Showing results by publisher "Crossroad Press" in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Harlan is about a suicidal, death-obsessed teenager by the name of Harlan Sexton. Turning himself into a ticking bomb, he has decided to kill himself at the end of the school year unless his closest friend Julian can find a way to change his mind. And that's just the beginning--the tension is amped up by the return of his abusive redneck father, a town serial killer stalking his female classmates, and an all out violent war between Harlan and a jock bully from school. If John Hughes had directed a movie inspired by the Columbine tragedy it would be this book.

Jon Shaw never believed in monsters, then he got his first case. Jacob Carpenter is a troubled teen and the police have written him off, but Shaw refuses to let the case go. The road will lead him to horrors and a Circus of the Damned, to a Clown who can't be human. Assisted by the mysterious members of a shadowy organization known as the O.C.L.T., Shaw will confront this horror and be changed by it, forged in a crucible of pain...

Ex-cop, security guard and sometime actor Jack Dwyer feels a familiar buzz when, after fifteen years, he sees Karen Lane, his old high school flame. But things are going so well with his girlfriend Donna, that he's pretty sure Karen is not what he needs right now. Still, he agrees to retrieve a suitcase for her which she'd left with her last lover, Glendon Evans, a psychiatrist.

The mutated spree killer known as the Claw has returned, leaving bloody victims all over Super City. While Homicide detectives try to find out who the Claw really is, uniformed officers must deal with the Bolt's escape from the drunk tank, and the bumblings of aspiring hero Knight Dude. Meanwhile, the Superior Six claim they'll cooperate with the police and stop the Claw - but they are busy fighting the Brute Squad and stonewalling the cops. The SCPD must find out the Claw's deadly secret, before he claims another victim!

Leila Blackwell suffers from keratitis, a condition that, coupled with prior eye problems, is slowly robbing her of her sight. Nevertheless, she stubbornly tries to maintain a “normal” lifestyle, often forsaking the companionship of her lover Cathy to act independently, as any fully sighted person might do. It’s thus that she finds herself alone in a public rest room when a familiar male voice penetrates the silence, saying, “Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you.”

It's 1959, and Judy Cooper, the Black Stiletto, sets out to confront a dangerous gangster known as the heroin king of Harlem, when the teenage daughter of her beloved martial arts instructor ends up a prisoner in an uptown narcotics den. The Stiletto has troubles of her own - a shady filmmaker is threatening to reveal her identity to the world - a close friend of her landlord and substitute father may be in cahoots with the Harlem criminals - she's fighting for racial equality - and she has fallen in love again....

Christian Greve is a photographer. He waves teddy bears at little children, arranges families like vases of flowers, and records graduations and dances for posterity. As a child, he was raised by a mother who thought he made a good mannequin to practice her makeup on... and a good plaything for her tricks.

Linc Jackson and his buddy Rick Weaver thought they'd seen it all on the brutal battlefields of Desert Storm, but found themselves displaced and forgotten men when they came back to the States. Now, a year later, the opportunity of a lifetime suddenly drops in their laps.... That is, if they don't mind tiptoeing on the dark side to make the score. During a freak flood that causes havoc in the downtown business hub of Chicago, Linc and Rick put everything on the line as they execute a heist that they hope will put them on Easy Street for the rest of their lives.

"There is a plague coming....For forty days and forty nights fear shall savage the streets. Those steeped in sin shall burn. The dying begins now" With this chilling message a wave of terror unlike anything the world has ever seen sweeps the streets of Europe. Thirteen martyrs burn themselves alive in thirteen major cities simultaneously. And this is just the beginning. A religious cult calling itself the Disciples of Judas has risen in the Middle East. They twist the words of ancient prophecies to drive home the fear.

Special investigator Whit Pynchon and crime reporter Annie Tyson-Tyree race against time to find the psychotic killer who is murdering the wives and girlfriends of all the cops in the small West Virginia town of Millbrook.

Longtime grifter and suburbanite Jonas Blades works in a sash-and-door mill until he literally bumps into Jacquie Mantooth, a voluptuous schemer who is putting together a plan to pull off a big diamond heist. She recruits her new lover, Jonas, to be the wheelman and they hammer out the final details with their inside man, a blind courier named Mr. Buggs. On the heist day, Jonas double crosses Jacquie by ratting her out to the police and grabs the stolen diamonds all for him. While Jacquie pulls a nine-year prison bit, Jonas, fearful of discovery and arrest, decides to sit on the stolen diamonds....

When his own goddaughter becomes the latest victim of a serial killer wielding an ice pick, New York City Detective Frank Janek knows he must get inside the mind of a serial killer to locate this monster.

Imagine a world where you don't recognize the human face. That's Hannah's condition - "prosopagnosia", or "face blindness" - when the brain center that recognizes faces is inoperable. The onset of the condition occurred when she was attacked by an unknown assailant in the inner lobby of her New York City apartment building. And now she thinks he's back, and not just in her dreams. When she also attracts the attention of a psychopathic predator and becomes the unwitting target of a Mafia drug ring, the scene is set.

Twenty-three of Shamus Award-winning author Bill Pronzini's stories, all of which display his versatility, his clean, crisp narrative style, and his keen awareness of detail. These tales, including three that feature his well-known series chararacter, the "Nameless Detective", run the gamut from psychological suspense ("Strangers in the Fog") to satire ("A Craving for Originality") to Western gothic ("The Hanging Man" and "His Name was Legion").

A collection of short mystery stories by award-winning author Bill Pronzini. In "The Man Who Collected the Shadows", a mild-mannered file clerk with a passion for pulpy detective stories learns that he has supernatural powers. In "Shade Work", a con man picks the wrong marks. Fans of mysteries and detective novels will enjoy listening to these 14 entertaining stories.

As a journalist, Kristy French is never going to win a Pulitzer while she's at The Newcastle Gazette covering bake sales and town fêtes. A missing persons report could be about to change all that. As a novelist, Ben Shelton's career's over before it's begun, he's the proverbial one hit wonder. The two of them have never met, but they're about to become the most important people in each other's lives. It isn't love. It's survival.

A stingy ex-husband, a teenage daughter, and a rusted-out Ford Escort have multiplied her troubles. Tripping over a dead body while on her morning jog seems like another incident for the minus column. But then her new editor at the newspaper gives her a regular column detailing the investigation. He's handsome, single, and just a bit mysterious. Suddenly, Colleen's life is on the plus side. Unfortunately, one dead algebra teacher plus two secret affairs plus four suspicious suspects quickly adds up to three perilous "accidents" for Colleen. 

Trapped in a lifetime of wrong turns and regret, Danny is a lost man desperate to reinvent himself. When Danny receives a sudden influx of cash, he devotes his time and money to mastering the art of time travel. Delving into his troubled past, Danny begins constructing an alternate life narrative to fulfill his biggest dreams and abolish personal tragedies. He ignites a love affair with his childhood sweetheart and achieves his ambition to fly airplanes. But the reboot comes with a price. As the secrets of Danny’s time machine come to light, murder and mayhem erupt around him.

Set among the wistful Victorians of San Francisco, the second installment of the Darcy Lott series finds stuntwoman Darcy once again plagued by murder. Recently returned to San Francisco to assist her Zen teacher in his new zendo, Darcy cannot shake the pain of her brother's disappearance. When she spies him on the roof of the zendo, she hurries to catch him—and finds him gone.

When a freelance photographer stumbles across a dead body, she is plunged into a homicide investigation and is brought closer to her uncle and aunt, the only family she has. To a handsome police detective who holds her life in his hands. To a suspect who holds her heart. And to a killer who is closer than she knows—in this spellbinding thriller by a masterful new storyteller.