Allan Armadale makes a startling deathbed confession to be shared with his young son once he reaches adulthood-he murdered another man named Allan Armadale. It's a dark secret that inevitably looms over the child of the perpetrator and his victim. Before dying, Allan Armadale reveals that he previously killed a man also named Allan Armadale. It's a revelation meant for his young son who discovers the information as an adult. At this point, he's...

Ex-Dallas Cowboy Rick Bannion has been through the revolving prison door for drug trafficking and now hunts bail-jumpers. His old friend Jack Brendy has just been busted by the Feds for smuggling cocaine, and when Brendy's wife approaches him seeking a favor, Rick jumps at the chance to help. The favor?-keep the government's sleazy informer off the stand. Unfortunately, when things go wrong, Rick finds himself in the crosshairs of the Feds.

Gino Cataldi is a man hanging on by a thread. Cancer took his wife, and drugs put his son in rehab. The only thing he has left is his badge.  When a teenage girl is kidnapped it brings back nightmares from the worst case he ever worked-the one that tore his life to shreds and forced him out of Philadelphia. Gino doesn't want this case but he knows he has to take it. Not just to save the girl, but to earn redemption for what went wrong in Philly.

Stoner is a private eye in the classic tradition: a loner with a history of failed relationships with women and all-too-successful relationships with bottles of scotch. He's unable to look away from the world's corruption-and unable to avoid trying to do something about it. His latest hopeless cause is Cindy Ann, a teenage hooker. She's not very pretty or bright or engaging ... she doesn't have much to offer at all. So when she disappears, it's all...

Bino Phillips has seen his share of crime-fighting, but nothing has prepared him for the desperate search for a serial killer stalking the streets of Dallas-a serial killer that has more than the usual thirst for blood. One woman has been found, the blood sucked from her body. She and a friend, who remains missing, were to be key witnesses in Bino's defense of a young coed dealer. Now Bino finds himself in a sudden race against death, especially when...

A WWII vet wrongly reported dead is on the hunt for his wife's killer. Los Angeles, 1946. Ex-cop and WWII vet Jack Chesley spent years in a German POW camp. But when he finally returns home to Los Angeles, he finds a new kind of torment waiting for him. It seems that after Jack was declared dead, his wife, Wilma, died a year later. The police said it was an accident. But Wilma's twin sister believes it was murder. Setting out to find Wilma's killer,...

Bobby Foster, carhop at the chic Cafe Comedie, is going to the gas chamber. He's already confessed to the murder of Tracy Kostakos, the club's rising star. But two years after the crime, Tracy's body is still missing and Bobby's confession is full of holes. All Souls Legal Cooperative's final appeal sends San Francisco's number one PI Sharon McCone behind the footlights into the super-charged arena of anxious club owners and aspiring young hopefuls,...

A string of brutal murders has bodies piling up in Brooklyn, and Detective Frankie Donovan knows what is going on. Clues left at the crime scenes point to someone from the old neighborhood, and that isn't good. Frankie has taken two oaths in his life-the one he took to uphold the law when he became a cop, and the one he took with his two best friends when they were eight years old and inseparable. Those relationships have forced Frankie to make many...

The House Without a Key (1925) is a mystery novel by Earl Derr Biggers. The first in a series of novels featuring Chinese American detective Charlie Chan, The House Without a Key is notable for its nuanced depiction of race and class on the edges of American empire. Based in part on the life of Chinese Hawaiian detective Chang Apana, the character of Charlie Chan was intended by Biggers as an alternative to racist Yellow Peril stereotypes of the early...

Vanessa loves her job as a chiropractor – except sometimes her work takes an unexpected twist… A Pain in the Neck forms part of the Case Files series of short crime fiction stories from USA Today bestselling author Rachel Amphlett.