Crime City

Tortured, then murdered, a university student dressed up as Santa Claus is left hanging from a meat hook on Christmas Eve - a gift intended for one particular cop. Detective Emile Cinq-Mars, local hero and old-style cop, wants the truth - and his gripping search takes him through a bone-chilling Montreal winter and into the heart of the city's colourful criminal underworld, where rival biker gangs, the Russian Mafia, and meddlers from the CIA all vie for a piece of the frozen city.

Dead Even features 15 stories highlighting major and minor characters from the River City series, including series favorite Katie MacLeod, Detectives Finch and Elias, hard-luck Officer Paul Hiero, and transplanted gangster Dominic Bracco.

After losing her sister to a drug overdose, Chief Superintendent Jo Howe is desperate to tackle the world of drugs that consumes the shadowy backstreets of Brighton. Operation Eradicate is her response, deploying undercover tactics to collapse drug circles while also providing treatment services to victims of drug abuse. But not everyone sees this as a positive development. The man behind Respite pharmaceuticals, billionaire Sir Ben Campbell, views Operation Eradicate as a threat to his business.

It's Mardi Gras season in post-Katrina New Orleans. City officials expect record crowds and the biggest boost to the Crescent City economy since the big storm. Alexandra Lee Destephano, legal counsel for Crescent City Medical Center, is anticipating her third Mardi Gras season and her date with Mitch Landry to the biggest Mardi Gras ball in New Orleans. But hold on. Alex is stat-paged to the hospital and learns from her boss and former husband that the wife of the governor of Louisiana has been found unconscious and covered in blood in her hospital room.

Countless criminals have made their mark on Chicago and the surrounding communities. Chicago Sun-Times journalist Jon Seidel takes listeners back in time to the days when H. H. Holmes lurked in his "Murder Castle" and guys named Al Capone and John Dillinger ruled the underworld. Drawing upon years of reporting, and with special access to the Chicago Daily News and Chicago Sun-Times archives, Jon Seidel explains how men like Nathan Leopold, Richard Loeb, and Richard Speck tried to get away with history’s most disturbing crimes.

New Orleans, 1919. As a dark serial killer - The Axeman - stalks the city, three individuals set out to unmask him. As Michael, Luca and Ida each draw closer to discovering the killer's identity, the Axeman himself will issue a challenge to the people of New Orleans: play jazz or risk becoming the next victim. And as the case builds to its crescendo, the sky will darken and a great storm will loom over the city.

Gruesome Quad-Cities is a collection of true-life stories, most of them rescued from old newspaper accounts published over 100 years ago. Only a few of the events in this audiobook have ever made it into print, except, maybe, in musky-old county histories. Even then, they are lucky to rate a paragraph. Gruesome Quad-Cities covers 16 brutal murders that occurred in Davenport, Moline, Rock Island, Bettendorf, Silvis, Muscatine, and more between 1867 and 1920.

Stacy Horn sheds light on the dark world of the NYPD’s real-life Cold Case Squad—a special command of detectives who take on the homicide cases that remain unsolved after their initial period of investigation. Those who comprise its ranks are often characterized as misfits and lone wolves—but brilliant ones, to be sure. Here, their fascinating and deeply troubling stories of cases closed—and others that remain open—are conveyed in chilling detail.

River City is plagued by a serial rapist. His attacks are becoming more brutal and Detective John Tower is sure that he’ll go from rape to murder if he isn’t stopped soon. Meanwhile, the rapes stir up ghosts for both Officer Katie MacLeod and Officer Thomas Chisolm. Both struggle to put those haunted memories to rest even as they are drawn into the center of Tower’s investigation. When a series of missteps and near misses push the rapist even further, everyone involved must face their old fears...or be destroyed by them.

In the wake of a tragedy, 13-year-old Graham moves with his family to Beirut, Lebanon, a city on the edge of the sea and cataclysmic violence. Inquisitive and restless by nature, Graham suspects his State Department father is a CIA operative, and that their family’s fragile domesticity is merely a front for American efforts along the nearby Israeli border. Over the course of one year, 1974, Graham’s life will utterly change. Two men are murdered, his parent’s marriage disintegrates, and Graham, along with his two ex-pat friends, run afoul of forces they cannot understand.

Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, serves as the conscience of the Jewish ghetto teeming with rogue cops and swindlers. He rescues Ben Ravage, an orphan, from a trade school and sends him off to Harvard to earn a law degree. But upon his return, Ben rejects the chance to escape his gritty origins and instead becomes a detective for the Kehilla, a quixotic gang backed by wealthy uptown patrons to help the police rid the Lower East Side of criminals.

When a well-connected and wealthy banker is found dead in his luxury car in the middle of Cardiff, the motive for the crime seems clear. The killer even left a note telling the world the man deserved to die, simply for his greed. But despite the obvious clues, seasoned detective, John Marco has his doubts that this was just a disgruntled employee. Marco also has a gut feeling that the family of the victim are hiding something.

Newly promoted to detective first-grade with the NYPD, Jane Bauer, is back to work after a nearly fatal run-in with a killer. But while she’s happy to be back on the job, her new assignment - another cold case - seems to hold little promise of being solved. Eight years ago, Anderson Stratton, a schizophrenic, was found dead of starvation in his apartment. Nothing on the scene indicated foul play, and although he left no note, the death was ultimately ruled a suicide.

In the future, Las Vegas is nearly destroyed. Rebuilt under a dark cloud that blocks all sunlight, Sin City takes on a whole new meaning. Beneath the neon, The Pagliacci Serial Killers are on the loose and a new drug called “Colors”, infused with nanotechnology, is killing thousands. Violence erupts as the mutant population take to the streets to protest working conditions and the disappearance of their loved ones.

(Book 4 of 4) AMANDA CREED RETURNS FOR A FINAL, ALL-OUT SPRINT TO THE FINISH. THIS TIME, EVERYTHING IS ON THE LINE... When everything else is stripped away, time stands as our most precious possession. No amount of money can buy back lost moments with our loved ones. And all the riches in the world can’t be traded to ease one’s regret when another is gone. These cold calculations have come home to roost, as Amanda Creed has successfully protected her vast corporate empire against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Yet in all her corporate cunning to safeguard the billion-dollar bottom ...

It doesn’t take long for Ray Spalding to realise that prison is nothing like an Elvis Presley movie. The warden has no intention of throwing a party and the only bands Ray encounters are gangs of hard men. When an old adversary seeks him out, Ray decides his only chance for survival is escape. Ray’s son, Jesse, is discovering that being on the run in the middle of winter is no fun. With his stamina stretched to the limits, he’s ready to surrender himself to social services. At least that way he can see his girlfriend again. Danny Boy is the man in the middle. He thinks he can break ...

The unexpected killing of Dallas drug king-pin Ricardo Salazar sets everyone on edge. A New York crime family is up in arms about the loss of a major narcotics supplier. The Dallas Police dread the ensuing gang war, but Detectives Rob Soliz and Frank Pierce were on the scene at the time of the shooting. Frank saw a mysterious red-haired woman enter Ricardo’s just moments before the shooting, but she was never seen leaving. Instead, all they found inside the house was a dead man and a voodoo doll at his feet.

Already struggling to keep their tiny congregation afloat, two Mormon missionaries stationed in the dangerous Latin American neighborhood of Vila Barbosa suspect the worst when Marco Aurelio, a man they recently baptized, disappears from a crowded street market. When the neighborhood's corrupt police force shows no interest, Elder Toronto and Elder Schwartz decide to investigate Marco Aurelio's disappearance themselves.

Right up until they put him in jail, McKenzie thought the cops were kidding. After all, he did them a favor by stopping a rookie cop from roughing up a distraught woman at a murder scene. But the next thing he knows, he’s in jail, missing an important date with his girlfriend and reliving nightmares he thought he had left far behind him - and vowing payback for all of it. If that means sticking his nose into an ongoing murder investigation, well, he’s done it before.

(Book 2 of 4) AMANDA CREED IS BACK AND SHE NEARLY HAS IT ALL. NOW, SHE COULD LOSE EVERYTHING... Can anyone ever have everything? There was a time Amanda Creed might have believed such things were possible. Not anymore. Yet, she never expected to gain so much, only to lose what she holds most dear. Amid the opulence and insulation of her new corporate lifestyle, the takers have come for Amanda Creed. And along with plotting to strip away her wealth, power, position and control, they have come to claim their pound of flesh, too. Having watched as precious things are nearly ripped from her, ...