Urban Crime

The two parts of being a paranormal private investigator I could really do without are being forced to eat bananas by an animated statue with a potassium fixation, and being put on trial for murder by a self-appointed council of vampire oligarchs. To be fair, I did kind of do it (the murder, not the bananas). But I was kind of saving my girlfriend, who is kind of one of them. On top of this, I've also wound up with a primordial queen of the damned trying to strangle me in my dreams.

In a deserted tenement in an occupied city, two dead bodies lie on a dusty floor as if they have fallen out of the air. One corpse is cut in half, the other is utterly unmarked. One is human, the other isn’t. The city of Ambergris is half ruined, rotten, its population controlled by narcotics, internment camps, and acts of terror. But its new masters want this case closed, urgently. Detective John Finch has just one week to solve it or be sent to the camps. With no ID for the victims, no clues, no leads, and precious little hope, Finch’s fate hangs in the balance.

A propulsive and ambitious novel as electrifying as The Wire, from a writer hailed as the West Coast's Richard Price—a mesmerizing epic of crime and opportunity, race, revenge, and loyalty, set in the chaotic streets of South Central LA in the wake of one of the most notorious and incendiary trials of the 1990s. At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted three white Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force to subdue a black man named Rodney King and failed to reach a verdict on the same charges involving a fourth officer. Less than two hours later, the city exploded in violence that lasted six days. In nearly 121 hours, fifty-three lives were lost. But there were even more deaths unaccounted for: violence that occurred outside of active rioting sites by those who used the chaos to viciously settle old scores.

Gideon Sable—master thief, con artist and self-proclaimed vigilante—faces a challenge he can't refuse. His client, the former Head of the British Rocketry Group, Professor Neil Sharpe, wants him to break into the Preserve. Once inside, Gideon and his crew of supernatural misfits can get any mystical artefact they desire out of the Preserve's collection. The catch? To reach it, they must go through the treacherous Box Tunnel complex and not only face trained guards and booby traps but steal something that can't normally be stolen—a ghost!

Nate Colgan: a violent man; 'smart muscle' for the Jamieson organization. Someone to be afraid of. But now, with its most powerful individuals either dead or behind bars, things within the Jamieson organization are beginning to shift. When Nate, long working on the fringes of the business, is reluctantly appointed its new 'security consultant', he can little imagine how things are about to unravel....

When honorable ex-con Jack attempts to repay an unstable criminal who saved his life, he finds himself and his new girlfriend caught in the middle of a mob war.

After five years’ hard time, ex-soldier Hugh Marlowe emerges into the free world ready to fight anyone who stands in his way. Rough justice is all he knows. But when a beautiful, vulnerable woman asks for his help, Marlowe quickly finds himself a world away from the London gangland that he knows in a different life with its own problems.

Judi Rifkin is one of the world’s most successful collectors of the weird and unnatural. In a London underworld filled with criminals with very special talents, Judi is a force to be reckoned with. And Gideon Sable—thief, rogue, and chancer—owes her a very large favor. Judi makes him an offer he can’t refuse: steal her the legendary Masque of Ra, kept safe in a Las Vegas casino, and she’ll wipe the slate clean. This isn’t Gideon’s first heist. But with old grudges, an unpredictable crew, and a formidable supernatural security team, this job might be a gamble too far.

A young journalism student named Coffee is granted the opportunity of a lifetime. During her spring break, she has to follow Mickey Royal around day and night in order to do a report on The Pimp Game. As Coffee accompanies Mickey Royal throughout his daily life, she embarks on an adventure like no other. She immerses herself into the underbelly of the shadow world and learns lessons she won't soon forget.

It's been a while since Sadie Fuller has lived a normal life. Her obsessive compulsions make even daily life a constant struggle. Living in New Los Angeles doesn't help either. A haven for Descendants, gods and goddesses that suddenly woke up in mortal bodies, the city is ripe with the mysterious and macabre. But now Sadie is witness to a Descendant murder and thrown into an investigation that will test her in ways she could never have imagined. Soon, she herself becomes the hunted. Who is serially killing the Descendants and why do they want to kill her?

Lily King has spent years behind bars. Convicted of murdering her husband, London villain Leo King, she hasn't been missed. Everyone believes she got what she deserved, but Lily knows she was fitted up. Now she's out, and she doesn't do forgiveness. In her absence things have moved on, and the old order has changed. But now she's ready to reclaim her position as head of the King family. Fuelled by vengeance, Lily King is back, and some people aren't going to know what's hit them.

Twelve stories from the celebrated author of one of the most famous mystery classics ever written, Trent's Last Case. Philip Trent is an artist, a journalist and an urbane unraveller of highly problematical crimes. Here the unshakable sleuth appears in 12 tales of misadventure, where the crimes that he investigates range from fraud and embezzlement to criminal assault and murder, yet they all succumb to his adept methods - even if the criminal sometimes escapes.

No stranger to fear since meeting the unhuman Inspector Hobbes, Andy Caplet fears getting fired from his reporting job (again). His main concern, though, is a shady property developer who has designs on Sorenchester Common, and more annoyingly on his wife. Perhaps a trip to the mountains will help him relax, but this proves even more perilous with foul weather, inedible food, brigands, and a terrifying cruise. Fortunately, mountain leopards, Yetis and Flossy, the yak, take a shine to Andy.

The self-appointed saviour of Lagos' sex workers, Amaka may have bitten off more than she can chew this time as she finds herself embroiled in a political scandal. When a plane crash kills the state gubernatorial candidate, the party picks a replacement who is assured of winning the election: Chief Ojo. But Amaka knows the skeletons that lurk in Chief Ojo's closet, including what took place at the Harem, the secret sex club on the outskirts of Lagos that he frequents.

Holly Evans and her over-protective mother, Josie, are living a hand-to-mouth existence, moving constantly from one squalid dump to the next. When they move into an illegally sub-let council flat in Manchester’s rough Lansdowne Estate, Holly finally feels settled for the first time in her life - even if she is forbidden to go out, or even open the front door to callers when her mum’s at work due to fear of eviction. Increasingly cut off from friends at school, she soon feels isolated and alone in the world.

Dr Cat Lupo aches for another child despite the psychosis which marked her first pregnancy. So when Ruby Winter, a small girl in need of help, arrives in the middle of the night, it seems like fate. But as the events behind Ruby's arrival emerge - her mother's death, her connection to Cat - Cat questions whether her decision to help Ruby has put her own daughter at risk.

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was brutally beaten and murdered in the street near her apartment, in full view of more than three dozen friends and neighbors - and no one did a thing to stop it. More than thirty-five years after its first publication, Thirty-Eight Witnesses, the true account of what transpired that night in Queens, New York, continues to disturb us. We would like to think that we would step in and do what we could to stop the carnage.

There's nothing so terrifying as money.... Two friends, Alex Glass and Oliver Peterkinney, look for work and for escape from their lives spent growing up on Glasgow's most desperate fringes. Soon they will become involved in one of the city's darkest and most dangerous trades. But while one rises quickly up the ranks, the other will fall prey to the industry's addictive lifestyle and ever-spiralling debts.

Yesterday John Fontanelli was just a pizza delivery guy in New York City. One day later, he's the richest man in the world. One trillion dollars - one million times one million - $1,000,000,000,000: more money than anyone could imagine. For generations the Vacchis, an old Italian family of lawyers and asset managers, had supervised the fortune as it grew over five hundred years, until one particular date that the benefactor had stipulated in his will.

He's touching the front of his coat, feeling the shape of the gun. Should have got rid of it. On any other night, any other job, he would. This isn't any other job. This, he intends, will be his last... It begins with two deaths: a money-man and a grass. Deaths that offer a unique opportunity to a man like Calum MacLean. A man who has finally had enough of killing. Meanwhile two of Glasgow's biggest criminal organisations are at quiet, deadly war with one another. And as Detective Michael Fisher knows, the biggest - and bloodiest - manoeuvres are yet to come...