Noir Mystery Thriller

When a body is found buried near the desolate forest road of Kellers Way, Detective Melanie Carter must identify the victim if she is to have any chance of finding the killer. That's no easy task with fragmentary evidence from a crime committed years earlier and a conspiracy of silence from anyone who might have information. The one person who may be able to help is Julie West.

Rick Barron, a former Beverly Hills cop, has risen to head of production of Centurion Pictures, and he's at the top of his game. But tensions are high in Hollywood, and when Rick's friend Sidney Brooks, a successful screenwriter, receives a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee, Rick isn't surprised. The witch hunt is spreading, and those under investigation are Rick's closest friends - even his wife, the glamorous starlet Glenna Gleason.

It’s been more than 20 years since Olof Hagström left home. Returning to his family’s house, he knows instantly that something is amiss. The front door key, hidden under a familiar stone, is still there. Inside, there’s a panicked dog, a terrible stench, water pooling on the floor: The father Olaf has not seen or spoken to in decades is dead in the bathroom shower.

The adoring wife of a senatorial candidate has a smile as sweet as candy and dots her "i's" with little hearts. A blond beauty, she is the perfect mate for an ambitious politician, but she has a little problem with sex and drugs--a problem someone has managed to put on videotape. The big boys figure a little blackmail will put her husband out of the race. Until Spenser hops on the candidate's bandwagon.

Hot on the heels of Best Cases of the Continental Op comes Honest Gain: Dicey Cases of the Continental Op, another original compilation from Skyboat Media. The Continental Op is back on the case, tracking down thieves and murderers from the steep streets of San Francisco to the rough and tumble Wild West in Arizona. These six stories featuring the Continental Op show that this private eye is not afraid to get his hands dirty in order to get the job done right, or get himself hurt in the process.

When Jackie is released from prison, his boss Pino sends a limo to pick him up. Even fresh out of the joint, ruthless Jackie is ready to work, collecting money for the mob and using his special training to take care of bad accounts—permanently.

Betrayal cuts deeper than a blade… and this time, it’s personal. In the gripping finale to the DI Zennor trilogy, the Cornwall-based detective and her team face their most perilous challenge yet. When a daring operation unravels a sinister network with ties both local and international, DI Verity Zennor is thrust into a deadly game where trust is a luxury she can no longer afford. As the case takes a devastating twist, Zennor discovers a wicked betrayal that threatens not just her investigation—but the very core of her team. Meanwhile, DS Sam Cartwright is forced to confront a fear ...

Repairman Jack is back! Jack can fix any problem, natural or supernatural, for a price. Now, in his next gripping adventure, he takes on two cases at once. The first involves a nun being blackmailed. What’s in those photos, she won’t say, but with her meager savings just about exhausted, she hires Jack to help her. The second: an elderly woman needs Jack to find her missing son. Jack must infiltrate the inner reaches of the Dormentalist Church, a secretive, globe-spanning cult whose members include some of the biggest and most powerful names in entertainment, sports, and politics.

It’s 1975, and the comic book industry is struggling, but Carmen Valdez doesn’t care. She’s an assistant at Triumph Comics, which doesn’t have the creative zeal of Marvel nor the buttoned-up efficiency of DC, but it doesn’t matter. Carmen is tantalizingly close to fulfilling her dream of writing a superhero book. That dream is nearly a reality when one of the Triumph writers enlists her help to create a new character, which they call “The Lethal Lynx”, Triumph's first female hero.

Sergeant Logan McRae is in trouble.... His missing-persons investigation has just turned up a body in the woods - naked, hands tied behind its back, and a bin bag duct taped over its head. The Major Investigation Team charges up from Aberdeen, under the beady eye of Logan's ex-boss, Detective Chief Inspector Steel. And, as usual, she wants him to do her job for her.

Things are going along okay with Dennis' gig at the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino in Tunica, Mississippi, "the Casino Capital of the South", until the day he looks down from the high-dive platform and witnesses a mob hit, Dixie style.

Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll supplements his meager income as a P.I. by working through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients a number of special services. Armed with his 16-inch steel telescopic baton, biting dry humor, and just a bit of a hero complex, the ex-cop sets out to protect the women who work there from clients who have trouble understanding the word "no".

Though he's still tormented by his brother's murder and the accident that ended his career, ex-homicide detective Liam Dempsey is trying to move on. His girlfriend and their adopted son are the best things that ever happened to him - and being a police liaison is the next best thing to being back on the force. But when an old friend asks for his help, Liam is thrust into a harrowing investigation that reawakens his darkest personal demons.

With three children under 10, Maddie is struggling. On the outside, she’s a happy young mother, running a charity as well as a household. But inside, she’s exhausted. She knows she’s lucky to have to have a support network around her. Not just her loving husband but her family and friends, too. But is Maddie putting her trust in the right people? Because when tragedy strikes, she is certain someone has hurt her child - and everyone is a suspect, including Maddie herself....

When Jax receives nine missed calls from her older sister, Lexie, she assumes that it’s just another one of her sister’s episodes. Manic and increasingly out of touch with reality, Lexie has pushed Jax away for over a year. But the next day, Lexie is dead: drowned in the pool at their grandmother’s estate. When Jax arrives at the house to go through her sister’s things, she learns that Lexie was researching the history of their family and the property. And as she dives in deeper herself, she discovers that the land holds a far darker past than she could have ever imagined.

The quiet northern Swedish town of Kurrajakk is rocked when a popular teenager is found dead, mounted on a sacrificial altar, body covered in strange cuts, a crow shoved down his throat. Rumors begin to swirl. A local ghost story, Krakornås Kung, The King Of Crows, is back. Jamie left the Violent Crimes department in Stockholm to rebuild her life. Her body. Her mind. To get away from cases like this. But Jamie can’t let injustice go unpunished – and now, she’s all out of compassion. The King may think Kurrjakk is his for the taking, but he’s never met Jamie Johansson.

It is the present day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking, and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: The Civil War never occurred. A gifted young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshal Service. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four". On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right—with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself.

Specialist in the scam, the con, and the rip-off, Jerry Manelli is running around New York hot on the trail of a priest: a thousand-year-old, two-foot-tall, ugly, misshapen, dancing Aztec priest made of solid gold, with eyes of pure emeralds, worth a million dollars. Somebody stole it from its museum home in South America and smuggled it through U.S. Customs in a shipment of plastic imitations. But the wrong one got delivered, and the million dollar statue, mixed with the fifteen copies, is somewhere in New York.

Inspector Hogarth is in deep trouble. The two men who once sought his blood now aim to eliminate each other. Only Hogarth stands between them. To stop them, he must plunge into deadly danger—and to protect his colleagues, he must do it alone. With the town teetering on the edge of a gang war, Hogarth faces a harrowing truth: he has become the catalyst for a new crimewave. He will fight on, alone. He will attempt to conceal the truth. But DS Palmer won’t stand idly by. Nor will the other woman in his life… The trouble is, their intervention might make things far, far worse… Against ...

Do you have any idea what the people you know are capable of? Best-selling author of All My Lies Are True, Dorothy Koomson, asks how well you can really know your neighbours.