Criminal Mystery

Texas attorney and former Texas Ranger Billy Bob Holland has many secrets. Among them is Vernon Smother's son, Lucas, a now-teenaged boy about whom few know the truth - Lucas is really Billy Bob's illegitimate son. When Lucas is arrested for murder, Billy Bob must confront the past and serve as the boy's criminal attorney. Billy Bob knows the propensity of the town, Deaf Smith, Texas, to make scapegoats out of the innocent and to exploit and sexually use the powerless.

Let me be the first person to welcome you to Normal, Kentucky located in the heart of the Daniel Boone National Forest. I'm Mae West the owner of Happy Trails Campground. Over the past few months my love life has been on what you'd call a slippery slope. Just this past week I'd resigned to the fact that me and Hank Sharp was caput! Done with. No more! And when I got a phone call during Bobby Ray's meeting with his birth mother from Hank, I felt like I was wrapped up between a nightmare and a dream.

With Malcolm on forced bed rest and off duty, Detective Seong-Jae Yoon faces his first solo case since joining the BPD—and it's one that will challenge his morals, his sense of duty, and his insistence on adhering to the letter of the law, especially when his actions in the Bishop case leave him questioning his own integrity. When the supposedly accidental death of a husband and father points to foul play in the victim's family, how close will Seong-Jae look to determine if the ends justify the means . . . and will he be able to live with the choices he makes?

You can pick your friends, they say, but you can't pick your family. And lately, Mike Daley's family has been keeping him very busy. An ex-priest, ex-public defender, and ex-corporate lawyer, Daley and his former wife, Rosie Fernandez, now run their own San Francisco criminal defense firm. Most of their cases are fairly small-time, which is why it would be surprising that the person accused of murdering movie director Richard (Big Dick) MacArthur is calling them - except that the accused is Rosie's own niece, Angelina.

"He pushed me." Three words turn a suspected suicide into an unsettling murder, pointing to a killer whose methods and motives threaten to expose buried memories of Seong-Jae's past. Yet neither Malcolm nor Seong-Jae are ready for the shadowed secrets that could shatter their tenuous new relationship, when a haunting presence seems to stalk them around every corner, watching their smallest move, baiting them and flirting just out of reach. Is it the killer, always staying one step ahead?

A murdered night club mogul unlocks a web of infidelity and deceit. The most likely suspect? The daughter of the richest family in Baltimore, if only Detectives Malcolm Khalaji and Seong-Jae Yoon can piece the evidence together. The clues just aren't lining up—but Malcolm can't tell if he's missing a piece of the puzzle or completely missing the mark. The McAllister case still haunts him. So many dead. So many he couldn't save. It's throwing him off his game. And the only one who really understands is his strange, coldly aloof partner.

In this contemporary thriller, National Book Award Finalist and New York Times best-selling author Paolo Bacigalupi explores the timely issue of how public information is distorted for monetary gain, and how those who exploit it must be stopped.

Ruthless defense attorney Tatum Graham has been living large in Miami, but when his recently acquitted client claims another victim, Tatum has a crisis of conscience. Disillusioned, he heads to his small Utah hometown for a simpler life...but that’s not what he finds. Soon after he arrives, Tatum’s childhood crush offers him a job at the county attorney’s office and assigns him a murder case.

From the outside, Carter Tomlin's life looked perfect: a big house, pretty wife, two kids - a St. Paul success story. But Tomlin has a secret. He's lost his job, the bills are mounting, and that perfect life is hanging by a thread. Desperate, he robs a bank. Then he robs another. As the red flags start to go up, FBI Special Agent Carla Windermere homes in on Tomlin from one direction, while Minnesota state investigator Kirk Stevens picks up the trail from another.

A beloved resident of Normal, Kentucky is found dead on the floor of the Normal Diner, leaving the entire town on high alert. Faster than the short order cook can say order up...the laundry ladies are in the scene. News spreads fast about the murder and Detective Hank Sharp is hungry for answers. Mae West along with the Laundry Club ladies come up with a list of suspects and the evidence is piling up faster than a juicy double cheeseburger. Who murdered the beloved citizen? Was it a hit to score some extra lunch money?

Mae West has spent the last few years bringing the rundown Happy Trails Campground and the small town of Normal, Kentucky, back to a thriving economic community. Mae's efforts haven't gone unnoticed. Not only is Happy Trails Campground in the running to be named Campground Hospitality of the Daniel Boone National Park, but she landed the coveted Paddle Fest kayak competition that secures the winner a spot on the Olympic team. When champion and Olympian kayaker Bryce Anderson turns over in his kayak dead, there's more than paddling going on, and his death has been ruled a homicide.

A large part of Goines' 39 years of life was spent being a successful pimp, a heif, an operator of corn liquor houses, an armed robber, and a small-time dope dealer. He lived the life of the streets, and out of that experience he created Prince, the anti-hero of Black Gangster. It's the story of the shocking underworld of Black organized crime and the fledgling Black "godfather" who goes from teenager ganglord to powerful Detroit mobster. Like the gangsters of the 1920s, he begins with bootlegging and branches out into every known crime.

They say where there's smoke, there's fire—but Malcolm and Seong-Jae have a lot of blood and no body in a case where the only witness to a murder may be the killer himself. Yet as they chase down a victim who may or may not exist in a crime that may or may not have happened, it's the sparks flying between them that threaten to ignite into dangerous flame . . . and by the time this case is over, their relationship may never be the same. One kiss, one case, one night may change everything . . .and when Malcolm and Seong-Jae come together, someone's going to get burned.

Multiple execution-style murders hint at a mob hit, but when Malcolm and Seong-Jae follow the clues, the last thing they expect is a host of very familiar—and very dead—faces. They say dead men tell no tales, but if Malcolm and Seong-Jae can't even trust the words of the living, they'll never catch a hit man dead set on burying every trace of an underworld secret . . . along with a few more bodies. But it's not just the cold bodies on their minds when a little undercover work sends them to a nightclub once owned by none other than Marion Garvey.

When John Milton witnesses a suspicious altercation between a young man and two thugs in a car auction parking lot, he can't resist getting involved. Milton came to Kansas City hoping to find a way out of danger. His recent vendetta against a cartel hitman who killed his friend has made him enemies in high places. Now he needs to find the only man who can get him out of this mess. But, like a moth to a flame, Milton is drawn to anyone who needs his help. And this time, he's also drawing the attention of money laundering criminals who really mean business.

When Hackberry Holland became sheriff of a tiny Texas town near the Mexican border, he'd hoped to leave certain things behind: his checkered reputation, his haunted dreams, and his obsessive memories of the good life with his late wife, Rie. But the discovery of the bodies of nine illegal aliens, machine-gunned to death and buried in a shallow grave behind a church, soon makes it clear that he won't escape so easily.

Broken trust. Shattered hearts. Secrets exposed—and yet still no closer to the truth. When Malcolm and Seong-Jae's relationship hits a wall, their partnership fragments as well . . . and they may not be able to withstand the crushing tide when protests over Tomasz Kowalczyk's death turn into deadly riots. Too many familiar faces return, and one will be leaving in a body bag. But for the puppet master guiding their every move, the chaos that descends on Baltimore is the perfect opportunity to capture his mark.

Who expects to find a corpse in a fairground? Certainly not Clara Fitzgerald, Brighton's first female private detective, who is enjoying some time off when a new case falls straight into her lap. Just exactly whose corpse is sitting propped up in the House of Curios, and why would anyone leave a body on view for everyone to see? Clara has a whole carnival of suspects and very few clues, but the ones she does have suggest she needs to look towards Brighton's seedy underworld for answers, and that may well mean putting her life in danger.

Sashi Burgette vanished three years ago on her way to school. The night after the teenager's disappearance, ex-con Dylan Kyle was stopped for drunk driving. An article of Sashi's clothing was found in his truck, and a police videotape of his drunken explanation under interrogation sealed his fate at trial. Now, just days from Kyle's execution, Sashi's mother visits Jack Swyteck, who's doing pro bono work at the Freedom Institute, and delivers shocking news: "Sashi called me."

I thought I had my hands full when Dottie Swaggert and Mary Elizabeth Moberly entered the Ms. Blossom Queen Beauty Pageant for seniors, but when I witnessed a fight at the festival between Carrie Patillo and Jason Dresser, Carrie's daughter's accused killer, I knew Jason was wrongfully accused for the murder and set up. How was I going to prove it before the trial started? Easy. Gather the Laundry Club Ladies and use our unique sleuthing skills.