Urban Crime

On the day he retires, Inspector Ashwin Chopra inherits two unexpected mysteries. The first is the case of a drowned boy, whose suspicious death no one seems to want solved. And the second is a baby elephant. As his search for clues takes him across the teeming city of Mumbai, from its grand high rises to its sprawling slums and deep into its murky underworld, Chopra begins to suspect that there may be a great deal more to both his last case and his new ward than he thought.

Promise and her best friend Mouse have fled Newark and are hiding out in New York City, wanted by the police—and the streets—for the death of B-Stone, leader of the Bloods. In the city, Promise has found work as a waitress at a hole-in-the-wall strip club. But one fateful night, she is forced to face her past when an up-and-coming rapper draws several shady characters into her orbit. Meanwhile, Asher has maneuvered himself into a position of great importance after B-Stone’s death, albeit with some help.

Umiko Wada has had enough excitement in life. With an overbearing mother and her husband recently murdered, she just wants to keep her head down. As a secretary to a private detective, her life is pleasantly filled with coffee runs and paperwork. That is, until her boss takes on a new case. A case that is surrounded by shadows. A case that means Wada will have to leave Tokyo and travel to London.

Carl Weber brings the best of urban street lit authors together, all telling their own dramatic tales of life in the streets in known cities across the USA. The second installment continues with Treasure Hernandez telling the tale of the Dirty South.

When an enigmatic message uploaded to the dark web turns out to contain an ancient secret giving regular people the power to do impossible things, like levitate cars or make themselves invisible, American government officials panic. They know the demo videos on YouTube and instructions for incantations could turn from fantastical amusement to dangerous weapon at the drop of the hat, and they scramble to keep the information out of the wrong hands. They tap Ben Zolstra, an ex-CIA field operative whose history with the agency is conflicted at best.

On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of Black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift.

A hard-working daddy's girl, Precious Cummings is sure she's going to college. But when her father is murdered, she discovers he lied for years about money they never had - and hid a shocking family secret. Shattered and lost, she starts hangin' with savvy hood chick Keisha - and falls hard for DaVon, LA's most powerful drug dealer. As his new lady, Precious soon gets the best of every luxurious thing - and fast learns the ropes of her lover's lethal hustle.

At first, med student Misty Heiress just wants to help. With her cousin Jillian in constant pain, and the doctor refusing to prescribe, Misty steals opioids from the Virginia Beach pharmacy where she works. But when Jillian starts reselling them to local dealers and gets big money, Misty grabs an unbelievable opportunity to get out of crushing debt. Soon Misty's boss, Sanjay, learns the truth and wants in. In no time, their illegal business dominates the street - and racks up a fortune. But when demand quickly outstrips supply, Sanjay way overplays his hand - and the Feds come calling.

Mumbai is a city that thrives on extravagant spectacles and larger-than-life characters. But as Chopra is about to discover, even in the city of dreams, there is no guarantee of a happy ending.

Former star basketball player Clay Edison is busy. He’s solved a decades-old crime and redeemed an innocent man, earning himself a suspension in the process. Things are getting serious with his girlfriend. Plus his brother’s fresh out of prison, bringing with him a whole new set of complications. Then the phone rings in the dead of night. A wild party in a gentrifying East Bay neighborhood. A heated argument that spills into the street. Gunshots. Chaos. For Clay and his fellow coroners, it’s the start of a long night and the first of many to come.

In the secret heart of London, under the cover of endless darkness, is the Nightside. But enter at your own risk. The party animals who live here may be as inhuman as their appetites. My name is John Taylor. The Nightside is my home, and I've got a brand new full-time job there (in addition to my private eye work) as Walker—the Voice of the Authorities. I'm also marrying the love of my life, Suzie Shooter, the Nightside's most fearsome bounty-hunter. But nothing comes easy here. Not life. Not death. And for certain, not happily-ever-after.

After laterally transferring from the sleepy bedroom hamlet of the Town of Camillus Police Department, Officer Patrick MacKenna has a whole different learning curve to contend with.... He rarely if ever had to pull his gun at CPD, but now he has a hard time leaving it in the holster. Drug dealers, gang bangers, robberies, shootings, and stabbings just keep adding up in his daily log as he tries to assimilate to the fast pace life of a city cop in an urban setting.

Parish “Pain” Wells is a man freshly reintroduced to society, after serving time in state prison. Prior to his fall, Pain had been a heist man who showed the promise of someone who could go on to be a legend. His trajectory changed on the night he had made the mistake of accepting a ride from a friend, and found himself behind bars for the one crime he hadn’t committed. Several years later, Pain returns home to a world that wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. The only one who still remains in his corner is his ailing grandmother.

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.

Local gangster Dante (Jack Boy) knows more than anybody how dangerous and ruthless the streets can be. But against his better instincts, he allows himself to fall for a local female gangster named Alinna, considered to be somewhat of a competitor to Dante because she leads her own all female crew. Alinna, too, is very well aware of the dangers that come with letting feelings get in the way of business. But like Dante, she decides to embrace the attraction anyway. That however proves to be a mistake when she discovers Dante is two-timing her with a female gang unit officer.

When Tanz, the accidental medium, is asked to help in the search for a missing woman, she finds herself at the Cross Bones Graveyard in London’s Southwark. From the outset it’s obvious there is unrest among the spirits who call this place their home, and now Tanz is right in the middle of it. What’s more, she now finds her ‘so-called gift’ is even stronger than it was and the dead really want to talk!

On a cold February night, the police find the third corpse on the quayside in the Pool of London, her body covered with flower petals and pearls. The killer walked away singing. When the cargo ship Cape Farewell sets sail, she carries nine passengers, one of whom is known to be the murderer. Which is why Superintendent Roderick Alleyn joins the ship at Portsmouth on the most difficult assignment of his professional career....

The latest crime thriller from best-selling author Kerry Barnes.

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.

Name's Kane, Kate Kane. I'm a paranormal private investigator, which is like a normal private investigator except - and stop me if you're having trouble following this - more paranormal. This business comes with a few basic rules: don't start drinking before noon, don't get your partner killed, don't sleep with the woman who killed him. Last year I broke all of them.