Crime City

When a well-connected and wealthy banker is found dead in his luxury car in the middle of Cardiff, the motive for the crime seems clear. The killer even left a note telling the world the man deserved to die, simply for his greed. But despite the obvious clues, seasoned detective, John Marco has his doubts that this was just a disgruntled employee. Marco also has a gut feeling that the family of the victim are hiding something.

It's Mardi Gras season in post-Katrina New Orleans. City officials expect record crowds and the biggest boost to the Crescent City economy since the big storm. Alexandra Lee Destephano, legal counsel for Crescent City Medical Center, is anticipating her third Mardi Gras season and her date with Mitch Landry to the biggest Mardi Gras ball in New Orleans. But hold on. Alex is stat-paged to the hospital and learns from her boss and former husband that the wife of the governor of Louisiana has been found unconscious and covered in blood in her hospital room.

On a summer night in 2009, three lives intersected in one American neighborhood. Two people newly in love - Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper, who spent many years trying to find themselves and who eventually found each other - and a young man on a dangerous psychological descent: Isaiah Kalebu, age 23, the son of a distant, authoritarian father and a mother with a family history of mental illness. All three paths forever altered by a violent crime, all three stories a wake-up call to the system that failed to see the signs.

It's early 1944 and Richmond, Virginia is a devil's paradise. Ration scams and police corruption are rampant while the inflated black market commands top dollar. Detective Sergeant Bennie Sherwood, fresh off a soul-scarring tour of duty with the Marines, couldn't care less. His old man was recently murdered under suspect circumstances, and he's on a hunt for the truth. But then an old friend is killed during a botched black market raid and Bennie is thrust onto a hellride through Richmond's underworld.

Brandon Blake, the tough and resourceful kid from the Portland waterfront, has made it. He's been hired by the Portland Police Department, partly as payback for stopping a vicious cop killer in Port City Shakedown. But the newest rookie on the night shift isn't pulling any punches. And when a drug-addled mom can't find her baby, Blake - whose mother left him and was killed when he was a toddler - comes down on her hard. Except the baby really is gone.

Gord Stewart, 40 years old, single, moved back into his sub­urban childhood home to care for his widowed father. But his father no longer needs care, and Gord is stuck in limbo. He’s been working in the movie business as a location scout for years, and when there isn’t much filming, as a private eye for a security company run by ex-cops, OBC. When a fellow crew member asks him to find her missing uncle, Gord reluctantly takes the job. The police say the uncle walked into some dense woods in Northern Ontario and shot himself, but the man’s wife thinks he’s still alive.

You'd think a man in Frank Parker's position would be riding high, but the fame from the Latham Case has turned to notoriety. The TCPD won't be stalled in its quest for answers, IA's shadow seems closer than ever, and no one can be sure when the Loonies will chase down him or his family. When Katsaros hires him out for another "missing person", he worries it'll be Lenny Marquez all over again. However, every case is different, and he soon realizes this young man needs his help.

Johnny "Whoops" Watson and Billy Bates - young guitarists and singers - and their band, Conflict, are playing clubs in Los Angeles, where the days of rock's zenith have faded, but the hopes and dreams of aspiring musicians haven't. Conflict is struggling, and chaos ensues when someone close to the band is killed. Johnny and Billy are swept up in the mystery, ill-prepared as they are to confront it.

Syracuse, upstate New York. The “Salt City”. An apartment building on the edge of The Projects - and Anne Malloy dies, flying out of a sixth floor window, an apparent suicide, while Mark Cornell watches. Mark was there for a purpose, his part-time gig being to snap incriminating photos for a divorce lawyer who happily takes cases over the phone. Watching the apartment was Mark’s assignment. But this assignment has a problem.

Rabato Sabato aka Soni Dike is a Lagos big boy: a criminal turned grandee, with a beautiful wife, a sea-side mansion, and a questionable fortune. Then one day he disappears and his car is found in a ditch, music blaring from the speakers. Soni’s older brother, Abel Dike, a teacher, arrives in Lagos to look for his missing brother. Abel is rapidly sucked into the unforgiving Lagos maelstrom where he has to navigate encounters with a motley cast of common criminals and policemen intent on getting a piece of the pie, and contend with his growing attraction for his brother’s wife.

Twenty-two-year-old Charlotte Ford reconnects with Danielle, her best friend from high school, a few days before Danielle is found bludgeoned to death in a motel room. In the wake of the murder, Charlotte's life unravels and she descends into the city's underbelly, where she meets the strippers, pornographers and drug dealers who surrounded Danielle in the years they were estranged. Ginsburg's Houston is part of a lesser known south, where the urban and rural collide gracelessly.

The woman falls. Her body begins to shake. Her brown eyes turn upwards, showing a mix of panic and desperate hope. She takes a deep breath and says one word: Blake. Then her eyes close, her face pales, and she goes still forever… The victim: Shannon, a woman who went out of her way to help the lost and hopeless, left abandoned to die by the side of the road. Where was she in those last few days before her death, and why was she so frightened?

Washington, D.C. homicide detective Marko Zorn takes on a far-reaching, complicated investigation when a narcotic more deadly than fentanyl spreads across the city, causing countless fatalities. His search for the people behind the off-label drug leads him to a Big Pharma company run by mysterious, psychopathic twin brothers. Anyone who crosses them is dead. Marko discovers that the company will soon release another dangerous prescription opioid analgesic, but when the company learns that this information has been leaked, more bodies pile up.

Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, serves as the conscience of the Jewish ghetto teeming with rogue cops and swindlers. He rescues Ben Ravage, an orphan, from a trade school and sends him off to Harvard to earn a law degree. But upon his return, Ben rejects the chance to escape his gritty origins and instead becomes a detective for the Kehilla, a quixotic gang backed by wealthy uptown patrons to help the police rid the Lower East Side of criminals.

Albert Jarvis is an unusually bright boy - a tragic temperament for the jailor's son in a gritty 1840s town at the edge of the American frontier. Desperate to belong, he fails repeatedly to prove himself worth his salt, until a captivating stranger offers an enchanting vision - a world where the path to heroism lies in words. The place is New York City. The stranger: Edward Rulloff, an accomplished physician, lawyer, professor, inventor, linguist fluent in 27 languages - and serial killer.

Spying from her window in New York City with high-powered binoculars, conspiracy theorist Zoe spots a man and woman on a park bench. Zooming in, she finds she can read the texts on the woman's phone. Her initial excitement turns to alarm when the woman's texts outline a plan to murder the man she is sitting next to. The police department is trying to manage a pandemic and catch a serial killer who has murdered six women. So, when Zoe reports the conspiracy to commit murder, the police have little time or patience for her theories.

Adam and his sister, Leila, are Nons—second-class citizens, living under the Permitted ruling class. Though their life in the Stone City is filled with family, stories, and music, they must carefully follow the rules, have all paperwork on hand, and never, ever do anything to anger a Permitted. When their father unexpectedly dies, they are even restricted in how they are allowed to grieve.

Baron Witherspoon, a disfigured WWI vet, works as a beat cop in a small Kansas suburb and is on a collision course with Jake Hickey, a volatile Chicago gangster. While Baron wants merely to provide residents with a safe place to live and escape the memory of the horrors of war, Jake is looking to recapture the glory of Prohibition. Forced to hide out in Arkansas City, Baron’s town, Jake’s impatient nature drives him to put together his own gang. The local crime outfit is wary of Jake’s dealings and lack of cooperation. Baron has his own suspicions but can’t prove anything.

Good Shepherd is a three-story collection of erotic crime fiction swirling with lust, revenge, and insatiable sexual gluttony. Three very different men and women sit at the center of each story. Yet, in the end, they’re all the same — forever changed by forbidden temptation in a world where justice pretends to be blind.

When a major Parisian modern art event gets unexpected attention on live TV, Chief of Police Nico Sirsky and his team of elite crime fighters rush to La Villette park and museum complex. There, renowned artist Samuel Cassian is inaugurating the first archeological dig of modern art, 27 years after burying the leftovers of a banquet. In front of reporters from around the world, excavators uncover a skeleton. Could it be the artist's own son?