American Crime

Hot Mr. Scrooge is my neighbor. Hope The man loathes Christmas. What person doesn’t warm up to the best holiday of the year? The cabin I purchased mentioned it needed light work, not a gut renovation. Looks nothing like the picture. The brooding beast next door said he’d help spruce up the place if it will get me to leave him alone. Deal. Because who wants to be around the Grinch longer than they have to? Even if he’s tall. Has a gorgeous face you can stare at all day. And a body you’d love to mount on your sleigh repeatedly. Then I wondered could I help Mr. Non-Christmas ...

A blend of Manhunt, Killing Pablo, and Zero Dark Thirty, this sensational investigative high-tech thriller - soon to be a major motion picture from Sony - chronicles a riveting chapter in the 20th-century drug wars: the exclusive inside story of the American lawman and his dangerous eight-year hunt that captured El Chapo - the world's most wanted drug kingpin who evaded the law for more than a decade.

Four action packed, urban stories in one grand collection. Whatever It Takes Cash rules everything around us and that’s not excluding the rent. Quay stepped into the strip game not by choice, but because she didn’t have any other options. After her good-for-nothing man puts them in a bind that could get her and her daughter thrown out in the harsh, rough streets of Jacksonville, Florida, Quay makes a decision to cross the ultimate line. When her brash plot to get deeper in the game puts her life on the line, Quay has to do whatever it takes to survive. Diggin’ Gold There's not a woman...

After a reunion with an old friend goes wrong in a Long Island nightclub, Kasheef Williams is forced to protect himself by any means necessary. The only problem is that prying eyes see everything. Those eyes belong to Alija Bell. She runs, but Kasheef sees her face, and he tells her that it's best for her to get temporary amnesia. Afraid for her life and the safety of her daughter, she keeps her mouth shut, but when a tape of the murder surfaces, the only face that is visible is Alija's. Now the police are looking for their eyewitness.

After the fallout between Bird and Tre, The Commission looks as if it might be falling apart. The brotherhood has been broken beyond repair and it seems as though everyone is scrambling to chose sides. It's hard to trust anyone, but like always life goes on and so does business........ The heat is on for Tre and his team after the Tasker Street massacre. Everyone is looking for a place to hide out at except for Tre. He doesn't change up his lifestyle one bit even though he knows he's a wanted man. He and Diana continue to have their every night get high parties at their beach house. That is...

On a sunny May morning in 1998 in Cortez, Colorado, three desperados in a stolen truck opened fire on the town cop, shooting him 20 times; then they blasted their way past dozens of police cars and disappeared into 10,000 square miles of the harshest wilderness terrain on the North American continent. Self-trained survivalists, the outlaws eluded the most sophisticated law enforcement technology on the planet and a pursuit force that represented more than 75 local, state, and federal police agencies with dozens of SWAT teams, U.S. Army Special Forces....

Lex Legacy runs a legitimate dispensary out of Minneapolis with his two homeboys, Josh and Devin. With a surplus of product on their hands, they need to find a way to get rid of all that extra product and make a whole lotta money at the same time. Their Chicago connection can take it off their hands, easy. Unfortunately, the kingpin of Chicago doesn’t like that Lex’s crew and the Chicago connection are cutting into his profit, and he wants it to go away. Will Lex and his boys succumb to this hood tyrant, or do whatever it takes to keep that money rolling in? Not only that, but he’s ...

When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher “KC” Clarke, had disappeared from his reservation worksite, she became particularly concerned. No one knew where Clarke had gone.

On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of Black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift.

Smoke Kings is a powerful and propulsive novel with a diverse and unforgettable cast of characters. Like Steph Cha's Your House Will Pay it explores decades of racial tensions through a fictional landscape where the line between justice and revenge is blurred.

Dr. Sandra Tanner is an award-winning author. What is the significance of a dislocated shoulder, an upcoming family reunion, and cellophane wrappers? They all interweave to solve a four-year-old murder. But how? When private investigator Kadence McKnight learns of her family’s strong adverse reactions to the upcoming quinquennial family reunion, she realizes she has a problem on her hands. She knows the backlash is because the murderer of Satrine Campbell has not been captured. Satrine’s body was found four years ago, a few feet beyond the back fence of the McKnight family cemetery, ...

At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980’s New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall. Witnesses reported officers beating him with Billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma.

She entered the ring to settle a debt. He dragged her out and claimed her as his prize instead. Talia is thrown into a brutal underground fight club to pay off her cousin’s mistake. Alone, terrified, and completely unprepared, she is shoved into the ring like meat for slaughter. But before the final blow lands, a man steps from the shadows. Alexei, a Bratva enforcer with ice in his eyes and power in every breath. He stops the fight, but not out of mercy. He takes her. Not to save, but to keep. Alexei is cold control made flesh. Everything he does is calculated and precise. But Talia tests...

J Jackson Bentley and others have contributed their American homeland short stories for this anthology. There are thrillers, murder mysteries and feel good dramas. Beautifully written and descriptive they are each a mini novel in the vein of the traditional and much loved short story writers of yesteryear. JJB kicks off the book with a tribute to the Great American Short Story, reminding us all of the great stories we now take for granted and which have spawned films and TV series that we know and love. The essay also pays homage to graphic novels and comics. There are fifteen stories ...

Rodeo Grace Garnet lives alone, save for his old dog, in a remote corner of Arizona known to locals as the Hole. He doesn't get many visitors, but a body found near his home has drawn police attention to his front door. The victim is not one of the many illegal immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border just south of the Hole, but is instead a member of one of the local Indian tribes.

She gave herself to save her brother. He took her to make her kneel and then couldn’t stop watching her fall. Zoe walks into the ritual hall of the Black Veil to trade her dignity for her brother’s life. Stripped, displayed, and offered like a sacrifice, she expects cruelty. She expects pain. What she does not expect is Yuri, the Bratva enforcer masked in silver and control, who claims her with quiet authority and terrifying focus. He does not touch her first. He watches. And what begins as survival quickly spirals into spectacle, obedience, and obsession. Yuri was trained to control ...

When Harlem gets off on a murder charge due to insanity, the asylum he’s sent to feels worse than death, with one exception: the beautiful Nurse Daphane. As their relationship grows, so do the stakes: She has the ability to help him escape, and he has the ability to set her free from her abusive relationship. Yet Harlem has one big secret: He was perfectly sane when he committed his crime. But in the end, Daphane’s own secret may be the deadliest of all....

Sam Bass is tall and lanky, loves old western movies, wears cowboy boots, and drives a beat-up Jeep Wrangler. He's a hot-shot pilot running a shoestring charter business on remote Ocracoke Island, and he has a gorgeous girlfriend, Valerie, a Cherokee widow with a young son.When Sam risks everything to help rescue a couple lost at sea in a storm, he gets publicity he definitely doesn't need.The Cowboy, as he's known to certain dangerous people, has been located and a hit team is dispatched to take care of unfinished business. Sam, Valerie, and her son are suddenly the focus of evil. Their ...

When you think about the police, who do you think of: Do you think of one officer, or the police as an institution? From movies and TV to the real world, a police presence looms over most conflict. But if there was a defining feature of the 2020 protests over the murder of George Floyd, it was the collective confusion about how America got to this point. Despite fragmented media coverage about police unions, militarization, and systemic racism, the average citizen’s knowledge remained hazy on what exactly police officers had been doing all along. It’s probably different than you would expect.

Twelve American tourists join an art expedition that begins in the Himalayan foothills of China - dubbed the true Shangri-La - and heads south into the jungles of Burma. But after the mysterious death of their tour leader, the carefully laid plans fall apart, and disharmony breaks out among the pleasure-seekers.