Any Old Diamonds

Once upon a time, a boy from a noble family fell in love with a girl from the gutter. It went as badly as you’d expect. Seventeen years later, Susan Lazarus is a renowned detective, and Templeton Lane is a jewel thief. She’s tried to arrest him, and she’s tried to shoot him. They’ve never tried to talk. Then Templeton is accused of a vicious double murder. Now there’s a manhunt out for him, the ports are watched, and even his best friends have turned their backs. If he can’t clear his name, he’ll hang.   

A shooting party at the Earl of Witton’s remote country house is a high treat for champion shot Patricia Merton - until unexpected guests turn the social atmosphere dangerously sour. That’s not Pat’s biggest problem. She’s visiting her old friend, the Earl’s heir Jimmy Yoxall - but she wants to spend a lot more time with Jimmy’s fiancée. The irrepressible Miss Fenella Carruth, with her laughing eyes and lush curves, is the most glorious woman Pat’s ever met, and it quickly becomes impossible to remember why she needs to stay at arm’s length.  

With the justiciary understaffed, a series of horrifying occult murders to be investigated, and a young student who is flying - literally - off the rails, magical law enforcer Stephen Day is under increasing stress. And his relationship with his aristocratic lover, Lord Crane, is beginning to feel the strain. Crane chafes at the restrictions of England's laws, and there's a worrying development in the blood-and-sex bond he shares with Stephen. A development that makes a sensible man question if they should be together at all.

Lord Crane has never had a lover quite as elusive as Stephen Day. He knows Stephen's job as justiciar requires secrecy, but the magician is doing his disappearing act more than seems reasonable - especially since Crane will soon return to his home in China. Then a blackmailer threatens to expose their illicit relationship. And as Stephen investigates a plague of giant rats sweeping London, his sudden increase in power, boosted by his blood-and-sex bond with Crane, is rousing suspicion that he's turned warlock.

Sir Philip Rookwood is the disgrace of the county. He's a rake and an atheist, and the rumors about his hellfire club, the Murder, can only be spoken in whispers. (Orgies. It's orgies.) Guy Frisby and his sister, Amanda, live in rural seclusion after a family scandal. But when Amanda breaks her leg in a riding accident, she's forced to recuperate at Rookwood Hall, where Sir Philip is hosting the Murder. Guy rushes to protect her, but the Murder aren't what he expects. Sir Philip turns out to be charming, kind - and dangerously attractive. 

Nathaniel Bainbridge is used to hiding, whether it's concealing his struggles with reading or his forbidden desire for men. Under the thumb of his controlling father, the governor of Primrose Isle, he's sailing to the fledging colony, where he'll surrender to a respectable marriage for his family's financial gain. Then pirates strike and he's kidnapped for ransom by the Sea Hawk, a legendary villain of the New World. Bitter and jaded, Hawk harbors futile dreams of leaving the sea for a quiet life, but men like him don't deserve peace. He has a score to settle with Nathaniel's father.

Dixon Penn’s family wasn’t terribly shocked when he announced he was gay, but they were devastated to learn he’s the only one without the gift of spellcraft. Fortunately, that doesn’t stop spellcraft from reaching out to him. Dixon’s prospects have gone from bad to worse, but a contest at the biggest greeting card company in the tri-state area would be just the thing to turn his luck around. Yuri Volnikov is determined to keep the charming contestant out. But Dixon has always been a sucker for big guys with exotic accents, and he won’t take no for an answer.

England, 1904. Two years ago, Captain Archie Curtis lost his friends, fingers, and future to a terrible military accident. Alone, purposeless, and angry, Curtis is determined to discover if he and his comrades were the victims of fate, or of sabotage. Curtis's search takes him to an isolated, ultra-modern country house, where he meets and instantly clashes with fellow guest Daniel da Silva. Effete, decadent, foreign, and all-too-obviously queer, the sophisticated poet is everything the straightforward British officer fears and distrusts.

Among his eccentric though strictly principled group of friends, Lord Richard Vane is the confidant on whom everyone depends for advice, moral rectitude, and discreet assistance. Yet when Richard has a problem, he turns to his valet, a fixer of unparalleled genius - and the object of Richard's deepest desires. If there is one rule a gentleman must follow, it is never to dally with servants. But when David is close enough to touch, the rules of class collide with the basest sort of animal instinct: overpowering lust.

Silas Mason has no illusions about himself. He's not lovable or even likable. He's an overbearing idealist, a radical bookseller and pamphleteer who lives for revolution...and for Wednesday nights. Every week he meets anonymously with the same man, in whom Silas has discovered the ideal meld of intellectual companionship and absolute obedience to his sexual commands. But, unbeknownst to Silas, his closest friend is also his greatest enemy, with the power to see him hanged - or spare his life.

Ghost/god Wes Cooper and his not-life partner, vampire Hudson Rojas, have settled into cohabitation in an upscale part of Toronto. So what if their hoity-toity new neighbors haven't exactly rolled out the welcome mat for the paranormal pair? Their PI business is booming, and when a suspect they've been tailing winds up in the morgue, it's alongside a rash of other shifters in apparent drug-related fatalities. Now, Wes and Hudson must connect the dots between the shifter deaths and an uptick in brutal vampire attacks across the city.

I have been Simon Feximal's companion, assistant, and chronicler for 20 years now, and during that time my Casebooks of Feximal the Ghost-Hunter have spread the reputation of this most accomplished of ghost-hunters far and wide. Here is how my association with Feximal came about. I dare say it may not be quite what you expect.

Can a witch avoid a murder rap without revealing the supernatural truth? Cosmo Saville guiltily hides a paranormal secret from his soon-to-be husband. And if he can’t undo a powerful love spell, uncertainty threatens his nuptial magic. But when he’s arrested for allegedly killing a longtime rival, he could spend his honeymoon behind bars. Police Commissioner John Joseph Galbraith never believed in love until Cosmo came along. Falling head over heels for the elegant antiques dealer is an enchantment he never wants to break.

On the trail of an aristocrat's secret son, enquiry agent Mark Braglewicz finds his quarry in a music hall, performing as a trapeze artist with his twin sister. Graceful, beautiful, elusive, and strong, Pen Starling is like nobody Mark's ever met - and everything he's ever wanted. But the long-haired acrobat has an earldom and a fortune to claim.

When the gods come calling, you don’t get to say no. Patrick Collins is three years into a career as a special agent for the Supernatural Operations Agency when the gods come calling to collect a soul debt he owes them. An immortal has gone missing in New York City and bodies are showing up in the wake of demon-led ritual killings that Patrick recognizes all too easily from his nightmares.