Private Cities

Ex-St. Paul cop Rushmore McKenzie has more time, and more money, than he knows what to do with. In fact, when he’s willing to admit it to himself (and he usually isn’t), Mac is downright bored. Until he decides to do a favor for a friend facing a family tragedy: Nine-year-old Stacy Carlson has been diagnosed with leukemia, and the only one with the matching bone marrow that can save her is her older sister, Jamie. Trouble is, Jamie ran away from home years ago.

Was Harper Ellis murdered or was it suicide? Harper Ellis had everything to live for—a promising career as a beloved elementary school teacher, a tight-knit group of friends, and a dream wedding on the horizon with her fiancé, Daniel Kessler. Life in her beachfront condo in Panama City Beach, Florida, should have been the start of her happily ever after. But on the evening of January 26, 2021, Harper was found dead—brutally stabbed twenty times in her own home. Daniel swears he left her alive just thirty minutes earlier. When he returned, the condo was locked from the inside, the ...

Nichelle Tramble's first novel, The Dying Ground, was named a Best Book of 2001 by the Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle. In this follow-up work, Maceo returns home after drifting for two years. He finds his friends tangled up in a murder case, and he must act fast to save them.

Private Investigator Jim Bean has worked hard to create his new identity in Vegas. He doesn't have a great life, but it's his. When his ex-fiancée, Erica Floyd, walks into one of his investigations looking for her missing sister, the tragic past he wanted to leave behind comes flooding back. Despite serious reservations, Jim agrees to search for Erica's sister. Clues lead him to a human-trafficking ring and one of Vegas' most influential mobsters.

Hired to prove infidelity in an heiress' marriage, Stone Barrington goes undercover. But the work turns dirty - and catastrophic - when the errant husband is found dead, and the other woman disappears without a trace. Now Stone must clear his own good name and find a killer hiding among the glitterati of New York's high society.

What do Jeffrey Dahmer's murderous glove, a brick from Lizzy Borden's fireplace, a girl missing for over a decade, and an old mob boss have in common? That’s what PI Jim Bean must find out to solve his next case. When Irving Silverland hires him to find some missing murderabilia objects from his museum, Jim Bean struggles to find a motive behind the strange theft. But when one of the exhibit’s employees is bludgeoned to death with the stolen brick that came from Lizzie Borden’s fireplace, the bigger picture behind the crimes begins to take shape.

Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It is during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers. For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext.

Stella DeSoto has had it with Vegas and her life. She's experienced the worst of people, and now a sailboat in the Florida Keys is calling Stella's name. All she needs is the cash to buy it. And she's got an idea. It’s reckless, risky, and downright illegal. But big risks can mean big rewards…if you don’t get caught.

It seems like just another quiet night at Elaine's. Stone Barrington and his former cop partner, Dino, are enjoying some pasta when in walks former client and all around sad sack Herbie Fisher...with a briefcase containing $14 million in cash.

Rushmore McKenzie is a retired cop, an unexpected millionaire, and an occasional unlicensed private investigator. So it isn't the biggest surprise in the world when he's attacked and kidnapped from his home - McKenzie has more than a few enemies out there with a grudge against him. But it is a surprise when it turns out his kidnapping is a case of mistaken identity.

It's strictly Friends & Family as V.I. Warshawski, "the detective mystery fans have been waiting for" ( Time), makes return appearances in a collection of stories that bring new meaning to "ties that bind." Decked out in her silk shirts and no-nonsense Attitude, V.I. is out to make a living - by the skin of her teeth.

A Jersey comedy with a little romance! Atlantic City social worker, Lucy Womzak, had always been able to find the good in people, to make the best out of bad situations, and to cook her way out of stress. So when her husband, Lester, leaves her for a slightly younger (but much skinnier) woman, she's sure she has the skill set to handle it and re-create a happy home for her and her sixteen-year-old twins. After all, she still has the ability to make a decent meatloaf. But positive thinking and a degree in therapy can only go so far. When Lucy discovers Les led a secret life as a mafia-...

Clients hide things from their lawyers all the time. Pam Wilson makes it an art form. Pam’s been on the run from the law for years and she was getting away with it. The statute of limitations ran out on most of her crimes. For her spouse Charlotte? Not so much. Though they were aging, they looked forward to enjoying their golden years and, hopefully, forgetting about the past. Life got complicated when Charlotte became gravely ill, their daughter got pregnant with the child of a married man…a married man someone took shots at from a rare motorcycle Pam happens to own. When the man was ...

Since kindergarten, Lena, Charlie, Sam, and Emma have shared a bond that’s grown stronger with each passing year. They’ve faced every challenge together, and now, in their mid-twenties, they’re ready to escape their small, gray hometown of Seaside, Oregon, for the vacation of a lifetime. They plan the ultimate girls' trip: a week of freedom in Panama City Beach, Florida, where they imagine warm sands, cold cocktails, and maybe meeting some tan and toned hotties. But their dream vacation quickly turns into a nightmare. On the sixth day of their trip, Charlie vanishes in broad daylight,...

Once a police detective in St. Paul, Minnesota, Rushmore McKenzie has become an unlikely millionaire and an occasional unlicensed private investigator, doing favors for friends. The favor, this time, is for a friend of a friend - Erin Peterson, a local business person and owner of a growing food company called Salsa Girl. Someone seems to have a beef with her: The outside locks on her factory having been systematically filled with superglue. But for some reason, Erin doesn’t want to report this harassment to the police.

February 1940. In San Francisco's Chinatown, fireworks explode as the city celebrates Chinese New Year with a Rice Bowl Party, a three-day-and-night carnival designed to raise money and support for China war relief. Miranda Corbie is a thirty-three-year-old private investigator who stumbles upon the fatally shot body of Eddie Takahashi. The Chamber of Commerce wants it covered up. The cops acquiesce. All Miranda wants is justice - whatever it costs.

When Private Investigator Jim Bean is called to conduct a simple insurance investigation at a Nevada trailer park, he finds himself wrapped up in a case that’s more complicated than anything he could have imagined. There’s a torched trailer. A missing woman named Emilee who harbors a dark past. And the Ward family, with their own sinister secrets to hide. Jim quickly realizes that if he wants to find Emilee, he’s going to have to get closer to the Ward family - and untangle their twisted web of lies. But the closer he gets to the truth, the more dangerous things become.

Mac McKenzie is rich. So rich that he’s left his job as a Twin Cities police officer and spends his time doing favors large and small for friends. So when an old Marine buddy of his father’s calls with a request, Mac takes the time to help him out. And it is one of the stranger favors he’s ever been asked: The elderly Mr. Mosley, a beekeeper, wants Mac to find out why his bees are suddenly dying in droves. Mac does some digging and before long turns up a hornet’s nest of trouble in the person of Frank Crosetti, a new neighbor on the property abutting Mosley’s bees.

Despite her innate ambition and summa cum laude smarts, Kate Pearson has turned into a major slacker. After being dumped by her handsome French "almost fiancé", she abandons her grad school plans and spends her days lolling on the couch, leaving her apartment only when a dog-walking gig demands it. Her friends don't know what to do other than pass tissues and hope for a comeback while her practical sister, Angela, pushes every remedy she can think of, from trapeze class to therapy to job interviews.

Life has hit Black Love hard; professionally and personally. After losing his present girlfriend in an attempt to save a former girlfriend the District Attorney turned amateur sleuth returns from Danville, IL to his home in Chicago and finds himself conflicted with being the District Attorney, at a crossroads in life he resigns and meets Trigger Brown a new flame. It doesn’t take long before he finds himself embarking on his next mystery. As a favor to Trigger he agrees to help Bunchy Edwards’ a missing person’s detective, whose own daughter has gone missing. Making his way through ...