Showing results by publisher "Books in Motion" in Crime Fiction

Every city has organized crime. But only River City has a Russian gangster like Valeriy. He’s meticulous, cunning, and willing to sacrifice anything - and anyone - to see his conquest through. In Val’s way are the men and women of the River City Police Department, including rookie B. J. Carson. She’s trying to fill the shoes of a legend while the pressures of patrol and her own past catch up to her. She and her colleagues must unite and work together with a former River City cop turned FBI agent to face down the single biggest organized crime threat River City has ever seen.

After the apparent shotgun suicide of Emerson Ward's childhood friend, Lou Barrett, the Chicago freelance sleuth heads back home to Huntley, Ill., for the funeral. Emerson was planning to drive back to Chicago the afternoon of the funeral, but decides to stick around after Lou's sister, Meg Brodsky, asks him to investigate Lou's death. Danger erupts after Emerson asks too many questions about Lou's business partner, Pete Anderson, and about a shady mall development that has left many investors in hot water.

A violent robber is loose in River City. Meet the cops that must take him down. Stefan Kopriva, a young hotshot. Katie MacLeod, a woman in what is still mostly a man’s world. Karl Winter, about to retire but with one more good bust left in him. And Thomas Chisolm, a former Green Beret who knows how dangerous a man like the Scarface Robber can be. These are the patrol officers of River City - that mythical thin blue line between society and anarchy.

Monona Quinn and her husband Doug are taking a relaxing vacation in the northwoods of Wisconsin. Mo’s enrolled in a writing workshop, and Doug’s resolved to learn to fish. Naturally, it’s the perfect time to solve another murder..... Pompous, self-important writer Fletcher Downs was supposed to be the writer-in-residence; he was supposed to teach a classroom full of hopefuls how to write a great mystery—but he hadn’t intended to teach by example.

RN Gina Mazzio returns to San Francisco's Ridgewood Hospital after a near-death experience in Nevada's desolate gold country. On her first day in the Ob/Gyn Women's Health Clinic, a co-worker suffers a mystifying post-abortion death due to sepsis. Two days later, the same thing happens to a clinic patient. Gina thinks it's an inside job, but gets no support for her theory. Convinced she's right, she risks everything to dig into the who and why of the deaths. She wants to know if someone is deliberately causing clinic patients to suffer horrible deaths.

Monday morning, a young mother disappears after a doctor’s appointment. Monday evening, a young socialite leaves a risqué lounge and never makes it home. Detective Jackson lands both cases, but at first he can’t find signs of foul play. When the socialite turns up dead, his investigation uncovers her dirty secrets, which complicates everything. The case runs into even bigger trouble with a suspect who hasn’t left his house in a year.

Everywhere Monona Quinn goes, people turn up dead - and Mo ends up confronting their killers! First there was Charlie, owner of the town diner and Mo's first friend after moving to little Mitchell, Wisconsin (Murder over Easy). Then there was the parish priest (Murder at Midnight).And now, even a trip to the family farm yields corpses.

What do you do when you inherit $330 million after taxes? If you're New Mexico rancher Miles Waddell, you build a dream. A flat-topped mesa and a third of a billion dollars equals Nightzone Zone, an astronomy-based theme park, complete with giant radio telescope, a bank of smaller scopes linked to a theater, five-star dining in a restaurant with retracting dome ceiling, a hotel/resort, tram car access, and a narrow gauge steam locomotive to carry tourists to the mesa top. Glorious. And too ambitious for many residents of Posadas County.

Boston is in the grip of a serial killer known as the Harvester, due to his fondness for keeping bloody souvenirs of his victims. But mny of those victims are people that Tally knew, through her work or as friends. Tally realizes there's a connection, a link that only she can find. But she'd better find it fast. The Harvester is getting closer.

All former truck-stop waitress/new heiress Lizbet really wanted was a swimming pool. What she got was a skeleton, suspicious cops...and Charlie. While digging the hole for the pool, workmen discover a human skeleton. Suddenly Lizbet's backyard becomes the focus of the cops, the FBI, and the media. And if that isn't enough, 30 minutes later, Charlie, the skeleton's owner, shows up in ghost form dressed as a sexy, young hippie type, and asks Lizbet to help him find out who murdered him back in 1969.

In the Atlantic Ocean, hurricane Helena is gathering strength, becoming the most powerful storm in recorded history. As Helena bears down on Bermuda, Donovan Nash, along with other members of the scientific research organization Eco-Watch, are called to fly in and extract key government people who have been studying Helena. For Donovan Nash, the routine mission turns deadly when an attempt is made on the life of the lead scientist.

Now that Samantha Sweet has a contract to provide her special handmade chocolates for the wealthy jet-set clients of Book It Travel, Sweet’s Sweets bakery is taking on a whole new dimension. It’s almost Halloween, and her pastry shop is bursting at the seams. She needs extra employees, but there is no place to put them. Right before the witching day, she comes upon a large Victorian house she can adapt for the business, but the mysterious, spooky noises at night are way more than the normal creaks and groans of an old building. Something else is going on.

Not far from the glitter of this world-famous adult playground, the killer claims his victims. Driven by a deep hatred for women, he begins his reign of terror by seeking out those who remind him of someone from his past. Someone who caused him great pain. As the body count rises, the national news media pick up on the story. Pressure for a speedy apprehension is brought to bear by feminist groups and politicians. But the killer is both daring and intelligent. He leaves little in the way of clues or evidence that will lead to his being identified.

Successful TV journalist Alison Reynolds' career comes to an abrupt end when top executives decide they need a "younger face". As if that's not enough, Ali discovers her media mogul husband is cheating on her: and her best friend from high school is missing.

When a woman walks into Samantha Sweet’s pastry shop, claiming to have amnesia, it’s a puzzle that seems to have nothing to do with Sam’s new commission for a fantastic one-of-a-kind order of chocolates, although "Jane Doe" seems to know a lot about that. Sam calls Sheriff Beau to solve the mystery of who this stranger is and where she belongs. But Beau’s attention is occupied by other things: nearly his entire force is out sick with some kind of flu bug, and now a murder far from Taos requires his full attention. “Jane’s” forgotten memories become vitally important....

"I've practically made a career out of babes, but this one really hit me. She had a shape like a three-dimensional dream, and I hugged that vision with my mind. Right from that first glance I had memorized her. She was the key - uhm - 'figure' in a sensational investigation leading all the way to the U.S. Congress. And me? I'm the shamus prepared to pursue both her and the clues to the ends of the earth, if only for the rear view."

'The scarlet bikini which had covered a minimum of the eye-popping curves on the dead woman, lay at her feet, and my eyes focussed on her as glassily as did the dead man’s next to her. He was dead, all right. He had been shot, poisoned, stabbed, and strangled. Either somebody really had it in for him or four people had killed him. Or else it was the cleverest suicide I’d ever heard of. Me? I’m Shell Scott, private detective and I’m wondering why anybody in his right mind would commit such a complicated murder....'

Shell Scott is hired to help State Senator Paul Hershey gather information against Joe Blake, one of the biggest crooks Los Angeles has ever produced. Joe Blake is the kingpin behind the opposition party to Paul Hershey’s re-election. Blake is backing the candidate against Hershey, a Blake pawn, and using smear and innuendo in an increasingly vicious campaign. Hershey’s only defense against this onslaught is to get the information that will put Blake behind bars. That’s where Shell Scott comes in.

They say that even the strongest man secretly wants to feel wanted. He even hopes to have some woman take care of him. Well, my cup was running over. Me? I’m Shell Scott, the human target for every gun in the State of California. And that’s no private eyewash...I was made to feel wanted all right...by the city, county and state police. And there was a woman with a nasty little .32 in her tiny hand, well she was just dying to take care of me, permanently. Everywhere I turned, somebody was trying to help me plan what to do with the rest of my life....

The Shootist is John Bernard Books, a man of principle and the only surviving gunfighter in a vanishing American West. He rides into El Paso in the year 1901, on the day of Queen Victoria's demise, there to be told by a doctor that he must soon confront the greatest Shootist of all: Death himself. In such a showdown against such an antagonist, J. B. Books cannot win. Most men may end their days in bed or take their own lives, but a mankiller has a third option, one which Books decides to exercise. He may choose his own executioner.