Dark Crime Fiction

A decade after leaving prison, Shea Stevens has put her criminal past in her rearview. But when someone abducts her eight-year-old niece, the tough-as-nails ex-con doesn't trust the police to find her. Instead, Shea forms an uneasy alliance with her estranged family’s drug-dealing biker gang to locate the missing girl and rain hell on those who took her. But the motorcycle club's violence and treachery only puts Shea and her niece in further danger.

Human remains are recovered from the bottom of the River Clyde. Not an unusual occurrence, but these have been sleeping the deep, dark sleep for eighteen years. Suddenly Glasgow’s underworld is buzzing with the news that the dredged up bones belong to Gentleman Joe Strachan, Glasgow’s most successful and ruthless armed robber.

Bristol Scott has a dirty little secret about her first husband’s unfortunate passing. And now that she’s arranged to marry Lorenzo Vitale, a man who’s strikingly like the deceased, she finds herself back in the thick of the action.

When three bodies turn up in a landfill outside of Philadelphia, FBI profiler Violet Darger heads to Pennsylvania to investigate. Right away there's a major complication. The emaciated corpses appear to have been starved to death. Darger arrives in time for the autopsies. As she watches the withered bodies laid out on the stainless steel slabs of the morgue, their faces crusted with sandy soil, skin pulled taut around knobby cheekbones, she thinks: what kind of a person could carry out such harsh acts?

I am going to restore my reign over both worlds. First, with a pen. Next, with a knife. Remind them who sits on the throne of this concrete jungle. Repair the structure that was shattered when my Mia Bella was stolen from me. Revenge will be had. Restitution received. And for me to reestablish order, I will do whatever is necessary. For there is no cost that is too great. For there is no sacrifice that is too sizeable. I am a different man because of the only woman I'll ever love. And that man is more dangerous than anyone could've ever predicted.

Nicky just wants to save her brother. She showed up with an envelope full of cash and a smart mouth and found herself in a den of monsters. I wish I could say I was the best of them, I wish I could protect her - but I’m far from perfect.

When the body of a homeless woman is found under Bradford’s railway arches, DS Nikki Parekh and her trusty partner DC Sajid Malik are on the case. With little evidence, it’s impossible to make a breakthrough, and when Nikki receives a newspaper clipping taunting her about her lack of progress in catching the killer, she wonders if she has a personal link to the case. When another seemingly unrelated body is discovered, Nikki receives another note. Someone is clearly trying to send her clues...but who? And then a third body is found.

I’m ordered to execute her.... I never expected to see her again. We shared one wild night several years ago. She had no idea that I work for the mafia. I’m a savage, ruthless killer, but she’s innocent. She saves lives. I take them. She’s a pediatric oncology nurse. Could she be any more of a saint? She entered the wrong hotel room. There can’t be any witnesses. My boss wants her dead. Her life is in my hands. I intend to make her my wife to protect her. She’ll hate me, but at least I can keep her safe.

I didn't ask for her as my bride. I just made her mine. Her father had to be taught what happens when you cross a King, but that isn't why Genevieve Rossi is sore, well-used, and waiting for me to claim her in the only way I haven't already. She's sore because she thought she could embarrass me in public without being punished. She's well-used because after I spanked her I wanted more, and I take what I want. She's waiting for me in my bed because she's my bride, and tonight is our wedding night.

Tucker, a young veteran, returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don't have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything.

The Trans-Siberian Railway is the longest rail line in the world. But for Dan Morgan's daughter, Alex, it could be the shortest trip of her life - and the last. After taking out a sadistic North Korean officer, she boards the train to make her escape. But she's not the only passenger with a hidden agenda. Dan Morgan has two choices: save his daughter before fighter jets blow up the train. Or stop a madman from annihilating the world. Either way, this train ride is a one-way ticket toward disaster - and the last stop is World War III....

After the notorious 'Middle Street Massacre' of 1951, when the majority of Brighton's criminals wiped one another out in a vicious battle as the local police force enjoyed a brief stop en route for an ice cream, Inspector Steine rather enjoys life as a policeman. No criminals, no crime, no stress. He just wishes Sergeant Brunswick would stop insisting that perhaps not every criminal was wiped out that fateful day. So it's really rather annoying when an ambitious - not to mention irritating - new Constable shows up to work and starts investigating a series of burglaries.

In number-one New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris’s "Dahlia Underground,” venerable vampire Dahlia Lynley-Chivers survives an attack by an anti-vampire terrorist group, only to show them they tried to blow up the wrong bloodsucker. Bailey Ruth Raeburn, a ghost assigned to assist humans in trouble, steps into the middle of a marital dispute with surprising twists in Carolyn Hart’s “Riding High”....

A decade ago, an angel made the worst mistake of her life. Yasmin saved a monster. The broken man she knew has become the most feared man in the city. And I’m done waiting. Her pathetic excuse of a father owes me a shitload of money, and I intend to collect her as payment.

I've never let anyone into my life. At least not like her. Not until her. She sees a side of me that isn't the bratva monster everyone else believes. Now that she knows, she's mine. Mine to keep and protect. Mine to please. In return, it's her love I crave. She's my soulmate.

Within the dazzling halls of London’s Crystal Palace, the event of the season has arrived: The Great Exhibition. An opportunity for the greatest minds of the century to come together under one roof in an unprecedented display of art and invention. And for two unlikely partners in crime, it’s about to become the score of a lifetime. Charming con man Kane Durante works alone—or on occasion with his best friend, Fletcher. But when his boss gives him the impossible task of stealing a priceless artifact from the Great Exhibition, he knows it’s a job he can’t pull off alone.

Junior Bender, Los Angeles burglar and off-the-books detective to the felonious, is reminded that rock and roll will never die (no matter how fervently he wishes some of it would) when Hollywood’s most dangerous geriatric mobster, Irwin Dressler, retains Junior’s investigative services to solve a rather unharmonious problem. Junior has one weekend to figure out who’s to blame—a weekend that begins with his tires being slashed, threatening notes left on his car, and a theatrical backdrop falling on a drummer during the truly terrible first set of the first concert.

When movie producer Cody Ziegler goes missing from The Homestead’s Millionaires’ Row, his wife, retired actress Olivia, immediately claims there’s foul play afoot. A million-dollar ransom demand soon follows, with clear instructions not to involve the cops. In desperation she enlists the help of Moira, Rick, Philip and Lizzie, aka the Retired Detectives Club. Racing against the clock, the four retirees set to work.

Outside the Hope & Glory pub, a man has been left to die. A victim of extraordinary violence, he will never walk or speak again. He remains in hospital, nameless, until criminal defence lawyer Sarah Kellerman walks onto his ward. Sarah barely recognises the man she once worked with. He was honourable and kind - what was he involved in? Who wanted him dead?

A series of seemingly motiveless murders of supernatural creatures points to a vigilante targeting the supe community of Scranton. Markowski wouldn’t normally have much of a problem with that, but his daughter may be next on the killer’s list... Justin Gustainis was born in Northeast Pennsylvania in 1951. He attended college at the University of Scranton, a Jesuit university that figures prominently in several of his writings. He is currently a Professor of Communication at Plattsburgh State University.