Stuart Fiction

Shame. Prejudice. Fear. All woven into the very fabric of my being. I'm swathed in them like the most suffocating cloak. Beneath this toxic mantle, I wear my desires close to my heart. Where it's dark. Where they're safe. Until I meet Darcy, a dancer at Alchemy and the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. The only problem? Her boyfriend, Max. She makes me feel alive, but he arouses emotions I've taken great care my entire life to condemn and deny and bury. Emotions I've always been taught are sinful and wrong.

Fegan has been a "hard man" - an IRA killer in Northern Ireland. Now that peace has come, he is being haunted day and night by 12 ghosts: a mother and infant, a schoolboy, a butcher, an RUC constable, and seven other of his innocent victims. In order to appease them, he's going to have to kill the men who gave him orders. As he's working his way down the list, he encounters a woman who may offer him redemption; she has borne a child to an RUC officer and is an outsider too.

Detective Constable Angus MacVicar has just landed his dream job – transferred out of uniform and assigned to Oldcastle’s biggest ongoing murder investigation: Operation Telegram, hunting the “Fortnight Killer”. Every two weeks another couple is targeted. One victim is left at the scene, their corpse used as a twisted message board. The second body is never seen again. This should be the perfect chance for Angus to prove himself, but instead of working on the investigation’s front line, he’s lumbered with the forensic psychologist from hell.

Born the bastard son of a Welsh princess, Myrdden Emrys - or as he would later be known, Merlin - leads a perilous childhood, haunted by portents and visions. But destiny has great plans for this no-man's-son, taking him from prophesying before High King Vortigern to the crowning of Uther Pendragon, and the conception of Arthur, king for once and always.

Ahren and his companions journey on to Evergreen, finding new courage after the traumas of the Green Sea. Setting off, then, to traverse the continent in search of the missing Paladin Yollock, it isn't long before they find themselves sucked into a maelstrom of adventures involving a woman who has been robbed, a desperate Cape Verstaad grandee, not to mention a cutthroat city which proves itself a veritable nest of ne'er-do-wells. Controlled by the brilliant assassin Reik Silvermantle, this hub of lawlessness and immorality presents Ahren and his friends with one of their greatest challenges.

For too long the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political movement that seeks to gain power and to impose its vision on all of society. America’s religious nationalists aren’t just fighting a culture war, they are waging a political war on the norms and institutions of American democracy.

Stone Barrington is no stranger to schemes and deceptions of all stripes - as an attorney for the premier white-shoe law firm Woodman & Weld, he’s seen more than his share. But when he travels to Europe under highly unusual circumstances, Stone finds himself at the center of a mystery that is, even by his standards, most peculiar.

When Holly's wedding festivities are shattered by a brutal robbery, she vows to find the culprits. With nothing to go on but the inexplicable killing of an innocent bystander, Holly discovers evidence that leads her into the midst of a clan whose members are as mysterious as they are zealous. Holly's father, Ham, a retired army master sergeant, is her ticket into their strange world.

Hana’s home has gone up in flames; the little bakery at the heart of the city is no more. Smoke curls into the sky and the buildings around her burn. But Hana has already lost far more – her blue-eyed fiancé was wrenched from her arms at the start of the war and her brave father was murdered by the Nazis. She’s determined to protect her younger sisters but every day more people are being killed… Hana realises that one person alone won’t win the war and she has to accept her sisters are playing their own part in the resistance.

The average song is three and a half minutes long; those three and a half minutes could lead to a slow blink, a glimpse of the past, or catapult the soul into heart-shattering nostalgia. At the height of my career, I had the life I wanted, the life I’d always envisioned. I’d found my tempo, my rhythm. Then I received a phone call that left me off key. You see, my favorite songs had a way of playing simultaneously. I was in love with one man’s beats and another’s lyrics. But when it came to the soundtrack of a life, how could anyone choose a favorite song?

Lauren Stillwell isn't your average damsel in distress. When the NYPD cop discovers her husband leaving a hotel with another woman, she decides to beat him at his own game. But her revenge goes dangerously awry, and she finds her world spiraling into a hell that becomes more terrifying by the hour.

Stone Barrington’s newest client does not seem the type to bring mayhem in his wake. A polite, well-deported gentleman, he comes to Stone seeking legal expertise on an unusual - and potentially lucrative - dilemma. Stone points him in the right direction and sends him on his way, but it’s soon clear Stone hasn’t seen the end of the case. Several people are keenly interested in this gentleman’s activities and how they may relate to a long-ago crime...and some of them will stop at nothing to find the information they desire.

Riding her Soul Horse, Danny, Deirdre Buford relentlessly pursues the men who took her sister through an America wrecked by the Great Virus, endless civil war and a collapse of the global order called the Breakdown. She’s forced by circumstances to ally with a nomadic photographer. His gentle decency moves her to the core, but her mission leads her away from the man she’s falling in love with and toward a confrontation with the people who hold her sister. To defeat them, she’ll need the help of the powerful Nations, a league of indigenous tribes.

Berlin Zoo, 1943: Ten-year-old Adelaide and her newborn sister are orphaned after a devastating night of bombing. Heartbroken and frightened, Adelaide runs to her mother’s closest friend, Katharina Heinroth, and the kind zookeeper takes the two little girls under her protection. As the bombing intensifies, Adelaide tries to shut out the horrors of war by caring for her tiny sister and playing with the adorable baby monkeys. But when Katharina organizes a dangerous operation to enable children and animals to escape the battle-scarred city, something goes wrong.

After Special Agent Holly Barker lets international terrorist Teddy Fay slip through her fingers for a second time, the CIA thinks she might want a long vacation, at least until Teddy is captured and the bad publicity has blown over. So Holly returns to her hometown of Orchid Beach, Florida, where she had been police chief for many years. But a very unpleasant surprise awaits her.

Ever a man of mystery and intrigue, Teddy Fay has donned a new disguise - that of Mark Weldon, a stuntman and actor starring in Centurion Studios' newest film. When the picture's leading lady begins receiving blackmail threats, Teddy is in the perfect position to investigate, and it soon becomes clear that the villains have more in their sights than just money. Money they've got. What they need is prestige, the cache of a respected studio to lend authority and legitimacy to their artistic endeavors...and a little bit of vengeance in the bargain.

When he's apprised at the last minute of a mandatory meeting abroad, Stone Barrington rushes off to Europe for a whirlwind tour of business and, of course, pleasure. But from the start the trip seems to be cursed, plagued by suspicious "accidents" and unfortunate events, and some of Stone's plans go up in flames - literally. Not a believer in coincidence, Stone sets out to learn the true source of his curious misfortune and finds that what appeared to be bad luck may, in fact, have been a warning.

Sifting through reams of seemingly unrelated intelligence, CIA analyst Katherine Rule discovers a chilling pattern: an ultrasecret Baltic submarine base...a crafty Russian spy-master in command...a carefully planned invasion about to be launched from dark waters. Her suspicions, however, are dismissed by those higher up; her theory, they say, is too crazy to be true. But to Katherine, it’s just crazy enough to succeed - unless she can stop it. If she’s right, an attack sub has already penetrated friendly waters.

I caught the attention of a monster. I didn’t ask for it. Didn’t even see it coming. But the moment I do, it’s too late. Killian Carson is a predator wrapped in sophisticated charm. He’s cold-blooded, manipulative, and savage. The worst part is that no one sees his devil side. I do. And that will cost me everything. I run, but the thing about monsters? They always chase.

Lew Fonesca is still a freelance process server, still has his office behind a Dairy Queen in Sarasota, and is still the friend of the poor and outcast. Now, he has two more cases he doesn't want, cases that will lead unerringly to the discovery of murder.