Showing results by publisher "Crossroad Press" in Literature & Fiction

The Bennett family moved to Jamaica after inheriting a coffee plantation in the Blue Mountains. This novel covers three generations of their lives, loves, triumphs and failures as the build an amazing, profitable plantation, producing some of the finest coffee in the world, and then run afoul of history. This novel , in many ways, parallels the amazing life of it's author, Hugh B. Cave, who owned a plantation on the last road into the Blue Mountains in Jamaica, only to lose it to the government.

Before Jesse James or Billy the Kid, there was Joaquín Murrieta - lover, bandit, revolutionary. On July 25, 1853, a troop of California Rangers killed and beheaded the young bandit. It was believed his army numbered in the hundreds and that he planned to sweep the country south to Sonora. Thinking the matter ended, the Rangers preserved his head in a bucket of whiskey and rode to Sacramento to collect their reward. Yet with his death, his fame only grew, along with rumors of his ghost in haunt of the Rangers.

Meet the Fixxer - with wit and aplomb, he works the fruitful fields of Hollywood fixing the sins and correcting the stupidities of the denizens therein. In Blood is Pretty, he comes to the rescue of "the most beautiful woman I have ever seen" to extricate her from the grip of the soul-sucking sexual desires of a producer born in slime, and takes on the task of buying off with money and muscle a film geek who won't cooperate with a director of minuscule talent who simply wants to claim "V" - the geek's "Holy Grail" of a film treatment - as his own.

Donovan DeChance is a collector of ancient manuscripts and books, a practicing mage, and a private investigator. Over the span of a long life, he has gathered and archived the largest occult library in the world. When a local houngan begins meddling with powers she may not be able to control, a turf war breaks out between the Dragons motorcycle club and the Los Escorpiones street gang - a war that threatens to open portals between worlds and destroy the city in the process.

Cara Bishop already saved the world. Now, with the war over and the aliens defeated, she's teaching other pilots to fly the alien ships that turned the tide...until the government approaches her about joining a super-secret mission, that is. Steve Hunter is the product of alien DNA. He was created in a lab, designed to destroy the aliens in a ground war that was never fought. Now, they're finally putting him to use as the leader of this new mission.

One hot summer afternoon a quarter century ago, a wealthy socialite and her young lover, a private school teacher, were gunned down in a cheap hotel room on the outskirts of the Midwestern city of Calista. Now, forensic sketch artist David Weiss has returned to his hometown to cover a routine celebrity murder trial for ABC. For someone who has earned a reputation for cracking high-profile cases with his portraits of suspects based on eyewtiness accounts, chruning out courtroom sketches is merely pedestrian work.

For untold ages a dark presence has shrouded the small town of Orangefield. In addition to the plentiful pumpkins that gave the town its name, Orangefield is home to the dreaded Lord of Death himself, Samhain. Despite rumors of his existence, and rare, brief sightings, Samhain has long been content to leave the local inhabitants alone. But that's about to change.

Twenty-three of Shamus Award-winning author Bill Pronzini's stories, all of which display his versatility, his clean, crisp narrative style, and his keen awareness of detail. These tales, including three that feature his well-known series chararacter, the "Nameless Detective", run the gamut from psychological suspense ("Strangers in the Fog") to satire ("A Craving for Originality") to Western gothic ("The Hanging Man" and "His Name was Legion").

Thirteen dark tales from the author of Saint Sadist and Gods of the Dark Web. The disappearance of his son brings a rock star home to atone for past sins. A bartending ex-preacher faces a terrible destiny when an former congregation member walks into his bar wearing a bloody shirt. A blizzard traps a suicidal writer at the Jersey Shore with a cult and its strange goddess. A woman shoots a pornographic video and the act shatters her reality. The zombie apocalypse forces three teenagers to take refuge with the school bully. And more.

In 1712, Johann Bessler unveiled the perpetuum mobile, a wheel that continually spun after being set into motion until it was stopped with no mechanical input. Bessler's secret died with him. Except that it didn’t. Elly Kassel is the granddaughter of Evelyn Kassel. Elly is called into the offices of eminent London solicitors where she discovers that her grandmother was a rich woman. She also receives a trunk and an envelope, which she is not to open until she reaches New York City. In New York, she is told, all her questions about her grandmother and her inheritance will be answered.

More Oddments features 14 more detective stories featuring characters such as Fergus O'Hara and the "Nameless" Detective. The stories included in this collection are: "Fergus O'Hara, Detective", "Chip", "Opportunity", "A Craving for Originality", "One of Those Cases (A "Nameless Detective" Story)", "I Didn't Do It", "Quicker Than the Eye (with Michael Kurland)", "Angel of Mercy", "Connoisseur", "Mrs. Rakubian", "Smuggler's Island", "A Taste of Paradise", "Under the Skin", and "Prose Bowl (with Barry N. Malzberg)".

Bran Hatten is big, mean and unpredictable. He'll pound any guy that crosses his path, and he's a complete jerk to girls who spurn his affections. Tess Ryan and her friends are looking for options, even those the mysterious new girl at Pembrook High might offer. Charisse Bienville lives in the old dark house at the edge of town, and she's hinted that she commands powerful magical forces. Tess and her friends join Charisse in a ritual to end Bran's reign of terror, but they don't count on what might come afterward.

To his neighbors in the sleepy hamlet of Inverness, New Jersey, Lincoln Blackthorne is a tailor. Far from major population centers, highways, airports, or trains, Inverness is just about the last place you’d expect to find an international soldier of fortune and treasure hunter. But that’s exactly what Blackthorne is - one of the best - and he’s about to embark on his most dangerous journey: the quest for a priceless work of art, a deadly magical talisman, an object of dire arcane power.

Dignon Malloy lives with his cat, Mr. Tibbs, in a rundown apartment in the heart of a dreary, nameless, industrial coastal city. Haunted by dark visions, memories of horrific childhood abuse and the recent murder of a coworker, his is a lonely, sad and painful existence - until he ventures into a used bookstore and comes across an old paperback titled Mythical Beings in a Mortal World. Inside, someone has written a name, Bree Harper, and a phone number. Is it an innocent note left by the previous owner, or something far more sinister?

Reverend Blake Hardesty has lived the life of Job. Yet he continues to preach faith in God to a dwindling congregation, sharing his life with his teenage daughter, Bethany, who seems to blame him for her mother’s death. If it weren’t for the angel who protects him from the beast who fills his dreams, he would be completely alone. But when trying to help a disturbed congregant makes him the victim of a vicious attack, he realizes that the angel may not be able to protect him any longer from the beast - the wolf - that is now growing inside him.

A golden time - that's what Chris Anderson, his brother Aaron, and their friends expected of that final summer. Freedom, and lazy, pleasure-filled days before the responsibilities of college and career. An idyll in their newfound private place on the shores of three small lakes. But Tri-Lakes is no oasis. A millennium ago it became the focal point of a powerfully malevolent force, and the remnants of an ancient Viking bloodfeud. Hatred is its source. Blood gives it power. And only sacrifice can banish it.

A law-student stripper, two inept hitmen, the First Church of Elvis, Scientist, and a small-time mobster's biggest scam... Things are about to get all shook up in this hilarious novel filled with explosions, attempted murder, intrigue, and a whole lot more.

Riding the crest of the bloody tide is Jim Caspion, a Civil War veteran turned buffalo hunter, a man of notable conscience and courage, ever haunted by the war, yet fleeing settlement and routine, forswearing the practicable for the exotic, the forbidden, and the extreme. From the opening when he rides into a buffalo stampede to escape a band of Cheyenne, to the very end, his fate is inexorably tied to the white buffalo he spies in his harrowing flight. Thereafter, its spiritual aspect exerts a growing influence over his own wry, sensual nature, altering his outlook.

Dr. Michael Cayle wants the best for his wife and young daughter. That's why he moves the family from Manhattan to accept a private practice in the small New England town of Ashborough. Everything there seems so quaint and peaceful at first. But Ashborough is a town with secrets. Unimaginable secrets. Many of the townspeople are strangely nervous, and some speak quietly of legends that no sane person could believe. But what Michael discovers in the woods, drenched in blood, makes him wonder.

An espionage operation has gone horribly wrong. Soviet agents take a bold gamble and seize an American ship. Now the USS Gettysburg sits at a dock in Cam Ranh Bay. A computerized, state-of-the-art war ship, the Gettysburg is the nerve center of America's sea-air defenses. For the Soviets, it's a prize beyond compare.