The Blue Journal

When one of Randi Conway’s psychotherapy patients is found dead of a gunshot wound, the investigation is turned over to Detective Anthony Walker.

Formerly a New York City cop, Walker now serves on the police force of an affluent community in Fairfield County, Connecticut. He lives among the privileged gentry, where he understands that appearances are often far removed from reality. This certainly proves to be true in the death of Elizabeth Knoebel, when Walker discovers that she had been keeping a private journal entitled “SEXUAL RITES”.

In her diary, Elizabeth was recording the explicit details of her sexual adventures with various men, many of whom were married to the women in her therapy group. Elizabeth was a predator bent on seducing and, in some instances, humiliating these men, obsessed with a perverse mission that Walker believes led to her murder.

As Walker uncovers the secrets of Elizabeth’s memoir, he becomes convinced that her killer is another of Randi Conway’s patients.

But which one?


The Bloody Black Flag

1722—aboard a pirate ship off the American Colonial Coast.

Spider John Rush never wanted to be a pirate, but it had happened and he’d learned to survive in the world of cut and thrust, fight or die. He and his friend Ezra knew that death could come at any moment, from grapeshot or storm winds or the end of a noose. But when Ezra is murdered in cold blood by a shipmate, Spider vows revenge.

On a ship where every man is a killer many times over, how can Spider find the man who killed his friend? There is no law here, so if justice is to be done, he must do it. He will have to solve the crime and exact revenge himself.

One wrong step will lead to certain death, but Spider is determined to look into the dying eyes of the man who killed his friend, even if it means his own death.


A Welcome Murder

After his unspectacular professional baseball career ends with a knee injury in Toledo, Ohio, Johnny Earl gets busted for selling cocaine.

Sent to prison for seven years, he is finally released in 1991. All he wants to do is return to his hometown of Steubenville, retrieve the drug money he stashed before he went to jail, and start a new life where no one has ever heard of Johnny Earl.

However, before he can leave town with his money, Johnny is picked up for questioning in the murder of Rayce Daubner, the FBI informant who had set him up on drug charges in the first place. Then his former prison cellmate shows up—a white supremacist who wants the drug money to help fund an Aryan nation in the wilds of Idaho.

Five memorable characters, each with a separate agenda, come together in this layered tale of murder, deceit, and political intrigue.

White Ginger

Haunted by the disappearance of his mother when he was eight years old, detective Hud Matthews begins his own investigation to find out what really happened so many years before.

Armed with Buddhist philosophy and wicked knife skills, Bai Jiang works at being a better person by following her conscience, while struggling with what she likes to think of as “aggressive assertiveness.”

When a girl goes missing in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Bai is called upon as a souxun, a people finder, to track down the lost girl. The trail leads to wannabe gangsters, flesh peddlers, and eventually to those who have marked Bai for death.

Enlisting the aid of her closest friend and partner, Lee-a sophisticated gay man who protects her, mostly from herself-and Jason-a triad assassin and the father of her daughter-they follow the girl across the Bay and across the country. Bai confronts paid assassins and triad hatchet men, only to find that being true to her beliefs as a Buddhist and staying alive are often at odds. At the same time, fighting a faceless enemy who seems committed to having her killed fills her with anger and fear that sometimes turns into a burning rage with deadly consequences.

Flavored with dark humor, White Ginger serves the perfect cocktail of wit, charm, sex, and violence.


Blind Moon Alley

It’s Prohibition. It’s Philadelphia. And Jersey Leo doesn’t fit in.

Jersey is an albino of mixed race. Known as “Snowball” on the street, he tends bar at a speakeasy the locals call the Ink Well. There, he’s considered a hero for having saved the life of a young boy. But when his old grade school buddy, Aaron Garvey, calls from death row and asks for one last favor, all hell breaks loose.

Jersey finds himself running from a band of crooked cops, hiding an escaped convict in the Ink Well, and reuniting with his grammar school crush-the now sultry Myra Banks, who has shed a club foot and become a speakeasy siren. Through it all, Jersey tries to safeguard the Ink Well with no help other than his ragtag group of friends: his ex-boxing-champion father, Ernie Leo; the street-savvy Johalis; a dim-witted dockworker named Homer; and the dubious palm reader Madame Curio. With them, Jersey digs for the truth about his friend Aaron Garvey-and winds up discovering a few things about himself.


Where I Can See you

Haunted by the disappearance of his mother when he was eight years old, detective Hud Matthews begins his own investigation to find out what really happened so many years before.

When a rare murder occurs in the lakeside community, Hud’s veteran skills are called upon to capture the killer. Pulled deep into the threads of the community with ties to the past, Hud quickly becomes a target, not only of the killer, but of those who wish the past to be left alone. As Hud gets closer to discovering the truth about the crimes, he has to face a choice of enforcing the law, or stepping outside of it to make sure that his version of justice is served.


The Blood Promise

Hugo Marston must figure out what lies hidden inside an old sailor’s chest before a 200-year-old blood promise is revealed and claims another life.

In post-Revolution Paris, an old man signs a letter in blood, then hides it in a secret compartment in a sailor’s chest. A messenger arrives to transport the chest and its hidden contents, but then the plague strikes and an untimely death changes history.

Two hundred years later, Hugo Marston is tasked with safeguarding an unpredictable but popular senator who is in Paris to negotiate an end to a dispute between France and the U.S. The talks, held at a chateau in the country, collapse when the senator accuses someone of breaking into his room. But theft becomes the least of Hugo’s concerns when someone at the chateau discovers a sailor’s chest and the secrets hidden within, and decides that the power and money they promise are worth killing for.

But when the darkness of history is unleashed, even the most ruthless and cunning are powerless to control it.


Black Karma

Bai Jiang uses her wits and martial skills to navigate the underworld of San Francisco’s Chinatown, where drugs, multiple murders, crooked cops, and out-of-control clandestine agencies are just part of her problems.

Bai Jiang-San Francisco’s best-known souxun (“people finder”)-is hired to track down the mysterious Daniel Chen. Police inspector Kelly suspects Chen of being involved in a botched drug heist that resulted in the death of an officer. Bai has her own suspicions. She thinks the police just want to see Chen dead.

Her investigation leads Bai into deadly intrigue as she finds herself caught between international intelligence agencies and merchants of war, who deal in death, drugs, and high-jacked information.

To make matters worse, she’s thirty-something and dating again. It’s not easy juggling a suitor with family connections, a brazen young man who finds her irresistible, and her ex-the father of her child.

World conflict and family strife explode as adversaries face off in San Francisco’s Chinatown, a world away from the one we know.


The Black Hour

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WINNER! ANTHONY AWARD: BEST FIRST NOVEL

WINNER! 2015 Lovey Award: BEST FIRST NOVEL WINNER! 2015 Silver Falchion: BEST FIRST NOVEL, Mystery/Thriller

WINNER! Mary Higgins Clark Award

Left Coast Crime Rosebud Award Finalist: Best Debut Mystery

Barry Award Finalist: Best Paperback Original Macavity Award Finalist: Best First Mystery Novel

For Chicago sociology professor Amelia Emmet, violence was a research topic-until a student she’d never met shot her.

He also shot himself. Now he’s dead and she’s back on campus, trying to keep up with her class schedule, a growing problem with painkillers, and a question she can’t let go: Why?

All she wants is for life to get back to normal, but normal is looking hard to come by. She’s thirty-eight and hobbles with a cane. Her first student interaction ends in tears (hers). Her fellow faculty members seem uncomfortable with her, and her ex-whom she may or may not still love-has moved on.

Enter Nathaniel Barber, a graduate student obsessed with Chicago’s violent history. Nath is a serious scholar, but also a serious mess about his first heartbreak, his mother’s death, and his father’s disapproval. Assigned as Amelia’s teaching assistant, Nath also takes on the investigative legwork that Amelia can’t do. And meanwhile, he’s hoping she’ll approve his dissertation topic, the reason he came to grad school in the first place: the student attack on Amelia Emmet.

Together and at cross-purposes, Amelia and Nathaniel stumble toward a truth that will explain the attack and take them both through the darkest hours of their lives.


Betrayal at Iga

Autumn, 1565: After fleeing Kyoto, master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo take refuge with Hiro’s ninja clan in the mountains of Iga province.

But when an ambassador from the rival Koga clan is murdered during peace negotiations, Hiro and Father Mateo must find the killer in time to prevent a war between the ninja clans.

With every suspect a trained assassin, and the evidence incriminating not only Hiro’s commander, the infamous ninja Hattori Hanzo, but also Hiro’s mother and his former lover, the detectives must struggle to find the truth in a village where deceit is a cultivated art. As tensions rise, the killer strikes again, and Hiro finds himself forced to choose between his family and his honor.