Urban Crime

His mother tragically dies of cancer, his once perfect world is turned upside down, and the coldhearted streets of Detroit couldn’t care less. Now, Lonnie McKay, homeless and alone, is caught up in the system at the mercy of others. Faced with women who could possibly help him but refuse to do so, he soon develops a vindictive dislike for every female with whom he comes in contact. Under the influence of anything he can take to get high, a delusional Lonnie sets no limits to what he’ll do to make these women pay - including murder.

When elderly George Rainsford goes to investigate a suspicious noise one night, the last thing he expects to find is a bloodbath. A man has been killed and a woman brutally beaten, left for dead. The victims are Lois Craven and Kevin Hardaker - both married, but not to each other. Their spouses swear they knew nothing of the affair, and, besides, they both have alibis for the attack. With nothing else to link the victims, the investigation hits a dead end.

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.

When India falls to her death from a bridge over a railway, her sister, Poppy, returns home to Brighton for the first time in years. Unconvinced by official explanations, Poppy begins her own investigation into India's death. But the deeper she digs, the closer she comes to uncovering deeply buried secrets. Could Matthew Temple, the boyfriend she abandoned, be involved? And what of his powerful and wealthy parents and his twin sister, Ana?

Almena Guillory, better known as the Grizzly Queen of the West, has plenty to recommend her for the noose, but US Marshal Apostle Richardson enforces the law, he doesn't decide it. When a posse tries to lynch Almena ahead of her trial, Apostle refuses their form of expedited justice - and receives a bullet for his trouble. Before escaping, however, Almena unexpectedly saves his life by absorbing his wound through the use of dangerous flesh magic.

Lucas Rurik used to be part of the Raven Guild. That is, until someone murdered all of its members—except for him. That was seven years ago. Now, Lucas keeps to himself, avoiding getting too close to anyone lest they become targets themselves. But when one of his oldest friends at the Rift-Crime Unit calls upon him for help with a case that’s already taken down people who mean a lot to him, Lucas can’t resist stepping back into the fray. Something is killing FBI and RCU agents alike—something unlike anything Lucas has ever seen before, on Earth or in the Rift.

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.

Harmony Black is much more than your average FBI special agent. In addition to being a practicing witch, she's also an operative for Vigilant Lock, an off-the-books program created to battle occult threats - by any means necessary. Despite her dedication to fighting the monsters threatening society, Harmony has become deeply conflicted about her job. Her last investigation resulted in a pile of dead bodies, and she suspects the wrong people are being punished for it.

Matt Turner's psychic ability has granted him a window into the entirety of Earth's intelligent beings - past and present - but this gift has also been his heaviest burden. A talent like Matt's can only be kept secret for so long, and ruthless individuals desiring lost and rare items viewed him only as a prized tool.

Centuries of life experience inside and outside the Rift couldn’t prepare former Raven Guild member and riftborn detective Lucas Rurik for his latest set of challenges. First, when his capture of a prominent political figure “trends” on social networks, he finds himself the target of both the media and the public. Then, Noah Kaya, an Ancient, tracks him down for help on a job. As a rule, Lucas doesn’t trust the Ancients; they always seem to have an ulterior motive. But something about this gig just won’t let Lucas say no.

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.

Carly Tabor thought she'd buried her gift with Freddy Richards, the orphan child whose remains were discovered in her King Street home two centuries after his murder. Her ability to communicate with the dead, especially deceased children, originally presented itself when the restless spirit of the child and three others haunted her home. Her new job as an investigative reporter for the local television station calls into question her idyllic lifestyle. When Carly overhears a conversation between her boss and the mother of a missing child seeking help, her sensitive ability returns.

Known by his friends as T-Lova, Terry Maddox is an intelligent and crafty individual who is determined to rise to the top of the underground drug trade, along with his best friend, Jihad, and their crew. Mack is an ambitious yet ruthless hustler who runs South Philly with his partner Shawn. Detectives Todd and Latrice Reed are siblings who are hell-bent on solving a slew of murders in hopes that it will prevent more casualties, and bring the killers to justice. Marty Frankel is a high-powered commodities trader who loses everything of value in his life due to his loyalty.

Born in the slums of Brooklyn, in the first year of the 20th century, Willie Sutton came of age at a time when banks were out of control. If they weren’t taking brazen risks, they were shamelessly seeking bailouts. Trapped in a cycle of bank panics, depressions and soaring unemployment, Sutton saw only one way out. So began the career of America’s most successful bank robber. Sutton became so good at breaking into banks, and such a master at breaking out of prisons, police called him one of the most dangerous men.

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.

The LaCroixs are four beautiful Haitian American women bound by money and blood. On the surface, the LaCroix Group is a venture capitalist company, but underneath, it’s so much more. The four sisters run long cons, targeting wealthy, prominent business figures. They have a system: Find the perfect mark, create the problem, then present the solution. For a cost....

Lucas Rurik is no stranger to navigating the tricky territory between humans and those touched by the rift. After all, as the last surviving member of the Raven Guild, protecting the peace is his job. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. As much as Lucas would like to be out hunting for Dr. Callie Mitchell—a deranged scientist with a bad habit of experimenting on the rift-fused—his friends at the Rift-Crime Unit require his expertise on a perilous case.

Be ready for some action, humor, and mystery in this anthology with short stories. You’ll listen about gangsters, witches, magic potions, interrogations, werewolves, and murder. Several stories have a murder victim, while others are all about theft or robberies. But in many cases, they spark the imagination and make up for a great way to sit back, relax, and read or listen to stories from a completely different world.

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.

Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8 million had been stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp., whose offices are across the street from where Zella worked. Zella didn't remember shooting Harry, but she didn't deny it either. The district attorney was inclined to call it temporary insanity - until the police found $80,000 from the Rutgers heist hidden in her storage space. For reasons of his own, Leonid McGill is convinced of Zella's innocence. But as he begins his investigation, his life begins to unravel.