Showing results by author "Neil Plakcy" in All Categories

From the moment he sees handsome Liam McCullough showering naked behind a Tunisian bar, ESL teacher Aidan Greene wants to make love to the sexy bodyguard. At first, though, a dead courier and beefy hired thugs get in the way. But as soon as Liam and Aidan head toward a rendezvous with a Tuareg tribe at a remote oasis, they start getting naked together and exploring all the passion Liam hid from as a closeted Navy SEAL and all the love Aidan missed from a long-term boyfriend who has just kicked him to the curb.

Peggy was a great friend to Steve when they were teens. Can he help her now as she faces the death penalty? As teens, semi-reformed hacker Steve Levitan admired his friend Peggy because of the way she fought back from a difficult childhood to travel to France and aspire to a college degree and a career as a lawyer.

An Alzheimer’s patient slips away from home on his own and tumbles into the Delaware River. And then Steve’s love Lili suffers the crushing loss of her mother in a Miami Beach hospital. Eckhardt Lalor left behind a fortune in real estate, a fractured family, and a bitter legacy as a city slumlord. Does that add up to murder? There’s no question of what killed Benita Weinstock — a dodgy heart — but her death rocks her daughter’s world, and Steve’s. It will be up to Rochester to solve the crime and heal his humans in this new mystery with heart — and fur.

Stop by for some comfortable visits to Stewart's Crossing, where reformed computer hacker Steve Levitan and his crime-sniffing golden retriever Rochester are nose to the ground in this collection of mystery short stories that take place between novels. In the first of these stories, Steve is learning to love the big, goofy golden he has inherited on the death of his neighbor, and Rochester shows him how to open his heart and his home to his sweetheart Lili.

Forty-two-year-old Steve Levitan has lost everything that matters to him: his marriage, his home, and his career. After finishing a brief prison term for computer hacking, he returns to his home town of Stewart's Crossing, PA, with his tail between his legs. With his parole officer peering over his shoulder, Steve begins a technical writing business and takes a part-time job as an adjunct professor of English at his alma mater Eastern College.

Steve Levitan and Lili Weinstock are on their way to the altar—but dognapping and murder get in the way. The theft of the vice-mayor's dog unveils a widespread pattern of canine thefts. Could those poor pooches be on their way to a testing lab or a puppy mill? And how does that case play into the death of a Billy Joel tribute act? Could the caterer they've hired be responsible?

Eric and Allie share a history neither of them knows how to forget. Once, they were teenage stepbrothers thrown together by their parents’ marriage. Two boys navigating grief, rigid rules, and feelings neither was ready to name. One night changed everything. Silence followed. Then distance. Then years of pretending it never happened. Now they’re adults. Eric is disciplined, controlled, and freshly untethered after leaving the military and finishing his degree. Allie is rebuilding his life piece by piece after addiction and rehab, determined not to fail again.

A Body at the Purim Carnival. A Hidden Past. A Community in Danger. When his golden retriever Rochester noses out a dead body behind the bounce house at Stewart’s Crossing’s first Purim carnival, Steve Levitan is pulled into two dangerous investigations, each revealing its own world of secrets, power, and betrayal.

In Food of the Dogs, Steve and his bride Lili head to Vermont for a relaxing honeymoon—until Rochester uncovers a murder victim. Their romantic getaway turns into a dangerous search for a killer hiding among small-town secrets. Dog Grant Me finds Steve back at Friar Lake Conference Center, where a winter cooking course becomes the setting for threatening notes, political intrigue, and a student’s murder. As a blizzard closes in, Steve, Lili, and Rochester must unmask a killer before the storm traps them with a murderer.

Eric and Allie share a history neither of them knows how to forget. Once, they were teenage stepbrothers thrown together by their parents’ marriage. Two boys navigating grief, rigid rules, and feelings neither was ready to name. One night changed everything. Silence followed. Then distance. Then years of pretending it never happened. Now they’re adults. Eric is disciplined, controlled, and freshly untethered after leaving the military and finishing his degree. Allie is rebuilding his life piece by piece after addiction and rehab, determined not to fail again.

The body in the canal belongs to Steve's old friend. Can Steve and Rochester uncover the clues to what happened to him? When his college friend Doug moves to Stewart's Crossing after an ugly divorce, reformed computer hacker Steve Levitan sees a way to pay forward the help he received under similar circumstances. But when Doug dies under mysterious circumstances, Steve and his crime-solving golden retriever Rochester have a new goal: Find the truth behind Doug's death, even if Steve has to risk the freedom he has fought so hard for to do it.

Fresh out of Florida University with a degree in construction management, Manny lands his dream job with Loredo Construction. He’s crushing hard on his thirty-something boss, Walter Loredo: a sexy, successful, and supposedly straight alpha male who commands attention on every job site.

Larry Leavis is six-foot-six, awkward, brilliant, and used to being invisible in a room full of beautiful men on South Beach. A gifted programmer just starting his career in Miami’s buzzing tech scene, he’s more comfortable behind a keyboard than on a dance floor. Romance? That’s for other people. Larry fixes Wi-Fi, writes clean code, and keeps his crushes safely locked in his imagination. Until one night at a South Beach café-bar changes everything.

When Eastern College launches its first winter intersession program, administrator Steve Levitan is excited to host a course on Caribbean cuisine at Friar Lake Conference Center. His wife Lili is co-teaching with her friend, prominent food anthropologist Dr. Yesenia Ubeda. But before the first meal is served, threatening notes appear, old documents surface with explosive implications for US-Cuba relations, and a student with a hidden agenda is found murdered. With his golden retriever Rochester at his side, Steve must untangle a web of long-buried secrets and dangerous obsessions.

Autumn has come to Bucks County, and Steve Levitan has a new job: develop a conference center for Eastern College at Friar Lake. But on his first visit to the property, his golden retriever Rochester makes a disturbing discovery, a human hand rising from the dirt at the lake’s shore.

Reformed computer hacker Steve Levitan has built a new life for himself after prison, including a home with his fiancée and his golden retriever Rochester. It matters deeply to him, enough to risk it all to bring justice to a killer in his neighborhood.

Openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka is faced with a new murder that comes dangerously close to his personal life. About a year and a half has passed since the flames engulfed Waahila Ridge State Park at the end of Mahu Fire. During that time, Kimo and fire investigator Mike Riccardi dated for about six months, but with Kimo so visible and Mike in the closet, the pressures on them increased to the point where their relationship ended. When a fire breaks out at a shopping center Kimo's father used to own and a young boy is killed, they are forced to work together.

Mahu Surfer, the second book in my Mahu Investigations mystery series, sends gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka back to his surfing past. His new boss asks the former competitive surfer to go undercover on Oahu’s North Shore to find the killer of three surfers. The catch: He can't tell any of his family or friends that he has returned to the force, causing him to lie, when he has just come out of the closet and begun to tell the truth about his life. In his return to the North Shore, Kimo discovers trouble in paradise.

Mahu Fire begins as openly gay Honolulu homicide detective Kimo Kanapa’aka attends a local charity event in support of gay marriage. When a bomb disrupts the gala, Kimo, his family, and friends are thrust into a deadly contest between good and evil. A wave of religious fundamentalism sweeps through O’ahu, at the same time as violence against gay and lesbian-owned businesses is on the rise. Coincidence? Kimo doesn’t think so. Working with hunky fire inspector Mike Riccardi, Kimo digs through the ashes to discover a motive for the attacks, as well as who is behind them.

Autumn has come to Bucks County, and Steve Levitan has a new job: Develop a conference center for Eastern College at Friar Lake, a few miles from campus. But on his first visit to the property, his golden retriever, Rochester, makes a disturbing discovery: a human hand rising from the dirt at the lake's shore. Whose hand is it? Why was the body buried there? The answers will take Steve, his photographer girlfriend, Lili, and the ever-faithful Rochester to a drop-in center for recovering drug addicts on the Lower East Side....