Showing results by author "Ace Atkins" in All Categories

It all started with a simple, yet sneakily difficult challenge from global best-selling author Harlan Coben: Pick a bird of prey, then use it as the inspiration for a brand-new story. The response from some of the best writers on the planet: Game on! The result: Eleven stories that are twisty, scary, surprising and bursting with imagination. An egg worth more than its weight in gold. A mysterious operative known only as Owl. An eagle-watcher who sees more than she should. Even a story that somehow places the Maltese Falcon in a nursing home.

After years of war, Army Ranger Quinn Colson returns home to the rugged, rough hill country of northeast Mississippi to find his native Tibbehah County plagued by corruption, decay, meth runners, and violence. His uncle, the longtime county sheriff, is dead. A suicide, he’s told, but others—like tomboy Deputy Lillie Virgil—whisper murder.

In this gripping new crime novel from the New York Times-bestselling author, Quinn Colson returns to take down a criminal syndicate that has ravaged his community, threatened his family, and tried to have him killed. Shot up and left for dead, Sheriff Quinn Colson has revenge on his mind. With...

He is only in his early 30s, but now Quinn Colson is jobless - voted out of office as sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi, thanks to the machinations of county kingpin Johnny Stagg. He has offers from bigger and better places, but before he goes, he's got one more job to do - bring down Stagg's criminal operations for good. At least that's the plan.

Thirty-six years ago, a nameless black man wandered into Jericho, Mississippi, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a pair of paratrooper boots. Less than two days later, he was accused of rape and murder, hunted down by a self-appointed posse, and lynched. Now evidence has surfaced of his innocence, and county sheriff Quinn Colson sets out not only to identify the stranger's remains, but to charge those responsible for the lynching.

A year after becoming sheriff, Quinn Colson is faced with the release of an infamous murderer from prison. Jamey Dixon comes back to Jericho preaching redemption, and some believe him; but for the victim’s family, the only thought is revenge. Another group who doesn’t believe him - the men in prison from Dixon’s last job, an armored car robbery. They’re sure he’s gone back to grab the hidden money, so they do the only thing they can: break out and head straight to Jericho themselves. Colson and his deputy, Lillie, know they’ve got their work cut out for them.

A classic Southern tale of backroom deals, tainted honor, dysfunctional family, high-stakes greed - and everyday heroism - from the New York Times best-selling author. Mississippi sheriff Quinn Colson had to admit he admired the bank robbers. A new bank was hit almost every week, and the robbers rushed in and out with such skill and precision it reminded him of raids he'd led back in Afghanistan and Iraq when he was an Army Ranger.

A high school dropout named Milly Jones was found walking down the middle of the highway, engulfed in flames. Even in a tough Mississippi county like Tibbehah, it shatters the community, and it is up to Sheriff Quinn Colson and his deputy, Lillie Virgil, to investigate what happened and why. Before long, however, accusations start to fly, national media and federal authorities descend, and what seemed like a senseless act of violence begins to appear like something even more disturbing - with more victims waiting in the shadows.

The Pritchards had never been worth a damn - an evil, greedy family who made their living dealing drugs and committing mayhem. Years ago, Colson's late uncle had put the clan's patriarch in prison, but now he's getting out, with revenge, power, and family business on his mind. To make matters worse, a shady trucking firm with possible ties to the Gulf Coast syndicate has moved into Tibbehah, and they have their own methods of intimidation.

In the latest thriller featuring the legendary Boston PI, Spenser heads to the City of Angels to meet old friends and new enemies in a baffling missing person case that might shake Tinseltown to its core. Gabby Leggett left her Boston family with dreams of making it big as a model/actress in...

A modern, Southern reinvention of The Maltese Falcon, Crossroad Blues won noir fans with its nod to the masters and thrilled readers with a wild ride along Highway 61. It’s here that we first meet Nick Travers, an ex-New Orleans Saint turned Tulane University blues historian. Nick searches for the lost recordings of 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson—and a missing colleague—and finds trouble at every turn.

Fresh from 10 years as a U.S. Army Ranger, Quinn Colson finds his hands full as the newly elected sheriff of Tibbehah County, Mississippi. An old buddy running a local gun shop may be in over his head when stolen army rifles start showing up in the hands of a Mexican drug gang. At the same time, an abused-child case leads Quinn and his tough-as-nails deputy, Lillie Virgil, deep into the heart of a bootleg baby racket and a trail of darkness and death.

Iconic, tough-but-tender Boston PI Spenser delves into the black market art scene to investigate a decades-long unsolved crime of dangerous proportions. The heist was legendary, still talked about twenty years after the priceless paintings disappeared from one of Boston's premier art museums...

Boston PI Spenser and right hand Hawk follow a con man’s trail of smoke and mirrors in this thrilling entry in Robert B. Parker’s long-running series. Connie Kelly thought she’d found her perfect man on an online dating site. She fell so hard for handsome, mysterious M. Brooks Welles...

With a precise eye for detail, Atkins takes Nick Travers on a journey into the hidden pockets of New Orleans, the battered roadhouses and truck stops of Mississippi, and the streets of Memphis that only an insider could know. The plan is simple. All Nick Travers, a former professional football player turned professor, has to do is drive up Highway 61 from New Orleans to Memphis and track down the lost brother of one of his best friends. But as Travers knows, these simple jobs seldom turn out smoothly.

In the 1950s, Ruby Walker boarded the Illinois Central from Mississippi to the Promised Land—Chicago. She became one of the greatest blues singers the city has ever known, only to lose everything when she was convicted of murdering her lover and producer, Billy Lyons, in 1959. She's been locked in a prison cell ever since. Now, a flickering hope emerges for Walker in the form of letters from a Tulane University blues historian named Nick Travers. She agrees to an interview only in exchange for him checking out what she calls the truth behind Lyons's last hours.

P.I. Spenser, knight-errant of the Back Bay, returns in this stellar addition to the iconic New York Times–bestselling series from author Ace Atkins. What started out as a joke landed seventeen-year-old Dillon Yates in a lockdown juvenile facility in Boston Harbor. When he set up a prank...

When crime-fighting attorney Albert Patterson is gunned down in a Phenix City, Alabama, alley in the spring of 1954, the entire town seems to pause for just a moment—and when it starts up again, there is something different about it. A small group of men meet and decide they have had enough, but what that means and where it will take them is something they could not have foreseen.

In the latest thriller featuring the legendary Boston PI, Spenser and his young protégé Mattie Sullivan take on billionaire money manager running a network of underaged girls for his rich and powerful clients. Ten years ago, Spenser helped a teenage girl named Mattie Sullivan find her mother's...

When music mogul Teddy Paris, a former teammate from the New Orleans Saints, visits Nick Travers and asks him to help find $700,000 taken from a rap prodigy, Nick can't turn down his friend. The missing money will pay a bounty on Paris's head that was set by a crosstown rival, a street-hard thug named Cash. Nick soon finds himself lost in the world of Gucci-lined Bentleys and endless bottles of Cristal champagne. He sets out with fifteen-year-old rap star ALIAS, seeking a team of grifters that conned the kid.