» mystery/suspense

Time Gone By by Jan Suzukawa

March 21, 2012

When Nick meets the man of his dreams again after three years, can he protect Tori from a killer? Time Gone By by Jan Suzukawa, available from Dreamspinner Press.

San Francisco P.I. Nick Cutter spent one night with the man of his dreams—and then the man disappeared. Three years later, on a routine missing-person assignment in Weller Falls, Montana, Nick is shocked to find his dream man living under the alias of Tori Tanaka.

Tori won’t talk about where he’s been or why he changed his name, but Nick soon learns that Tori fled because he witnessed a murder—and now the killer may have followed him to Weller Falls.

Buy in eBook
Genre: Mystery/Suspense
Length: Novella

What Ever Happened to Jan Phillips? by Michael Halfhill

March 16, 2012

Jan’s association with Tim brings intrigue and peril into the life of Jan Phillips. What Ever Happened to Jan Phillips by Michael Halfhill, available from Dreamspinner Press.

Eighteen-year-old Jan Phillips is down and out, hustling johns in Philadelphia’s Tenderloin District, when he catches the eye of Tim Morris, a powerful lawyer with ties to a secret organization. Against his better judgment, Jan is soon caught up in a web of intrigue that will change his life forever—or end it prematurely.

It’s 4:00 a.m., and the phone is ringing. Waking from an uneasy sleep, Jan answers and in so doing allows two strangers into his life. One is a victim of a heinous crime, a man to whom Jan feels an instant connection. The other is a deadly enemy. Their appearance will lead to murder—and the first plight Jan faces as Master of the Mundus Society.

Buy in eBook
Buy in Print
Genre: Mystery/Suspense
Length: Novel, Second Edition

Bencher’s Crossing, TX by A. Soon Donim

March 12, 2012

Will Clinton take a second chance at love? Bencher’s Crossing, Texas, by A. Soo Donim, available from Dreamspinner Press.

Murder, Murder, Everywhere!

Sheriff’s Deputy Clinton Greengrass meets Texas Ranger Ed Givens over a dead body. It’s a decidedly inauspicious beginning. When one body turns into three, the investigation—and the attraction between them—heats up, but Clint misses his chance when they close the case before he makes a move.

Three years and a promotion later, Sheriff Greengrass is out of the closet and working on the case of another string of murders, murders that bring Ed and all the sexual tension back to town. Despite the circumstances, Clint is happy to get a second chance, but a lawman’s job is never done. Can Macone County handle the two of them as partners on and off the job?

Buy in eBook
Buy in Print
Genre: Mystery/Suspense, Western
Length: Novel

A Hard Winter Rain by John Inman

March 5, 2012

Can Harry protect Sean from the demons threatening his life? A Hard Winter Rain by John Inman, available from Dreamspinner Press.

Sean Andros is tired—tired of hustling, tired of trying to make the rent, tired of running from his past.

But the past can chase you down in a heartbeat. Suddenly Sean’s living a nightmare again and casualties are stacking up around him. The only person he can trust is Harry, a man twice his age and the closest thing to a friend Sean has ever known. Harry Connors has loved Sean since their first night together, and now, with danger hard at their heels, Harry will do anything to protect the tough, strangely vulnerable young man who begs him for help.

Harry had better be serious about offering protection, though, because the demons threatening Sean’s life are no joke. Only a hard winter rain will wash away the evil that drove Sean Andros to the streets, and Sean and Harry are going to have to be strong if they plan on sticking around for the sun.

Buy in eBook
Buy in print
Genre: Mystery/Suspense
Length: Novel

The Mysterious Stranger

February 27, 2012

I’ve always loved those tales when a mysterious stranger blows into town, promising secrets revealed and offering to change everything. Wherever the geography, thick, blanketing fog rolls in and an invitation is made. But turns out there’s a price to be paid; the Mysterious Stranger knows this cost.

Can the Mysterious Stranger be trusted? Is he who he says he is?

Maybe. Maybe not.

In my urban fairy tale, King Perry, narrator Vin Vanbly is one of these unusual wanderers, a man who decides to intervene and change everything. At the end of Chapter One, Vin asks his new friend, “Are you ready to get kinged?”

If he says ‘yes,’ Perry’s life will never be the same.

In books featuring the Mysterious Stranger, he’s never the narrator. Otherwise, we’d see that he’s probably pretty ordinary, considering which fast food he wants for lunch, how he wishes he had better foot support, occasionally worried about paying his rent. While we want to understand him/her better, we also still want the Mysterious Stranger to remain mysterious. We want to see the amazing magician saw the lady in half; after the show we don’t want to see the two of them smoking cigarettes while txting, sharing a bag of Funions.

By the end of King Perry, readers knows quite a bit about Vin. (And we definitely know how often he thinks about food.) We witness moments of his self-doubt. We better understand his unique flavor of love. Yet there are details he does not – will not – visit in his own brain, so by the time we reach the last sentence, the reader still questions who he is and how he lives.

What happens next? Who was that masked man?

The Mysterious Stranger shrugs.

He shuffles out of town, taking the fog with him.

Errors and Omissions by Lee James

February 6, 2012

Can Kirk and Austin stop a killer before he can stop them? Errors and Omissions by Lee James, available from Dreamspinner Press.

Rock star Brent Hunter has a plan to get back to the top of the charts—until his jet vanishes en route to London. Four months later, a phone call convinces Austin Hunter that his brother is alive and in hiding. That, or it’s all an elaborate and deadly confidence game.

Austin turns to private detective Kirk MacGregor to find the truth about his brother. As Kirk follows a trail of dead-end leads in the most perplexing investigation of his career, a strong attraction simmers between him and Austin, despite the fact they’re both married.

Together they unearth a tragic family history of violence, pure greed, and a thirty-year-old fratricide as they take on the coldest killer since Hannibal Lecter. But deadly foes have nothing on the painful truths and even more painful losses Kirk and Austin must face… and none of that compares to confronting what they feel for each other.

Buy in eBook
Buy in print
Genre: Mystery/Suspense
Length: Novel

Marlowe’s Ghost by Sarah Black

January 25, 2012

Can the ghost of Christopher Marlowe bring together two men from completely different backgrounds? Marlowe’s Ghost by Sarah Black, available from Dreamspinner Press.

Former Marine Will Marlowe dreams of being a great classics scholar, but his subversive street art, Bad Toys, is what he does best. When he’s sent to London to retrieve Tommy Jones, what he’s really interested in is a chance to take Bad Toys global. He doesn’t expect cancer survivor Tommy to captivate him or to become the pet project of a real live—dead—author.

Meanwhile, Tommy is struggling to write a dissertation about Christopher Marlowe while conveniently ignoring the fact that he knows Marlowe didn’t die in 1593. And Marlowe’s ghost? He has an agenda all his own that seems to involve two parts mystery, one part romance.

Buy in eBook
Genre: Fantasy/Paranormal, Mystery/Suspense
Length: Novella

Hair of the Dog by Ashlyn Kane and Morgan James

January 23, 2012

Can Ezra survive being changed into a werewolf or will darker forces prevail? Hair of the Dog by Ashlyn Kane & Morgan James, available from Dreamspinner Press.

It’s nine o’clock the morning after his father’s funeral, and Ezra Jones already knows it’s going to be a bad day. He wakes up hungover, sore, and covered in blood. Then it gets worse: the handsome and compelling Callum Dawson shows up on his doorstep claiming Ezra’s been turned into a werewolf. Ezra wants to be skeptical, but the evidence is hard to ignore.

Ezra doesn’t have a lot of time to get used to the rules Alpha Callum imposes—or the way his body responds to Callum’s dominance—as he’s busily working for the CDC to help uncover the origins of a lycan epidemic. When the sexual tension finally breaks, Ezra barely has time to enjoy it, because a new danger threatens. Someone wants Ezra for their own unscrupulous purposes and will do anything to get him.

Buy in eBook
Buy in print
Genre: Fantasy/Paranormal, Mystery/Suspense
Length: Novel

Quick Final Note: The contests end… And a few sentences of not-quite-sex from Delsyn’s Blues

January 2, 2012

… three days from today, which will be Thursday 1/5. So if you haven’t entered, there’s time, and if you have, please be patient.

As long as I’m here, a teeny little titilating excerpt from Delsyn’s Blues:

Sonny looked at him and he got warm. More than a little. Sonny’s hair, wet and dark, sending rivulets meandering down his just-cut-enough belly, pooling in his navel and in the hollows inside his hip bones, then soaking into the rough white towel he’d wrapped around and tucked at the waist. Luki’s breath went a little ragged, and he raised his eyes from the spectacle to find Sonny watching him back.

Sonny’s eyes had that look. The one that said “take me, you’re in charge,” but conveyed clearly that he knew Luki was twisted right around his finger. Or his dick. Didn’t so much matter which. Luki didn’t really care who had whom by the balls, so to speak, and he could play too. He licked his fat lips, knowing quite well what that did to Sonny. “Come here,” he said, not so much a request as an offer.

Sonny rolled his eyes, but it didn’t mask the heat rising up his neck. “What, again?”
***

Whatever books you’re spending time with now, folks, happy reading. Au Revoir!

A brief excerpt from Delsyn’s Blues (farther along the twisting plot!)

January 2, 2012

(This is one of the softer, gentler, isles in the San Juans, just at nightfall.)

*

Climbing over the gunwale, Luki remarked, “Why did you call this a bucket? Looks like a perfectly good boat.”

“Look over the side, back there.” Sonny pointed.

“Melvern’s Bucket,” Luki read. “Oh.”

“So, anyway,” Sonny said. “Off we go to Mack’s Island.”

Luki had already sat down and started to do his routine weapons check. He tended not to be as heavily armed these days as he had been when they first met. But he still had his favorite handgun and two knives, and of course, a supply of ammunition and nylon handcuffs. He
was taking stock now, making sure everything was where and how it was supposed to be, a job clearly requiring that a cigarette hang out of his mouth. He puffed at the damn thing without using his hands, which meant he had to keep his eye squinted like Charles Bronson in The Mechanic and his face scrunched up on one side—the side with the scar. Sonny hated that he looked damn sexy that way.

“It’s not fair,” he said.

“What’s not fair?”

That something can look sexy and kill you at the same time. He shook his head to dismiss Luki’s question, didn’t answer at all out loud.
Besides, there were other things he needed to have his mind on now. And he hadn’t forgotten that one reason Luki seemed lightly armed was because he, Sonny, still had his other gun. Sonny didn’t bring the subject up, but he was pretty sure Luki hadn’t forgotten either.
Sonny set the boat in motion, having a fair idea of the coordinates and a fair sense of direction. Not more than fair, out on the water, just like he only had a fair ability to drive the damn boat. Melvern had insisted he learn, but… well, it just wasn’t a car. He couldn’t remember the first time he’d lain across a hood wrenching on a car engine, but as far as activities go, cars had always been what he loved best—aside from weaving and dyes and that sort of thing. And now, aside from Luki. Everything to do with Luki. Including staring at Luki, watching him smoke his lungs dry and play with guns. Disgustingly, Sonny wanted to weave him like that.

“I hate being on the water,” Luki said.

“Yeah?” It didn’t surprise Sonny; he just didn’t know why.

“I’ve had not so good things happen around water, you know?”

“Like getting beat up and cut and generally gay-bashed?”

“Mm-hm.”

“And almost drowning while getting blown up in a river.”

Luki holstered his gun and adjusted the position of the leather accessory, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and looked up at Sonny.

Not smiling. “That too.”

Sonny sighed and stepped over to his lover, letting the Bucket drive itself for a moment. He stood in front of Luki, so close he had to
part his legs to either side, which basically parked his sex in Luki’s face. He wished they had more time, but second best would have to do. He buried his hands in Luki’s curls, forcing him to look up. Then he bent low and eased into a kiss, a long, sweet, sucking and sliding one.

After a moment, he regretfully eased off, kissed Luki’s nose on the way by, and stepped back to the wheel. “Very nice,” Luki said, voice huskier than ever. “But there must be an explanation.”

“Now you’ve had something good happen to you on the water. I hope.”

Luki didn’t answer for a moment—which was okay. He absently patted the big red dog, which had been sticking close to Luki since they’d come on board and now leaned into Luki’s legs and stared with him at the gray planks that made up the deck. There was no way to know if either of them saw what they were staring at. After a moment, Luki looked up, chewing his lip, then he let it slip from between his teeth. “You love me, Sonny.”

Sonny nodded.

Luki said, “I love you back.”