Southern California Fiction

Avery Collins isn't your typical attorney. After years behind bars for a murder she didn't commit, she's now a relentless defender of the innocent. Her latest case? A ticking time bomb of secrets and lies. Esme Guitierrez, an El Salvadoran refugee, stands accused of murdering Aria Whitmore, the talented daughter of a billionaire hotelier. Avery unearths a web of disturbing truths hidden within the Whitmore mansion: the disappearance of Aria's birth mother, her unlikely friendship with a schizophrenic man, and threatening emails containing insider information point to a much darker reality.

Framed. Imprisoned. Now free and out for blood. Avery Collins spent seven years behind bars for a murder she didn't commit. Now she's hell-bent on exposing the truth and making her enemies pay. With her best friend and relentless PI Regina Baldwin at her side, Avery peels back layers of corruption reaching to the highest levels of power. As they dig deeper, a sinister web of greed, deceit, and murder unravels—revealing the shocking truth behind Becky Whitfield's death.

I never wanted to be a cowboy - living in a small town was suffocating. The military was my out. I saw every place I ever wanted and everything that nightmares are made of...until I almost lost my life and ended up back home.

Avery Collins, social justice warrior, has a new case, only it's not a criminal case. Not yet, anyway. Seven year old Frankie Jamison is dying, and nobody quite knows why. Avery knows Frankie through Regina, as Frankie is the son of Lorinda, one of Regina's best friends from the street. Lorinda has nothing in her life, nothing but her young son, and now she's losing even that.

On a beautiful October day in the San Fernando Valley, teenager Missy Avila was lured into the woods, beaten, tortured, and drowned. Missy's best friend, Karen Severson, publicly vowed to find the killer and even moved in with Missy's family to help. Three years later, a surprise witness exposed the murderers as Missy's two best friends—one of whom was Karen. New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury delivers a story full of twists, turns, betrayals, and confessions.

Aidan Collins has his very first large case when his client, Marina Vasiliev, a drop-dead gorgeous mental patient, is accused of killing her wealthy husband. Marina insists that she didn't do it, but Aidan can't trust her. After all, he met Marina in the mental hospital–he originally obtained her as a client when she was involuntarily committed, and he assisted her with getting out. Diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, Marina's view of reality shifts from day to day. Marina has no memory of what happened the night that her husband died.

At the age of thirty-nine, Alice Chang suddenly finds herself living in the last place she expected: her mother’s house. But in the face of divorce, eviction, and the recent death of her father, she doesn’t have a choice. Watching as her mother thrives in a new job and meets younger men at the local gym, Alice struggles, reflecting on her parents’ marriage, her relationship with each of them, as she adjusts to being single again for the first time in twenty years. Then she finds her father’s old journal...and uncovers a shocking family secret.

In this moving collection of short stories and essays, Gordon Lee Johnson (Cupeño/Cahuilla) cements his voice not only as a wry commentator on American Indian reservation life but also as a master of fiction writing. In Johnson’s stories, all of which are set on the fictional San Ignacio reservation in Southern California, we meet unforgettable characters like Plato Pena, the Stanford-bound geek who reads Kahlil Gibran during intertribal softball games; hardboiled investigator Roddy Foo; and Etta, whose motto is “early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise”.