Showing results by publisher "Crossroad Press" in Crime Fiction

To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton makes his way to the United States with the sole ambition of bringing his “art” to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, and drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his “art” to limits even Compton hadn’t previously imagined.

Since the night he made an ill-advised decision to commit a pair of revenge killings, Nick has made his living as a professional murderer. Early on, he dispensed with guilt or emotion. But after a routine hit gets messy, Nick gets sick, and the conscience he thought he’d killed comes creeping back into his brain. Now, Nick’s profession and life are on the line, and he has begun stalking a perfectly innocent couple to see if he can snuff them out without the slightest hint of remorse...or if the humanity he worked so hard to suppress is making up for lost time.

Tommy O’Brien once hoped to leave his run-down industrial hometown. But, marriage and fatherhood have kept him running in place, working a job that doesn’t even pay the bills. And now, he seems fated to stay for the rest of his life: He's just learned he’s going to die young - and soon. But he refuses to leave his family with less than nothing - especially now that he has nothing to lose. Over a couple of beers with his best friends, John and Sherm, Tommy launches a bold scheme to provide for his family’s future. One man’s war with God may impact us all.

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.

Kearny and Donny MacGregor are famous hoaxers whose lineage can be traced to a long line of conmen and tricksters. Hours before the brothers perform a successful crop circle hoax, they are approached about creating an Earth light hoax for the mayor of Stony Creek, the Bigfoot capital of northern California. Earth light is a general term used to describe unknown lights in the sky, and the mayor of Stony Creek believes that this second "phenomenon" will help pull the town from its revenue slump.

From out of a shadowy backwoods hollow echoes a dark threat from the past, nearly a century lost and forgotten. The rural town of Harmony, Tennessee, possessed a disturbing secret; a secret so ancient that most of its residents were completely unaware of it. Even the last survivors of a vigilante raid long ago have filed the tragic events of that autumn night away, totally unaware of the evil that remains, dormant, but forever patient, among the tall pines and thick-leaved kudzu of a place known only as Hell Hollow.

Cryer once had another name, but he can't remember it. The man he used to be was stabbed in the head by an assailant. After months of catatonia, Cryer awakens in a mental facility to find that his former life is almost completely forgotten. He knows his wife and daughter have been murdered - he saw them die moments before his own assault - but his shattered mind is incapable of retaining their names. Or even his own.

Elena Lacosta, a paranoid, take-no-prisoners drug trafficker turned FBI fugitive, marries a cop and fights her inner demons. Her new life depends on it. When Elena's oldest brother Gabriel is killed, she listens to what seems like endless accolades about him at his memorial service, held in a packed church with standing room only, and before the dirt on his grave can settle, she is scheming to reinvent herself in her dead brother's image to launch her new life.

In his sixth adventure, Rhodes is confronted with what seems at first to be a suicide: the body of a man newly arrived in the county is found hanged in the dilapidated building he has taken over for his business. Simon Graham was a rare-book dealer. If it seems unlikely to find such an arcane entrepreneur in this extremely rural and sparsely populated part of Texas, it becomes less strange when it turns out that Graham was more con man than bibliophile.

Craig Edmonds, a successful stockbroker, reports the disappearance of his wife, Kirsty. What starts as a typical missing person's case soon evolves into a full-blown homicide investigation when forensics uncover blood traces and dark-blonde hairs in the boot of the missing woman's car. Added to this is Craig's adulterous affair with the victim's younger sister, Narelle Croswell, compounded further by a recently acquired $1,000,000 insurance policy on his wife's life. He is charged with murder, but with no body and only circumstantial evidence, he walks free.

After the loss of his wife and child in a plane crash, former NYC firefighter Sebastian Martin is nearing alcoholic oblivion when his brother offers him a last-chance job opportunity as an insurance fraud investigator. Despite his reservations, he soon discovers he has an instinct for the job. A move to Dallas, where he learns it's okay to be alive, proves to be his salvation. Investigating fraudulent claims for a dead child and another for a missing husband, in Honduras, leads him to murders, international car thieves, and torture at the hands of a former KGB agent.

Rafe Carmichael has a good life. As assistant manager of a ski lodge in the mountains of Utah, he's living the dream - until the dream turns sour. When one of his employees dies of an accidental drug overdose, he's naturally saddened, but not surprised. But when he finds a kilo of heroin stashed in the dead man's ski locker, and learns some troubling information from the man's ex-girlfriend, he begins to wonder if it really was an accident after all.

Tennessee State Representative Jack Walker hires Ashley Owens to find his missing, drug-addicted wife, and soon enough Ash finds himself unexpectedly at odds with Chattanooga’s various underworld gangs - both the living and the unliving. Fortunately, he has Zora Banks, a beautiful, Southern conjure woman of mixed race in his corner. Together, they find themselves embroiled in a far-reaching occult organization’s grab for ultimate power.

“I was to make myself a killer.” In 1865, a man calling himself Septimus Whitehall slashed, shot, and burned his way from New York to California in a frenzy of violence. This is his own story, told in his own words. Seven names were on the doctor’s list. Seven men and women scattered all over the United States and its western territories. Seven souls judged guilty by a mysterious man with no past apart from the loss for which his enemies are blamed. The War Between the States is over, but Septimus Whitehall intends to wage a bloody war of his own and he is willing to cut down almost anyone who stands in his way.

A murderer is stalking the Windy City, carving out the eyes of his victims as grisly souvenirs. When shy Ellen Gordon finds a diary left behind in a coffee shop, she can't keep from reading it. And when she meets the author in person, he's just as charming as his writing. Only when she reads further does she find clues to the identity of Chicago's terrifying serial killer. Could it be the author, himself? Ellen will have to uncover the truth about her new boyfriend quickly if she doesn't want to become the killer's next victim.

Serial killer Frank Haid, dubbed the Painkiller by Chicago police and media, murders 18 people - all paralytics. Commanded by an unseen presence that he calls ''Father'' and that speaks in the voice of an uncle whose rotting corpse he keeps in the living room, Haid destroys his victims (what's left of them) and evidence in a way that puzzles police. Hardest hit are residents of Marclinn, a home for the handicapped, where survivors decide they must track down the madman themselves.

The lives of two strangers, Greg Jenkins and Megan Brighton, become inextricably entangled when they each sign up for a dinner dating agency. Greg's reason for joining has nothing to do with looking for love. His recently divorced sister, Sam, has disappeared and Greg is convinced that Dinner for Twelve, or at least one of its clients, may be responsible. Neither is Megan looking for love. Although single, she only joined at her best friend Brenda De Luca's insistence. When a client of the dating agency is murdered, suspicion falls on several of the members.

Crease is going back to his quaint, quiet hometown of Hangtree. It's where his father, the sheriff, met ruin in the face of a scandal involving the death of a kidnapped little girl and her missing ransom. It's where Crease was beaten, jailed, and kicked clear of the town line 10 years earlier.

Once a happy family man, Kealan now spends his days walking aimlessly and crashing in his friend's spare room. It never seems to matter how much he walks, because his shadow is always there. When he meets younger Valerie, an inquisitive and sensitive soul, a few rays of light begin to penetrate his dark curtains. But what about her jealous ex? How is it that some things inevitably tie together? And where does one's shadow lead to?

Could Martin Talbot's elderly, Alzheimer-stricken mother, Judy, really have been the Black Stiletto? When Martin discovers several volumes of her diaries hidden by his mother, he is stunned beyond all imagination. His mother, the underground heroine of yesteryear? The famed, still unidentified woman who battled Communist spies, took on the Mafia, and preyed on common crooks? The woman who exacted punishment on evildoers without mercy? But it is all described, in great detail, in the diaries. Could it be true? Talbot is filled with doubt and disbelief.