Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Literature & Fiction

Patrick O’Neil is a travel agent who never goes anywhere. His closest confidante, Sharon, is chain-smoking her way to singles hell, passing up man after man. His parents, proprietors of a suburban men’s store whose fortunes are sagging more visibly than its customers, can’t agree how best to interfere in their sons’ lives. And his lover, Arthur (a nice golden retriever of a guy to whom Patrick can’t quite commit), wants to cement their relationship by buying a house. Then a call comes in the middle of another sleepless night.

Welcome to Hex City. Population: magicians. Thanks to hexslinger “Reverend” Asher Rook, sorcerers now have a sanctuary where they can live and work in peace. But a storm is coming—a tempest known as Chess Pargeter. Infuriated by his former lover Rook’s betrayal and sacrificed in the name of the Mayan goddess who is Rook’s current consort, Chess leaves a trail of death and destruction in his wake. Caught up in Chess’s crusade is Pinkerton-agent-turned-outlaw Ed Morrow and a young woman spiritualist.

In his Locus review of Two Worlds and in Between - the first volume of The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan - Gary K. Wolfe wrote, “...it makes you wish the second volume were here now.” Well, the long wait is over. This second volume completes this ambitious undertaking, collecting the finest of Kiernan’s stories from 2004 to 2012, selected by the author herself. The book includes 25 short stories and one poem, plus the short novel Black Helicopters - more than 200,000 words of fiction, including the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Prayer of 90 Cats”.

Charlie has built a highly respected private investigations firm through hard work, smart choices, and relentless ambition. Her team of investigators are highly skilled and trustworthy—but she secretly struggles with her sexual orientation and a mother with early-onset Alzheimer’s. When Charlie and her crack team head to Birmingham, Alabama, following the trail of a missing person, what should be a routine case turns into a complex chase for answers. Shady locals and a southern patriarch with dark secrets dating back forty years obscure their path.

Carson Chow is a high functioning addict. For years, he's been able to meet the increasing demands from his aging immigrant parents while hiding his crystal meth use every other weekend. One Friday night, as he's passed out from a drug binge, he misses 38 phone calls from his father, detailing first the collapse and eventually the death of his mother. Carson has always been close to his mother. He throws himself into the preparation of his mother's funeral. Will this tragedy plunge him deeper into his abuse or finally rouse him from his addiction stupor?

Socially awkward Will, grieving her mother’s death, is fascinated by Dolly, a beautiful, charming rebel with an insatiable taste for adrenaline. Both musicians come alive at Harlem jazz clubs and Prohibition-era speakeasies. Dazzled by the world they are discovering together, their romance ignites. But while Will is obsessed with Dolly, Dolly is obsessed with crime. The power dynamics keep shifting as Will agrees to commit petty crimes with Dolly in exchange for sexual favors. When the University and their rich families unite to split them up, passions escalate.

A new Civil War is brewing. With the city of Bewelcome as its headquarters, Allan Pinkerton’s Detective Agency leads a siege on Hex City, the town founded by “Reverend” Asher Rook and his consort, the Mayan goddess Ixchel. Monsters prowl the battleground, rocket trails of spells crisscross the sky, and an unnatural rain falls. Sides must be taken, but Pinkerton-agent-turned-outlaw Ed Morrow, spiritualist Yancey Kloves, and even Rook must choose what ruin or redemption means to each of them. Meanwhile, Chess Pargeter gears up for the greatest fight of his life—and death.

Taking its inspiration from Great Expectations, this novel teases us with the question of what Pip might have been like had he grown up in the American South of the 1960s and 1970s. A guilty encounter with an escaped felon, a summer spent working for an eccentric man with a mysterious past, conflicted erotic feelings for his employer’s niece and nephew—these events set the stage for a journey of sexual and moral discovery that takes Newt Seward to New England, Rome, and Paris—all before returning home to confront his life’s many expectations and disappointments.

Someone is murdering the homeless in Detroit’s Cass Corridor―by immolation. These horrific crimes wouldn’t require an investigation by Charlie Mack and her crack team investigators, except that one of the burned bodies is her mother’s friend. There’s a lot wrong with this case: the police won’t admit a serial killer is on the loose, drug trafficking intersects with the deaths, and a rogue cop is involved. The timing also couldn’t be worse―Charlie and Mandy are finally moving in together.

When a guilt-ridden client has an unexpected change of heart, the Mack team’s careful preparation for his grand jury testimony is blown to smithereens. Now, Charlie and Gil must pull out all the stops to defend him from his new enemies and the estrangement of his father. Meanwhile, Charlie reports for jury duty and unwittingly begins to unravel a disturbing plan to alter the outcome of a crime lord’s conspiracy trial.

When private investigator Charlie Mack is hired by her ex-husband’s new wife, Pamela, things get awkward quickly. Her ex, Franklin, has been charged with his brother-in-law’s murder. Charlie and Pamela both believe he didn’t do it, but he has gone into hiding for some reason neither of them understands. To the police, it adds up to easy guilt, but to Charlie, it indicates that Franklin has stumbled onto something that likely comes with life-threatening complications.

A hate group operating in Oakland County, Michigan, has claimed responsibility for a six-month-long string of arson fires and robberies at mosques, temples, and Black churches around Detroit, eluding police and federal agencies. The most recent fire, at a mosque in Dearborn, kills a respected imam. His children—suspicious of law enforcement’s treatment of Muslims and afraid of reprisal—hire Charlie Mack and her team of investigators to find their father’s murderers.

When Charlie and her team of investigators are asked to take on a seemingly impossible case―to identify and thwart an attack on the upcoming Detroit Auto Show―it takes a $100K incentive and the help of a dozen freelancers for Charlie and her crew to unravel a twisted plot that runs through several countries and many more bank accounts. But finding out who’s behind the intricate plot only solves half the problem. Charlie and her crew are drawn into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as they try to locate dozens of hidden bombs before they can be detonated.

Satellite Street is woven through with the theme of transitions. Paul Marden is grappling with the way that a sudden, devastating illness and his slow recovery have made him reevaluate what "normal" is for a man in his 60s who grew up in a time of change that promised better days than the ones he is now living through. Another character's transition involves both gender and spirit; Lelee was born male and wanted to transition to female, but the process has been hindered by heart issues. Lelee also believes that she can speak to the dead, although she is skeptical.

At 19, almost 20, Ron Bancroft is newly out as transgender and finds himself adrift: kicked out by his family, jilted by his girlfriend, and unable to afford to return to college in the fall. So he heads out to Wyoming for a new start, a chance to prove that - even though he was raised as a girl, even though everyone in Boston thinks of him as transgender - he can live as a man. A real man. In Wyoming, he finds what he was looking for: rugged terrain, wranglers, and a clean slate. He also stumbles into a world more dangerous than he imagined, one of bigotry and violence.

Sam Brandt is a long-term denizen of Connecticut’s renowned Leverett School. As an English teacher, he has dedicated his life to providing his students with the same challenges, encouragement, and sense of possibility that helped him and his friends become themselves here half a lifetime ago.

It’s 2007, and while 43-year-old Leanne Spencer’s career is building up steam, her love life is a trainwreck. She’s always believed her addiction to bad boys stems from her flawless father dying when she was a child, but it turns out Mom’s a liar, Dad’s not dead, and her childhood was a well-crafted illusion.