Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Genre Fiction

Sherlock Holmes’s discovery of a mysterious musical score initiates a devious Christmas challenge set by Irene Adler, with clues that are all variations on the theme of “theft without theft”, such as a statue missing from a museum found hidden in the room it was taken from. In the snowy London lead-up to Christmas, Holmes’s preoccupation with the “Adler Variations” risks him neglecting the case of his new client, Norwegian arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who has received a series of threats in the form of animal carcasses left on his doorstep.

Franny Steinberg knows there’s powerful magic in laughter. She’s witnessed it. With the men of Chicago off fighting WWII on distant shores, Franny has watched the women of the city taking charge of the war effort. But amidst the war bond sales and factory shifts, something surprising has emerged, something Franny could never have expected. A new marvel that has women flocking to comedy clubs across the nation: the Showstopper.

The most wanted man in the West, Big Bob McGraw has earned his reputation as a thief and killer. Carson Stone rode with McGraw’s gang exactly once, minding their horses during a bank robbery, before quitting. But with the marshal of El Paso, Texas, gunned down in cold blood as the bandits escaped, he’s been judged guilty by association. To clear his name, Carson teams up with bounty hunter Colby Tate to track down the outlaws—now scattered across the frontier—and bring them to justice.

In my perfect world I would be selling gourmet donuts, creating art that people loved, be married to my high school sweetheart, live in an adorable dream house. I had big plans for my life once, but nothing was turning out like I thought it would. One day I looked in the mirror and the strong, creative girl of my childhood wasn’t smiling back at me anymore. My aunt must’ve known something that I didn’t, because when she left me her cottage on Sweetwater Island, a tiny spark lit inside me. Could this be a second chance at the life I always dreamed of?

India is a country divided, torn by religious strife and hounded by potential invaders on all sides. The world’s most powerful governments believe that whoever controls India holds the strategic advantage for global domination. As the chaos spins out of control, a name resurfaces after centuries of obscurity: Akbar.

They were the most elite team of interservice fighters America’s government had ever formed. As war raged in Vietnam, the Black Berets took on the most secret—and most heinous—of covert operations. Now they’re back, and they have a new mission. Eight years after their bloody exploits across the battlefields of Asia, the five-man team is reunited at the behest of their scheming CIA handler, a man none of them trusts after a dirty war of lies and betrayals. However, word has it one of their own, thought long-dead, is alive and being held prisoner in Laos.

Key Isabella might be small, but it has become a hub for the drug trade into the United States. For the Black Berets—the world’s fiercest mercenaries—the issue of a billion-dollar heroin smuggling operation hits a sore spot they can’t ignore. Arriving in the West Indies, the five-man team of American heroes is tasked with overthrowing Key Isabella’s evil dictator without anyone finding out they’re involved. To make matters more difficult, they soon bump into the additional problem of a police force just as violent and corrupt as the nation’s tyrannical leader.

The Black Palm called themselves a nation, though their own people had cast them out. They called themselves an army, but made war on unarmed men, women and children. And in their fanatical crusade, they might strike anywhere. Even in the tiny Caribbean republic of New Neuzen. The only thing that stood between New Neuzen and a terrorist bloodbath were five American tourists.

Someone wanted to overthrow the government of San Sebastian, a country whose tiny army, nonaligned status, and location on the deadly curve of Central America made it ripe for subversion. The first try was an attempted hit on its president on a crowded street in Washington. The second was an invasion from the sea. Both times the Black Berets were there to keep the worst from happening. But how long could five men and one boy hold out against an army of the world’s most skilled assassins? An army with limitless resources—and the patience to keep on killing?

When a bloody raid in Libya turns up nothing but a camp of terrorists who know nothing about any bombs, the elite American fighters find themselves ordered to Portugal to follow up a new lead. Once there, they learn every undercover agent from every country working in Portugal has been taken out of play, leaving the door wide open for staging an apocalyptic attack. If the Black Berets fail to locate the bombs and take out the merciless cabal that stole them, it could mean the end of the world as they know it. For these five warriors, the stakes have never been higher.

To the average citizen, the Lion of Salvador was a national hero, a military general of such renown that his accolades spanned two continents. To those in the know, however, the man was the cruelest of drug lords, a savage despot building an unstoppable empire that ranged from the Central American jungle to the bustling streets of New York.

Letting a struggling Chicano gas company run its pipeline across their Louisiana land struck the Black Berets as a good idea—especially once Cowboy got an eyeball on Isabella Cifuentes, its stunning, sultry president. But the contract, it seemed, contained some very fine and lethal print. A Texas oil magnate allied with a fanatical right-wing cult had made an unholy alliance to keep the territory free of Mexicans and competition—even if it meant taking his grievance to the people next door.

In the arms race against Russia, the United States has eked ahead with their superior advancements in computer technology. All that changes when Russia recruits some of Japan’s finest scientific minds to build their greatest weapon yet: a supercomputer capable of annihilating the US’s formidable Star Wars defense system. Destined for the land of the Samurai, the Black Berets know just how much is riding on this latest mission. If Russia succeeds in its quest for world domination, the future of the warriors’ countrymen—and their loved ones—is bleak indeed.

The Black Berets had to hand it to Parkes, their former CIA case officer. First he’d sent them on a suicide mission to Vietnam. Then he’d sent some CIA hitmen to finish them off when the enemy couldn’t. And the moment they set foot stateside, the world’s meanest mercenaries found that Parkes had arranged another lethal welcome. Well, they’d never liked Parkes much. But how were they going to tell him? First they had to find him, and that would take Beeker, Rosie, Cowboy, Harry, and Marty, from the bayous of Louisiana to an academy of terror in the Libyan desert.

Pamela Binnings Ewen’s newest novel reveals the story of Émilienne, once the most beautiful, sought-after woman in Paris during the Belle Époque, the era of peaceful years just before World War I. As a girl, Émilienne fights her way through poverty in Montmartre, drawn to the lights of Paris below. Soon, she stars at the Folies Bergère, mistress of kings and princes, known as the most beautiful woman in Europe.

Anna Crane, soon to be married, reflects back on her childhood in Ohio during the 1960s and ‘70s with her two sisters and her charismatic, self-destructing mother. Evoking the claustrophobia of small-town life, Anna’s first passionate love affair with a troubled boy who works as a groom and trainer at a horse track, and her mother’s endless stream of suitors and a failed marriage, the novel races toward a chilling conclusion when Anna is betrayed by the two most important figures in her young life.

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.

Eighteen-year-old Niri and his family live a modest but secure life working in the villa of the wealthy Benzes. But when the pandemic comes, they are all let go, and left staring into the abyss of poverty. As their situation grows desperate, he decides he won’t wait at the mercy of a corrupt, indifferent government. Sneaking through the city at night, past military patrols, Niri returns to the villa to take what his family needs to survive. Waiting for him is his childhood friend—and the Benzes’ daughter—Mary, who has a bigger plan that will change their lives forever.

Three years after her best friend Peggy went missing, Harper Starling is lost. Lost in her dead-end job, lost in her grief. All she has are regrets and reruns of her favorite science fiction show, Infinite Odyssey. Then Peggy returns and demands to be taken to the Argonaut, the fictional main character of Infinite Odyssey. But the Argonaut is just that … fictional. Until the TV hero himself appears and spirits Harper away from her former best friend. Traveling through time, he explains that Peggy used to travel with him but is now under the thrall of an alien enemy known as the Incarnate.

Tommo has been aboard a whaling ship for six grueling months when he decides, with his friend Toby, to escape and hide on a wild island. They are not alone. The island is home to a tribe called the Typees known for being cannibals. But when Tommo breaks his leg, they can no longer avoid the valley the Typees call home. They venture down into the tribe’s territory, but instead of violence, the Typees greet them happily with food and shelter. Tommo and Toby quickly become accustomed to life in the tribe and even prefer aspects of island life to their so-called “civilized” society.