Showing results by author "Neil Plakcy" in All Categories

Three charming cozy mysteries with heart-- and fur! Stolen treasures, a cane-whacking elderly woman and a couple of dead bodies. Join Steve Levitan and Lili Weinstock as they navigate the treacherous waters of wedding planning-- and murder.

Forty-two-year-old Steve Levitan has lost everything that matters to him: his marriage, his home, and his career. After finishing a brief prison term for computer hacking, he returns to his home town of Stewart's Crossing, PA, with his tail between his legs. With his parole officer peering over his shoulder, Steve begins a technical writing business and takes a part-time job as an adjunct professor of English at his alma mater Eastern College.

There's something so sexy about a beach and the men who hang around it. Whether it's on the ocean, a lake, or a New Zealand river, beaches mean water and sunshine and handsome guys showing off what God or genetics gave them. Pick any beach around the world, and you're bound to find excellent eye candy. These gorgeous guys are the stuff of gay fantasy from sleek swimmers to muscular surfers and boarders to sun-worshipping naturists. Their skins are toned golden brown, and their bodies shimmer with droplets of water. The stories in this collection showcase those beach bums.

First feelings of lust for another boy, all-night study sessions, the excitement of a student hot for a teacher...is it any wonder that college boys are the objects of fantasy the world over? Whether toweling off after a swm, lurking in the library stacks, or engaging in some male bonding at the frat house, these gorgeous undergrads are good for page-turning, arousing action.

There’s a new dog in town--a golden retriever named Luke, in training to be a seeing-eye dog. He and Rochester immediately bond, but there’s something odd about Luke’s human, Ben Ji. How can someone so young afford an expensive townhouse on Sarajevo Way? When Ben is shot, Steve begins to discover the lies he has been telling.

Autumn has come to Bucks County, and Steve Levitan has a new job: develop a conference center for Eastern College at Friar Lake. But on his first visit to the property, his golden retriever Rochester makes a disturbing discovery, a human hand rising from the dirt at the lake’s shore.

Construction workers, plumbers, gardeners - or any hard working man with a tool belt - plays a part in many gay male fantasies. In this steamy collection, we take a ride to the top of a high-rise under construction for a precarious steel-beam encounter; go down in the belly of a dark steamy mine; hang out with some hunky, sweaty landscapers; and slip into the construction manager's office for a quickie. In this world, the hats are not the only thing that's hard.

Who hasn't experienced a pang of lust or longing at a photo of a male model? Whether a hundred times life size on a billboard or romping through the pages of a glossy magazine in his Calvins, Tommys, or Ralphs, the male model is the gold standard for masculine beauty. The characters in these stories run the gamut, from the billboard-gracing Aiden in Cynthia Hamilton's "Big Picture", to life models in drawing classes, to runway models, to ordinary guys immortalized in a catalog shoot in T. Hitman's "When Gary Met Larry".

Steve Levitan and Lili Weinstock are on their way to the altar—but dognapping and murder get in the way. The theft of the vice-mayor's dog unveils a widespread pattern of canine thefts. Could those poor pooches be on their way to a testing lab or a puppy mill? And how does that case play into the death of a Billy Joel tribute act? Could the caterer they've hired be responsible?

When his mentor, Joe Dagorian, director of admissions at prestigious Eastern College, is murdered during a fundraising event, Steve Levitan feels obliged to investigate. He and his golden retriever, Rochester, go nose to the ground to dig up clues, including a bloody knife and some curious photographs. But will Steve’s curiosity and Rochester’s savvy save them when the killer comes calling? A cozy mystery for dog lovers!

Peggy was a great friend to Steve when they were teens. Can he help her now as she faces the death penalty? As teens, semi-reformed hacker Steve Levitan admired his friend Peggy because of the way she fought back from a difficult childhood to travel to France and aspire to a college degree and a career as a lawyer.

Mahu Surfer, the second book in my Mahu Investigations mystery series, sends gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka back to his surfing past. His new boss asks the former competitive surfer to go undercover on Oahu’s North Shore to find the killer of three surfers. The catch: He can't tell any of his family or friends that he has returned to the force, causing him to lie, when he has just come out of the closet and begun to tell the truth about his life. In his return to the North Shore, Kimo discovers trouble in paradise.

"Hang ten!" takes on new meaning in this collection of erotic stories that follows the sexual escapades of those fabulous beach boys. Their taut, tanned bodies glistening with water and their hair damp from a dip in the ocean, these dudes are like sex on surfboards - fast, sleek, and oh so hot! The 19 stories - including "Blue Star Boy", "Samurai of the Surf", and "Surf Stud Initiation" - follow the adventures of these sensuous surfers from Cape Cod to Japan to Hawaii as they ride the waves of pleasure to anything from tender romance to raw, hardcore sex.

It's almost time for graduation, and Eastern College is in trouble. A prominent alumna is dead, and a faulty computer program is jeopardizing student records and financial aid. It's up to Steve and Rochester to dig into the situation and retrieve the culprits! Rita Gaines wasn't a nice person-but she did love her dogs, and most of her clients respected her financial acumen and her talent in training dogs for agility trials.

When a local gallery owner is murdered, Lili is asked to identify artists who graced an event she photographed two decades ago. As shadows of the past resurface, the couple's wedding concerns pale in comparison to the enigma unfolding before them. Lili digs deep into her memories, Steve scans the dark web for details about a crime that went unpunished, and Rochester sniffs out clues to help them both bring justice.

Seamen: From mariners on huge yachts to competitive sailors in races like the America's cup to recreational boaters, the combination of men and water is irresistible. Whether they're wearing Speedos or slickers and handling megayachts or windsurfers, these guys can set sail right to our heart. Neil Plakcy, the editor of Hard Hats, Surfer Boys, Skater Boys, The Handsome Prince and Model Men sailed the high seas and gazed through many a porthole looking for stories of navy men, yachtsmen, and even a pirate or two and the fun they get up to, on land and on sea.

Autumn has come to Bucks County, and Steve Levitan has a new job: Develop a conference center for Eastern College at Friar Lake, a few miles from campus. But on his first visit to the property, his golden retriever, Rochester, makes a disturbing discovery: a human hand rising from the dirt at the lake's shore. Whose hand is it? Why was the body buried there? The answers will take Steve, his photographer girlfriend, Lili, and the ever-faithful Rochester to a drop-in center for recovering drug addicts on the Lower East Side....

An Alzheimer’s patient slips away from home on his own and tumbles into the Delaware River. And then Steve’s love Lili suffers the crushing loss of her mother in a Miami Beach hospital. Eckhardt Lalor left behind a fortune in real estate, a fractured family, and a bitter legacy as a city slumlord. Does that add up to murder? There’s no question of what killed Benita Weinstock — a dodgy heart — but her death rocks her daughter’s world, and Steve’s. It will be up to Rochester to solve the crime and heal his humans in this new mystery with heart — and fur.

Reformed computer hacker Steve Levitan has built a new life for himself after prison, including a home with his fiancée and his golden retriever Rochester. It matters deeply to him, enough to risk it all to bring justice to a killer in his neighborhood.

Semi-reformed computer hacker Steve Levitan’s longtime girlfriend, Lili, is acting out of character, and he's eager to figure out why and how he can help her. But that gets delayed when he and his golden retriever, Rochester, are asked to help investigate a double homicide in a posh neighborhood of Stewart's Crossing.