Urban Crime

New York Times best-selling authors Ashley and JaQuavis follow up their smash hit Carter Diamond with part two in the prequel series to The Cartel. Picking up right where the last installment ended, this action-packed street tale tells the story of the man who started it all. Before the Cartel - he stood alone.

Chris Davis. Elvis Spielberg. Jamaican accent. British accent. Accountant. Author. High-stakes gambler. None of the above? What is the truth? Who is the Truth? His whole existence has been a mystery to many, an enigma few people know to exist. He is a master of disguise, a dweller in secrecy, and a teller of many tales. And for the right price … a destroyer of lives. But when the bodies start turning up after a job gone south, Truth realizes that someone is out to unmask his real identity and kill him.

After a reunion with an old friend goes wrong in a Long Island nightclub, Kasheef Williams is forced to protect himself by any means necessary. The only problem is that prying eyes see everything. Those eyes belong to Alija Bell. She runs, but Kasheef sees her face, and he tells her that it's best for her to get temporary amnesia. Afraid for her life and the safety of her daughter, she keeps her mouth shut, but when a tape of the murder surfaces, the only face that is visible is Alija's. Now the police are looking for their eyewitness.

Toby Dunbar returns in the explosive second installment of the gritty urban series that captured listeners with its raw emotion, street wisdom, and unforgettable characters. But this time, survival isn’t enough. The past won’t stay buried, and neither will the people Toby thought he left behind.

Baby-faced teen Giovanni Macedo is desperate to find belonging in one of LA's most predatory gangs, the Columbia Lil Cycos—so desperate that he agrees to kill an undocumented Mexican street vendor. The vendor, Francisco Clemente, had been refusing to give in to the gang's shakedown demands. But Giovanni botches the hit, accidentally killing a newborn instead. The overlords who rule the Lil Cycos from a Supermax prison 1,000 miles away must be placated and Giovanni is lured across the border where, in turn, the gang botches his killing.

After the arrest of Chancellor King and the murder of his eldest son and heir, Ghost, the King family and the streets of New York City are thrown into chaos. Chancellor’s older brother, Chapman, takes the opportunity to usurp the crown, breaking the line of succession and stepping over his nephew Shadow. Chapman’s first act as the new king is to banish what remains of his broken family, branding them enemies of the crown. Stripped of all wealth and power, Maureen King places a seemingly impossible task on the shoulders of Shadow.

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.

Barely out of his 20s, Chester Hines knows the score. He's just another bug crawling through the streets of Detroit, waiting to be squashed under the heel of a system meant to keep a brother down. But with his old lady on his back, his only options are on the wrong side of the law. He didn't need a fortune-teller to tell him that sooner or later he'd end up in a system more brutal than the one that forced him there.

Ursula is unable to face up to the tragedy that consumes her, her world has shrunk to an almost unrecognisable state. Then Alice, who’s in the first flush of her relationship with Simon who seems perfectly normal—except that he flinches at the slightest touch. And Gareth, who lives a humdrum life as he struggles to cope with his mum’s increasing dementia. She can’t remember much about her days—not even when a postcard from his long-dead father comes through the door. None of these three strangers have ever met, but their worlds will soon collide.

Paul Reeves is a successful immigration lawyer, but his passion is collecting old maps of New York, tangible records of the city's rich history in an increasingly digital world. One afternoon he attends an auction with his neighbor Jennifer Mehraz, the beautiful young wife of an Iranian financier-lawyer, but halfway through the auction a handsome man in soldier fatigues appears in the aisle and whisks Jennifer away.

In 2001, a woman’s skeleton was found in the woods overlooking Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital. Despite an audit of the hospital’s patient records, a forensic reconstruction of the woman’s face, missing-person appeals, and DNA tests that revealed not only where she had lived but how she ate, the woman was never identified. Assigned the name Madame Victoria, her remains were placed in a box in an evidence room and eventually forgotten. But not by Catherine Leroux, who constructs in her form-bending Madame Victoria 12 different histories for the unknown woman.

Jakki and School Boy are more than first cousins; they’re best friends and partners in crime with a reputation for getting theirs by any means necessary. The pair are ultimately forced to defend not only their family name but their loyalty to each other. With both wanting to stand at the head of the table, Jakki and School Boy feud. Sani, a well-known female gambling house owner, is at the top of her game, but after she decides to inject phony currency into her business, all hell breaks loose.

Two nights ago a young woman brought her husband into the emergency room of the Sriphat Hospital in Thailand, where he passed away. A guard thinks she remembers her coming in before but with a different husband - one who also died. Ladarat Patalung, for one, would have been happier without a serial murderer - if there is one - loose in her hospital. Then again, she never expected to be a detective in the first place.

Forced to flee Detroit, ruthless and rotten Kenya and her identical twin, London, have dodged the bullets of a vicious hired hitman and endured the pain of a brutal rape. Now, due to mistaken identity, the girls must deal with Storm's strange disappearance and his partner's heinous murder before it's too late and they're next. Once again the sisters' lives are turned upside down. This time, the consequences could land them both in jail - or dead and unclaimed in the county morgue.

Matt Helm is puzzled. He’s been sent to Mexico to investigate the sighting of a flying saucer, but Helm doesn’t believe in little green men. Then his Russian opposite number is shot in her hotel, but who did it? And why are the Mexican cops acting so tough? Time to track down the redhead who called in the sighting and get to the bottom of the case.

As a painter travels the world and creates his art, he also mourns the death of his queen, his wife. He is secluded from the world and finds an escape through the drawings in his work. Not until he gets an unexpected knock at his door does his life take a drastic turn. The guest presents a problem that traps them inside of a home for 72 hours and this quiet suburban estate becomes the devil’s playground. The painter is then thrown into a psychological game that has twists and turns, which leads to an unforeseeable ending.

To those who don’t really know her, Kate Henderson’s life must seem perfectly ordinary. But she is in fact a senior MI6 officer, who right now is nursing the political equivalent of a nuclear bomb. Kate’s most recent mission has yielded the startling intelligence that the British Prime Minister has cancer - and that one of the leading candidates to replace him may be a Russian agent of influence. Up against the clock to uncover the Russian mole, Kate risks everything to get to the truth.

The bayou is burning, the battle is just beginning - and Luce Boudreau is smack in the middle of no-man's land.... Life as a cop in Canton Town, Mississippi, is never dull - particularly when hiding deep within you is a demon bent on the apocalypse. Luce is doing her best to pretend her two worlds aren't crashing into each other, but what should be a routine arson investigation takes a shocking turn when Luce discovers a link between the suspects and her own dark secrets. There's no turning back, even though her search for the truth threatens to burn her old life down around her.

Identical twins Kenya and London return in the highly addictive Essence best-selling Say U Promise series, and now things have gone from bad to worse for the tragically troubled sisters. They are caught in the middle of a deadly drug war that was started by one of them, and the streets run red as lives are drastically changed forever. With an illegitimate baby on the way and a price on her head, one twin fights to avoid the dangers of the game she despises, while facing the vindictive wrath of her sister for what is deemed to be the ultimate betrayal.

The Beladors finally have a fierce leader in Daegan, their new dragon king, but life is far from secure now that they've inherited his enemies. Quinn, Evalle, Storm, and friends race to stop a group of vigilantes killing nonhumans before the preternatural world erupts into war - if they can't prove Beladors aren't guilty of the crimes. The team soon discovers someone is trying to turn the entire VIPER preternatural coalition against the Beladors, but who? Or is this all about setting an elaborate trap for Daegan?