Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Modern Detectives

It’s been fifteen years since Mandy Reasoner was murdered - a crime for which her boyfriend, Duke, was convicted. But when high school students and best friends Betty and June discover that Mandy was June’s long-forgotten aunt, they decide to pursue the mystery. Galvanized by the growing community who doubts the evidence against Duke and is rallying to free him, the two girls start on a path that will bring them not only to Duke himself but smack into Nickel, tough-as-nails teenage P.I. attempting to keep his own life together.

Ten years after the death of patriarch Xavier Bentheim, long-estranged Till Anschütz returns to Berlin for the wedding of the family’s youngest daughter. Till carries with him the disturbing memories and macabre secrets surrounding Xavier’s death. And although he doesn’t know it, his return to Berlin has set in motion a sinister plan.

Jimmy Veeder and Bobby Maves are back at it, two years after the events of Dove Season - they’re not exactly the luckiest guys in the Imperial Valley, but, hey, they win more fights than they lose.

Settled on his own farmland and living like a true family man after years of irresponsible fun, Jimmy’s got a straight life cut out for him. But he’s knocking years off that life thanks to fun-yet-dangerous Bobby’s booze-addled antics - especially now that Bobby is single, volatile as ever, and bored as hell.

Crimes happen in a flash. Before you even know it, the shots have rung out, the jewels have been stolen, and the bodies are cooling on the floor. In this anthology, over eighty authors - including veterans such as Chuck Hogan, Ken Bruen, and Tasha Alexander - come together to tell tales of murder and mayhem, all in one thousand words or less. Dare to confront these fearful, furious tales, each offering a glimpse of the darkness lurking in the human heart.

Max Stark is a trained circus clown whose tricks can be downright terrifying - especially for his ex-wife. News anchor Laura Stark thought she’d seen the last of her devious ex-husband, but a series of sinister pranks has her convinced Max is back - and hell-bent on turning her life upside down. After she broke a controversial story that left her unable to rely on New York’s finest, Laura turns to a pair of eccentric private investigators for help.

The Bentheims of Berlin take in Till Anschütz, an orphan on the run, who quickly befriends 12-year-old Max. The boys are intrigued by the office where Max’s cold, distant father, Xavier Bentheim, writes his horror novels. And when they get up the nerve to explore, Max and Till are truly horrified by what they discover behind a hidden door.… Till awakens strapped to a gurney. His belly is burning, and a young woman with dead eyes flicks her forked tongue against his face. "We’ve modified you - you’ll like it," a familiar voice purrs.…

To keep the light of his life, he'll have to do some dark things. After Matt Caine loses his wife in a car accident, all he has left is his daughter, Anna. But just as the little girl - who survived the accident - finally starts thriving, Matt's former in-laws threaten to take her away via a bitter custody battle. Desperate to keep Anna and in debt to some dangerous local thugs, Matt has no good options. But he does have Jay, one very bad friend.

He is a man alone, a drifter haunting the back roads and highways of America. Every town he leaves behind preserves but a glimmer of him, the cool, handsome man with the teardrop scar whose presence fades with the sunlight. But all that changes when a brutal assault forces him to play Good Samaritan for a beautiful young woman, placing him squarely in the crosshairs of a vengeful ex-con. Caught between duty to his fellow man and the anonymity of life on the road, the Samaritan struggles to resist the forces drawing him into a shadowy world of violence, intrigue, and deception.

For his entire adult life, ex-criminal Will Daniels has been running from his past. Now, in the wake of his son’s gruesome death, he’ll turn around and embrace it. After learning his boy got his head half blown off while helping a couple of punks rob a bank, Will tries - oh, how he tries - to just let the police handle the investigation. But as legal channels fall well short and Will’s helpless fury mounts, it’s only a matter of time before he dishes out a more personal brand of justice.

After the brutal murder of an art gallery owner, the beautiful and mysterious artist Holly Troy seems to be the key to finding out what really happened on the night of the homicide. Unfortunately, Holly also suffers from dissociative identity disorder, and many of her personalities come straight from classical mythology, from the powerful Cronos and Pandora to the fickle Fates. Holly has no idea who she was the night of the crime - whether she witnessed anything, or even if she was the killer herself. Homicide detective Orson Cheever must unravel the complex labyrinth of Holly’s mind before he can find the truth.

With the police on his back and his agency taking sleazy cases he never thought he’d have to, Paul Chang erupts under the job’s pressures and sees his personal demon, an alter ego he calls the dragon, emerge. Only the training from his martial arts teacher and old friend Shu keeps Chang sane. But his ex-wife Colleen and a journalist are being stalked by someone trying to make it look like Chang is the aggressor, and when the harassment turns deadly, the lives of everyone close to him are in danger.

As the lawlessness of Prohibition pushes against the desperation of the Depression, there are two ways to make a living in Los Angeles: join the criminals or collar them. Kitty Pangborn has chosen the crime-fighters, becoming secretary to Dexter J. Theroux, one of the hard-drinking, tough-talking PIs who pepper the city's stew.

When a serial killer shows up on Longboat Key, Florida, after a twelve year absence, Matt Royal is stymied. The first woman killed on Longboat Key has ties to a secretive government agency for which Matt’s best friend Jock Algren works. Was this a coincidence or was she a targeted kill? Matt’s friend, Longboat Key detective Jennifer Diane (J.D.) Duncan, investigates the murders but also seems to be a target of the killer. Why? And where has the killer been for twelve years?

Caleb Parker has been on the run from his past ever since his father, a serial murderer known by the name of Shame, was electrocuted by the state of Florida. Wishing for nothing more than to start life anew and away from the dark shadows of his past, Caleb tries to distance himself from his father’s legacy by moving to California. But even when he’s far from his father’s killing grounds, the past catches up with Caleb when a new series of murders occurs - reminiscent of Shame’s brutal handiwork. Once more Caleb is thrust into the spotlight - only this time as the prime suspect.

Comics kill. Or so the esteemed Dr. Werner Frederick would have people believe - people like the Congressmen holding hearings on banning violent crime and horror "funny books". And when the crusade provokes a most un-funny murder, Jack Starr - comics syndicate troubleshooter - has no shortage of suspects. Was it the knife-wielding juvenile delinquent or the naked seductress? Perhaps a frustrated publisher or an outraged cartoonist. Or was it a comic book reader…?

There’s bad stuff out there. Folks reckon things like vampires don't exist, but they does - Jock from the burger van told me. Plus I found an actual one of ’em, sleeping at the time in the back of a hearse I nicked that first morning. That's how me and Jock got to setting out freeing the world of ’em, using his bag o’ wooden stakes and special bottles of whisky. Course, I knowed that vampires didn’t exist, not when I stopped and done some thinking. And I knowed Jock had mental wossnames, what with his son falling off that roof and him reckoning them immigrants pushed him.

It's 1968, New York City is in a state of mayhem, and private eye Alex Novalis is flat broke. So he accepts a mundane missing persons gig from wealthy construction mogul Gabriel Kravitz, whose 18-year-old daughter, Lydia, has disappeared. The only lead is that Lydia had been sleeping with Jerry Pedrosian, a radical artist and known womanizer. But there are few clues, and everyone in Lydia's life seems to be hiding something... including her miniskirted best friend, Andrea Marshall, who Novalis is inconveniently attracted to.

Lost for more than 60 years and overflowing with political and sexual intrigue, Thieves Fall Out provides a delicious glimpse into the mind of Gore Vidal in his formative years. By turns mischievous and deadly serious, Vidal tells the story of a man caught up in events bigger than he is, a down-on-his-luck American hired to smuggle an ancient relic out of Cairo at a time when revolution is brewing and heads are about to roll.

Antique salvager, counterfeiter, and former art forger Jota knows his newest commission pays suspiciously well, but it’s too easy to turn down. All he has to do is find an old clock that apparently has disappeared after being sold in the auction of a bankrupt estate. In Madrid’s El Rastro market, where whisper networks of shady and ambitious hustlers promise generous rewards for minimal favors, what sounds too good to be true usually is, but the last thing Jota is expecting to uncover is his own past.