Showing results by author "Blair Howard" in All Categories

A brutal murder. An impossible crime. Why did Genevieve have to die? Who murdered her? Caught between two worlds, one where she didn’t belong, the other she couldn’t give up, Genevieve committed the ultimate deception and married into a world of wealth and privilege and it cost her her life. Kate Gazzara’s most difficult case, a mind-bending riddle. A gripping, fast-paced thriller that will keep you listening long into the night.

A vicious killer is on the loose in the small but affluent bedroom community of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. The local police are ill-equipped to handle a murder investigation. So they call on the expert: the tenacious and dedicated Detective Kate Gazarra of the Chattanooga PD. The killer is careful, leaving no obvious evidence and no motive. Lieutenant Gazarra must pursue high-profile suspects, navigate interference by the city’s elite, and get inside the mind of the killer. All while training in a new partner and appeasing the formidable Chief Johnston.

No one could figure out exactly why Sandra McDowell had to die. What was her connection to the Raven, an aging hit man 20 years on death row with only days left to live? Clues are plentiful, but all are dead ends. The Raven is a mind-bending mystery thriller, a twister of a tale that will keep you up listening long into the night. You can’t hear just one! Join Harry Starke as he tries to unravel the nightmare world of...The Raven.

She appeared out of nowhere. A chance meeting. And then she was gone, abducted. The shadow crossed in front of the car so fast I didn’t have time to stop. I hit the brakes hard and swerved into the mud at the side of the road. Looking out through the deluge it was difficult to make out the figure coming towards the driver’s window, but as it came closer I could see it was a girl, just a kid. Instinctively, my hand went for my gun and rested on the grip as she approached.

A brutal murder. An embattled cop. A cold case nobody wants. They found her lying in the mud on the banks of South Chickamauga Creek. She’d been stabbed forty-four times. The killer was never found. Twenty-three years later the case lands on Kate Gazzara’s desk. With her career in jeopardy, she finds herself plunged into a frantic race against time...and members of her own department.

Saffron was the first. T.J. Bron found her naked body lying beside a dumpster at the rear of the Sorbonne. Four weeks later, a teenage couple looking for a quiet spot to get it together find a second victim. The bodies continue to pile up. The killer's clever. Clues are scarce. Lieutenant Kate Gazzara is baffled. What few clues there are make little sense and generate more questions than answers. Can she figure it out and stop a sadistic killer's reign of terror?

Three Days in Hell, action-packed from start to finish, is the story of Confederate General Bushrod Johnson's Chickamauga as told through the eyes and words of one of his staff officers, Major Chester Rigby. The author takes you onto the battlefield as no one has done before. He plunges you right into the center of the action, which doesn't let up until the very end. It's a story of heroism, desperate deeds, and death and destruction on a scale the likes of which had never been seen before.

Isla Tansy Mortenson Wallace was a noted local neurosurgeon, wife of local veterinarian Jim Wallace, and one of Chattanooga’s movers and shakers. That is until she was found dead on her own property. Did she fall off her horse? Was she thrown? Was she murdered? And if she was killed, by whom, and how, and why? Why does Lt. Kate Gazzara not want Harry Starke anywhere near the case? Lots of questions and no answers.

It was late Friday evening when they discovered the body. The girl had been in the concrete pipe for more than a week. The daytime temperatures were hitting 120 degrees. It was the stench that drew the kids to her. Who was she? Who put her there? Who...killed her? It’s Kate Gazzara's first case, a mind-bending riddle, and as if that wasn’t enough, she has a new partner to cope with.

Maggie Hart, a student at UTC, was abducted on Labor Day. Her body was found five days later on the RiverPark. She'd been strangled. She wasn't the first, nor would she be the last. Harry Starke, recovering from a near-death experience, is dragged reluctantly into an investigation that quickly turns into a cat and mouse game between Harry and a very clever killer, Harry being the mouse. Emoji is an action-packed, lightning-paced story, with an explosive finale you'll not see coming.

The hills of horse country, Shenandoah Valley, the Blue Ridge Mountains and numerous wineries are among the state's offerings. Here's a guide to the national and state parks, the cities, towns and villages and everything in between. Places to stay and eat, along with recommended fall foliage tours.

During the last few days of the Civil War, a company of Confederate raiders rode into the small Kansas town of Elbow. There they raped, pillaged and murdered among the local populace, thus triggering a chain of events and a chase that extended for more than 1,000 miles across the grasslands and mountains of Kansas and the deserts of New Mexico.

On a balmy day in April 1863, Union Colonel Abel D. Streight, at the head of a brigade of federal infantry, set out on a 220-mile ride to destroy the Western and Atlantic railroad at Rome, Georgia. The most fascinating thing about the raid is that Streight's brigade of four infantry regiments, almost 1,800 soldiers, was mounted on mules, a huge problem in itself; few of his men had ever ridden a horse, let alone a mule.

There’s something strange going on at Clearwater Psychiatric Hospital. Director Dr. Norman Gill has a list in his desk drawer. He keeps it locked away. It’s for his eyes only. The list has seven names, with seven dates. Seven deaths in 11 months. Harry Starke will have to sharpen his skills for this one. Is there a lunatic loose in the hospital? A staff member, a patient? Does someone else have a list, and if so...how many names are on it?

When prominent defense attorney Madison Lombardi drops dead on the street outside her office of a perceived heart attack, no one pays much attention . . . Except for her husband. When a second attorney, her law partner, drops dead a week later in almost the exact same spot, more people begin to pay attention, including police chief Wesley Johnston. Homicide detective Kate Gazzara, much to her dismay, is assigned what appears to be little more than a case of coinciding medical events. However, appearances can be deceiving, and Kate remains unconvinced by the notion of mere coincidences.

Mystery woman, Morrigan Doyle, is in prison. Finn Doyle, her son, has ties to the Irish mob in New York. He became acquainted with Harry Starke when Harry was investigating his mother’s billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. But Finn has an agenda of his own and wants to hire Harry to “find a friend,” Matteo Rossi. Rossi, a low-level thug, a soldier in the Irish mob, is missing and Finn is worried, thinking someone has “offed him,” and he wants to know who. Initially, Harry turns Finn down.

On a balmy afternoon in May 2002, wealthy stockbroker Peter Nicholson was turkey hunting with three friends in Prentice Cooper State Forest when he tripped, fell on his shotgun, and accidentally shot himself … dead, but did he? Fifteen years later, as a last resort, Nicholson’s mother asks Harry Starke to find the truth. As we all know, Harry loves a cold case, but … as always, there’s a twist in the tale.

Five years after physicist Mark Holder discovered the Slipstream Drive in 2058, humanity reached for the stars and began to colonize the galaxy. For centuries, humans continued to populate system after system without encountering intelligent alien life. Some twelve hundred years later, after many generations of relative peace, in the year 3278, human space is invaded by a powerful and mysterious enemy. To these invaders the very concept of free will is heresy. Their crusade—to eradicate humanity. The war begins, and the fight for the survival of the human race is on.

Commodore Richard Morian’s mission is to capture the Imperator, but it will take a planetary invasion on a grand scale to do so, a battle fought in space, in the air, and on the ground. And all this to a backdrop of political intrigue that threatens to bring the entire Sovereign system down.

Kingsley Lynch fell to her death from a seven-story, downtown rooftop garden. Was it an accident, suicide, or was she pushed? The two detectives assigned to the case decided she jumped. Her husband, an influential city councilor disagrees, and six weeks later Kate Gazzara is assigned to reinvestigate.