Red River Mystery

"A suspenseful crime story with just a hint of something otherworldly." -Booklist Faye Longchamp doesn't believe in ghosts, but she's an archaeologist-dead people are her life. While working in Rosebower, a rural New York town founded by Spiritualists, Faye is surrounded by people who talk to the dead on a regular basis. So when influential Spiritualist Tilda Armistead invites Faye and her daughter to commune with the dead, she can't say no. An hour after Tilda's crystal ball shows Faye things no rational mind can explain, Tilda is dead. The evidence says someone trapped Tilda in a small room, nailing its one door shut before setting her house afire. There is no possible way for her to have escaped the blaze, let alone drive for miles before finding Faye and dying in her arms. Yet Tilda did. How? And why? Anywhere else, these people would be dismissed as crazy. But in Rosebower, "normal" is relative. As Faye watches psychics and charlatans jockey for power, Tilda's sister, Myrna, is slowly dying. Will Rosebower reveal its secrets before more goes up in flames?

"The cinematic characters have substance and style. They walk off the page and talk Texas." -The Dallas Morning News Constable Ned Parker's retirement is cut short when Center Springs, Texas, becomes the latest stop for a murderer who has already hit Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma on his deadly spree. A dead man hooked to fishing lines in the river draws Ned into the investigation to back up his nephew Cody, the new Constable and Vietnam vet. Cody and Deputy John Washington, the law south of the tracks, follow a lead from their small community to the long abandoned Cotton Exchange warehouse in Chisum. The building is a hoarder's paradise: each floor is stuffed to the ceiling with garbage, furniture, books, tools, tires, rats, and filth. But this maze of junk is also host to booby-traps, shafts, and bales. Was this lair built out of desperation or designed to torture and kill anyone trying to capture the elusive killer? Despite Ned's warnings, Cody dives into the building where he confronts both his own demons and a killer intent on destruction....

No one really notices that a fix may be in until Matt O'Connor, a Chicago-based columnist for a national racing newspaper, gets a call from Moe Kellman, a horse-owning acquaintance. Kellman's question for Matt: Was the death of ninety-two-year-old Bernard Glockner, Chicago's oldest active bookmaker, suicide or murder? Glockner was Kellman's late uncle and Kellman-a man not unfamiliar with the Chicago mob, wants Matt to check it out. Matt quickly comes to believe that the fate of the bookie is tied to a series of races whose outcomes have been manipulated. His quest is aided by horse trainer Maggie Collins and Dave Zimmer, a professional gambler known as "The Fount" for his reputation as an encyclopedic source of information. Eventually, going as far afield as Las Vegas and Madison, Wisconsin, they fix their sights on a brilliant sociopath. But why would this psycho have plotted a race-fixing scheme? Spiced with the kind of lively language that marked Blind Switch, the author's debut novel (2004), Riders Down offers striking insights into the world of horse racing and the possibilities of its corruption.

"Fast pacing, a strong sense of place, and plenty of publishing-business details combine with a likable although flawed main character to produce an engrossing read."-Booklist The phone rings in the middle of the night. Publisher Guy Mallon's book warehouse has burned to the ground. In the ashes there is a burned body. Carol Murphy, Guy's lover and business manager, fed up with the failing operation, has already split. But why is her car spotted parked nearby? It all began when retired businessman Fritz Marburger tempted Guy with a proposition: publish celebrity jazz singer Sweet Lorraine Evans' novel, which he will underwrite. It's the first step in a Faustian bargain that finds Guy sniffing increasingly noxious fumes as the crass Marburger rents Guy's warehouse space and saddles him with an amoral co-tenant: pornographer-turned-vanity publisher Roger Herndon. Supported by two Santa Barbara poets with strong backs and by two strippers who form the core of Roger's stable of porn stars and production assistants, Guy first tries to make a go of the new venture. But after the murder, he knows he must bring Roger down to reclaim his own soul.

Top 10 Modern Westerns for 2016 by True West Magazine Top Books for 2015 by Strand Magazine "Reavis Z. Wortham is the real thing: a literary voice that's gut-bucket Americana delivered with a warm and knowing Texas twang." -CJ Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author At the tail end of 1967, the Parker family once again finds it impossible to hide from a world spinning out of control. Fourteen-year-old Top still can't fit in with their Center Springs, Texas, community or forget recent, vicious crimes. His near-twin cousin Pepper, desperate to escape her own demons, joins the Flower Children flocking to California-just as two businessmen are kidnapped and murdered in the Red River bottoms on the same night a deadly hit and run kills a farmer. Constable Ned Parker wonders if these crimes are connected, but he goes after Pepper, leaving the investigation with Sheriff Cody Parker. Parker hires Deputy Anna Sloan, an investigator with an eye toward detail as everyone is eyeing her. Yet it is instinct that propels her after killers through a world nearly forgotten, the hunt's backdrop one of continuous rain, gloomy skies, and floods. When she's ambushed, the investigation accelerates into gunfire, chases, and hair-raising suspense. What of Pepper? Out on Route 66, the Mother Road to California, a man named Crow isn't what he seems. Lies, deceptions, and a band of outlaw motorcyclists proves to the Parkers that no matter where you turn, no matter what you do, the world is full of such darkness that even grandmothers are capable of unspeakable deeds. Best Small Fictions of 2015 by The Dallas Morning News Will Rogers Medallion Award 2016 Honorable Mention, Western Fiction

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, now streaming on Netflix, starring Essie Davis as the honourable Phryne Fisher "Among Phryne's pleasantly dashing adventures, this one stands out for its emphasis on sexual orientation and institutional coverups." -Kirkus Reviews STARRED review The decidedly raven-haired Miss Phryne Fisher returns to delve deep into the dark side of Melbourne, Australia. It's 1929, and girls are going missing. Little, pretty golden-haired girls. And they're not just pretty. Three of them are pregnant, poor girls from the harsh confines of the Magdalene Laundry. People are getting nervous. Polly Kettle, a pushy, self-important girl reporter with ambition and no sense of self preservation, decides to investigate and promptly goes missing herself. It's time for Phryne and Dot to put a stop to this and find Polly Kettle before something quite irreparable happens to all of the missing girls. It's all piracy and dark cellars, convents and plots, murder and mystery...and Phryne finally finds out if it's true that blondes have more fun.

A fascinating historical mystery by Sulari Gentill, author of #1 LibraryReads pick The Woman in the Library Winner of the 2018 Ned Kelly Award for Best Mystery For fans of Rhys Bowen, Kerry Greenwood and Jacqueline Winspear comes an adventure-packed romp that threads 1934 Sydney's upper class and its seedy underworld. Wealthy Rowland Sinclair, an artist with leftist friends and a free-wheeling lifestyle, reluctantly agrees to a charity race. He'll drive his beloved yellow Mercedes on the Maroubra Speedway, renamed the Killer Track for the lives it has claimed. His teammates are a young Errol Flynn and the well-known driver Joan Richmond. It's all good fun. But then people start to die... The body of a journalist covering the race is found murdered in a House of Horrors. An English blueblood with Blackshirt affiliations dies in a Maroubra crash. Reporters stalk Rowly for dirt while bookmakers are after an edge. When someone takes a shot at him-it could be anyone. Then the police arrest one of Rowly's housemates for murder. For fans of Golden Age mysteries-but with a bohemian twist-this historical novel features a riveting crime, a wry, almost British sense of humor, and an amateur sleuth you can't help but root for. Other Rowland Sinclair Mysteries: A Few Right Thinking Men A Decline in Prophets Miles off Course Paving the New Road A Murder Unmentioned Gentlemen Formerly Dressed

For millennia, Egypt has depended upon the waters of the Nile. Its annual floods fertilize the land. By the time Britain extends its dominion over Egypt, the Cairo Barrage is the key to control, its name taken from the French term meaning a dam or irrigation channel designed to increase a river's depth or to divert its flow. An attempt to blow up the Manufiyah regulator in the Barrage is not a petty matter. Gareth Owen, The Mamur Zapt, Chief of Cairo's Secret Police, is hurriedly summoned. He hasn't a clue what a regulator is. Nor can he identify the mysterious Lizard Man who seems to have a grudge against the whole Egyptian irrigation system. But he does know that the ceremonial cutting of the temporary dam thrown up each year across the mouth of the Khalig Canal restarts the whole irrigation cycle, allowing water to pour through the canal and signal the opening of dams all across the land. The cut will require policing. Especially as it is going to be the last cut before the canal is filled in. While this modernization will wipe out a health hazard, the Cairenes love the party that goes with the cut. They are less than happy with the dam. Things grow worse when a young woman's body is discovered at the site. Owen has to say it's extremely embarrassing. Is this the traditional ritual sacrifice? Or a sign of sabotage? A diversion? Or just plain murder?