Crime & Mystery Books

Ex-Chicago cop and new PI Josie Harper has been hired by an outside group to clear the name of publisher Lauren Wade, recently acquitted of the murder of her lover. That means finding the real killer, a task made more difficult by Lauren's unwillingness to cooperate and a large family problem—Lauren's parents have been kidnapped for a ransom she can no longer pay. Josie has a big challenge of her own: how to redeem herself after losing her job as a detective. When Josie and Lauren join forces to rescue the parents, they discover they make a great team, in more ways than one.

Will Josie's troubled past come back to haunt her? And who did kill Lauren's lover?

Bounty Hunter Luca Bennett's in a bind, which is nothing new, but this time it's her feelings, not a jumper, that's got her tangled in knots. She's finally decided she wants to be more than a friend with benefits to cop Jessica Chance, but when hot and dangerous attorney Ronnie Moreno returns to town, a new case and an old flame threaten to interfere. When the case puts her at odds with the entire police department, Jess included, Luca is forced to make a hard choice that could change her entire world. As the lines between right and wrong blur, she faces the biggest risks of her life. Luca loves to gamble, but the stakes have never been higher. Will she win big or will she lose everything?

The Angels and Demons Literary Weekend brings former New Orleans resident Winter Lovelace back to town from her gig as writer-in-residence at a prestigious women's college in upstate New York. Winter desperately needs a break from the book she is struggling to finish, and hopes that this weekend will inspire her and trigger her creativity.

But while waiting for a friend in a hotel courtyard, a body lands at her feet, and Winter is dragged into a baffling mystery quite against her will. The victim is a notorious m/m romance author who is also a homophobe, and the list of people who wanted her dead is quite extensive. Winter herself is considered a suspect!

To make matters worse, Winter's ex shows up to cover the story for a local news station...an ex Winter had hoped she'd never see again.

Michele "Micky" Knight, a New Orleans PI, meets an out-of-town team of investigators who are working a human trafficking case. They want someone local to show them around. It sounds easy, and a woman with smiling green eyes is asking. But it stays easy only if Micky stops asking questionsand she's never been good at that. What starts out as a tourist tour of the underside of New Orleans turns into a risky game of cat and mouse, and twists even further as Micky is caught between the good guys and the bad guys, each willing to do whatever it takesincluding getting rid of an inconvenient PIto achieve their ends. Who can she trust? And who's trying to kill her?

The eighth Micky Knight mystery.

Assigned to partner Detective Daryl Chandler in the investigation of a series of child abductions, Special Agent Blythe Kent is both intrigued by the cases and the woman bringing them to the attention of New York's Deviant Data Unit. Detective Chandler knows she can find every child in her case files. Possessing an almost uncanny sixth sense, and using good old-fashioned detective work, Daryl has been drawn to a wealthy suburb where she believes the children are. With Daryl and Blythe posing as a loving couple desperate to adopt a child of their own, Daryl believes they can draw the kidnapper out and bring all the missing children home. Neither of them is aware that unearthly hands have a stake in the abductions, and that when it comes to facing demons, they are going to need a protector of their own to get everyone home safe and sound.

A Wings paranormal mystery.

Vivian Cooper and the DiGiovanni twins have been through hell and back. And they're still broke and on the run. Life's a bitch like that.

Cooper and the twins are together again. This time with Reese and Ryan's fathers in tow. All they have to do is get their money back. But they dig up more than they bargained for in Vegas. And that chick who ripped them off in Mexico doesn't want to give up the gold. Plus the DiGiovanni family is probably still after them. And maybe the cops. This whole stealing the money and running thing is hard.

Even if they manage to get the money and get away, can they stay hidden? Cooper's sins have to catch up at some point. Will Reese and Ryan still be her salvation?

Final novel in the Dirty Trilogy

Bounty hunter Luca Bennett is back and so is a woman from her past, asking for favors. Unable to resist a woman in need, Luca barrels headlong into an intricate web of organized crime. Just when she thinks she's found what she's looking for, the stakes are raised and she learns she can trust no one.

While Luca tries to unravel the mystery related to her latest job, her personal life has its share of puzzles, from the enigmatic woman on the arm of her pal, police officer Jessica Chance, to a family reunion centered on an unlikely wedding. As her personal and professional lives collide, will Luca discover what she's looking for is closer than she thinks?

Starvation and disease haunt the streets of 1820s Paris, while supernatural terror stalks the night. The once-famous police force is a shambles, its elite Bureau of Supernatural Investigations disbanded. Only Detective Inspector Elise Corbeau remains, spared by a shadowy protector for a purpose not even she knows.

When charismatic cult leader Hermine Boucher is kidnapped, all fingers point to her ex-lover, inventor Maria Kalderash. But the further Inspector Corbeau investigates, the more suspects she turns up, until finally, the finger is pointing right back at the Paris Police.

Navigating a web of betrayal, hidden agendas, and shifting alliances, Corbeau must protect the innocent, bring the corrupt to justice, and escape the ever-growing list of people who want to see her at the bottom of the Seine. If she can do it, she just might save her job. And she may even find true love.

Vivian Cooper and Reese DiGiovanni have hated each other since the second grade. Too bad Reese's twin brother, Ryan, is Cooper's best friend.

Cooper and Ryan will do anything for each other, even when it's illegal, suicidal, or just plain stupid. Which is why, when Cooper and the twins stumble upon millions of dollars in gold bars, they take it and head for Las Vegas. Soon they find themselves running from some very angry and very organized criminals. Which turns out to be not nearly as sexy as it looks in the movies.

Even if they manage to survive the pissed off guys who are chasing them, Cooper and Reese might kill each other for the hell of it. Or hook up. It really could go either way.

First in the Dirty Trilogy.

Who says crime doesn't pay?

Luca Bennett makes her living looking for people, but her sights aren't set on lost children separated from their parents at a busy mall or elderly Alzheimer's patients who wandered from the nursing home. She's a bounty hunter paid to apprehend fugitives on the lam.

Luca caught her latest job from new-in-town, criminal defense attorney, Veronica Ronnie Moreno. Ronnie's client, seedy local businessman Jed Quitman, failed to show up for court, and Ronnie wants him found right away. With Jed's mug smiling from dozens of billboards and low-budget, late-night television commercials, Luca figures finding him will be a breeze.

It doesn't take long for Luca to realize there's nothing simple about this job, from a stranger threatening her to stay away, to the fiery hot woman who has Luca looking for more than the usual one-night stand. The hunt for Jed quickly turns complicated, and the pursuit is fraught with danger, as is her attraction to the elusive Ronnie Moreno. In a case loaded with twists and turns, can Luca find everything she's looking for?

Goodness may appear in many forms; evil need only take one.

The Chicago PD Deviant Data Unit specializes in the dark and cruel aspects of criminal behavior. When a serial killer who leaves his victims oddly posed starts terrorizing the city, Detective Rafe Douglas leads the team tasked to find this sadistic killer. Still recovering from severe injuries sustained in the line of duty, Rafe's tenuous hold on what is real is further tested by someone who wants in on the case and won't take no for an answer.

Private Investigator Ashley Scott experiences the world through unveiled eyes. She alone can see that Hell's inhabitants are breaking free from their confines and are bringing their evil to Earth. She believes the killer isn't human and knows she has to convince Rafe there are more things happening in the Windy City than anyone could possibly realize. Only together can they solve the secrets revealed in the killer's brutal slayings.

First, do no harm. But as New Orleans PI Micky Knight discovers, not every health care provider follows that dictum. She stumbles into a tangle of the true believers to the criminally callous, who use the suffering of others for their twisted ends. In a city slowly rebuilding after Katrina, one of the most devastated areas is health care, and the gaps in service are wide enough for the snake oil salesmenand the snakes themselvesto crawl through.

The seventh Micky Knight mystery.

Women. Crime. Justice. At least the search for it. On the mean streets, the back allies, the dark corners.

These are stories of tough women in hard places. The nights are long, the women are fast, and danger is always a short block or quick minute away. Edited by award winning author/editors J.M. Redmann and Greg Herren, Women of the Mean Streets is an anthology of some of the top, tough women crime writers today, noir stories with a lesbian twist.

What do you do when you fall through the loopholes in the system and all you have to rely on are your own wits?

Lois and Sophie have scrambled and saved for years, planning for their retirement in Florida. But now they've lost it all, and Lois's sniper training from her long-ago service as an Army nurse leads to a desperate career choice.

When Detective Morgan Holiday is assigned to investigate a spate of sniper killings, it's just one more stress point in her already overburdened life. But as she grows increasingly solitary—coping with an Alzheimer's-plagued mother who refuses to be confined to a nursing home, and a police partner counting the days to retirement—she comes to realize that these murders may cut close to home.

A modern morality tale of justice, retribution, and women who refuse to be politely invisible.

It's just one more body in one more destroyed house. In New Orleans, after Katrina, there are thousands of destroyed houses and hundreds of body yet to be found. Can one more matter? It does to Micky Knight as she takes on the search to find out who the woman was and why she might have died there. But is Micky searching for justice or just doing anything to avoid confronting the ways Katrina destroyed everything that had tied her to New Orleans?

Micky's investigation leads to a tangle of greed and deceit that stretches back generations. Someone is using the destruction wrought by the flooding to finish what was started a hundred years ago. To stop them Micky will have to risk not just her life, but any chance to reconnect with Cordelia and rebuild the life she had before Katrina. But if she doesn't stop them, a young teen whose only crime was wanting to help the destroyed city, will be the next body left in an abandoned house.

The sixth book in the Micky Knight mystery series.

Among the moss-covered trees and wrought-iron balustrades of southern Louisiana, Detective Michele Knight (Micky to her friends) takes on the seemingly simple job of shooting a few photos for a client, but the going gets rough as Micky finds herself slugging through thugs and slogging through swamps in an attempt to expose a dangerous drug ring. The trail leads to the Hundred Oaks Plantation, a transvestite named Eddie, a beautiful doctor named Cordelia, and memories Micky thought she had buried twenty years ago.

Hard-hitting prose in the style of Sam Spade and Mike Hammer with a lesbian twist.

The First Micky Knight Mystery

"I was forty-six when I left the big city for the Big Easy. They say New Orleans is like a woman, beautiful, deceitful, and deadly. All I know is, I had to leave Los Angeles on the run and The Crescent City beckoned like a broad on her back."

In the sequel to Femme Noir, Nora Delaney has returned to her job as a college basketball coach in Los Angeles. When she beats up a rival coach on national television, she is fired and flees to a tiny town outside New Orleans to take refuge with her cousin Ellis Delaney and his wife. Working at Ellis' pawn shop, Nora meets Cleo Sweetleaf, who becomes a mentor and a second father. While Nora takes stock of her life, her everlasting hunger for strange women causes trouble from sunup to sundown. When Cleo is murdered, Nora, spurred on by revenge, is drawn into solving the crime. But after being beaten and left bleeding in an alley, Nora might not solve the mystery alive.