Southern Crime

THE CARTAYA CAPER is a story whose plot is woven from the fabric of real life experience on the Costa de la Luz. Despite living in a pleasant seaside village close to the Portuguese border, Nick Mellors is bored of his life as an itinerant teacher. His Welsh friend Meuric is tired of his office job, while his young Spanish pal Juanjo is sick of working for peanuts at a posh hotel. When the three men sit down to devise a money-making scheme to get them out of their collective rut, some rather dodgy options are discussed. After choosing one and planning their first project, their lives will ...

Which of the following short stories would you read first? A.) A stubborn donkey challenges a Tennessee race horse. B.) A chess match ends in bloodshed. C.) Two sisters beg a funeral director to play their daddy's favorite Johnny Cash song. D.) A shooter takes aim from a church baptistry. E.) Two astronauts survive a horrific spinout only to return to earth and find everybody else walking around in super slow motion. Why not read them all? They're all in this far-flung collection of short stories and more. Scroll up and get them now with just one click.

Dan has joined the backpacker trail in far South East Asia. He wants nothing but peace, and to relax. But trouble finds him soon enough. Kimberly Smith is a CIA agent. She is flown into Myanmar to help locate another CIA agent, missing in action. When Dan saves Kim from an ambush, their fates become entwined. Ignoring the instant spark between them, Dan leaves her alone. But when Kim is attacked and abducted before his eyes, he defends her with all his might. They escape, but they are now pawns in a CIA operation that could bring the world's two superpowers to a global conflict.

After elementary school teacher Nichole Miller discovers the woman's body, she makes two phone calls: first to the police, who call Beverly's death a slip and fall, and second to her best friend, journalist Jenny Martin. Jenny is attempting to revive her flailing marriage and her all-but-DOA career, and she knows foul play when she sees it. The two women enlist the help of Beverly’s daughter-in-law, Robin, who’s eager to expose the truth.

From the courtroom to the bedrooms in Atlanta, one fateful day in October finds the lives of lawyers, cops, and criminals intersecting in ways unforeseen. Some of those lives will be cut violently short. Intersection of Lies, the latest fast-paced thriller from author Tonya Sharp Hyche, weaves a complex web of greed, corruption, and romance that is certain to enthrall anyone who likes their murder mysteries to keep them guessing until the final pages through brilliant twists, love triangles, and the sharpest minds in one southern city. At age twenty-nine, the gorgeous, blonde city ...

When the mysterious death of a childhood friend forces homicide detective Alex Abrams to return to her hometown, she’s pulled back into a world of dark secrets and painful memories she thought she’d left behind. Alex, a battle-hardened Iraq War veteran, is forced to confront the ghosts of her past—and the deadly truth lurking in the shadows of her tight-knit community. Teaming up with her twin brother, Lucca, Alex soon uncovers a chilling pattern of so-called "accidental" deaths—each one more calculated and chilling than the last.

What if you left a job and the next thing the FBI is after you? Retirement takes a dramatic turn for a successful bank employee when she's wrongfully accused of bank fraud just as she's starting a new life in Mississippi. Inheriting a substantial sum from her late father, she sets out to fulfill her lifelong dream of opening a hunting business. But when the past catches up with her, she meets a determined real estate agent who not only helps her find the perfect property, but also falls in love and sets out to clear her name. “Mississippi Calling" is a thrilling tale of love, redemption, ...

Alexandra Haywood and her sister Neely have always loved Whistledown, the family's Shelby County horse farm. After their billionaire father's sudden and tragic death, Alex returns to find the family fortune in shambles, and Whistledown has to go. But Joe Welch, the sexy farm manager, refuses to cooperate. Sparks of rage give way to a fiery attraction when Joe and Alex meet head-on. But just as a volatile passion flares between them, the discovery of a shocking murder with ties to the past rocks the county.

The stakes are high, and time is running out... When a charred body is discovered on a burning boat at Horsea Marina, Detective Inspector Andy Horton is called to investigate. The victim is identified as Tom Brundall, a wealthy financier from Guernsey, who was terminally ill. Puzzled, Horton wonders why a dying man would return to his hometown of Portsmouth and who would want to kill him. As Horton digs deeper, another body surfaces, forcing him to grapple with not just the victims' pasts but also the unresolved mystery of his own mother's disappearance three decades earlier.

It is 1999, and someone is slaughtering young black women in Burdon County, Arkansas. But no one wants to admit it, not in the Dirty South. In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child and searching in vain for their killer. He cares only for his own lost family. But that is about to change.... Witness the becoming of Charlie Parker.

Since 1994, South Africa has seen a worrying increase in the commercialization of murder – and has been rocked by several high-profile contract killings. Drawing on his research of over a thousand incidents of hired assassinations, from 2000 to 2016, Shaw reveals how these murders are used to exert a mafia-type control over the country’s legal and illegal economic activity. Contracted assassinations, and the organized criminal activity behind them, contain sinister linkages with the upper world, most visibly in relation to disputes over tenders and access to government resources.

Detective Jose Ramirez and the Sierra Hills Police Department are scrambling for leads on a killer who has already struck five times, each time leaving his signature trademark: large butcher knives piercing the abdomens of his young female victims. Profiling the killer is proving to be difficult, and Detective Ramirez knows that it’s only a matter of time before their perpetrator strikes again. As if Ramirez isn’t frustrated enough, to his dismay, he is assigned a partner. Officer Daniel Chatham, a handsome, young man, fresh out of grad school, has pulled some strings to join the ...

Hank Weinberg is a modern day Atticus Finch, recently retired as a defense attorney in Mobile, Alabama, and a Holocaust survivor, who fled the Nazis as a young child. With his daughter in rehab, he's now taking care of his special needs grandson. Mourning his dead wife, spending mornings fishing on the pier with other octogenarians, he passes the rest of his days watching over his sweet grandson with the help of Lupita, a young Honduran babysitter.

When forensic psychologist Claire Britten started working with lawyer Nick Markwood on his South Shores project, she had no idea it would endanger her life - and the life of her daughter. But when the little girl goes missing from her South Florida home and Nick insists his longtime nemesis is to blame, Claire frantically follows the trail to the Cayman Islands, desperate to save her daughter before it's too late.

When Marcus De La Cruz volunteered to sponsor the next prospect for the Savage Kings MC, he never expected to have a female candidate. Instead of being intimidated by him, she gives as good as she gets. Teagan Allen knows the dangers of being a member of an outlaw MC all too well, since her father was killed while wearing the bearded skull king patch. Roy Allen wasn’t just a member; he was the president of the Charlotte chapter. Hoping to better understand her father’s obsession with the biker club, Teagan is determined to wear the same coveted patch, no matter what it takes.

A cabin in the woods. Three dead, one in critical condition. Property owned by not just any Tennessee local, but one of the richest men in the country. Vera Boyett isn’t quite sure what it means. But that’s why Sheriff Gray “Bent” Benton called her: to figure it out. Criminal analysis is what she does best. Even when the town is in panicked shambles, even when the case is more delicate than most…and even when it’s not the only case on her plate.

Life had taught Heat many valuable lessons. Things like have a code to live by, the simpler the better. Simple rules a man could live by. Rules like whoever killed a man’s partner had to pay for that sin. Rules like never take the rap for something you didn’t do. And most important of all, never let somebody else do your dirty work for you. Introducing P.I. James Benoit “Heat” Heatley in A Matter of Vengeance, a tale of Southern Noir. What readers have to say about A Matter of Vengeance: “All I can say is WOW! A Matter on Vengeance: Introducing P.I. James Benoit Heatley, my second...

In 1932, the city of Natchez, Mississippi, reckoned with an unexpected influx of journalists and tourists as the lurid story of a local murder was splashed across headlines nationwide. Two eccentrics, Richard Dana and Octavia Dockery, enlisted an African American man named George Pearls to rob their reclusive neighbor, Jennie Merrill, at her estate. During the attempted robbery, Merrill was shot and killed.

Even in the chill of February, no place touches Harper McClain's heart like Savannah. She should be walking beneath the historic city's towering oaks, surrounded by graceful mansions. Instead, she's hiding miles away on Tybee Island after a mysterious voice on the phone warned her that someone wanted her dead. The call was too specific to ignore. The caller knew everything about her. But that was months ago, and she's getting tired of being scared.

New Orleans: live music, endless drinks, brightly coloured attractions, the perfect place for a party. The bachelorette begins on a Friday night; all six women are excited for a chance to escape their everyday lives. But then friendly rivalries turn vicious, and a game of truth or dare turns deadly. By the end of the weekend one of them will be dead.