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Vassal of El

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He tried to forget his past, but it wouldn’t forget him

At sixteen, Torren was violently torn from his family and his people and left for dead, a cripple in more ways than one. For the next few years, he traveled alone, making few friends.

Then, one night, a terrified young woman fleeing for her life stumbles into his camp, and his life once again takes new direction. As he reluctantly takes responsibility for getting her to safety, his past comes back to haunt him in a way that is painfully ironic. Against both his will and his better judgment, he must return to the place he had thought lost to him forever if he is to make good on his promise to keep his charge safe from harm.

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The Angel of Terror

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Beautiful Jean Briggerland is the epitome of evilness in this fast-paced thriller. Her many plots to steal her victim’s riches do not shy away from lies and murder. Only Jack Glover, the lawyer of Jean’s most recent victim, is aware of her true nature. Can he stop her crime spree and bring her to justice before she murders her way to wealth and happiness? Don’t count on it! Page after page offers action, new twists, and unexpected surprises that will keep listeners on the edge of their seats!

Original cover background image by Faylyne.

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Riders of the Purple Sage

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Riders of the Purple Sage is a Western novel by Zane Grey. Considered by many critics to have played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre, the novel has been called “the most popular western novel of all time.”

Riders of the Purple Sage tells the story of Jane Withersteen and her battle to overcome her persecution by members of the polygamous Mormon Church, a leader of which, Elder Tull, wants to marry her. Withersteen is supported by a number of Gentile friends, including Bern Venters and Lassiter, a famous gunman and killer of Mormons. Throughout most of the novel she struggles with her “blindness” in seeing the evil nature of her church and its leaders, trying to keep both Venters and Lassiter from killing her adversaries, who are slowly ruining her.

Through the adoption of a child, Fay, she abandons her false beliefs and discovers her true love. A second plot strand tells of Venters and his escape to the wilderness with a girl named Bess, “the rustler’s girl,” whom he has accidentally shot. While caring for her, Venters falls in love with the girl, and together they escape to the East, while Lassiter, Fay, and Jane, are pursued by both Mormons and rustlers.

Original cover background image by Larry Lamsa.

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Blackbird Fly

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The sudden death of her husband turns Merle Bennett’s life upside down. She finds herself doing what she least expected, decamping to France for the summer to fix up the ancestral home. The village in southwest France should be idyllic: warm sunshine, vineyards, and walls of golden stone. As the past unravels, colliding with modern tensions and the filthy trials of renovation, the summer takes on a dark cast, full of secrets best left buried.

In her first stand-alone suspense novel, Lise McClendon reaches deep into the past to find a France untouched by the outside world of tourism and fashion. Writing in a “lyrical, often humorous style,” she brings both the pain and rewards of rebirth and the rich French countryside to life.

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Death of a Nationalist

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Madrid 1939. Carlos Tejada Alonso y Lean is a Sergeant in the Guardia Civil, a rank rare for a man not yet thirty, but Tejada is an unusual recruit. The bitter civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans has interrupted his legal studies in Salamanca. Second son of a conservative Southern family of landowners, he is an enthusiast for the Catholic Franquista cause, a dedicated, and now triumphant, Nationalist. This war has drawn international attention. In a dress rehearsal for World War II, fascists support the Nationalists, while communists have come to the aid of the Republicans. Atrocities have devastated both sides. It is at this moment, when the Republicans have surrendered, and the Guardia Civil has begun to impose order in the ruins of Madrid, that Tejada finds the body of his best friend, a hero of the siege of Toledo, shot to death on a street named Amor de Dios. Naturally, a Red is suspected. And it is easy for Tejada to assume that the woman caught kneeling over the body is the killer. But when his doubts are aroused, he cannot help seeking justice.

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Defining Diana

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Defining Diana is Book 1 of the Steele Chronicles.

Found naked and alone in a locked room. The beautiful woman was in perfect health – except she was dead…

It’s 2043 and much has changed: nuclear war, biotechnology and all-powerful corporations have ruled the world… Now science is taking DNA manipulation to new, unrestricted levels.

Superintendent Frank Steele is an old-fashioned cop. He commands a small, elite police unit that is handed all of the bizarre and baffling cases no one else can solve. He knows the money, the murders, missing persons and gruesome body shops are all connected. He knows it starts with the girl…

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Hard Cold Whisper

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David Kellgren is a process server, a job where everyone wants to kill the messenger and things can get a little bit dangerous and out of hand. David is attacked when trying to serve legal papers to a gang member and an angel comes to his rescue: nineteen-year-old Gabriella Amaya, trapped in a large dilapidated house, caring for her dying aunt. This elderly aunt has money, diamonds, and real estate, promised to Gabriella when the aunt dies. Is there any way the sultry caregiver can get her crafty hands on that wealth sooner? And share it with her new lover, the unsuspecting process server who starts to wonder if he’s become a patsy in an elaborate murder plot, or if he simply cannot allow himself to truest any woman who says, “I love you.” Set in San Diego, Chula Vista, and Tijuana, Hard Cold Whisper is Michael Hemmingson at his finest, most terse and torqued prose in the crime genre. — Hemmingson wrote Hard Cold Whisper as an experiment during the 2010 3 Day Novel Challenge during Labor Day Weekend, a concerted event where writers all over the world participate. The method here pays homage to hardboiled noir master Gil Brewer, who wrote many of his finest Fawcett Gold Medal titles in a possessed, white hot flash fury of several days or a week. Hard Cold Whisper is Hemmingson’s nod to the feel and atmosphere of the Gold Medal paperback.

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High Season

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Frank Coffin had been a well-respected Baltimore homicide detective. But when he started having panic attacks at crime scenes, he was forced to go home to Cape Cod, where the worst crimes were usually break-ins, bicycle thefts, and domestic disputes. That is, until a vacationing televangelist turns up dead on the beach wearing a wig, a muumuu, and one size-twelve pump. Not to mention the raspberry-colored taffeta scarf strangling his neck.

Frank and his partner, Officer Lola Winters, begin checking out the drag bars and isolated trysting spots the reverend might have frequented. However, when the body count starts to rise, it becomes alarmingly clear that a killer with an agenda is at large in Provincetown. And Coffin’s fears—like unwelcome summer tourists—have returned in full force…

Cover image adapted from a photo by Andrew Bossi.

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It’s Behind You

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A story about fame, megalomania and murder.

Carina Hemsley, former soap star of ‘Winkle Bay’ was a hugely popular actress in her day – until her ego took over and ‘Cora Smart’, her character, was axed off.

Now, after years away from the lime-light, she’s appearing as the Good Fairy in panto, terrorising the cast and crew of a tatty third-rate northern theatre and drinking and smoking herself to death. Audiences are down and the outlook isn’t good… until she starts receiving death threats in the post. Along with the police, the media circus descends, boosting her public profile and putting bums on seats in the theatre.

Follow Carina and her not-so-merry troupers as they face an onslaught of assassination, romance and intrigue, but as Carina says, ‘The Show Must Go On!’

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Las Vegas Noir

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In 2004, Akashic Books launched a groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, starting with the award-winning best-seller Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

In this chilling portrait of America’s Sin City, lady luck is just as likely to dispense cold hard cash as a cold-hearted killing.

Brand-new stories by: John O’Brien, David Corbett, Scott Phillips, Nora Pierce, Tod Goldberg, Bliss Esposito, Felicia Campbell, Jaq Greenspon, Jose Skinner, Pablo Medina, Christine McKellar, Lori Kozlowski, Vu Tran, Celeste Starr, Preston L. Allen, and Janet Berliner. — See below for full table of contents.

Las Vegas provides the classic sophistication and darkness necessary for a deadly noir story. Stylish, sultry, brimming with ambition and greed, the characters that populate this literary Las Vegas are pushed to the extremes of human experience. From the neon glitter of the Strip to the treacherous views of Red Rock Canyon and Boulder City, from the desperation of Naked City to the racial tensions of the Westside, no other location offers so many different avenues leading to serious trouble.

Many legendary authors have turned their attention to Vegas to investigate the city’s moods and mysteries. Now, the most recent crop of acclaimed writers explore the secret neighborhoods and byways of America’s most sinful city, offering readers not only compelling noir tales but also an insider’s understanding of this steamy oasis. These authors take readers beneath the surface flash of Freemont Street and the Strip and into the gritty multicultural environs of underground Vegas.

 

Table of Contents
Part I: Sin City
“The Tik” by John O’Brien (Scotch 80s) — Narrator: Darla Middlebrook
“Pretty Little Parasite” by David Corbett (Fremont) — Narrator: Arielle Lipshaw
“Mitzhav” by Tod Goldberg (Summerlin) — Narrator: Mike Vendetti
“Babs” by Scott Phillips (Naked City) — Narrator: Charles Bice
“This or Any Desert” by Vu Tran (Chinatown) — Narrator: Mike Vendetti

Part II: Neon Grit
“Benny Rojas and the Rough Riders” by Pablo Medina (West Las Vegas) — Narrator: Mike Vendetti
“Bits and Pieces” by Christine McKellar (Green Valley) — Narrator: Lee Ann Howlett
“Crip” by Preston L. Allen (Nellis) — Narrator: Darla Middlebrook
“Three Times a Night, Every Other Night” by Lori Kozlowski (North Las Vegas) — Narrator: Arielle Lipshaw
“Disappear” by Jaq Greenspon (Sunset Park) — Narrator: Charles Bice
“All About Balls” by Jose Skinner (East Las Vegas) — Narrator: Mike Vendetti

Part III: Tales from the Outskirts
“Atomic City” by Nora Pierce (Test Site) — Narrator: Charles Bice
“Dirty Blood” by Celeste Starr (Pahrump) — Narrator: Darla Middlebrook
“Guns Don’t Kill People” by Bliss Esposito (Centennial Hills) — Narrator: Diane Havens
“Murder Is Academic” by Felicia Campbell (Mount Charleston) — Narrator: Denice Stradling
“The Road to Rachel” by Janet Berliner (Area 51) — Narrator: Kenneth Campbell

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