Suspense/Thriller

Suspense/Thriller

Mens Rea

Gary S. Kadet

Insurance Adjustor George Arrant of Elsmere, Delaware is at odds with the world.

George is suffering a mental breakdown. The pressures of economic failure in an economy benefitting only the rich have culminated in the foreclosure and seizure of his home, which George’s wife and two children know nothing about. He’s been keeping his firing and mounting destitution a secret from his family to avoid worrying them.

Hours before the police, the bank representative, and the moving men are to arrive, he unlocks his gun cabinet, takes a shotgun and blasts his wife and children into eternity. He believes he’s saving them from the humiliation and brutality of poverty in America. After the ensuing failed suicide attempt, George wanders in a fugue state to Wilmington, where he encounters Rich Simony, the young VP of his foreclosing bank. George murders Rich for his credit cards, bank accounts and his Cadillac Escalade. He then flees Delaware for Providence, Rhode Island’s Crimetown – seat of the New England La Cosa Nostra.

George takes up with lead NECLN crime boss, Sallie “Jumbo” Palumbo. With Jumbo’s help, he assembles a crew and starts robbing banks across the country, all to one purpose:

Takedown of the foreclosure king – the sitting Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.

Tenebrous the Liar Series: The Leopard and the Red River, Book One

John Kevin McDonagh

Tenebrous Rasque is the last hero and the son of the devil.

Others say he is a liar.

In a strange world, full of strange souls, the stories of Tenebrous precede him wherever he goes. When drunk he exaggerates the tales, when sober he does what he must for money. He has killed many, but most deserved it. Tenebrous lingers reluctantly in this existence.

The dead will rise and Tenebrous will cross the universe to find his lost love. While searching, he is coerced into an impossible task. He must cross the vast northern desert, to rescue an aged general’s granddaughter from the zealous followers of a man that claims to have returned from the dead. Matthew, the undead god, preaches his knowledge of the afterlife.

Those that hear his words are driven mad and compelled to spread their master’s chaotic message. Matthew needs Tenebrous’ most sacred possessions, his father’s silver pistols. Matthew wants to destroy the last hero and condemn him forever…

…to a forgotten unmarked grave.

A Belle Bannon Novel: The Sundance Revenge

Mike Pace

Deaths are mounting at the Sundance Film Festival…

January in Park City, Utah means the streets and ski runs are jammed with Hollywood celebrities. Belle Bannon is a former combat Marine with anger issues and currently works as a bow-hunting guide and a member of the Ski Patrol to make a few extra bucks. On a normal day that quickly turns terrifying, the power goes out in a heavy windstorm, stranding skiers in chairs dangling high in the air on the ski lifts. During Belle’s harrowing attempt to extract a stranded skier, he resists, screams, “Rover!”, head-butts her, then executes a perfect back dive to the rocky ravine far below. Watching from the trees, a woman who calls herself “The Sword of Justice” is ecstatic and whispers to herself, “It begins…”

Over the next few days, more “accidents” occur, including an eighteen-year-old girl whom Belle considered a little sister. Angry and suspicious, Belle sets out to find a link connecting the accident victims in hope of proving the deaths were homicides. The search eventually leads to an event that occurred almost a hundred and fifty years earlier. The efforts trigger the killers to take aim at her and the entire town.

With a target on her back, she must race a ticking clock to both rescue the next victim, before it’s too late, and save the residents and visitors of the town…

…from a deadly catastrophe.

A Belle Bannon Novel: The Comanche Code

Mike Pace

Belle Bannon’s younger sister works as an intern at a western artifacts museum in the Texas panhandle. Two rogue Chinese agents mistake her for Nora Yates, the curator of the museum, and kidnap her. The kidnappers give Belle and Nora seventy-two hours to decode a series of obscure Comanche symbols on Chief Quanah Parker’s war lance, or Belle’s sister will die.

The search for clues necessary to decode the symbols takes them across the dusty plains of west Texas, through New Mexico’s labyrinth of caverns, and deep into the fetid Louisiana bayou. What they discover along their journey is that the symbols lead to the location of a mysterious jade box, the contents of which can make the kidnappers filthy rich. Belle and Nora not only have to deal with the kidnappers, but also fight off an opposing force—lethal Chinese agents who are willing to do anything, including killing innocent people, to prevent the contents of the jade box from surfacing.

It’s then that Belle realizes she faces an impossible dilemma: If she and Nora survive, beat the ticking clock, and save her sister . . .

. . . the end result could be nuclear war with China.

Deception

Laura Ranger

Izzy has had a long line of liars make up her past. It’s her history that makes her in high demand as an Art Authenticator. She can spot a fraud, as well as a forgery with little effort. Izzy no longer makes room in her life for men since she knows all men lie. She would rather have a dog. That is until Caleb Matthews sweeps her off her feet with his genuine, sincere, no-nonsense way. Over time, she allows him to break down her walls of mistrust. She learns how to make allowances for people that may be flawed, and not always entirely honest. But is that wise? After 25 years of marriage she begins to suspect there’s more to her husband then what she’s known. No matter how she tries, she can’t find anything amiss. Is her paranoia from being deceived in her past sabotaging her future or is there something more she’s missing? Whatever you imagine the end will be may have a bit of truth, but you won’t see the twist until it’s too late.

Rogue

Laura Ranger and Steve Soderquist

Chris and Lexi Denton led what they considered a normal life. Lexi worked as a dance instructor at a local studio, and Chris was a successful broker at a firm in downtown Miami, Florida. When Chris gets entangled with a crime boss who utilizes his talent for numbers to cover up deadly secrets, the pair soon discover much more than just Carlos Mandini’s dark secrets, they discover their own. Chris and Lexi Denton are not who they believed.

The Poe Predicament

Phil Thomas

Stuck in another time, Richard Langley just wants to find his way back home.

Richard, a former college professor, wanders a local neighborhood bookstore where he stumbles upon the find of a lifetime: a signed copy of 
Tamerlane and Other Poems. He’s then swept to another era where he is alone, confused, and his only mission is to get back to where he came from.

While struggling to adapt to his nineteenth-century environment, Richard meets a man he must help exonerate from false accusations in order to restore history’s original timeline and, ultimately, find his way back.

What Richard did not count on, was that man being the owner of the signature…

Edgar Allan Poe.