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?

Wedding planner Adam More has an epiphany: He has devoted all his life's energy to creating events that he and his partner Steven are forbidden by federal law for having for themselves. So Adam decides to make a change. Organizing a boycott of the wedding industry, Steven and Adam call on gay organists, hairdressers, cater-waiters, priests, and hairdressers everywhere to get out of the business and to stop going to weddings, too. In this screwball, romantic comedy both the movement they've begun and their relationship are put in jeopardy when Steven's brother proposes to Adam's sister and they must decide whether they're attending or sending regrets.

Secrets lead to nothing but trouble and heartbreak.

Newly arrived in the small Southern town of Oakboro, Salem Lacy is planning to keep a low profile after an ill-timed step out of the closet cost her the corporate job and high-powered friends she had in Atlanta. That plan derails when Salem meets the mysterious and beautiful Knox Bolander, a woman who is whispered to cause odd and sometimes dangerous things to happen. When a fire that occurred twenty years earlier on the Bolander estate threatens to destroy Salem's chance to rebuild her life, she must decide if she will risk everything again for this secretive woman who has been rarely touched and never loved.

Walt Whitman referred to a "Mad, naked, Summer Night!" In the pages of Boys of Summer, acclaimed editor Steve Berman's latest anthology, talented authors and fresh voices reveal the allure and excitement of the season for gay teens. June always promises romance. July entices with its raw heat, and August offers a languid fire that will burn out before autumn's approach. These are stories of young love and adventure, when the sky's ceiling is a bright blue marvel, when another boy's laughter at the beach can distract from dull summer jobs.

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.

Quiet and introverted graduate student Nicole Kennedy has always longed to do something far more adventurous than study politics from used textbooks. But when she spontaneously sets off for Africa to volunteer as a teacher over the summer, she gets more excitement than she could have ever imagined. Within hours of arriving in Kenya, Nicole finds herself at the center of an international conspiracy involving millions of dollars and being rescued by beautiful but infuriatingly arrogant government agent Kira Anthony. Despite her suspicions that Kira may not be who she claims to be, Nicole can't seem to fight her growing attraction to the beguiling blonde. Could it be the thrill, the danger, the close proximity that explains her feelingsor is it a glimpse of something she's never known and can't bear to lose?

Will the masked outlaw who stole Lucia's locket also claim her heart?

When Miss Lucia Foxe is robbed by a band of shadowy highwaymen, she does not realize this frightening event will change her life forever. Her brave quest to retrieve her stolen locket brings her into close contact with the thieves and their dashing and fearless masked leader, Len Hawkins. But there is more to Len than meets the eye. Beneath the robber's mask lies a woman who, in her heart, is not really so very different from Lucia.

As their unlikely love grows against the backdrop of the poverty and violent protest of Regency England, Lucia learns how much more there is to the world than her upbringing has taught her. Len flirts with death every day, and eventually, an attempt at exacting revenge on her cruel father threatens to snatch her from Lucia's arms.

Will Len survive her encounter with death and avoid the retribution of the agents of justice? And can respectable gentlewoman Lucia love Len enough to sacrifice everything she knows?

When truth is buried so deep it can kill, will the love of one woman be enough to save the life of another?

Kara Lynch lives a simple life as a ranger in Washington's Riverside State Park. When dead bodies begin to turn up, her simple life vanishes. Adopted at birth, Kara has no idea her birthright is at the center of the murders and is the sole reason her life hangs in the balance. Help comes in the form of wolf expert, Camille "Cam" Black Wolf. Tall and mysterious, Cam is both a blessing and a curse--it's hard to concentrate on saving hikers when Kara's fighting the urge to run her hands all over Cam's body. With assistance from vampire Riah Preston and her partner Adriana James of the Spiritus Group, they race to stop a preternatural killer. But will the secret they uncover give Kara wings or send her to the grave?

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.

Life coach Elaine Raitt is educated, elegant, and dedicated to her profession. Blue-collar boi Joey Lang is too insecure to even approach herthat is until her well-meaning but meddling best friend Lisa decides to break the ice and makes Joey a life-coaching appointment with Elaine. A session meant to bring clarity only leaves them both feeling more confused about their purpose in life and love.

Will Joey be able to find the strength to chase the woman of her dreams, and even if she does, will Elaine be willing to risk the life she loves for the woman who could be the love of her life?

Six weeks after Hurricane Katrina, an emotionally battered Chanse returns to a New Orleans that is a battered shell of its former vibrant self to try to pull together the shattered pieces of his life. But on arriving, he discovers that his last client before the storm was murdered shortly after she hired him to find her long missing father--and Chanse is drawn into the Verlaine family's deadly web of lies and secrets as he tries to find his client's killer against the backdrop of unbelievable destruction. The third Chanse MacLeod mystery, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award.

Three months before her wedding to her post-college sweetheart, reality show producer Annie Collins finally acknowledges her dormant desires. Wrapped in the arms of another woman—her trainer, Oksana Gorinkov—Annie experiences a physical heat she never knew existed. Soon the one-night stand meant to be her final farewell to the single life stretches into a consuming month-long affair, the genuine intensity of which neither woman can ignore. Annie sees where her heart belongs, and though the objections from her family and friends and the scars from Oksana's ex threaten to drive them back to their respective sides of Los Angeles, Annie knows she must fight for this relationship, a real love worth much more than any fantasy she's ever dreamed up.

Twelve O'Clock Tales is the fourth collection of short fiction by legendary novelist and memoirist, Felice Picano (The Lure, Like People in History, True Stories). A personal homage to the storytellers of his youth, Edgar Allen Poe, E.F. Benson, and H. P. Lovecraft, as well as his acquaintances, Arthur C. Clarke and Harlan Ellison. Thirteen dark tales, eerie, bizarre, and dreamlike, the tales will thrill and disturb, discomfort and titillate, enthrall and leave you wondering. Picano ranges across time and space, from tribal West Africa to the American heartland, to a lab in Venezuela, and a California Highway fifteen years from now. His characters range from a teen accident survivor with a secret, to a far-future scholar forced to travel to a galactic backwater, to a retired L.A. cop who dabbles in astrology, and a peasant girl in B.C.E. Israel encountering the strangest of strangers. The thirteen tales include brand new stories and acknowledged Picano masterworks collected here for the first time.

Behind closed doors, everyone suffers from some kind of demon.

Veteran Elite Operative Landis "Chase" Coolidge's latest mission requires every bit of her considerable tracking skills because she has to locate a colleague kidnapped by a brilliant scientist responsible for the deaths of millions. Former op Phantom is along for the ride, desperate to find her missing lover.

By day, Heather Snyder works in the New York fashion industry. But her secret life as a high-class call girl thrusts her into the middle of a global black market organ-harvesting ring and draws the interest of the EOO.

No stranger to the world of call girls, Chase revels in her latest assignment, until she discovers that Heather is the one woman who can change her roguish ways.

Fifth in the romantic intrigue series: Elite Operatives.