American Mysteries

Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in. From his small apartment in southern California, he orchestrates fantastic adventures where possibilities, both dark and bright, open in the boundaries between the real and the imagined. As the creator of Trace Italian—a text-based, role-playing game played through the mail—Sean guides players from around the world through his intricately imagined terrain, which they navigate and explore, turn by turn, seeking sanctuary in a ravaged, savage future America.

The car fire didn’t kill Navajo Tribal Policeman Delbert Nez—a bullet did. And the old man in possession of the murder weapon is a whiskey-soaked shaman named Ashie Pinto. Officer Jim Chee is devastated by the slaying of his good friend Del and confounded by the prime suspect’s refusal to utter a single word of confession or denial. Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn believes there is much more to this outrage than what appears on the surface as he and Jim Chee set out to unravel a complex weave of greed and death that involves a historical find and a lost fortune.

Tinseltown's awards season is in full swing, and everyone is obsessed with dressing up, scoring free swag, and getting invited to the biggest awards shows of the year. But when celebrity publicist Lyla Davis is killed, the festive mood comes to an abrupt halt. Apprentice private eye Dayna Anderson thinks she's uncovered the killer. Unfortunately, what starts as an open-and-shut case turns out to be anything but.

When a bright young heiress with a flair for romance and one too many enemies is found brutally murdered, Nero Wolfe and his sidekick, Archie, find themselves embroiled in a case that is not as black and white as it first appears.

When Howard Moon Deer's girlfriend Aria storms from his cabin in the middle of the night, he just considers it another conflict in their tempestuous relationship. But when he finds her Jeep abandoned down the road with no sign of her nearby, his instincts lead him on an investigation that uncovers the dark underbelly of a trendy southwestern town.

LC Duncan, patriarch and leader of the Duncan clan is alive and well after being shot by a mysterious gunman. His near death experience has caused him and his wife Chippy to reflect on both the past and present, and together they decide that it's time to return to Waycross, Georgia for a long overdue family reunion. But wherever the Duncans go, trouble and drama are never too far behind, and this time it comes in the form of longtime Duncan enemy Vinnie Dash, and Ruby, the mother of Orlando Duncan's baby who disappeared before the child was born.

David Rivers wants vengeance. But there’s only one way to kill his greatest enemy - David must first join the secretive organization that slaughtered the only family he had. To prove his allegiance, he enters a life-or-death battle in the badlands of Somalia. But the closer David gets to his target, the more he realizes that the betrayal of his team was not as random as he thought. Someone inside the organization seems to know his true purpose, and that could mean only one thing.

Bootlegging was Milton and Yvonne Hamilton's ticket out of poverty, prison time, and plain bad luck. Now they've moved on - to a bigger, richer pool of clientele - right in their own respectable new middle-class backyard. And their growing friendship with seemingly-perfect couple Joyce and Odell Watson is proving golden in more ways than one. As Milton soon learns, Odell is hiding an outside family and dubious business dealings. It's the perfect recipe for a blackmail scheme that will help Milton hide his own dirty secrets - even from Yvonne....

A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place 27 years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister. Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to stop it?

Some of the best-known and most influential pieces of crime fiction have been from African American writers. Be it Walter Mosley's great Detective Easy Rawlins, or the mean streets of Harlem at the hands of Chester Himes, the stories and characters in this anthology have shaped the mystery genre with their own unique viewpoints and styles. Contributors to the collection include Robert Greer, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Cary Phillips, Frankie Bailey, and Richard Wright.

In the third installment of his acclaimed anthology series, master of crime fiction Lawrence Block has gathered together the best talent from popular fiction to produce an anthology of short stories based on masterpieces of American art. Among the star-studded lineup of writers you'll find Jerome Charyn, Jane Hamilton, Christa Faust, John Sandford, Sara Paretsky, Walter Mosley, Charles Ardai, Barry Malzberg, and Janice Eidus.

The groundbreaking debut novel from Gamal Williams tells the gripping tale of three young boys who form an unlikely friendship and soon discover that despite their differences, they had more in common than they realized. When 14-year-old Fin meets Stacks and Justin, he never thought their union would be bonded in love, friendship, joy, and pain. When an unexpected tragedy occurs, the young men's bond is put to the test. A test of friendship, loyalty, family, and love. For one of them, their choices would shape his life, mold him into the man he had to become, and pushes him to the edge of ...

Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation’s casino…and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step—an ancient tribal myth come-to-life, one that’s intent on devouring her whole. With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing and the tribe scrambles to find answers, Anna struggles with her place on the rez.

Steven Drokharis knew that embracing his destiny as one of the most powerful Dragonsouls to ever live would be difficult, but he had no idea that he’d be pushed to his very limits. Ten days after rescuing Aria and ending the life of an insane Dragonskin, Steven and his escort find themselves going toe-to-toe with Rhaegen Mulk - the deadly Dragonsoul responsible for the death of Steven’s parents. And Rhaegen Mulk doesn’t fight fair. He will pull out all the stops to end Steven before he can grow his escort and establish a primacy of his own.

She’s settling into a new life. But when a fishing trip totally capsizes, can she get a friend off the hook for murder? Elizabeth Trout still feels awkward living back home. Discovering a BFF from her raucous high-school days has become the perfect mom is as weird as staying with her mother while awaiting construction of her new home. But she’s shaken to her core when her newlywed husband and beloved dog are nearly blown out of the water in a dockside explosion which leaves another woman dead … and her bestie is arrested for the crime. To clear her friend, Elizabeth and her spouse set...

TE’QUI is a well-known killer and stickup kid that pumps fear into the hearts of hustlers. He’s cold and calculating—traits that have helped him survive in the trenches. Despite his hard exterior, his desire for a woman to love and trust run deep, which leads him to KESHA, a beautiful hood chick looking for the right man to cherish and hold her down. Together they take the jack game by storm, stacking blood money and leaving D-boys outlined in chalk. But due to an unexpected occurrence, Kesha has to put her gun on the shelf, leaving her man to secure the bags alone. Te’Qui attacks ...

After losing his job, MELVIN finds himself struggling to make ends meet. Figuring that he doesn't have any choice but to get it how he lives, he decides to get his the ski mask way. Melvin's first jack move is successful, but the caper nearly leaves him knocking on death's door. Realizing that he'll need someone in the streets to watch his back, he finds a crime partner in his fifteen-year-old son, TIAZ, a dangerous young thug who's destined for ghetto stardom. On their road to riches, the father and son duo stack plenty of money and dead bodies along the way. But it isn't until they run ...

Investigating stolen art is not a pretty picture… Nikki’s dream job becomes a reality when a New York antique art dealer hires her for a covert mission aboard a cruise ship. Her task is to gather evidence on two passengers suspected of stealing art from the New York dealer. The presumed thieves, posing as art experts, quickly befriend Nikki, plunging her into a moral quandary. Can she remain impartial? As her investigation intensifies, she identifies a third suspect and breaks into his cabin. The situation escalates when he arrives unexpectedly and finds her rummaging through his ...

Las Vegas: a city built on obscene wealth and corrupt deals, cunning entrepreneurs, and the ruthless mob. The Cartel's plan to open a casino will rake in cash, but it comes with great sacrifice. The stakes have never been this high, and the rules of the game have never been this hard to manipulate. And when one dead girl, one scorned wife, and one hole in the desert launch a chain of catastrophic events, the Cartel is sent on a downward spiral as they battle the Arabian mob and fight traitors within their circle.

Dreams tell old man Paul T'Sosi he's dying. So why is Navajo trickster Magpie trying to tell him a far more terrifying secret? Hungry for revenge, Ma'iitsoh Dine', the Navajo Wolf, is out for blood. Summoning his darkest powers, the Witch of Ganado circles tribal investigator Charlie Yazzie's young son and close friends. Some may survive the witch's evil vendetta, but others will die to settle an old score.