Southern Thrillers

The Phantom of the Pavilion by K. A. Wijeratne In the crumbling cricket ground of Maduwila, whispers from the past refuse to fade. When jaded sports journalist Laki Perera stumbles upon a half-forgotten scandal buried beneath the lush spin of Sri Lankan cricket, he finds himself haunted—literally—by the ghost of Ranjith "Rana" Abeysekera, a prodigious spinner whose mysterious death decades ago was written off as disgrace. As Laki joins forces with his estranged daughter Madhavi and fiery investigative reporter Shyamali Peiris, the trio uncover a tangled web of match-fixing, political ...

Hollywood movie star Lawton Fletcher has come to tiny Warrendale, Georgia, with plans to buy the entire town. Instead, when attorney Tammi Randall and her friend Mitch Griffeth arrive to keep an appointment with Fletcher, they find him shot to death. To the police, the obvious culprit is Freddy Meadows, a local man known to be violent. Tammi is less than impressed by the unappealing Meadows, but believing he is innocent, she agrees to represent him on behalf of the Legal Aid Society. Investigating Fletcher’s background for other possible suspects, Tammi travels to the fleshpots of Los ...

From the Editor: Night in London is a feast of non-stop action. It moves with the velocity of a breaking wave. And it gains a special impact from the fact that it rings of authenticity. When Casey Christie describes the viciousness and extreme brutality of a criminal gang, he is writing from raw experience. Christie was at the cutting edge of the police drive against criminals in Johannesburg. And we meet again with the colourful crew he assembled in his first novel set in South Africa—the fearsome Black Bastards, so called because they have special police dispensation to wear all-black ...

"The Serpent and the Menace brilliantly blends the mystery and crime thriller genres and can be enjoyed from both the fictional thriller and historical aspect." –Anne Brownlow, ex-criminal investigator John Doby is many things: a venomous snake hobbyist and societal dissident with a list of priors not for the faint of heart, an autodidact versed in herpetology and Native American languages—and according to some, a “carnival attraction” and “welfare queen.” But is he the person responsible for the disappearance of local boy, JC Wagoner, in this quiet community? Is John involved? ...

A fresh murder in Arizona throws a family into chaos, and unravels a decades-old mystery. It’s been 20 years since the accident. A nighttime car crash on a desert road that left her parents dead and her sister disabled. Now a law enforcement officer with the Arizona Rangers, Michaela Sanchez has tried to get over the guilt she feels. She’s tried to move on. But when her brother is charged with the murder of a local activist, echoes of her family’s tragic night come crashing back. Michaela will do everything in her power to prove her brother’s innocence.

The 3 female protagonist thrillers CIA FALL GUY & LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS & HOT POTATO are now available in one ebook -- BRAINS BEFORE BEAUTY: CIA FALL GUY: Is Beth Parsons being set up as a fall guy for someone within the CIA? It's 1997 and Beth Parsons -- a widow whose husband was killed years earlier in a bombing at the U.S. Army Officers Club in Frankfurt, Germany -- is summoned to CIA headquarters. The supposed reason for the summons is to identify someone from when she was stationed in Germany. When the man who drove her to the CIA is shot and killed, she realizes that all may ...

The Runaway Redhead Tommy Crane hired A.J. Harker to find his wife. She had disappeared three days before. She had apparently fled their home after a fight. But something doesn’t feel right about it, and Harker doesn’t trust Crane. He agrees to take the case, but he takes it with reservations. If he finds the young woman, he plans on getting her side of the story before letting his client know. Except somebody doesn’t want Molly Crane found, and they are willing to kill to make sure that she isn’t found.

Eleven years have passed since Alexa Hamilton left the South behind, fleeing the pain of her ex-husband's betrayal and the cruelty of his prominent Charleston family. Now an assistant D.A. in Manhattan, Alexa has made a name for herself as a top prosecutor while juggling her role as devoted single mom to a teenage daughter.

The polite Piedmont town of Hillston, North Carolina, wants to go on believing it is still too temperate to require homicide experts. But when the wife of a state senator is found beaten to death, the inner circle of Hillston’s ruling families arranges to have the case assigned to Detective Justin Savile, the charming black sheep of the dynasty that founded the town. Aided by his wise-cracking partner and a young woman from the Carolina mountains whose strength and love rescues him from his own destructive impulses, Savile sets out to unravel the deceit hidden in Hillston’s past.

Fresh out from under five years of deep cover in New York City’s seamy world of narcotics trafficking, Detective Joe Dante is teamed with the straight-laced Rosa Losada to investigate a series of gruesome serial murders that have all of Manhattan on edge. The mystery killer is clearly obsessed with a type and has the means to strike at will. Motivated by entirely different sets of life experiences, both Dante and Losada are equally obsessed with seeing this string of killings brought to an end and need to discover a means of working together without friction to accomplish that task. “...

Just because she can see the dead doesn't mean Verity Long wants to spend her days hunting ghosts. Instead she's over the moon to land a marketing job at the local bank...until she finds her new boss dead in the vault. Even her ghost friend, Frankie, knows that's no way to start a career. Relieved to let the police take charge, Verity steps aside, bound and determined to keep her ghost sightings to herself. But when she learns the main suspect in the murder is a very crooked, very dead mobster, Verity knows it's up to her to solve the case.

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.

Sophia, proprietress of For Goodness Cakes, has been commissioned to cater the Heart of the Town Library charity fundraiser at Grape Valley Winery. She's spent all her dough to make this a successful event, raise her profile, and win more plum catering jobs. At first, the going is as smooth as an elegant chocolate ganache. After nibbling Sophia's tasty treats, Ray Peel, the winery's landlord, announces he will pay off Rumford's library loan. But the evening soon turns decidedly frosty when Ray is murdered - before he can make good on his promise, and before he can pay Sophia.

Carl Weber brings the best of urban street lit authors together, all telling their own dramatic tales of life in the streets in known cities across the USA. The second installment continues with Treasure Hernandez telling the tale of the Dirty South.

A funeral, a ghost, a murder. It's all in a day's work for Emma Lee Raines...especially when the ghost turns out to be someone very dear to her heart. Psychic Debbie Dually is the one who informed local undertaker Emma Lee Raines that she wasn't crazy, she was a Betweener, someone who can communicate with ghosts of the not-so-dearly departed. In fact, she told Emma Lee how she was the only one that could help solve their murders to help them rest in eternal peace. This time Debbie Dually finds herself needing Emma's help. This means solving her own murder.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol finds something terrible on the side of I-35 South, ultimately bringing multiple missing persons cases to light from Austin to Kansas. I-35 boasts easy access to nearly twenty universities, including most of the former Big XII schools. The race up and down Interstate 35 to find this, most brutal, sort of criminal takes shape when one of the missing turns out to be an Oklahoma Native. Her older brother and his friends from the Tribal Police are going to find her with or without help, no matter who gets in their way. Even the authorities. Luckily the Fed put in ...

Early one morning, 26-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell and a phone call from his brother asking if everything's all right at home - he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can't remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory.

Only 24 years old, Naomi Scott was just getting started. A law student, tending bar to make ends meet, she wanted to change the world. Instead, her life ended in the dead of night at the hands of an unseen gunman. There are no witnesses to the crime. The police have three suspects. All three men claim to love her. Could one of them be her killer?

"America's best novelist" ( The Denver Post), two-time Edgar Award winner James Lee Burke is renowned for his lush, suspense-charged portrayals of the Deep South – the people, the crime, the hope and despair infused in the bayou landscape. This stunning anthology takes us back to where Burke's heart and soul beat -- the steamy, seamy Gulf Coast -- in complex and fascinating tales that crackle with violence and menace, meshing his flair for gripping storytelling with his urbane writing style.

If Tipsy Collins learned one thing from her divorce, it’s that everyone in Charleston is a little crazy - even if they’re already dead. Tipsy, a gifted artist, cannot ignore her nutty friends or her vindictive ex-husband, but as a lifelong reluctant clairvoyant, she has always avoided dead people. When Tipsy and her three children move into the house on Bennett Street, she realizes that some ghosts won’t be ignored. Till death do us part didn’t pan out for Jane and Henry Mott, who have haunted the house for nearly a century.