Open Season


Archer Mayor - 1988
    Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont police force has a serious problem: in a community where a decade could pass without a single murder, the body count is suddenly mounting. Innocent citizens are being killed—and others set-up—seemingly orchestrated by a mysterious ski-masked man. Signs suggest that a three year-old murder trial might lie at the heart of things, but it’s a case that many in the department would prefer remained closed. A man of quiet integrity, Lt. Gunther knows that he must pursue the case to its conclusion, wherever it leads.Open Season is the first of Archer Mayor’s twenty-three Joe Gunther novels, a series of gripping police procedurals set in New England, where small-town charm, stoicism and civility sometimes conceal brutal truths.

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.

Lockdown


Sean Black - 2009
    His task: to protect one of America's most ruthless businessmen.A BLOODY SHOOTOUTSuddenly gunshots ring out. People run for cover. Innocent bystanders are mown down. Amid the chaos, Lock's hunt for the killers turns into an explosive game of cat and mouse.ONLY ONE MAN CAN SAVE NEW YORKLock's search for the truth leads him through the corporate corridors of power and dark alleys of Manhattan towards a deadly confrontation with one of the world's most dangerous women. As the clock ticks towards midnight on New Year's Eve, Lock realizes that not only is his own life in terrible danger but so are the lives of millions of others...

First Degree Innocence


Ginger Simpson - 2010
    Her arrest comes on the day she’s called in sick and stayed inside, so she can’t explain how an eye-witness describes her in great detail, down to the make and model of her car.A terrible mistake has been made, and her insistence of innocence falls on deaf ears. Even her fellow inmates don’t believe her as it’s a claim they all make. Alone in the world, she has no one to turn to for help, and not a single soul to campaign for her freedom…at least until she makes a valuable friend. In the meantime, a plan for retribution is brewing, and naïve Carrie finds herself smack dab in the middle of an evil scheme concocted by the prison bully. A ten year sentence seems mild when she’s threatened with death for refusing to participate. Can Carrie find a way out of this horrible nightmare, or is she destined to spend her days locked in terror, isolation, and the cold gray interior of prison walls?

A Terrible Beauty


Graham Masterton - 2003
    Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire is used to bloodshed, but this ivory litter of human remains is unimaginable butchery."Of other worlds apart from this..."In isolated darkness not far away, an American tourist is at the mercy of a serial killer. His tools are a boning knife, twine, and a doll fashioned from nails and fishhooks. The murder of his victims is second only to the pleasure of their pain."Darker places inhabited by evil monstrosities..."As an eighty-year-old mystery unfolds, so does a modern-day ritual that's marked Katie Maguire as its next victim. For what happened once in this small picturesque village is happening again. It's more than a series of horrifying crimes. It's tradition."Take me there."

Stone of Fire


J.F. Penn - 2011
    Morgan Sierra, an Oxford University psychologist with a deadly past, doesn’t know the answer to that question — and doesn’t care. All she knows is that her sister and niece have been abducted, held hostage for the stone pendants that Morgan and her sister wear: two of twelve relics once owned by the original Apostles.Forged in fire and wind, drowned in the blood of martyrs, the twelve Pentecost stones have been kept secret for two thousand years. But now the Keepers of the stones are being murdered, and the relics stolen by Thanatos, a shadowy group dedicated to remaking the world into a living Hell. The authorities are clueless; the world lies helpless. And Thanatos grows more powerful with each stone they take. Enter Jake Timber — agent of ARKANE, the British agency tasked with investigating the supernatural. Jake knows some of the secrets Morgan needs to save her family, but can’t stop Thanatos without her help. Only together can they stop Thanatos before the stones are captured, before Morgan’s family is murdered, and before the world is changed forever.From flooded ruins in Italy, to religious sites in Israel, to the far reaches of Iran and Tunisia, Morgan and Jake must race across the world to find the stones before Thanatos gathers the relics and uses their power to turn Earth into a living Hell.But every step they take brings Morgan and Jake closer to the end. To the knife edge between salvation and madness. To the moment when Morgan will have to decide whether she will save her family… or save the world.Time is running out. Thanatos draws near. And the day of Pentecost is at hand.Stone of Fire is the first book in the ARKANE series by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.F. Penn.

Foreign Deceit


Jeff Carson - 2012
    All that trouble falls to background noise, however, when Wolf learns his brother has just committed suicide in northern Italy. Devastation and resentment of his sibling's selfish act is short-lived, because Wolf knows one thing is for certain: his brother would never kill himself. Or would he? A nagging suspicion there's more to the story is enough to pull Wolf from his volatile life, to Lecco, Italy--a picturesque city along the shores of Lake Como, where danger lies amid the ancient cobblestone alleys.With the aid of a beautiful Carabinieri agent, can Wolf piece together what really happened to his brother without suffering the same fate?

Shadows in the Water


Kory M. Shrum - 2017
    They didn't kill her — and they'll soon regret it.When DEA agent Jack Thorne's house is stormed by vengeful drug lords, both he and his wife are shot dead. Only his daughter Louie survives — by using a terrifying power that defies reason.Piecing together a life in his absence, Louie embraces her gift and her rage under the force of a single need: revenge.She will destroy the men that took her family. No matter the cost, no matter how many bullets, she won't stop until justice has been well and truly served.

Key Lime Blues


Mike Jastrzebski - 2010
    For Wes Darling it was guns, lies, and dead bodies. The Darling Detective Agency was founded in 1876 by Aaron ‘Dusty’ Darling. Now Wes’s chain smoking, stressed out mother is grooming Wes to take over. How does he handle his mother’s demands? He heads to Key West, moves onto a sailboat, and takes a job tending bar at a little joint called Dirty Alvin’s. Life is carefree until his mother’s lover, a man who mentored Wes for years, is murdered on a Key West Beach. Reluctantly, Wes is drawn into a spinning web of murder, sex and deceit. First there are his mother’s pleas for help. Throw in a six-foot-tall red-headed stripper, a retired mobster who acts like it’s the 1940’s, a pair of dim-witted hit men, a phobic psychic named Elvis, a small fortune in stolen diamonds, and what do you have? Mayhem in Key West.

Innocent Little Crimes


C.S. Lakin - 2011
    But, it's not enough she has everything she desires; for fifteen years she has been obsessively orchestrating payback to five unsuspecting, former schoolmates—“friends” who played a nasty trick on her, and now it’s her turn for revenge.Under the flattering auspices of a cozy college reunion, these unsuspecting classmates are invited to Lila’s private island for a weekend from hell where Lila forces them to play a vicious parlor game—a psychological “Ten Little Indians,” where one by one Lila’s guests are figuratively killed-off. Yet, revenge turns bittersweet when the weekend is over and one guest is dead.A psychological spinoff of Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" that Publisher's Weekly calls "A page-turning thrill ride that will have readers holding their breaths the whole way through."

A Familiar Sight


Brianna Labuskes - 2021
    Gretchen White is a specialist in antisocial personality disorders and violent crimes. She’s helped solve enough prominent cases for detective Patrick Shaughnessy that her own history is often overlooked: Gretchen is an admitted sociopath once suspected of killing her aunt. Shaughnessy still thinks Gretchen got away with murder. It’s not going to happen again.When a high-profile new case lands on Shaughnessy’s desk, it seems open and shut. Remorseless teenager Viola Kent is accused of killing her mother. Amid stories of childhood horrors and Viola’s cruel manipulations, the bad seed has already been found guilty by a rapt public. But Gretchen might be seeing something in Viola no one else does: herself.If Viola is a scapegoat, then who really did it? And what are they hiding? To find the truth, Gretchen must enter a void that is not only dark and cold-blooded, but also frighteningly familiar.

To Kill For


A.J. Carella - 2014
    do you trust yours?Money and a handsome fiancé from a good family. What more could a girl want?Jamie McKay appears to have the perfect life, but things suddenly start to go horribly wrong. A sudden death and a run-in with a would-be killer leave her alone, afraid and a long way from home.Kat McKay, long estranged from her family, returns to the small town she hasn't been back to since she walked away as a teenager. Determined to find out what happened to her niece, she must face the demons from her past and enlist the help of the man she left behind.Can the McKays survive the explosive results?

Fog City Fraud


Peter Ralph - 2015
     Why had he been holding a young girl on the ledge with a knife to her throat? Did he fall or did the shock of the bullet that ripped his shoulder apart kill him? Why had made this otherwise, peaceful, family man snap? Did the answers to these questions die with him?

Corruption (collector) (HarperCollins Poche, 191)


Don Winslow - 2017
    . .All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop.He is "the King of Manhattan North," a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force." Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite special unit given carte blanche to fight gangs, drugs, and guns. Every day and every night for the eighteen years he’s spent on the Job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps. He’s done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean—including Malone himself.What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city’s history. Now Malone is caught in a trap and being squeezed by the Feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, trying to survive, body and soul, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.This is the great cop novel of our time and a book only Don Winslow could write: a haunting story of greed and violence, inequality and race, crime and injustice, retribution and redemption that reveals the seemingly insurmountable tensions between the police and the diverse citizens they serve. A searing portrait of a city on the edge and of a courageous, heroic, and deeply flawed man who stands at the edge of its abyss, The Force is a masterpiece of urban realism full of shocking and surprising twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting us today.

The Hand of Christ


Joseph S. Nagle - 2010
    Another is discovered. Middle East peace talks at the Umayyad Mosque in Syria are attacked and CIA Officer Dr. Michael Sterling is caught in the middle. Along with the ambassadors of each nation in attendance, a Syrian agent is fatally wounded but, before dying, passes shocking intelligence to Michael - intelligence that outlines the planned assassinations of the Ayatollah of Iran and of the Pope and more: the intelligence outlines the history of an esoteric organization that traces their lineage to the truth of the Crucifixion – to Christ himself. Known only as the Order, their charter and goal throughout history has been to infiltrate governments with pawns of their own; to reclaim their right to rule. To make matters worse, the Order has framed Michael for the Ayatollah's assassination and a Presidential backed, but botched CIA mission – codenamed Merlin – made Iran nuclear capable and they want revenge for the killing of their beloved leader. Iran has aimed its full nuclear arsenal at the United States and has issued an ultimatum: hand over Michael in forty-eight hours or it will be war – exactly as the Order had planned. Attacked by his own agency, manipulated by the Order, and wanted by the Iranians, Dr. Michael Sterling carries the reader on a mesmerizing and fast-paced journey through Syria, the US, and Rome to stop the Pope's murder and to avert a manufactured war.About the Author:JS Nagle began his career in Intelligence as an Interrogator and was cross-trained in Counter Intelligence. A Paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division, JS Nagle spent many a night preparing to jump into the darkness with only a parachute strapped to his back and his weapon at his side. JS Nagle has received training at the prestigious Defense Language Institute for both the German and Spanish languages, and he holds an expert qualification with a number of weapons. In his private life, he has earned degrees in Economics and an MBA in Organizational Management; he spends his spare time training for Ironman triathlons, chasing his entirely too fast toddler-daughter; loving his brilliant, clinician wife whilst bragging incessantly about his son who is a cadet at an unnamed private University in Washington DC.Follow the Author:Twitter: @SterlingNovelsBlog: SterlingNovels.blogspot.comEmail: JMScott@SterlingNovels.com