Crime Noir

Caleb Rush, aka Crush, is the toughest, coolest bodyguard/bouncer in Los Angeles, a man who lives strictly by his own moral code, which doesn't exactly hew to the standards of US law. When Amelia Trask, the wild daughter of a scruples-free billionaire tycoon, comes to Crush for help, his quiet life roars into overdrive, and he has to use his wits, brawn, martial-arts training, and knowledge of the Russian Mafia to stay alive and clean up the mess that young Amelia has created.

Desperate to complete the last chapter of his law thesis on workplace dynamics for women to secure his tenure, Professor Stanley Hopkins stumbles on an old close college friend, Donald Johansson, who has plenty of female employees. The problem is that Donald is a porn video king. Taking his wife to California’s seedy city of Burbank to help with taping interviews, Stanley realizes he is in way over his head the moment a leading porn star is brutally killed in Donald’s office during a party.

All kinds of evolved life forms wash up on the beaches of Key West, just waiting for a chance to wreak havoc on the general population. Take Douglas Barnes, president of Barnes Waste Management, who gets his jollies by sending some amazing things into the outer atmosphere; or Dougie Barnes, who has a predilection for poetry, parrots and perversion. Into this haven for the insane waltzes Trula Montoya, a former TV actress with a secret, and Shaw Chandler, a disenchanted EMS worker on the scent of murder.

The halls are decked, the deck is stacked, and here comes that jolly old elf. Junior Bender, divorced father of one and burglar extraordinaire, finds himself stuck inside the Edgerton Mall, and not just as a last-minute shopper (though he is that too). Edgerton isn't exactly the epicenter of holiday cheer, despite its two Santas, canned Christmas music, chintzy bows, and festive lights. The mall is a fossil of an industry in decline; many of its stores are closed, and to make matters worse, there is a rampant shoplifting problem.

If you like audiobooks laced with dark, gritty suspense, you won’t be disappointed by this addition to the adventures of Johnny Deal. Set in Miami, each novel in Les Standiford’s gripping series glows with the heat of danger and deception. In the wake of a major hurricane, Johnny Deal, a Miami contractor, is busy with renovations and enjoying new prosperity. But the ambitious plans of a Cuban sugar baron are about to remove the sweet taste of success from Johnny’s life. Hired thugs send Deal’s plans up in flames, but it’s not just the contracting business that is at stake.

A chilling note predicting the deaths of six people is found in a school's time capsule, 10 years after it was buried. But surely, if a 13-year-old wrote it, it can't be a real threat.... Detective Huldar suspects he's been given the investigation simply to keep him away from real police work. He turns to psychologist Freyja to help understand the child who hid the message. Soon, however, they find themselves at the heart of another shocking case.

Insurance mathematician Henri Koskinen has just restored order in his life, as well as in the adventure park he now owns, when a man from the past appears—and turns everything upside down again. More problems arise when the park's equipment supplier is taken over by a shady trio: Why won't Suomen Leikki Ltd sell the new Moose Jump to Henri when he needs it for the park's main attraction? At the same time, Henri's relationship with the artist Laura Helanto is reaching a breaking point.

Isaiah Coleridge is a mob enforcer in Alaska - he's tough, seen a lot, and dished out more. But when he forcibly ends the money-making scheme of a made man, he gets in the kind of trouble that can lead to a bullet behind the ear. Saved by the grace of his boss and exiled to upstate New York, Isaiah begins a new life, a quiet life without gunshots or explosions. Except a teenage girl disappears, and Isaiah isn't one to let that slip by. And delving into the underworld to track this missing girl will get him exactly the kind of notice he was warned to avoid.

Hanson joins the Green Berets fresh out of college. Carrying a volume of Yeats's poems in his uniform pocket, he has no idea of what he's about to face in Vietnam - from the enemy, from his fellow soldiers, or within himself. In vivid, nightmarish, and finely etched prose, Kent Anderson takes us through Hanson's two tours of duty and a bitter, ill-fated return to civilian life in-between, capturing the day-to-day process of war like no writer before or since.

In recent decades, ostensibly to combat the rising tide of criminality in Mumbai’s underworld, the Indian Police Service has carried out many hundreds of extrajudicial assassinations of suspects. Karan, an expert sharpshooter in an elite branch dispensed with dishing out this vigilante justice, has a difficult choice: Should he continue to blindly follow orders from his superiors, regardless of their moral standing, or take matters into his own hands and do what he believes to be right?

Sam Kelson is a PI like no other. As a consequence of being shot in the head while working undercover as a Chicago cop, he suffers from disinhibition: He cannot keep silent or tell lies when questioned. But truth be told - and Kelson always tells the truth - he still feels compelled to investigate and, despite the odds, he's good at his job.

Picking up the story with Baer on the road to North Carolina and Tat and Corazon in the motel with the hot tub, disaster is moments away. Baer, audiobook number six, is packed with more action, wit, and destruction than any audiobook in the series so far. It's more brutal, more funny, more heartbreaking, and more enlightening.

In the second book in the Dead Jack series, the zombie detective hits rock bottom, bingeing on fairy dust and formaldehyde 24/7. Reluctantly, he sets out with a fellow zombie, the narcissistic Garry, to find his long-lost soul. But a new threat emerges: a neo-Nazi group that hunts down the depressed corpse, believing his sidekick Oswald has the power to capture all the souls in Pandemonium. Again, the wicked world needs saving, but this time can Jack also save himself?

Private detective Sam Jones’s six-year search for an 8-year-old boy ends with gunshots in a basement and cold bodies that would eventually lead the police straight to him. Jones had never promised Ruth Verne that he would find her son alive, but he knew deep down that she believed he would - worse, he had believed it too. Jones wasn’t ready to look Ruth in the eye and tell her he had failed. He wasn’t ready to admit that he lost everything and had nothing to show for it. But an unsigned note scrawled on a bathroom door gives Jones a second chance - a chance for redemption.

There has never been a woman as beautiful as top model Delora Deanne. But Delora Deanne doesn’t really exist. Unknown to the panting public, Delora is a composite of many women. Her face is played by Gertrude Bragg. Torso and legs by Eula Stolz. Hands, Eva Lou Strauss. Brains, Hazel Swackhammer. But now, Delora is coming apart. Hazel Swackhammer receives the first in what is to be a series of beautifully wrapped presents. Inside, she is surprised to find a pair of pale lavender gloves...containing the hands of Delora Deanne.

Douglas Rigby, attorney-at-law, is bankrupt. He's just sunk his last $200,000 - a clandestine "loan" from his last remaining client, former bigshot TV exec Glenn Haskill - into a cocaine deal gone wrong. The lesson? Never trust anyone else with the dirty work. Desperate to get back on top, Rigby formulates an art forgery scheme involving one of Glenn's priceless paintings, a victimless crime.

Things have gone from bad to worse for T.J. Peterson. The cops have kicked him off the force, his girlfriend called it quits, his best friend and former partner won't speak to him, and his estranged 20-year-old daughter, Katy, continues to torment him with photos of the hellholes she is living in. Add in a shrink's diagnosis of PTSD, and Peterson is barely holding it together. When he receives an anonymous text message with an online link to a video of a young journalist being tortured, Peterson does the only thing he knows how to do - he sets out to save her.

Just when DI Tom Mariner seems to be settling down with his new girlfriend...everything kicks off. First, a badly decomposed body of a young woman is found in a Birmingham sewer. The police can't identify her and dub her "Madeleine". Then, an important politician and his wife are shot on an isolated road. "Vengeance is mine" is scrawled in blood at the scene. Finally, a bomb explosion in the busy city kills five people, causing chaos and panic. Can Detective Mariner and his team get to the bottom of crimes that will come very close to home for him and his team?

Two teenagers go missing on the same day. Just a coincidence? They are from very different backgrounds: Yasmin is the talented, grammar-school-educated daughter of devout Muslim professionals. Ricky disappears after storming out of his council house after an argument with his mum's latest boyfriend. The press is convinced Yasmin's disappearance is a racially motivated abduction. Her family has been the target of a far-right group. But DI Mariner soon discovers Yasmin is far from the innocent victim her parents think she is.

Isobel Kingston is dead. Or so everyone believes. When a mysterious woman writes her last words in sand, Isobel steps out of the shadows to uncover the truth. As she plunges into a storm of betrayal, the winds are determined to throw Atticus Riot on her course, and the two detectives collide in a sea of madness and murder.