Showing results by publisher "Black Rose Writing" in Crime Fiction

The Unwelcomed begins with the arrival of a young Radcliffe student at the office of renowned psychotherapist, Dr. Morton Prince. Pursued by a city marshal hellbent on solving the murder of two infants strangled by her father, Clara Fowler relives the nightmare that was her childhood—exalted by Visitations from Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin, cursed by the emergence of a demonic presence obsessed with her demise.

Special Agent Adam Locke quits DEA and joins his brother's artificial intelligence company so he can care for his dying girlfriend, but when his brother is killed in a suspicious accident, Adam discovers life-saving technology can be also deadly. Being a special agent meant everything to Adam, but when his girlfriend is diagnosed with cancer, he resigns to be closer to home. He takes a job at his brother's AI start-up and works for an eccentric billionaire on Cuttyhunk Island, a tiny community near Cape Cod.

Hapless Nate Hester yearns for the safety and affection of a group. He sets off on a hitchhiking trip to escape bad parenting and the Vietnam draft. Nate soon longs to be off the road. A drug dealer befriends him and introduces him to the Hells Angels. The Angels introduce him to the wonders of drug use and free sex, but the effects wane, and Nate leaps from mania to depression.

1955 in Eklund, Minnesota, nestled on the shores of Spirit Lake: College student, Barbara Gruen, is found frozen to death in a snowbank. Presumably, she lost her way in a blinding snowstorm while walking home from an off-campus party, resulting in a tragic accident. Or was it? Nancy Borg, a college senior and friend of Barbara's brother, is shaken by the news, particularly since Barbara was her friend's sister. Eager to escape Eklund and her narrow-minded father, Nancy unexpectedly becomes entangled in the tragedy's aftermath.

Burr, Oklahoma, summer, 1976: On the eve of America’s Bicentennial celebration, a notorious local politician is assassinated at a campaign rally. The case seems open and shut; the killer—a young, anonymous homeless woman—is shot by police at the scene. With the death of the assassin, the lead investigator is content to write off the crime as a random act. Burr’s Chief of Police, Emmett Hardy, isn’t so sure.

Olivia is excited for university. She will be on her own in a new place, hopeful to meet new friends. On the night she moves in, she is taken off the street by two masked men. She is placed in a room that is little more than a cell. A pink cell. A room made for a doll. She is now part of their collection.

Donnie Chariot is the most gifted thoroughbred horse racing handicapper in the country. He single-handedly sets the morning betting lines across the country. His unique ability to distill data and past racing performances has made him rich and bestowed him with real power. But when early onset Alzheimer's causes his unique gift to fail him, mobsters from Manhattan to Las Vegas aren't happy. Chariot needs his estranged daughter, who shares the same otherworldly gift with numbers, to help him, but their rocky past keeps them apart.

Los Angeles, 1954. Sending a pair of mass murderers to the chair got his name in the papers, but veteran fighter pilot turned detective, Augy Small, couldn’t celebrate. The culprits confessed, but the cops only ever found one body. Who had the killers died to protect? Katya Tyler, a Russian enigma with a wad of cash in one hand and a hit list in the other, claims to have the answers. First, she wants Augy’s help to bring down a massive underground network of human traffickers. As the case unfolds, every clue is an echo of his past.

As five friends travel through the isolated California desert towards a popular music festival, their trip is interrupted thanks to our modern world's ever-evolving state of technology... Stranded and alone needing to recharge their electric vehicle. When the group of teenagers settle on a remote parking lot in the middle of nowhere, it isn't only a charging station they find. They also uncover pure, unrelenting evil. Hiding in the shadows is a maniac. Searching endlessly and without discrimination for victims to satisfy a hunger, viciously hunting down anyone that comes near.

It’s 2090, and NanoGov has exploited nanotechnology to overtake the planet. The super-rich have converted to Mod, the two-dimensional ruling class. Jeremiah Prior, a three-dimensional disgraced Fringe detective hiding in Antigua for the murder of his partner, is forced back to Manhattan to prevent his estranged daughter from converting to Mod.

On an icy day in February, African American grandmother Vera Moon arrives home to find her grown son Charlie brutally murdered. She vows to find the killer who has managed to elude the police. Not knowing where to begin, Vera is involved in a suspicious hit-and-run car accident, witnessed by a young Irish American woman, Dani, on the run from the train-wreck of her own life.

It's 1987–a dangerous period during America's War on Drugs, but DEA Special Agent Sam Dahl is comfortable- perhaps even a little bored–with his job seizing drug money from couriers passing through the daily hubbub of the LAX airport. A friend begs Sam to find out what happened to her parents who disappeared while boating in the Gulf of Mexico. Although Sam possesses well-honed instincts and a keen eye for trouble, he knows nothing about missing-person cases.

In Twenty Mile Bottom, Mississippi, a grandmother mysteriously disappears. Her 18-year-old grandson, Roy Gene, smells a rat and launches his own investigation. Unbeknownst to him is a domestic terrorist plot masked by a renegade religious cult run by a gypsy fortuneteller and his alcoholic evangelist grandfather. The grandfather's infamous Halloween service, The Devil Walks at Midnight is the emotional lynch pin to a corrupt theology of fear that keeps everyone in line... except Roy Gene's grandmother... and Roy Gene.

After Kenny's wife dies suddenly, he is forced to deal with the tough challenge of raising his children alone. Adding to his struggles of being "Mr. Mom," Kenny's nine-year-old son now suffers from Traumatic Mutism, as brought on by the loss of his mother. It is a problem Kenny has no idea how to fix. But just when he thinks he might have the answer, he and his son cross the unlikely path of a violent drug addict.

Private Investigator Steve Rockfish needs cash, like yesterday. The bad news is that yesterday, a global pandemic raged, and Maryland was headed toward a lockdown that would ultimately lead to cheating spouses no longer “working late”, and hence a lack of new clients. Rockfish's luck changes when a Hollywood producer reaches out, but the job is two states away and involves digging up information on a child-trafficking ring from the 1940s. What he uncovers will be used to support the launch of a true-crime docuseries. He grabs a mask and hand sanitizer and heads for South Jersey.

In the simpler times of 1971, Inspector Philip Steele, recently transferred to Fredericton, takes a well-deserved holiday visiting his beloved, elderly godmother in her quaint village nestled in the gently-rolling Appalachians of Atlantic Canada. But when a bank robbery and the murder of a teenage boy initiate a string of even more shocking events which wreak panic in the quiet community, Phil must return to long days of investigation with his oft-misquoting, black sergeant Zareb Woodbridge, who struggles with questioning some of the more racist locals.

Rookie homicide detective Malachi Wolf investigates a string of murders in Washington, DC and uncovers both a vigilante killer and a terrorist conspiracy-making himself a target. After his father's murder, Malachi abandoned his economics doctorate to become a police officer and protect the innocent. Now, he must solve his first homicide to prove himself worthy of the badge.

In the finale of the That Was Before series, Randolph Spiers and Sheila Backe team up with redemption, forgiveness, and the possibility of second chances at stake.

When 14-year-old Mitch Graves, bored with festivities at a Memorial Day block party in 2006, decides to ride his BMX to a set of train tracks near his home, he discovers something that would tattoo the fear of God into any ordinary child's memory-a wayward drifter hiding in the shadows of an abandoned railcar in the midst of taking another man's life. Where most kids would be terrified beyond belief, Mitch finds himself intrigued.

PI Steve Rockfish's father loses part of his retirement savings in an online romance scam while partner Jawnie McGee handles the firm's newest client, who spins a tale of alleged spousal infidelity. Rockfish becomes fixated on tracking down those responsible for the fraud. Restitution is coming in the form of cash or broken bones. At the same time, Jawnie's surveillance of the cheating spouse reveals more acts of kindness than sex. Unbeknownst to the partners, each investigative path leads to the Church of the Universal Nurturing II, where the fraud is on a cryptocurrency level.