself back to the courthouse to defend her new friend Ava, an island local accused of stabbing the senator she’s been sleeping with.

What You Did


Claire McGowan - 2019
    A devastating accusation. Who should she trust, her husband or her best friend?It was supposed to be the perfect reunion: six university friends together again after twenty years. Host Ali finally has the life she always wanted, a career she can be proud of and a wonderful family with her college boyfriend, now husband. But that night her best friend makes an accusation so shocking that nothing will ever be the same again.When Karen staggers in from the garden, bleeding and traumatised, she claims that she has been assaulted—by Ali’s husband, Mike. Ali must make a split-second decision: who should she believe? Her horrified husband, or her best friend? With Mike offering a very different version of events, Ali knows one of them is lying—but which? And why?When the ensuing chaos forces her to re-examine the golden era the group shared at university, Ali realises there are darker memories too. Memories that have lain dormant for decades. Memories someone would kill to protect.

Night of the Assassin


Russell Blake - 2011
    A no-holds-barred, breakneck-paced thriller, Night charts the early years of El Rey - known as the King of Swords - a super-assassin responsible for some of the world's most spectacular and daring executions.Framed against the backdrop of present-day Mexico's brutal narco-trafficking violence, Night of the Assassin chronicles the making of a monster - a cold-blooded, ruthless killing machine. Raw, disturbing, edgy and unflinching, this epic saga defies convention to create a roller-coaster of intrigue, suspense and thrills that will leave even the most jaded thriller aficionados gasping for breath.Best if read after King of Swords, Night was written to provide background on El Rey, with the assumption that the reader is already familiar with the events in King of Swords.

If Angels Fall


Rick Mofina - 2000
    Pointing them out now no longer applies to the current edition.Tom Reed is a crime reporter with The San Francisco Star, whose superb journalistic skills earned him a Pulitzer nomination. But years later Reed’s life is coming apart. His editor wants him fired. His wife has left him to wrestle with his demons. Alone, Reed is tormented by the fear he may have caused the suicide of an innocent man suspected of murdering a two-year-old girl.Reed’s friend on the case is legendary San Francisco Homicide Inspector, Walt Sydowski, who has one of California’s highest clearance rates. He is also a lonely widower haunted by the fact he cannot solve the girl's heartbreaking death.Both men grapple with the past while they race the clock to learn the truth behind a several new abductions that have anguished the Bay Area, in this acclaimed thriller set in the late 1990s.

Hush


Anne Frasier - 2002
    None haunts her dreams more than the killer who took her son's life sixteen years ago, then silently disappeared into the dark. Now an urgent request for help from the Chicago police has reawakened Ivy's greatest nightmare. The Madonna Murderer has returned to fulfill his calling. This time Ivy understands the killer instinct. She knows what man is capable of. This time she's ready to confront her deepest fear, face-to-face. For the very last time...

No Good Deed


M.P. McDonald - 2010
    It triggers dreams of disasters. Tragedies that happen exactly as he envisions them. He learns that not only can he see the future, he can change it. Then the unthinkable happened and everyone ignored his frantic warnings. Thousands die. Suddenly, the Feds are pounding on his door and the name they have for Taylor isn't urban hero. It's enemy combatant. And, it means they can do anything they want to him. Anything at all.

An Ace and A Pair


Blake Banner - 2017
    But he’s a dinosaur who belongs to another age. Detective Carmen Dehan has such a bad attitude that nobody at the precinct can stomach her. Captain Jennifer Cuevas wants them both out of the way and thinks they make a perfect pair. So she gives them the Cold Cases file – the cases nobody gives a damn about.She has no idea just how hot a cold case can get.Ten years back Nelson Hernandez and his four cousins were playing poker in a dive at Hunts Point. Somebody came in, blew them away and beheaded and castrated Nelson, leaving his head and his balls on the table. There was no shortage of suspects, the Jersey Mob, the Triads from Manhattan, or the 43rds own bent cop, Mick Harragan. But nobody was ever charged, and the night of the murder Mick Harragan went missing with Nelson’s wife, Maria.Now Stone and Dehan plan to find him – whatever the consequences…

Fire and Ice


Dana Stabenow - 1998
    But that was before his life unraveled. Transferred in disgrace to this rough-and-tumble fishing town on the shores of Bristol Bay, Liam knows Newenham is the end of the line. It's also his last shot at getting his life back.. He's about to come in for a very rough landing. Stepping onto the airstrip at Newenham, Liam walks into a crime scene: a body torn apart by the propeller of a Piper Super Cub. As if that isn't enough of a welcome, the woman bending over the corpse is Wyanet Chouinard, the only woman Liam ever truly loved - and soon to be his prime suspect. Next, a man is held hostage in the town's only decent burger joint--held for shooting out a jukebox that was playing Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville. And Liam still doesn't have his uniform on.

Nightmares of Caitlin Lockyer


Demelza Carlton - 2013
    The worst part is that they're human. "Name?" "Nathan Miller.""What happened?""I was shot.""By whom?""A homicidal lunatic with a gun and bad aim." "Her name?""Caitlin Lockyer.""What happened to her?""Looks like someone tried to kill her."Nathan found Caitlin on a beach covered in blood. Saving her life was just the start. Now he's the prime suspect and he has to find out who's really responsible. Both of their lives depend on it.Who hurt her? Why was he shot? What did he promise? Why doesn't his story add up? Who was the dead man on the beach? What will she remember when she wakes up? A tiny taste of what's in store: "Stay away from her, Nathan. That girl isn't good for you."Stay away from her? I'd go crazy with worry in a day. "You don't know her."Chris looked grim. "Neither do you. Is there anything you wouldn't do for her?" "Yes," I snapped. "I wouldn't die for her."Chris turned around to stare at me, her mouth hanging open. "Do you want to know why?" I asked steadily. "I wouldn't die for her because I wouldn't be able to protect her any more. What if I missed one of the people who hurt her? I couldn't take that risk. She's too important." Nightmares Trilogy Dark, disturbing and definitely scary - Nightmares of Caitlin Lockyer is the first book in Demelza Carlton's Nightmares Trilogy. The second book is Necessary Evil of Nathan Miller.

The Watcher


Jo Robertson - 2011
    Working with a single-minded tenacity, she sets out to prove it.Deputy Sheriff Ben Slater hides his personal pain behind the job, but Kate's arrival in his county knocks his world on its axis. He wants to believe her wild theory, but the idea of a serial killer with the kind of pathology she proposes is too bizarre.Together they work to find a killer whose roots began in a small town in Bigler County, but whose violence spread across the nation. A Janus-like killer, more monster than man, he fixates on Kate. The killer wants nothing more than to kill the "purple-eyed girl again."

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.