Showing results by author "Robert W Walker" in All Categories

The body parts were first discovered in the bellies of sharks. Marine scientists in the Florida Keys insist sharks rarely dine on live humans, so there can be only one explanation: They were dead before they hit the water. Dr. Jessica Coran knows why. They call him the "Night Crawler". And he's out there, riding the tides with his victims, feeding the waves after his own perverse hungers are satisfied. But when similar murders surface in London on the Thames River, Jessica faces double jeopardy. One killer? Or two....

He felt most alive when he watched them die - writing, breathless, gasping for oxygen that wasn't there. But, he could only draw out the pleasure for so long before his victims expired. And, then it was time to choose another. Death by asphyxiation. That's what Chicago medical examiner Dr. Dean Grant was forced to conclude by the gruesome evidence before him. Recognizing the work of a serial killer, Grant knew he'd have to move fast.

In this rousing 1852 romp through the eerie woods surrounding Hannibal, Missouri, and up and down the Mississippi River, 14-year-old Daniel Webster Jackson runs into a counterfeit Underground Railroad when he decides to run away from his foster home. At every turn, he musters courage to survive in a land where the law is at odds with the heart and soul of a people, where the Missouri Compromise forces everyone into a disguise or a secret identity.

Just when Archeologist and Vampire Slayer, Dr. Abraham Stroud thinks he can take it easy, take a second seat on a dig in West Texas, he is wrong from the outset. Plagued by warnings he does not at first recognize, Abe soon finds himself in the thick of an attack on humankind by a pod of prehistoric, giant centipedes that have cultivated a taste beyond livestock to a taste for humans. The creatures are known to local Native Americans as "Burrowers" as they have seen them before, but for Abe and those around him, there is a brewing war anticipated and soon engaged.

This is a short story dealing with an injustice, a town without patience or pity in 1912 for the last living slave woman in this town. Each of six scenes builds to a crescendo of action. It is an old story of injustice brought about by those in power toward the poorest and least powerful in the community. It is also a story of rage when the last straw is put on old, dear Aunt Tilley who has changed the diapers of those who want to remove her. Told in the best tradition of Mark Twain's more serious tales.

Dr. Abraham Stroud, who has faced down monsters and supernatural beings from vampires and werewolves to man-sized spiders from space, as well as Satanipedes in Texas, a hero who has astrally traveled through time in search of the origin of evil, now faces a new kind of horrid threat. He's asked on/begged to come on a dig in a faraway ancient and foreign land near Malta...a dig that has uncovered a children's graveyard from ancient times; a cemetery of suspected vampire babies.

Texas Cherokee Detective Lucas Stonecoat is back, and with help from FBI profilers and police shrink Meredyth Sanger, now Lucas' wife, he is on the trail of a serial killer the press calls The Baby Slayer. It is a grisly if apt name given the killer. Lucas and his task force are soon on the track of the pedophile murdering monster, possibly the worst excuse for humanity that Lucas has ever come across. But all the systems of law enforcement have become obstacles to catching and keeping this particular suspect behind bars.

Archaeologist Dr. Abraham Stroud has faced off against vampire colonies, werewolf packs, and zombie hordes, in previous digs. Abe now faces the worst monsters in his experience - the SubterraneanS: creatures straight out of the earth, cemeteries to be exact, but now they are expanding and are the root cause of sinkholes. They are tired of feeding on the dead in cemeteries and are now coming after you and me. This is a creature like nothing seen before, and it threatens all of mankind.

It is 1896 in Chicago - which means it has been three years since Inspector Alastair Ransom beat the charge of murder of a cleric, but his enemies have been working behind the scenes to hang him for the very same crime. Such a thing may appear impossible given double-jeopardy laws, but the Chicago Archdiocese and other powerful groups want Ransom's head. The book opens with this battle being waged by Ransom from behind bars.

When Ragnar Magnusson has to do battle with the high seas and an ancient mariner and navigator of the ship, part of his bravado is for Helga, also on board The Battlestormer. A young man on board with his three boyhood friends, Ragnar is singled out by the ship's navigator to become his apprentice in the art and science of navigating the oceans. Captain Leif Knutson is in search of the fabled Vinland the Good, exploring for King Sigurd, and he hopes to open up timber and ore trade in the newly found lands far to the west of Greenland.

The Civil War: Caught up in the drama and intrigue of a nation torn apart - The Indian Nation - Chief Ross's spy, Jessie Longbow, and Ross's beautiful and intelligent niece, Raven Ross, a reporter for the Tahlequah Voice, try to maintain a romance that they believe is bigger and stronger than the turmoil of war. This means love amid wartime in the Trans-Mississsippi theater of war which history has long ignored. This novel does for the Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes what Glory did for Black Union soldiers.

Spiders consume 400 million tons of prey every year, so when Abraham Stroud, archaeologist and vampire slayer, uncovers a coven of ancient spider men, a race that has visited Earth before, found in Northwest Georgia living in caves and tunnels, he must act...Stroud goes in with mercenaries and powerful weapons, but the Tsuchimugo, as the Japanese called them, are a vicious and evil lot, clever and cunning, and their webs are powerful.

A strange case takes Dr. Jessica Coran and her team on a 70-foot dive off the Coast of Nantucket Island to do a crime scene investigation inside a sunken yacht, the Promises Fulfilled. Within the eerie confines of the underwater sepulcher, Jessica and the others discover more questions than answers. Even with the help of the famous undersea explorer, Dr. Bob Ballard of Titanic fame, on raising the yacht, more questions mount as there is no evidence whatsoever as to precisely how the ship went down, and later, on autopsy, Jessica discovers no one on board had saltwater in their lungs.

When a new strain of "smart" spiders emerge in Chicago known as Chi-racnids, heads will roll, as these parasitic spiders make babies inside humans. Specifically inside human heads, until the weight of the growing horde inside the skull becomes too heavy for the brain stem and spinal cord to support.

Everything is calm in the city, so who needs the Senior Squad of retired detectives?...until trail bikers and kayakers are suddenly disappearing along a stretch of the Chicago River, disappearing into the river with a bizarre creature ripping them apart and feeding them to its babies. Neither dogs nor divers could lure the creature out into the light for capture or killing, until the Old Fart Squad comes up with a crazy plan involving a sacrificial goat. Can they put an end to the ravenous snake being in the river, and to capture or kill her offspring?

After the Gone Gorilla case, wherein a 450 lb. gorilla spirit rampages through the Museum of Natural History in Chicago, the Old Fart Squad of retired Chi-town detectives are charged with learning just what was going on at the curious, huge SPIRE Hole. This hole, a mile wide, was opened up in downtown, within the rich confines of the most expensive real estate in the city.

Mix the horror of The Relic with the humor of Midnight at the Museum and imagine twists and turns that keep you guessing and questioning the meaning of true honor, duty, courage, and the rules of reality. When the famous Bushman exhibit of a lowland gorilla goes missing from Chicago’s Museum of Natural History, no self-respecting Chicago police detective wants the case. So the assignment is pawned off on an "Old Fart Squad" of Dirty Harrys, retirees called back into service and led by the classy Aubrey Hamilton.

FBI Medical Examiner Dr. Jessica Coran and Inspector Richard Sharp have been enlisted to spearhead the investigation of a series of crucifixion murders - a bizarre rash of ritual killings in London's underground. The madman has left a trail of carnage unequaled in the history of serial crime. But he has also left no clues to his identity, or to his unfathomable motive.

The murder was so appalling even a hardened agent like FBI medical examiner Dr. Jessica Coran was shocked - the spinal cord had been literally ripped from the woman's back. Ghastly as it was, it wasn't unique. A man had already been convicted of killing his wife in the exact same fashion. Is the doomed death-row prisoner innocent? There's only one thing for Jessica to do: find the real killer.

The killer loved seeing his victims ablaze, gleefully watching as their bodies were consumed by hungry, merciless flames. Later his pulse would race at the sight of the orange glow in the night sky, and the sounds of the fire engines as they screamed toward the raging infernos he had created. Chicago coroner Dr. Dean Grant had seen many gruesome things in his time. But nothing had prepared him for the nightmares of smoldering horror that were spread out on the morgue slabs in front of him.