Urban Crime

Twelve stories from the celebrated author of one of the most famous mystery classics ever written, Trent's Last Case. Philip Trent is an artist, a journalist and an urbane unraveller of highly problematical crimes. Here the unshakable sleuth appears in 12 tales of misadventure, where the crimes that he investigates range from fraud and embezzlement to criminal assault and murder, yet they all succumb to his adept methods - even if the criminal sometimes escapes.

Dr Cat Lupo aches for another child despite the psychosis which marked her first pregnancy. So when Ruby Winter, a small girl in need of help, arrives in the middle of the night, it seems like fate. But as the events behind Ruby's arrival emerge - her mother's death, her connection to Cat - Cat questions whether her decision to help Ruby has put her own daughter at risk.

As a low-level enforcer in Los Angeles, Ken Swift knows danger, but nowhere does he feel it more than in his tangled romances. Divorced from one woman, in love with another, and wrestling with a strong desire to get to know a third, his life is far from perfect, and it becomes all the more complicated when his troubled daughter resurfaces on the same day as a major job.

After eight years spent locked up, Max has gotten very good at being a prisoner. He knows the guards, the inmates, and how to survive. But the parole board has decided that he has sufficiently reformed, and it’s time for him to say goodbye. When Max reaches the outside world, he finds that freedom doesn’t make anything easier.

On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of Black Americans murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes, hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift.

Another day, another hijacked body. And just 13 hours to solve a murder…Detective Vincent Graves has made a habit of dying. Waking up in someone else’s body isn’t pleasant, especially when it's inside a coffin with tons of dirt pressing down on it. Once he’s out, he learns his soul has 13 hours to find the borrowed body’s killer. With the help of a brilliant FBI agent, Vincent’s quest for clues leads to a looming supernatural presence. And escaping the dark threat may be impossible with his ever-ticking clock… Can Vincent close the case in time?

Crime and gentrification are hot-button issues that easily polarize racially diverse neighborhoods. How do residents, activists, and politicians navigate the thorny politics of race as they fight crime or resist gentrification? And do conflicts over competing visions of neighborhood change necessarily divide activists into racially homogeneous camps, or can they produce more complex alliances and divisions? In Us Versus Them, Jan Doering answers these questions through an in-depth study of two Chicago neighborhoods.

After narrowly escaping a murder conviction, Marco finds himself back in the only life he knows. His longtime attorney, Johnny Cargile, has once again worked his legal magic, but this time, the stakes are higher than ever. With increasing pressure from law enforcement, Marco and his crew have been ordered to leave Cincinnati. The heat on their organization has become too intense, forcing everyone to retreat to more familiar territory. For Marco, that means returning to Detroit a city he once called home.

Las Vegas: a city built on obscene wealth and corrupt deals, cunning entrepreneurs, and the ruthless mob. The Cartel's plan to open a casino will rake in cash, but it comes with great sacrifice. The stakes have never been this high, and the rules of the game have never been this hard to manipulate. And when one dead girl, one scorned wife, and one hole in the desert launch a chain of catastrophic events, the Cartel is sent on a downward spiral as they battle the Arabian mob and fight traitors within their circle.

In the United States today, one in every 31 adults is under some form of penal control, including one in 11 African American men. How did the "land of the free" become the home of the world's largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the Reagan administration's War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society at the height of the civil rights era.

D Hunter's investigation into his mentor's murder leads into a parallel history of hip hop, a place where renegade government agents, behind-the-scenes power brokers, and paranoid journalists know a truth that only a few hard-core fans suspect. This rewrite of hip-hop history mixes real-life figures with characters pulled from the culture's hidden world, including Jay Z, Kanye West, and Russell Simmons.

Born in the slums of Brooklyn, in the first year of the 20th century, Willie Sutton came of age at a time when banks were out of control. If they weren’t taking brazen risks, they were shamelessly seeking bailouts. Trapped in a cycle of bank panics, depressions and soaring unemployment, Sutton saw only one way out. So began the career of America’s most successful bank robber. Sutton became so good at breaking into banks, and such a master at breaking out of prisons, police called him one of the most dangerous men.

Once the undisputed king of Cincinnati’s drug game, RC Quadir vanished from the streets without a trace. But he didn’t retire—he upgraded. Now, he’s the mastermind behind The Cleaners, an elite, high-tech crime scene erasure crew that specializes in making the aftermath of murder disappear like it never happened. Their clients? Only the rich, the ruthless, and the connected. Mob bosses. Cartel shot-callers. White-collar criminals with blood on their hands. If your pockets run deep enough, The Cleaners will scrub your sins clean—no prints, no bodies, no evidence. Just silence.

Jon Reznick doesn’t trust the CIA—but when operative Daniel Black shows up near his home in Maine, he listens. A high-value target has been taken out by a sniper in Mallorca. The kill was clean. Professional. And just the beginning. Reznick is sent in under deep cover to hunt for the assassin and retrieve a cache of Cold War–era surveillance tapes—evidence so explosive it could bring down presidents. As bodies begin to fall and the sniper’s true mission comes into focus, Reznick realizes the stakes are far higher than anyone imagined.

A young journalism student named Coffee is granted the opportunity of a lifetime. During her spring break, she has to follow Mickey Royal around day and night in order to do a report on The Pimp Game. As Coffee accompanies Mickey Royal throughout his daily life, she embarks on an adventure like no other. She immerses herself into the underbelly of the shadow world and learns lessons she won't soon forget.

I’ll admit, I’m struggling to adjust to my new role as the Keeper of Stories while raising a stubborn toddler. Plus, the missing persons case at Bay Side Media has fallen into my lap and there are a lot of fairy tales that involve kidnapping. Everything is piling up fast, making me want to rip my planner to shreds and quit adulting. But when my mother vanishes to the mysterious Cygnus Island, I’m forced to face the fairy tales and their villains. Can I kill two birds with one stone?

Jakki and School Boy are more than first cousins; they’re best friends and partners in crime with a reputation for getting theirs by any means necessary. The pair are ultimately forced to defend not only their family name but their loyalty to each other. With both wanting to stand at the head of the table, Jakki and School Boy feud. Sani, a well-known female gambling house owner, is at the top of her game, but after she decides to inject phony currency into her business, all hell breaks loose.

When Detective Domenica Kiernan solved the murder of a mayor’s aide—killed by a vampire—she never imagined she’d find herself at the vanguard of the NYPD’s latest special squad: the Supernatural Crimes Unit. Tasked with closing cases involving magic and monsters, the SCU has dealt with a shape-changing domovoy committing assault in Chelsea, the murder of a kappa on City Island, a thieving Taotie in Chinatown—and their latest: two murder victims whose corpses have been liquefied by a powerful spell.

When an enigmatic message uploaded to the dark web turns out to contain an ancient secret giving regular people the power to do impossible things, like levitate cars or make themselves invisible, American government officials panic. They know the demo videos on YouTube and instructions for incantations could turn from fantastical amusement to dangerous weapon at the drop of the hat, and they scramble to keep the information out of the wrong hands. They tap Ben Zolstra, an ex-CIA field operative whose history with the agency is conflicted at best.

The bayou is burning, the battle is just beginning - and Luce Boudreau is smack in the middle of no-man's land.... Life as a cop in Canton Town, Mississippi, is never dull - particularly when hiding deep within you is a demon bent on the apocalypse. Luce is doing her best to pretend her two worlds aren't crashing into each other, but what should be a routine arson investigation takes a shocking turn when Luce discovers a link between the suspects and her own dark secrets. There's no turning back, even though her search for the truth threatens to burn her old life down around her.