For his next hardboiled story, P.I. Frank Johnson investigates several of his clients' cases over the course of a week in frosty October. In his largest case, a woman hires him to locate her birth mother, who was last heard from in Frank's hometown of Pelham, Virginia. He also declines an offer to join a bounty hunter team because the leader is dangerously reckless. Later, he discovers something very wrong is in his abandoned phosphate quarry, which requires his immediate attention before it's too late. As he always does, Frank leans on his long-time friend and business partner, Gerald Peyton; his medical examiner wife, Dreema; and his brilliant but outspoken attorney, Robert Gatlin. While juggling these and his other cases, Frank works long hours to reach a satisfactory resolution for each of his clients. Silver Dagger Award-winning and critically acclaimed crime novelist James Crumley endorsed the P.I. Frank Johnson Mystery Series. "With a plot as...

Phyllis Garner refuses to believe her best friend Ladybug Miles’ death is an accidental drowning in the local Coronet River. Phyllis thinks it was murder and asks her friends Isabel and Alma Trumbo to do their talented snooping in small town Quiet Anchorage to root out the truth of what happened and bring the guilty killer to justice.Isabel and Alma call on their own assistants, including twenty-something Sammi Jo and The Three Musketeers (Ossie, Blue, and Willie) to help with the investigation. Even Petey Samson, Isabel and Alma’s pooch, gets involved.

Over the past two decades, Tommy Mack Zane has faithfully worked as a contract killer for Watson Ogg, the Washington, D.C. crime boss. Now middle age creeping up finds Tommy Mack edgy, jaded, and weary of his grisly trade. As he contemplates retirement, he is framed for the murder of Mr. Ogg’s niece. Desperate, Tommy Mack enlists the aid of his friends, the mercurial D. Noble and burly Esquire to do battle with Mr. Ogg and his mercenary “dark suits.” A new, better life filled with his passions for poetry and jazz drives Tommy Mack to the slambang climax where a few dark secrets about his past are unearthed. Told in spare, lean prose, Ask the Dice is a brisk, literate, and idiosyncratic noir. Mr. Lynskey’s crime novels have been praised by such luminaries as James Crumley, Ken Bruen, and Megan Abbott. Robert Wade (Wade Miller) wrote in the San DiegoUnion-Tribune: “A new wave of young writers is experimenting with the old-style thriller…among  the most promising is Ed Lynskey.”

Quiet Anchorage, Virginia, is a peaceful small town until the murder of Jake Robbins, the fiance of Megan Connors. Two elderly sisters, whose bickering belies their mutual devotion, are horrified when Megan, their niece, is accused of brutally murdering Jake.<The sheriff, running for re-election, is all-too-pleased to have an easy solution and, with the niece in custody, is no longer investigating the case. This leaves it up to the aunts, who have hitherto solved such baffling cases as who was vandalizing tombstones and who stole the church collection, to metaphorically roll up their sleeves and track down the killer with the help of a young neighbor.

"LAKE CHARLES is going to scorch your soul. Ed Lynskey has given us a geographical and spiritual wasteland that that bears comparison with the best noir fiction being published today. I loved it." -- Ed Gorman, New York Times bestselling author of SLEEPING DOGS

Small town Quiet Anchorage, Virginia, doesn't seem like a prime spot for murder, and Isabel and Alma Trumbo look forward to spending their days playing Scrabble and visiting with the "Three Musketeers" outside the local florist shop.When their young friend Sammi Jo becomes a suspect in her father's murder, however, the sister-sleuths dust off their skills and get to work investigating. Of course, someone willing to kill Sammi Jo's father isn't likely to be intimidated by a couple of senior sleuths.